dungeons and dragons turns 30

Dungeons and Dragons celebrated it’s 30th anniversary. From this MSNBC article:

The game peaked in the 1980s, but there are plenty of fans left. Some 4 million people play D&D regularly. Many of them laugh at a common suggestion that fantasy gamers are geeks: Of course they are, they say.
“I think a lot of people who get drawn to this game are loners, but here’s a real opportunity to come out of that shell and feel safe about it,” said fan Mitch Hamburger, 32.

It’s splitting hairs, but I'd say that D&D hasn’t yet peaked. Then again, I'm counting people who are playing D&D licensed games, especially Neverwinter Nights, which has a rich set of design tools built into it, and allows geographyically-separated groups to play through dungeon modules (official or user-designed) over the intarweb. I’m expecting that there will eventually be games that allow the tabletop style interaction over broadband, though this will more likely be a teleconferencing setup rather than a bleeding-edge graphicsfest.

For a clue on just how geeky things can get, check Über Goober, a documentary that does for the gaming scene what Trekkies did to the Star Trek scene. Or just check this list of questionable campaign happenings.