Dungeons and Dragons
The early success of D&D led to a proliferation of similar game systems. Despite the competition, D&D has remained the market leader in the
role-playing game industry. In 1977, the game was split into two branches: the relatively rules-light game system of basic Dungeons & Dragons,
and the more structured, rules-heavy game system of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (abbreviated as AD&D). AD&D 2nd Edition was published in 1989.
In 2000, a new system was released as D&D 3rd edition, continuing the edition numbering from AD&D; a revised version 3.5 was released in June 2003.
These 3rd edition rules formed the basis of the d20 System, which is available under the Open Game License (OGL) for use by other publishers. D&D
4th edition was released in June 2008. The 5th edition of D&D, the most recent, was released during the second half of 2014.
In 2004, D&D remained the best-known, and best-selling, role-playing game in the US, with an estimated 20 million people having played the
game and more than US$1 billion in book and equipment sales worldwide. The year 2017 had "the most number of players in its history—12 million
to 15 million in North America alone". D&D 5th edition sales "were up 41 percent in 2017 from the year before, and soared another 52 percent in
2018, the game's biggest sales year yet". The game has been supplemented by many premade adventures, as well as commercial campaign settings
suitable for use by regular gaming groups. D&D is known beyond the game itself for other D&D-branded products, references in popular culture, and
some of the controversies that have surrounded it, particularly a moral panic in the 1980s that attempted to associate it with Satanism and
suicide. The game has won multiple awards and has been translated into many languages.