Within the last several years especially, Dungeons and Dragons has achieved newfound popularity within quite a short time frame. While the recent success of Dungeons and Dragons has introduced a litany of new players to tabletop RPGs, it's important to remember that the game itself has existed since the mid-70s, and people have continued to play D&D since that time. However, one longtime player has recently made a surprising discovery.

The earliest editions of D&D are comparatively more archaic by modern standards. For both old and new players, Dungeons and Dragons 5e is considered by many to be one of the most accessible versions of D&D in existence, but the foundation of 5e was ultimately laid with previous versions of D&D. Now, a veteran fan of Dungeons and Dragons has managed to find one of their earliest character sheets that they made in the 80s.

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Over on Reddit, a user named Random-Mutant posted an image of a character sheet for Advanced Dungeons and Dragons that's dated February 1985. According to the user, this was the second character sheet they had ever written for D&D, which depicts a level 5, half-elf ranger named Abadorth. It appears that this character sheet was made back when Dungeons and Dragons 1e was being actively used, as D&D 2e wouldn't release for another two years.

The fact that the user somehow managed to save this character sheet for such a long period of time is quite an impressive feat. Depending on how actively any given player plays D&D or how many campaigns they are a part of, they likely would have a number of new Dungeons and Dragons characters that could easily get lost over the course of several decades.

It's amazing how many evolutions Dungeons and Dragons has gone through since its initial release in 1974 to the point where Advanced Dungeons and Dragons was essentially just regular D&D with all the additional races and classes released via magazine publications included within it. For some players, it might be hard to believe that the Ranger build that this user made in 1985 wasn't initially included in the first version of the game.

In any case, it will be interesting to see how Dungeons and Dragons will continue to impact modern culture in the years to come. Thanks in large part to shows like Stranger Things and Critical Role, D&D has achieved massive mainstream success and has allowed individual players to push the envelope when it comes to homebrew concepts and entirely original content for Dungeons and Dragons. It's safe to say that the franchise has come a long way since 1985 when this user's character sheet was first made.

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