[OSSR]Best of the Dragon, vol. I

[Ancient History]

The inside front cover is a full-page add for Ral Partha

Dungeons & Dragons was published in 1974; the first magazine supporting the game, called The Strategic Review was published in 1975 and ran seven issues, it was followed by The Dragon in '76, which became Dragon Magazine in 1980. This is a collection of articles from the Strategic Review and the first couple years of The Dragon.

Thus ends the lesson. Let's talk game design.

Everything about roleplaying was new. Even content generation. What people wanted, what they needed, how to publish it and get it out to people - everything was up in the air. The magazines offered a creative space to try out and publish ideas before they were codified; how "official" they were is a point of semantics. Like later issues, they tended to be miscellanies - and in style and content, were closer to the amateur fantasy 'zines being published at the time. Because publishing was primitive.

So this 76 pages has ~40 articles from some of the legends and forgotten writers of the very first years of D&D - where they cut their teeth on new classes, new rules, metaphysics, fiction, etc. Fun stuff. It is published almost uniformly in a two-column format, with ads for game stores and companies that no longer exist, peppered with crude cartoons and the odd bit of colored artwork, although most of it is in black and white. Paper covers; this wasn't a particularly expensive printing, despite it's $3 price tag.

A note from the introduction:

The D&D material contained herein will be invaluable to the beginner seeking to better understand the philosophy and background of the game, as well as to the more experienced gamer seeking even deeper immersion into an understanding of the game. further, there are treatises on design and play aspects that all D&Ders can benefit from.

Some of the material in this volume can be recognized as the prototype of material that was later incorporated into the game, or refined further into tenets of AD&D. Keep in mind that these articles are unchanged from the way they first saw print, and in some cases have therefore been superceded or transmogrified

tl;dr: TSR discovered early on that nostalgia and reprinting had a value all of its own.

There are three sections of this (Design/Designer's forum, Dragon Mirth, and Variants), but I'm going to try and handle this in 5-6 posts, see if I can handle about 15 pages of material per post.

[Ancient History]

PLANES The Concepts of SPatial, Temporal and Physical Relationships in D&D
by Gary Gygax

For game purposes the DM is to assume the existence of an infinite number of co-existing planes. The normal plane for human-type life forms is the Prime Material Plane. A number of planes actually touch this one and are reached with relative ease. These planes are the Negative and Positive Material Planes, the Elemental Planes (air, earth, fire, water), the Etherial Plane (which co-exists in exactly the same space as the Prime Material Plane), and the Astral Plane (which warps the dimension we know as length [distance]_. typical higher planes are the Seven Heavens, the Twin Paradises, and Elysium. The plane of ultimate Law is Nirvana, while the plane of ultimate Chaos (entropy) is Limbo. Typical lower planes are the Nine Hells, Hades' three glooms, and the 666 layers of the Abyss.

This is, basically, Gygax laying down the foundations of the D&D cosmology as it would exist right up until 4th edition. It's important to recognize right off the bat that Gygax is deliberately kitchensinking it: combining aspects of parapsychology (Astral Plane), Michael Moorcock's Elric chronicles (elemental planes), parallel worlds, and different heavens and hells - with just enough structure to try to accommodate them all.

Naturally enough, most of this article is concerned with how magic weapon bonuses are handled with respect to different dimensions, which Gygax starts off to explain by saying:

If it is accepted that the reason that certain creatures can only be hit by magical weaponry is because the creature exists in two or more planes simultaneously, then it follows that the weapon must likewise extend into the planes in which the creature exists.

This is the kind of metaphysics which AD&D is not known for; it's amazingly much closer to (and quite possibly an inspiration for) how Shadowrun handled weapon foci. Metaphysics are important for designing a consistent game world and a system that accurately models that setting; D&D abandoned a lot of that, since it was easier to make shit up and try to fit the setting to the system than vice versa. Concurrent with the idea of whether your magic sword is any good on another plane is visiting other planes, which Gygax expands upon briefly:

As of this writing I foresee a number of important things arising from the adoption of this system. first, it will cause a careful rethinking of much of the justification for the happenings in the majority of D&D campaigns. Second, it will vastly expand the potential of all campaigns which adopt the system -- although it will mean tremendous additional work for the DMs.

HOW GREEN WAS MY MUTANT The appearance of Humanoids in Metamorphosis Alpha
by Gary Gygax

Metamorphosis Alpha (1976) is the first science-fiction rpg, politely referred to as "a dungeon crawl in space." You're trapped on a generation ship full of mutants. Have fun. This article is essentially a set of tables for randomly generating humanoid races (i.e. two arms, two legs, upright posture), covering Skin/Hair Coloration (d20), Skin Characteristic (d10), and Color Pattern (d10); Head (d8), Neck (d6), and Body (d8) characteristics; Facial Features (d10), Hands and Feet (d12), Fingers and Toes (d12); Arms (d6), and Legs (d6).

It's basically a way to generate rubber forehead aliens from Star Trek. An example!

The Xag'Yg have pocked skin, dotted red and blue. Their heads are quite small with round eyes, and perched atop round bodies on short necks. They have double-joined arms ending in and short, four-fingered hands, and bowed legs ending in short feet with four toes on each foot.

SOME IDEAS MISSED IN METAMORPHOSIS ALPHA
by James M. Ward

In the course of writing anything about anything, when everything is done and sent to the printers, there is something that should have been added to it or changed in it. Such is the case, in looking over the TSR booklet Metamorphosis Alpha that I designed.

Jim Ward adds brief notes on Chemical Radiant Neutralizers, Chemical Flammable Retardants (fire extinguishers), Radioactive Material In Containment, and Sensory Intensifiers, along with something about poisons and shamans.

The above information came through playing the game, and I imagine that as time goes by there will be lots of reports from others that have noticed things that need clarification inMetamorphosis Alpha. I hope those wolfoids stay off your tail.

Not your parents' wolfoids.

AN ALTERNATE BEGINNING SEQUENCE FOR METAMORPHOSIS: ALPHA
by Guy W. McLimore, Jr.

Basically, instead of normal character creation, the ship's clonebanks have activated and you're a clone. There is a percentile table to roll on to see if you're a human, latent mutant stock, or mutant (and if so, number of mutations). this of course means you have to roll on additional tables. One of the possibilities of being Latent Mutant Stock is that you could roll a lethal mutation, dying during character creation - something I thought was Traveller's innovation. If you're human, you also have a 1% chance of rolling a SPECIAL SKILL (basically, psychic powers), which requires yet another table to roll on.

HINTS FOR D&D JUDGES
by Joe Fischer

When talking to new D&D judges, the one phrase most often heard from them is: "Help!"

These players turned judges are usually crammed full of ideas for new types of traps, monsters, and treasure to spring on their unsuspecting players, which is great. The trouble, in most cases, seems to be that they aren't quite sure where to start, which isn't so great. Hepefully [sic] this article will not only get you started, but show you which way to go once you are started.

Basically, this is for giving new dungeon masters (judges) ideas on how to build a town, wilderness, and dungeon. The advice is far away from "realistic" in the sense of economics, geography, politics, culture, architecture, etc. but is focused primarily on game considerations. For instance:

One of the first decisions to be made is whether or not magical items are to be sold in town. Actually most items shouldn't be sold but traded. (i.e. A magic-user, having no use for a magic shield, could trade it in for a scroll.) If so, remember that the non-character selling them must be powerful enough that the players can't acquire the magic by force. Also note that a complete plan of the seller's domicile should be done. The magic should be sold or traded at prices several times their real value; the non-character is in business to make money, not to help weak characters.

It's not all bad advice, but some of it is so basic that it's almost second nature to anyone that's played D&D at this point.

Another feature of any town or city is the local pub. here player-characters, at the cost of a round of drinks, can find out latest happenings and more importantly, local legends. Of course the judge should decide first if he wants legends in his game. If he does, then it is a good idea to slip in an occasional "bummer" legend in with the rest. that way players are a little more leery about following up legends, and the bartenders don't get overworked.

There is the occasional table, and the occasional good idea:

Other traps can be intelligent gold pieces; they have the nasty habit of screaming when taken from the room they were found in, which draws all sorts of monsters, or throwing themselves en masse at whoever makes the mistake of opening the chest they are in. The damage caused by the gold can vary. Or even more discouraging is finding out that after fighting a red dragon and losing half the party they have won 60,000 chocolate centered gold pieces; real value being about a copper each.

Joe Fischer is definitely of the old-school Mister Cavern variety, where the relationship with players is somewhere between antagonistic and openly sadistic, and a lot of games have bizarre and silly, nonsensical elements.

For reasons I don't understand, this section includes a couple magic items, notably the Hobbits' Pipe (this was pre-Halflings, I guess), which can blow magical smoke when you're indulging in pipeweed.

Noted sources of inspiration given are Larry Niven's Ringworld, Tolkien's "Moria", Clark Ashton Smith's Hyperborea, Arthur Conan Doyle's lost World, Fritz Leiber's

"Newhon"

, Frank Herbert's Dune, and Star Trek.

The ad on this page is for the game PSI-EMPIRES by "The Game Mills" of Oak Brook, IL. Which I have never heard of until now.

LANGUAGES or, Could you repeat that in Auld Wormish
by Lee Gold

Lee Gold is "Editor of ALARUMS AND EXCURSIONS, the D&D amateur press association." APAs are derived from the amateur journalism associations of the early 20th century, and are basically groups of people who self-publish journals, magazines, and news sheets and share them with each other. APAs in particular are usually published in "mailings" - everybody makes a bunch of copies of their journal (on mimeograph, spirit machine, Xerox if that's been invented, etc.) and sends it to the editor, who assembles them all into packets and mails them out to all the contributors. Alternately, everybody sends materials to the editor and he compiles them, sets the type, prints/copies them out, and then sends them on...and there are other schemes. But basically, it's a form of communication that Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard would have recognized; Michael Moorcock and Fritz Leiber participated in them. A few are still around today.

Sorry, long digression: this is a brief discussion of what the fuck "language" is in a D&D context, including things like "What the hell is an alignment tongue?" which leads to such interesting questions as:

Can a Mule understand a Horse? Can a Unicorn? I use an Equine tongue, 70% understandable and speakable by Horses, 70% by Mules (to whom it sounds very aristocratic), 50% by Unicorns.

And so on and so forth. Not much of this would make it into AD&D, although there's the bones there of further developments in the D&D languages line - and this is a good example of an article which is probably recreated more or less independently at least once every fucking edition.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF TOWNS IN D&D
by Tony Watson

Most D&D campaigns center around a dungeon and most of the players' time is spent in exploring the labyrinth and battling the nasties to be found therein. Rightly so; the depths are the place where the most fearsome monsters, trickiest traps and, of course, largest treasures are to be found.

This is sort of an expansion on some of Fischer's ideas on towns, but actually getting into some detail about the nature of medieval dwellings, businesses, etc. - Again, not terribly realistic, but a step in the direction of verisimilitude. A personal favorite:

brothel - No thieves' quarter would be complete without one. As well as being a haven for earthly delights it should be brimming with privy information (available for bribes of 10-100 gps). Fees are about 20 gp (35 for the "special"). One to six male patrons of all types and classes will be in the waiting area.

There's also tables for rolling up NPCs (kind of shit, to be honest, and I'm not rolling it. The only interesting thing to note is that most NPCs will be level 1-3, with only 1 in 6 having the chance to have 1d8 levels.

You really get the sense in D&D that the idea of procedural content generation was a genuine novelty and a gamechanger, and people loved the use of tables to build up characters and towns and other things - stuff that would all get tremendously easier as personal computers were introduced and became more powerful, so that you can generate entire worlds with the click of a button, but which in '78 you had to do with pen and paper and a handful of dice.

The downside to that is, of course, that there's a severe limit to how accurately you can model some stuff randomly. I mean, 25 gp for (presumably) vaginal penetration isn't just a failure of the imagination, but it is hideously overpriced according to this 1912 brothel menu. But it is why we now have stuff like the Interspecies Reviewers manga.



Next up...more stuff.

[Shrapnel]

The comments section for the brothel menu thing claim it's fake, but I also know you would never mislead me about old-timey fuckeduppedness.

I'm conflicted and don't know who to believe!

[Ancient History]

It's a hoax. But it's still a damn sight more imagination than the early D&D brothel-makers showed.

[Thaluikhain]

and the Astral Plane (which warps the dimension we know as length [distance]

Oh, so that's how that works, never knew that. Wait, how does that work?

[TiaC]

and the Astral Plane (which warps the dimension we know as length [distance]

Oh, so that's how that works, never knew that. Wait, how does that work?

It's perfectly clear. It's just bigger than bigness itself. What could possibly be confusing about that?

[deaddmwalking]

If the inner planes and the outer planes are the bread of your peanut butter sandwich, and the prime is peanut butter, the astral is the jam. It's not really distinct from the peanut butter layer, and if you were swimming through the jelly you'd find a way to get to either slice of bread.

[Emerald]

That verbiage is just referring to the fact that distance in the Astral Plane doesn't map one-to-one to distance in the Material Plane. It's a plane of pure thought, so "distance" is based on your familiarity, "speed" is based on your willpower, and so forth; that's why teleportation can cross intervening distances instantly and extradimensional spaces can be bigger on the inside using the Astral Plane, because distance there is whatever the caster/creator wants it to be.

[Ancient History]

LET THERE BE A METHOD TO YOUR MADNESS
by Richard Gilbert

WHEN DESIGNING A DUNGEON; before you begin madly scattering chutes, monsters, and secret doors, take a moment to figure out what it's all for. If you are postulating a world with any sort of "realizm" [sic] at all, you must appreciate that a dungeon doesn't just come into being for the hell of it. to the peoples of your world, digging a dungeon out of solid rock is a tremendous task, one not to be undertaken lightly.

Compared to the philosophy of the Tomb of Horrors, or Gygax literally rolling a dungeon from random tables behind the screen as the PCs look on, this is almost shockingly revolutionary thinking. Gilbert illustrates this with a mind's-eye sketch of a 15-level dungeon for a wizard named Nappo which at its peak included barracks and facilities for several hundred orcs...which probably never made it any farther than that planning stage. It's not a bad article, although I didn't get this reference:

A D&D world does not have to be similar to Europe, as Dr. Barker has shown us so well.

It turns out that Gilber was referencing the creator of Tekumel.

THE PLAY'S THE THING...
by Thomas Filmore

When you roll up your next character, try investing more in him than just the six die rolls. Try to create a colorful background for him. give him a purpose and a reason for being where and what he is.

Filmore trying to encourage role-playing versus roll-playing. The focus on making an interesting character instead of a merely powerful one is not something we associate with early D&D, but it was obviously an issue that some players felt the need to address. It really is funny how long ago some of these issues came up, and how relevant they remain.

So, personalize your next character, play the part of a saint or demon, vary your characters as much as possible to experience the range of excitement available in the worlds of D + D.

DESIGNING FOR UNIQUE WILDERNESS ENCOUNTERS
by Daniel Clifton

As much as we talk about "points of light," early D&D really was about dungeon-crawling, and wilderness is what you passed through to get to the dungeon, rolling random encounters like this was walking through the Mirkwood in the Hobbit and all the dwarfs had strayed off the path. This article consists of a set of random tables and associated directions on how to use them. The second paragraph starts off with:

For encounters, consider a four foot square area and determine terrain to each corner section of four square feet. If a river flows through the hex in question, then allow a 105 chance that it will flow across the field with an additional 10% chance that it will have a ford (if an encounter with a swimmer is indicated, then the river will always be on the field; and if the party is travelling upon a road, then an appropriate bridge or ford will be located at the river.) To determine the course of the river, first randomly locate it in one of the areas, find the initial direction of flow in chart 6-A, and then plot its course according to chat 6-B from one four-square-foot area to the next until both ends are plotted off the field. roll on the appropriate chart for each area, plotting the flow of streams as with rivers immediately upon rolling the proper number. Next, find the grade of slopes and hills by rolling on the matching 'A' chart (grade also indicates height [...]

...you get the idea. After you sit the maths exam, you may have a richly detailed cartographic wilderness experience, but I doubt it.

DESERTED CITIES OF MARS
by Jim Ward

Thoughts on adapting Edgar Rice Burrough's description of Martian ruins into D&D. There are, of course, tables.

The Martian architecture lends itself easily to chart form, which may prove useful to the perspective [sic] judge.

I'd like to take half a moment to add that most of these "articles" are incredibly short by contemporary standards - half a page or a page is typical - probably because these were written back when you still had to type stuff and lay things out by hand.

THE TOAL PERSON IN METAMORPHOSIS ALPHA
by James M. Ward

The concept of role playing revolves around the idea that you become a "being" from a world that can only be imagined.

This takes the central thesis of Filmore's article above, and decides that what you really want are a series of tables to roll on to fill out your backstory, as determined by your trusty dice. This includes a Mutation Generation Chart which determines how many generations of mutation there are for each of your parents (from "Human" to "Tenth Generation Mutant"). I don't know what it gets you to be the proud descendant of ten generations of mutation on both sides (aside from a number of physical and mental defects), but you roll your dice and take your chances.

HOW HEAVY IS MY GIANT?
by Shlump da Orc

Einshtein, our smartest Kobold, based his formula on an average human male, 5'8" tall with a 38" chest size, and 18" torso length and who weighs 180 lbs. Then he figured that this portion of the body amounts to 35% of the whole body. THrough diabolical methods he discovered that a cubic foot of a human body weighs 47 lbs. Using all of this information he created a formula and calculated the following weights, chest sizes and torso lengths.

Written in character, this is basically a set-up for a height/weight chart that goes from 5'8" (which the table actually lists as 160 lbs) to 30' (23,660 lbs). This is then complicated on the next page by discussing over- and under-weight giants, the refined formula, a discussion of how much a giant could lift based on their weight (not related to their Strength attribute), and "non-flesh giants" for when you have giant animated bronze statues; also the length of giant strides. The list of pounds-per-cubic-foot weights of various substances (just in case you absolutely needed a giant Aluminum Golem in your dungeon) is so long that they had to continue it on page 41.

Which is...uh...fucking nerdy, but the kind of shit you have wikipedia and probably an app for today, if you even care that much about the relative weight of fictional giants who probably couldn't support their own mass unassisted anyway.

TOLKIEN IN DUNGEONS & DRAGONS
by Rob Kuntz

Many people who play and enjoy D&D still have their complaints to offer TSR in one form or the other. One which crops up persistently is the comparison issue between Dungeons and Dragons and that of J. R. R. Tolkien's works. Some people get to the crux of the matter by stating the obvious disagreements between Tolkien's conceptions and fictional characters as compared to their representation within the D&D game format.

Frank and I discussed this a bit when we did the OSSR of MERP, but the number of gamers that were really upset about not being able to roleplay in Middle Earth was directly contrasted by the lawyers for the Tolkien estate, who wanted royalties per hobbit or something.

The funniest part of this article isn't Kuntz' vapid attempt to argue that D&D wasn't designed to steal from emulate Tolkien, but the snippets of fan-letters that he copies into the body of his article where people bitch that elves don't get enough dice. But Kuntz does at least note:

One must also remember that this system works with the worlds of r. E. Howard, Fritz Leiber and L.S. de Camp and Fletcher Pratt much better than that of Tolkien.

Which is patently true. Kuntz also notes that:

THere was not a continuing story line possible, for the story itself was in fact based around the destruction of the ring and all those events which were spawned from it. As we would say at TSR "END OF ADVENTURE"

Curtain, fade to black.

NOTES FROM A SEMI-SUCCESSFUL D&D PLAYER
by James Ward

I like that this article shares space with a full-column advertisement for the ARDUIN TRILOGY, which most people have fucking forgotten about and good riddance. Also, I wonder if absolutely any of the people that wrote these articles were ever paid for them - I kinda doubt it. But I digress.

This is Jim Ward's bag of adventurer hacks, like creating a continual light wand instead of a torch (not an actual wand wand, but a small baton like a perpetual glowstick); carrying around a small potted rose plant, a potion of plant control, and a 4th-level plant/growth spell just in case you get cornered in the dungeon; steel potion bottles to prevent breakage; carry around vials of garlic juice to hurl at vampires that are standing outside of normal garlic-smelling range...and others.

Everyone knows the usefulness of the ten foot pole in many tight places. The use of a five foot steel rod is even more useful in those tight places.

Then there is the poison on the dagger trick, which every judge is always trying to stop. I have been told that poisons evaporate, poisons exposed to the air lose their effectiveness, or the most used of all, in your area there is no poison strong enough to kill the things you want. I suggest to all you players and especially the magic users that can use only daggers, that any amount of money and effort spent in the procuring of a really effective poison is worth it. I spent over 90,000 gold and haven't regretted a copper piece of it.

What a coincidence.

Now, some of these are silly and some of them are sound, and I personally like the idea of researching original spells ("I made a fourth level cold ray that really works great against all creatures and especially those fire types."), even though D&D was notoriously bad at providing actual mechanics for that. However, Jim adds at the end:

Hope some of this helps, those ever suffering players, in the dungeons where the judge is a real sadist!

SOME THOUGHTS ON THE SPEED OF A LIGHTNING BOLT
by James Ward

This article was inspired by the release of Eldritch Wizardry and is the effective equivalent of asking how Captain Kirk can dodge phaser blasts, except Jim is sympathetic with how the poor wizard can deal with those "Conan-type" fighters with all those damn hit points. I'm really not sure how to approach this article, given how completely tone-deaf it seems to be...warriors and wizards, steel vs. spells at 40 feet apart.

THE MEANING OF LAW AND CHAOS IN DUNGEONS & DRAGONS AND THEIR RELATIONSHIPS TO GOOD AND EVIL
by Gary Gygax

This is in part a definition of what "Law" and "Chaos" mean with regard to the D&D alignment axis, and includes a rather large Cartesian plotmap that has Law - Chaos on the horizontal axis, Good - Evil on the vertical axis, a box for Neutrality in the middle, and fits most of the critters from the Monster Manual in it for a slightly more complicated positioning system than we normally think of alignment being. Actually, this wouldn't be the stupidest approach if they made some sort of Japanese TRPG-style power graphic out of it. So, for example, white dragons are just on the evil side of true neutral, while brass dragons are just on the good side of chaotic.

The most interesting thing about this article is that it represents an evolution of Gygax's thinking but not a shift in his position:

Many questions continue to arise regarding what constitutes a "lawful" act, what sort of behavior is "chaotic", what constituted an "evil" deed, and how certain behavior is "good". There is considerable confusion in that most dungeon-masters construe the terms "chaotic" and "Evil" to mean the same thing, just as they define "lawful" and "good" to mean the same This is scarcely surprising considering the wording of the three original volumes of DUNGEONS & DRAGONS. When that was written they meant just about the same thing in my mind--notice I do not say they were synonymous in my thinking at that time. The wording in the GREYHAWK supplement added a bit more confusion, for by the time that booklet was written some substantial differences had been determined. In fact, had I the opportunity to do D&D over I would have made the whole business very much clearer by differentiating the four categories, and many chaotic creatures would be good, while many lawful creatures would be evil.

This is, recognizably, what Gygax ultimately did do in D&D.

As a final note, most of humanity falls into the lawful category, and most of lawful humanity lies near the line between good and evil. With proper leadership the majority will be prone towards lawful/good. few humans are chaotic, and very are chaotic and evil.

GARY GYGAX ON DUNGEONS & DRAGONS Origins of the Game

When the International Federation fo Wargaming was at its peak, it contained many special interest groups. I founded one of these, the "Castle 7 Crusade Society". All members of this sub-group were interested in things medieval and I began publishing a magazine for them entitled Domesday Book. In an early issue, I drew up a map of the "Great Kingdom". Members of the society could then establish their holdings on the map, and we planned to sponsor campaign-type gaming at some point. Dave Arneson was a member of the C&C Society, and he established a barony, Blackmoor, to the northeast of the map, just above the Great Kingdom. He began a local medieval campaign for the Twin cities games and used this area.

...and on into the creation of CHAINMAIL, the beginning of the Greyhawk campaign, and then D&D. It's a pretty brief article and more-or-less accurate, although I think Arneson's contributions are not as emphasized as they should be.

Although D&D was not Dave's game system by any form or measure, he was given co-billing as author for his valuable idea kernels. He complained bitterly that the game wasn't right, but the other readers/players loved it.

Pull the other one Gary, it has got bells on.

You can, however, rest assured that work on a complete revision of the game is in progress, and I promise a far better product.

D&D IS ONLY AS GOOD AS THE DM
by Gary Gygax

Successful play of D&D is a blend of desire, skill, and luck.

DM advise from Gygax, which ranges from "well, that sounds reasonable" to

[...] if a favorite player stupidly puts himself into a situation where he is about to be killed, let the dice tell the story and KILL him.

Player character life was cheap in the early dungeons. Gary also bitches heavily about players that deign to spend six months in-character enchanting swords or researching spells or things like that. And, something Frank might relate to:

Now I know of the games played at CalTech where the rules have been expanded and changed to reflect incredibly high levels, comic book characters and spells, and so on. Okay. Different strokes for different folks, but that is not D&D. While D&D is pretty flexible, that sort of thing stretches it too far, and the boys out there are playing something entirely different - perhaps their own name "Dungeons & Beavers," tells it best.

Gygax also asserts:

To my certain knowledge no player in either BLACKMOOR or GREYHAWK has risen above 14th level.

The point of this early-life-crisis old-manning is that players aren't earning their rewards...but he also suggests you don't go too far "the other way":

so if a 33rd level wizard reflects a poorly managed campaign, a continuing mortality rate of 50% per expedition generally reflects over-reaction and likewise a poorly managed campaign. It is unreasonable to place three blue dragons on the first dungeon level, just as unreasonable as it is to allow a 10th level fighter to rampage through the upper levels of a dungeon rousting kobolds and giant rats to gain easy loot and experience.

Which still shows how limited Gygax's thinking was at this point - still focused on the descent through levels of a dungeon, getting harder the deeper you go. Not a very organic approach, although AD&D would end up being very organic indeed.

And we'll leave it there for now. More delving into the time capsule next time.

[Ancient History]

THE DUNGEONS & DRAGONS MAGIC SYSTEM
by Gary Gygax

This is actually an important article and I want to go through it in a little more depth than the others.

Because there are many legendary and authored systems of magic, many questions about the system of magic used in D&D are continually raised. Magic in CHAINMAIL was fairly brief, and because it was limited to the concept of table top miniatures battles, there was no problem in devising and handling this new and very potent factor in the game. The same cannot be said of D&D. While miniatures battles on the table top were conceived as a part of the overall game system, the major factor was always envisioned as the underworld adventure, while the wilderness trek assumed a secondary role, various other aspects took a third place, and only then were miniatures battles considered. So a somewhat different concept of magic had to be devised to employ with the D&D campaign in order to make it all work.

I don't know if this is a vast surprise to anyone here, but this is sort of the default explanation for why D&D magic (and by extension, most RPG magic systems) are focused primarily on combat, healing, and very limited utility, and why the settings seldom seem to take magic into account - because D&D/CHAINMAIL was an extremely limited conception. It is, ironically, a failure of the imagination.

The four cardinal types of magic are those systems which require long conjuration with much paraphernalia as an adjunct (as used by Shakespeare in MACBETH or as typically written about by Robert E. Howard in his "Conan" yarns), the relatively short spoken spell (as in Finnish mythology or as found in the superb fantasy of Jack Vance), ultra-powerful (if not always correct) magic (typical of deCamp & Pratt in their classic "Harold Shea" stories), and the generally weak and relatively ineffectual magic (as found in J. R. R. Tolkien's work). Now the use of magic in the game was one of the most appealing aspects, and given the game system it was fairly obvious that its employment could not be on the complicated and time consuming plane, any more than it could be made as a rather weak and ineffectual adjunct to swordplay if magic-users were to become a class of player-character.

The subtle insinuation here is that Gandalf does jack shit, Thoth Amon manages to conjure demons but needs to perform ritual magic to do it, and de Camp/Pratt's Incompleat Enchanter was completely overpowering. Gygax wanted wizards to accomplish significant magical effects, but leave them limited in scope so that they wouldn't make every other player class feel small in the pants. Taking these systems as his examples, he chose to go with Vancian magic - since it gave the wizard PCs a limited bag of magical effects that could be quite powerful but also once exhausted wouldn't come back right away.

...which basically set the tone for RPG game design right through the next 5 editions of the game. Even when we talk about Warlocks and Binders and Swordsages, we're really looking at ways to manage the idea of magical resource schedules in such a way that the character class remains powerful enough to be a contributing member of the group, but doesn't completely overshadow everybody else. Ironically, games like Mage would take their basis by completely tossing most practical limitations out of the water, and Shadowrun would combine elements of spontaneous and ritual magic...but let's go on a bit.

Magic purports to have these sorts of effects: 1) the alteration of existing substance (including its transposition or dissolution); 2) the creation of new substance; 3) the changing of normal functions of mind and/or body; 4) the addition of new functions to mind and/or body; 5) summon and/or command existing entities; and 6) create new entities. In considering these functions, comparatively weak and strong spells could be devised from any one of the six. Knowing the parameters within which the work was to be done then enabled the creation of the system.

The irony here is that this is closer to the Psionics disciplines, Shadowrun's spell categories, or Mage spheres than anything ever implemented in any edition of D&D. This is the kind of metaphysical groundwork which has always been missing from D&D, so that spells have always been designed almost completely by ass-pull. I think the last time I saw a serious attempt at "make your own spell" for D&D was in the Epic Level Handbook, and that was a fucking joke that nobody would ever use. I'd really like to see a system where D&D wizards could effectively design and research a spell as easily as a Shadowrun mage.

[...] some relatively powerful spells were apportioned to lower levels of magic use. Charm Person and Sleep at 1st level are outstanding examples. the effect of some spells was set to reflect the level of the magic-user employing them. Many of the spells were developed for specific use in dungeon expeditions or during wilderness adventures. A few - mostly drawn from CHAINMAIL - were included with the table top battle in mind. All such spells were assumed to be of such a nature so that no less than three of the four basic components of magic were required in their use. All spells were assumed to have a verbal component.

This is vindication to gamers throughout the generations who have claimed that spells like charm person, sleep, and color spray were too good for their level - they were! Also, it underscores how completely fucking fire-from-the-hip all the spell creation was. There was no "system" to devising these spells.

Magic-use was thereby to be powerful enough to enable its followers to compete with any other type of player-character, and yet the magic would not be so great as to make those using it overshadow all others.

Keeping in mind nobody at Gary's table at this point had gotten past 14th level, and that this was a couple generations before wealth-by-level guidelines were a thing so that you might hit the level cap as a demihuman before that and a +3 sword could be a weapon of myth and legend, he might actually have believed this. There was certainly the idea in the designers mind that a warrior's hitpoints and ability to swing a sword were so substantially superior to a wizard that three hit points at 21s level was fair.

Gary Gygax, at least at this point, didn't understand that wizards were quadratic. Or he did, but not at his table.

This was the conception, but in practice it did not work out as planned. Primarily at fault is the game itself which did not carefully explain the reasoning behind the magic system. Also, the various magic items for employment by magic-users tend to make them too powerful in relation to other classes (although the GREYHAWK supplement took steps to correct this somewhat0. The problem is further compounded by the original misconceptions of how magic worked in D&D - misconceptions held by many players. The principle [sic] error here is hat the one 1st level spell allowable to a 1st level magic-user could be used endlessly (or perhaps at frequent intervals) without the magic-user having to spend time and effort re-memorizing and preparing again after the single usage. Many players also originally thought scrolls containing spells could be reused as often as desired. finally, many dungeonmasters geared their campaigns to the level of TV give-away shows, with gold pouring into players' purses like water and magical rewards strapped to the backs of lowly rats. This latter allowed their players to progress far too rapidly and go beyond the bounds of D&D's competition scope - magic-users, clerics and all.

To further compound the difficulties, many dungeon-masters and players, upon learning of the more restrictive intent of the rules, balked.

Gary Gygax was not a guy who thought it was his job to satisfy the customer. He thought that customers should learn to be satisfied with what he deigns to give them. That "monty haul" was a legit playstyle designers were bitching about within a couple years of the first edition being released is evidence of a desire for different styles of play than Gary's "your 1st level wizard has 1 spell and 2 hit points and you should be grateful you little shit." approach.

The logic behind it all was drawn from game balance as much as from anything else. Fighters have their strength, weapons, and armor to aid them in their competition. Magic-users must rely upon their spells, as they have virtually no weaponry or armor to protect them. Clerics combine some of the advantages of the other two classes. The new class, thieves, have the basic advantage of stealthful actions with some additions in order for them to successfully operate on a plane with other character types. If magic is unrestrained int he campaign, D&D quickly degenerates into a weird wizard show where players get bored quickly, or the referee is forced to change the game into a new framework which will accommodate what he has created by way of player-characters. It is the opinion of this writer that the most desirable game is one in which the various character types are able to compete with each other as relative equals, for that will maintain freshness in the campaign (providing that advancement is slow and there is always some new goal to strive for.

There's a lot to unpack here, but a lot of it has to do with Gygax's incredibly limited idea of the field of play. He's focused on four specific roles with extremely limited options available to them, which even in the oD&D days weren't remotely balanced - but it could look like you've equally handicapped all players if you rigidly enforce artificial limits on their roles and keep them in a dungeon where anything too creative is punished. Speaking of which...

It is certain that new spells will be added to the game system as the need arises, particularly with regard to new classes and sub-classes of characters or simply to fill in some needed gap. The creation of an endless number of more powerful spells is not desirable in the existing game system, and there is no intention of publishing 10th or higher level spells.

Missing the forest for the trees here, the fact that a potentially infinite number of spells can be created but Fighters can only swing their sword in the same number of ways is the functional essence of linear warriors/quadratic wizards, even before you get to the scaling issues where a fireball can take out a roomful of orcs faster and easier than a Fighter can.

D&D has focused a lot over the years on limiting abilities by level, assuming that this would provide balance in play, but not all of the abilities were limited equally - you might have only so many proficiences/skill points to spend, but the wizard could always pick up another spell and add it to their spell book. A Fighter can buy more powerful swords to swing, but they are still effectively limited at swinging them, while a wizard with enough spells can do...anything. Once you're out of the dungeon especially, and every encounter isn't swift and violent in a small enclosed space, being a guy in armor that is good at stabbing things just isn't sufficient. Even in a fight it isn't enough, because fights can get a lot more complicated and demand other skills and abilities.

Magic is great. Magic is powerful. But it should be kept great and powerful in relation to its game environment. That means all the magic-users who have been coasting along with special dispensations from the dungeonmaster may soon have to get out there and root with the rest of the players or lie down and die.

I find it really weird that Gygax put the onus on the idea that players just aren't playing it right. This is why White Wolf thought it could bury D&D back in the day. It's also why D&D never really figured out what the hell its magic was doing across the editions. There was never an idea of D&D magic as being limited or systemized in any effective way - almost any effect could appear in any spell of any school. "Illusion" and "Necromancy" were suggestions, guidelines, not hard limits. Magic-users were never balanced because magic itself was never balanced. Instead of changing the system to suit the play, Gary expected the play to conform to his idea of how magic should work...which he never formally defined in anything except a very limited scope.

Tomorrow...fuck, I dunno. It's been a bad day.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

For the record, I think having an equine language sounds cool and something that could totally exist in a fantasy world.

[Thaluikhain]

Out of interest, did the system work if you were playing it the way Gygax thought you should be? And did he (eventually) adequately explain what that was?

[Ancient History]

Out of interest, did the system work if you were playing it the way Gygax thought you should be?

With enough mindcaulk? I'm sure there were people at the table that enjoyed nothing more than endless dungeon crawls spiced up with the occasional wilderness encounter, where wizards had 1d4 hp, a dagger, and 1 spell which they could cast and then had to lie down for 8 hours and spend 10 minutes memorizing before they could do it again. It was never balanced like Gygax thought it was, because eventually a wizard (if they survived) was still throwing around lightning bolts and fireballs and commanding Fighters to go sit on their swords until the pointy bit tickled their throats. Quadratic wizards were still a thing, but Gygax refused to acknowledge it.

[Ancient History]

Okay, so after Gygax's "get off my lawn" moment, we have a full-page advertisement for the Judges Guild, advertising things like "Sea Steeds & Wave Rides" campaign play aids ($6.50), "War-Cry Ancient Rules 2nd Edition with Medieval and Fantasy Rules" ($4.00), "Journal L" of the Judges Guild Journal Back Issues ($.30), and lifetime subscriptions ($150 + seven years appropriate postage).

Turn the page and we're into the "Dragon Mirth" section...

MONSTER REFERENCE TABLE ADDITION, HOSTILE & BENIGN CREATURES
by Wesley D. Ives

This is half a joke write-up for new monsters like "Drolls," "Hobnoblins," "Weregamers," and "Hippygriffs." No actual stats or images provided. This was back when D&D didn't mind taking the piss out of itself on a regular basis. Pretend I said something witty about this as we move on.

MISCELLANEOUS TREASURE, MAGIC, WEAPONS, ARTIFACTS AND MONSTERS--ADDTIONS, DELETIONS, OMISSIONS, CORRECTIONS, CHANGES, VARIATIONS AND OTHERWISE CONFUSING ALTERATIONS (with special thianks to Wesley D. Ives for initial investigation and information)
by Gary Jaquet

Random crap, mostly without stats, some of it referring to Ives' article. If there's anything unfunnier than a bad joke, it's digging through the archives to unearth the ur-joke that it is based off of.

POTIONS:
C2H5OH

This potion, known by a variety of names, such as Wild Turkey, Seagram's and even Pabst Blue Ribbon, is a valuable item (in some cases, up to $10.00/fifth). Caution must be exercised when imbibing in these potions as over-indulgence will cause them to become potions of delusion. Over-indulgence will require administration of a 6th level "hair of the dog that bit you" spell from a magic user or a "cure hangover" spell from a cleric.

THE SEARCH FOR THE FORBIDDEN CHAMBER
by Jake Jaquet.

Fiction staring Dimwit the dwarf, 'Lumbo the elf, and Ralphedelonamious (Raplh) the wizard. This goes on for far too many pages, interrupted only by a full page ad for "McEwan Miniatures" which includes a picture of a sasquatch picking its nose and a four-armed demon with a VISA card over the line "Authorized Tunnels and Trolls Line" and a two-page spread for The Armory with the note that "The Dice Man Cometh!" and offering such tremendous options as waterproof dice (non-smudging!), inlayed ivory dice, and a clip-out coupon promising free dice.

The story ends with the heroes finding a box containg a note that reads:

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:

FINDER'S KEEPER'S...
(signed)
F. BAGGINS

WHAT TO DO WHEN THE DOG EATS YOUR DICE or Some Other Calamity Befalls you Twenty Minutes Before the Game Club Gets To your Place
by Omar Kwalish

This article is told in a jocular manner but is a semi-serious-but-increasingly-ridiculous effort to describe alternatives, including a table of how to approximate dX probabilities using a pair of standard d6s, chits in a jar, cutting cards, numbered straws, the ever popular spinner...


Oh my.

...coin flipping, the "Glassic Greco-Roman Augury Method" (counting the birds that fly by), numbered jumping beans, and the "Maso/Macho Delight":

This system requires that the players all be males with hirsute chests. Using this system, the players snatch hairs from each other's chests, using the number of hairs as the number generated. If the number snatched exceeds the top of the range, use the remainder as the number. Using this system, when your opponent gets all the lucky numbers necessary to completely destroy your army, it REALLY hurts.

EXCERPT FROM AN INTERVIEW WITH A RUST MONSTER
by Michael McCrery

More fiction. This is interesting as being sort of the ur-text for Dragon Magazine's monster ecology articles.

Next up, Gary Gygax's Sturmgeshutz and Sorcery...

[Thaluikhain]

This goes on for far too many pages, interrupted only by a full page ad for "McEwan Miniatures" which includes a picture of a sasquatch picking its nose and a four-armed demon with a VISA card over the line "Authorized Tunnels and Trolls Line"

Tunnels and Trolls had its own miniatures? *googles* Oh, is this the four armed demon?

Also, they had this:

Which apparently is the Shoggoth from Arena of Khazan (which is the second half of the same gamebook as Amulet of the Salkti, so I have that). As well as being an unimpressive model, there's no game use for it. And it's mostly random what monsters you fight, so you aren't likely to see it. And if you get into combat, you are supposed to roll 101d6 for its attack. So you'd re-roll and fight some other monster instead.

(I could totally make one of those out of Greenstuff though, might do that.)

They also apparently had the Unicorn from Arena of Khazan, though it could be a unicorn from anywhere.

the "Glassic Greco-Roman Augury Method" (counting the birds that fly by), numbered jumping beans, and the "Maso/Macho Delight":

Huh.

[Ancient History]

This goes on for far too many pages, interrupted only by a full page ad for "McEwan Miniatures" which includes a picture of a sasquatch picking its nose and a four-armed demon with a VISA card over the line "Authorized Tunnels and Trolls Line"

Tunnels and Trolls had its own miniatures? *googles* Oh, is this the four armed demon?

Yes, but they're on a stair and holding a VISA card.

[Ancient History]

STURMGESHUTZ AND SORCERY or How Effective Is A Panzerfaust Against A Troll, Heinz?
by Gary Gygax

So, this is a tabletop miniatures battle report between two teams, one of which is a German SS Patrol and the other of which is a Fantasy group led by a "12th level EHP with +2 Armor & Shield, Snake Staff" - I had to google "EHP," which apparently is Garysprach for "Evil High Priest." Ze Germanz (the term 'Nazi' never appears) were defeated by the EHP and its minions, mainly because the cleric turned invisible, flew above them, and rained down spells while none of the Germans looked up. This is followed by a page of rules on various WWII-era weaponry in D&D mechanics.

For example the Ss soldiers in the battle reported above were veteran elite troops, so their base level was 3rd. The NCO's were 4th level and the officer was 5th.

That finished off the Dragon Mirth section, and we go on into the Variants section.

ILLUSIONISTS! Generally Appearing As A New Class For Dungeons & Dragons
by Peter Aronson

This is the first sub-class for the Magic-User, which eventually spawned all the other specialists that D&D ever used, and by extension one of the first real attempts at generating new material using existing material as a template - the kind of class-proliferation that would lead to serious bloating in D&D3, but is a fairly natural expansion of the system.

Illusionists themselves aren't terribly weird as far as that goes - they're based on the idea of magic as illusion rather than just chucking fireballs around. Like all early D&D, their titles-per-level, attribute requirements, and XP limits per level are all...idiosyncratic...and in addition to which, they are strongly limited in the spells and magic items they can use (no bonus spells, yet!) When I say strongly, I mean Illusionists can use 4 types of wand, plain crystal balls, and scrolls with illusionist spells.

A number of the spells aren't listed out in full, but are variations on existing spells. So for example, the 1st level spell darkness is listed as "Same as Anticlerics" (remember them?) This is the ultimate origin of some very utilitarian spells like nondection, hypnotic pattern, and shadow magic, which were pretty revolutionary at the time and still highly influential today.

One thing that was dropped is that Illusionists could learn Magic-User spells as if they were 3 levels higher - i.e. a 1st level MU spell could be learned as a 4th level Illusionist spell - an idea that was largely but never completely dropped because D&D is weird.

ILLUSIONIST ADDITIONS
by Peter Aronson

This new article expands on the previous one, taking Illusionists up to 14th level and expanding their spell list out to 7th level (it was previously capped at 5th). This article is probably most notable for including the original for color spray, phantasmal killer, illusionary script, true sight, mass suggestion, programmed illusion, and alter reality.

Color Spray: A sheet of bright conflicting colors. They affect 1-6 levels of creatures, rendering them unconscious through confusion. (Note: for every 5 levels above Trickster the caster has obtained, add one to the die roll for amount of levels, the number never to exceed 6.) The distribution of the effect if there are more target levels than spell levels is semi-random, first one creature is fully affected, then another, till all the levels are assigned, there being no more than one partially affected creature. There is no saving throw vs this spell if the creature is fully affected, if all but one level is affected, it gets a normal saving through, for every level unaffected beyond the first it gets an additional +2 on its saving throw, in any case, it will not affect any creature above the 6th level. Range 24".

The fact that we still know so many of these spells when others like dispel exhaustion fell by the wayside says something about how much the players and game designers were influenced by these relatively short articles.

TOMBS & CRYPTS
by James M. Ward

Set of tables/rules for randomly determining how much treasure is inside a randomly found tomb or crypt. Many of these tables require rolling on other tables, which probably require rolling on yet more tables.

HALFLINGS, DWARVES, CLERICS & THIEVES IN DUNGEON! And A Pair of New Treasures And Some New Monsters To Make the Pot Sweeter
by Gary Gygax



Dungeon! was a board game inspired by D&D, basically going through a dungeon, fighting monsters, taking their treasure, and home in time for tea. Which is probably something close to Gygax's vision of ideal play.

THE DWARF: The Dward fights as an Elf, so simply use that score on each monster card which applies to the Elf when combatting monsters. Likewise, the Dwarf needs 10,000 gold pieces to win. Although the Dward does not open secret doors any better than a Hero (a roll of 1 or 2), he does detect and remove traps easily. Therefore, whenever a Dwarf enters a space containing a Trap he simply puts it in the discard pile, ignoring the results of the trap, and freely picking up any treasure thereunder.

STATISTICS REGARDING CLASSES: (ADDITIONS) -- BARDS
by Doug Shwegman

...I believe it is a logical addition to the D&D scene and the one I have composed is a hodgepodge of at least three different kinds, the norse 'skald', the celtic 'bard', and the southern european 'minstrel'. The skalds were often old warriors who were a kind of self appointed historian whose duty was to record the ancient battles, blood feuds, and deeds of exceptional prowess by setting them to ancient battles, blood feuds, and deeds of exceptional prowess by setting them to verse much like the ancient Greek poets did. Tolkien, a great Nordic scholar, copied this style several times in the Lord of the Rings trilogy (for example Bilbo's chant of Earendil the Mariner). [...] Such a character was not as trust worthy as the celtic or Nordic Bards and could be compared to a combination of Thief-Illusionist. [...] I wanted to put the Bard into perspective so that his multitudinous abilities in Dungeons and Dragons can be explained. I have fashioned the character more after the Celtic and Norse types than anything else, thus he is a character who resembles a fighter more than anything else, but who knows something about the mysterious forces of magic and is well adept with his hands, etc.

The bard as originally conceived is a jack-of-all-trades who combines aspects of Fighter, Magic-User, and Thief - with the addition of a Bardic Lore and Charm ability. Gygax probably had kittens when Schwegman proposed that one. I'm not going into the rules governing them because they're long, complicated, refer to ancient D&D stats, and for reasons I do not readily comprehend go up to level 25, even though level 8 is the "Highest Level a Dwarf, Halfling, or Elf can attain."

THE ORIGINAL RANGER CLASS An Exciting New Dungeons & Dragons Class
by Joe Fischer

The Ranger, by comparison, is...also a gish class, but combining Fighter, Cleric, and Magic-User.

rangers are a sub-class of Fighting Men, similar in many ways to the new sub-class Paladins, for they must always remain Lawful or lose all the benefits they gained (except, of course, experience as a fighter).

Rangers as generally conceived in RPGs owe everything to Tolkien; and provide the basis for one of the great spin-offs of D&D:



I'd say more about these but even by the standards of oD&D Rangers aren't terribly interesting; this is back when around 9th or 10th level your built a stronghold and attracted followers.

WIZARD RESEARCH RULES
by Charles Preston Goforth, Jr.

These rules have been playtested in the "Kingdom of Blake" game at the Historical Simulation Society in Charlottesville, Virginia, for over a year, real time, or over nine years, game time.

Designed to supplement some rules that aren't republished here and long out of date, this is a very long set of really idiosyncratic rules which I lack a lot of context for (spell levels appear to go up to 18th, for example). Some of these aren't bad ideas - like using blood magic to create a magic item in extremis - but the way they're worded refers to concepts I've never heard of in any edition of D&D.

WITCHCRAFT SUPPLEMENT FOR DUNGEONS & DRAGONS

I have no idea who wrote this or why it is here, but it's about witches as NPCs, both white witches and black witches. Most of that isn't interesting, but this is:

Fifty-percent of the primary survivors (players) in my current dungeons & Dragons campaign are wizards above the 11th level, and about a quarter are lords magically armed (one has accumulated an astounding collection of over 20 enchanted swords!) We had once again reached the point where no ordinary outdoor encounter could present any sort of a realistic challenge. My solution: witches, particularly those of the Secret Order.

That's a lot of quadratic wizard right there.

The "Secret Order" gets access to various special powers, magic items, etc. for doing witchy things, which while they might have been vaguely interesting never actually went anywhere in D&D ever again and so...aren't

Tomorrow, let's wrap this up.

[Blicero]

Designed to supplement some rules that aren't republished here and long out of date, this is a very long set of really idiosyncratic rules which I lack a lot of context for (spell levels appear to go up to 18th, for example). Some of these aren't bad ideas - like using blood magic to create a magic item in extremis - but the way they're worded refers to concepts I've never heard of in any edition of D&D.

Do you have a sense as to how much of this book is sufficiently idiosyncratic and context-dependent that it's basically unusable to a modern reader?

Set of tables/rules for randomly determining how much treasure is inside a randomly found tomb or crypt. Many of these tables require rolling on other tables, which probably require rolling on yet more tables.

Do the tables induce interesting outcomes? How do they compare to the tables the base books already included?

[Ancient History]

Do you have a sense as to how much of this book is sufficiently idiosyncratic and context-dependent that it's basically unusable to a modern reader?

The stuff in this book is outside even OSRIC territory. We're talking mostly pre-Halfling days, when you could still play an outright hobbit. A fair chunk of stuff is recognizable, but very little of it is applicable, even if you were being super dogmatic.

Do the tables induce interesting outcomes? How do they compare to the tables the base books already included?

Less than you'd think. You roll a d12 to detrmine the type of person is buried in the tomb/crypt, which gives you modifiers for nine categories of treasure from gold pieces gems and maps to magic items, special items, and guardians. The odds might encourage you to go tomb-robbing, and there's a slight possibility you might hit some kind of dungeon complex (which I'm sure the GM would have fun rolling up). But it's a lot like the tables in the Encyclopedia Magica - long, detailed, but highly situational.

[Ancient History]

Page 63 is a full-page advertisement for Fantast Games Unlimited, Inc., which published games like Chivalry & Sorcery. All-knowing wikipedia describes it as an "early competitor to Dungeons & Dragons" and I have never heard of it before now.



MONKISH COMBAT in the ARENA of PROMOTION
by John M. Seaton

Since the conception of the Mink as a D&D character, I wondered about the promotional combat system for them. As I am a novice in the martial arts (Neisi GoJu Ryu) I figured that the Monkish advancement system would be something like the advancement system used today. Assuming that the only thing that Monks with appropriate points needed to advance had yet to do would be to exhibit their prowess over the current "master," I devised a very simple combat system which is based on the "En Guard" rules. Some of the things in the system may seem strange or wrong to experienced karatakas but for a game system this is simple enough for everyone.

There are distinctions and parallels between "monks" as understood in the European Catholic tradition and the "monks" of Buddhist institutions in Asia, with the D&D version coming down more strongly on the latter. In part, this is because "cleric" was already a thing, and in part because somebody wanted to write unarmed Eastern martial arts rules into D&D. The system that Seaton comes up with is...uh...different? Weird enough to look at.

First off, this is basically a mini-game for monks when they want to beat the gym leader and get their badge.



So this isn't real combat? I guess? I mean, you start off being able to take more damage.

To "enter the arena" for combat, multiply strength and constitution then add 10 times your level to get Damage Points Taken (DPT). This is the number of damage points you can take.

But you can do more damage too.

Next, add strength, dexterity, and 1/2 intelligence to get Damage Points Given (DPG). This is the amount of damage you inflict with a "normal" blow.

This is a one-on-one combat in a ceremonial arena...

...and things get weird.

The combat consists of as many turns that it takes for one combatant to concede - or die. Each turn is 10 sets long, and each set is 6 units long. This represents the combinations that a monk would use in his initial attack. thereafter, each stop period represents new plots and plans that are formed by each player after each combat.

Both players write 6 units of combat, then they execute. then write and fight... etc. If, after a set is found that a combatant is below 3/4 DPT all his succeeding blows are at 1/2 strength. At any time between blows a combatant may concede the battle. combat immediately stops and the victor is then recognized as the new-or current "Master."

This is essentially a blind bid system: each player has the same cards, chooses a combination of them, and then they both reveal their cards. A table is consulted to see how each card reacts with the opponent's card. The cards (actions) are:

Blocks (High Block, Middle Block, Low Block, High Two-Handed-Block, Low Two-Handed-Block, Knee Block)

Strikes (Reverse Punch, Back Fist, Knife Hand)

Kicks (Front Kick, Head Kick, Side Kick, Sweep, Stamp)

Other (Rest, Jump Back, Jump Forward, Duck)

Summary - you can kick and block once or twice, block 1, 2, or 3 times, one strike & one block, or use two strikes

There are a number of fiddly details to the system - under certain circumstances, you can grab or trip your opponent, and generally speaking taking your opponent to the ground and grappling them is a solid way to get several unanswered punches to the head in. If you chose the right block to a strike/kick, you take no damage; you pick the wrong one, you can take double or triple damage, which is rather like a very complicated system of Rock-Paper-Scissors.

Which may not be the cleanest system I've seen, but it is basically competent as it deals with some of the major issues of combat (i.e. how to deal with simultaneous actions without just taking turns). I could see this cleaned up and expanded out into something interesting by embracing the card-game mechanic a la the Tome of Battle, where your "deck" represents the maneuvers you know, and everybody has a few basic cards that get shuffled out over and again but the martial classes get a bigger hand size and more interesting maneuvers to choose from each round. I'd probably ditch the table in favor of more interaction between the cards, but that's just me.

SOLO DUNGEONS & DRAGONS ADVENTURES
by Gary Gygax, with special thanks to George A Lord
Preliminary testing: Robert Kuntz and Ernest Gygax

Although it has been possible for enthusiasts to play solo games of DUNGEONS & DRAGONS by means of "Wilderness Adventures", there has been no uniform method of dungeon exploring, for the campaign referee has heretofor been required to design dungeon levels.

To parse that, it was possible to play a kind of solitaire D&D by using the Random Wilderness Encounter tables/terrain generator tables/treasure tables. You just rolled up your character, rolled the terrain, picked a direction, rolled a random encounter, fought or fled as appropriate, licked your wounds, and if you won roll up any treasures you might find.

This is obviously slightly complicated in a dungeons setting because the dungeon write-ups in oD&D included a lot of traps, secret doors, etc. What Gygax has come up with is basically a series of tables for generating a dungeon on the fly as you explore it, using a sheet of graph paper and common sense if you roll a room that is bigger than what could physically fit in the space.

As long as your idea of a fun evening involves procedurally generating content and not trying to tunnel through a wall or something, there's nothing wrong with this system. Most of the traps and rooms are pretty generic, but that's understandable, the most interesting one being "Enchanted Lake" which is a portal to another dimension and the magic pools which weird stuff like turn all your gold to platinum or lead.

Hell, I could play run this like we did solo Fighting Fantasy gamebooks on In The Trenches if anyone is interested.

LYCANTHROPY--THE PROGRESS OF THE DISEASE
by Gregory Rihn

This is a two page thought experiment on lycanthropy in D&D, expanding on the condition as a disease with lots of percentages, with thoughts on various aspects of roleplaying and play...some of which I don't understand.

If a magic user or other "specialist" cannot or elects not to be cured, experience gained since first transformation will affect his fighting skill in the same manner, since he will have effectively retired from magic use. He would have to fight as a magic-user of his hitdice due to his unfamiliarity with fighter's equipment. referee's may calculate how long it would take such a person to use a sword effectively, if it is possible at all. It is assumed that some bearish instincts will aim him in fighting as a bear.

This inability to use magic also applies to Bards, Rangers, Clerics, and Psychics.

Most of this article deals with werebears because "Werebears are the most usable type of lycanthrope for player characters." Looking somewhat ahead, they even give a write-up for Werebear as a 10-level class.

THE JAPANESE MYTHOS
by Jerome Arkenberg

Before Deities & Demigods there was...this. Basically very brief write ups of a dozen or two Japanese deities and buddhas in D&D statistics (sort of). Example:

KWANNON - Goddess of Mercy
Armor Class: 0
Move: 16"
Hit Points: 175
Magic Ability: See Below
Fighter Ability: 7th
Psionic Ability: Class 6

Kwannon is a matronly deity. She will never deny mercy to those that call on her. If necessary, she herself will suffer whatever the supplicant was to suffer, though usually she will merely try to prevent it from happening. She can Shapechange, Teleport, Polymorth others, Stun, Anti-Magic Shell, Protection/Evil, Protection/Missiles, Invisibility, and Stone-to-Flesh.

Deities & Demigods would expand the powers of the deities significantly. the section also includes some Japanese-specific Yokai like Kappa, tengu, and Oni, which are all surprisingly powerful compared to the gods.

RANDOM MONSTERS
by Paul Montgomer Crabaugh

This is not a collection of random monsters, or a table for rolling up wandering monsters, but a system of tables for rolling up monsters that are random - stats, hit dice, Armor class, etc.

this table is suited for the local group's dungeons, and I should warn you that we around here fall somewhere between Lake Geneva and CalTech in philosophy.

Even as a set of tables go, this is pretty limited. The Type table is:

1-4 Mammal
5-7 Reptile
8 Undead

There's no Good/Evil axis on the Alignment table, just Law/Neutrality/Chaos. There are tables for "special characteristics" which range from "Hostile to Dwarves" to "Proboscis does blood drain, 1-4/turn" for mammals to "Breaths lightning, does 1-6 hits/four levels, kills at 17+" to "tongue is whip, does 1-4" for reptiles.

I guess if you're really into the whole "procedurally generate everything" mindset there's some value here, but the critters generated aren't likely to be anything remotely realistic or fleshed-out.

So we come to our final entry:

D&D OPTION: DEMON GENERATION
by John Pickens

This is a lot like the last article, only focused on demons (levels I-VI + Prince), but they do care more what it looks like:

In order to determine exactly what the demon looks like, roll two dice on the dungeon encounter table of the proper level. Mix the results anyway you like to come up with the most hideous appearance possible. if the creatures have any special abilities, the demon gains these too.

I'm not against rolling your demon as opposed to building a demon, although if I had my druthers the latter would be a nicer option for Mister Cavern so they could tailor it to their game.

...and that's a wrap. A true miscellany of stuff which was considered the best of the wild, early days of D&D. Apparently, it was so successful they did a couple more, which I also happened to pick up at the comic book shop...but maybe we'll look at those another time.

I really want to emphasize how Wild West gaming was at this point; there was a lot of innovation, but TSR was also treating CalTech like those gamers were the antipope. Why Gygax's vision was so myopic is hard to say, except maybe that he really was just a wargamer at heart. Early D&D was very far and away from later simulationist games like Call of Cthulhu or storytelling games like Vampire: the Masquerade, because the focus was so limited, and the main game was incredibly conservative in that any element, once embraced, was rarely and reluctantly let go - even ultravision and hobbits straggled on for an obscenely long time in the pages of the Dragon.

But it was also ground zero for a lot of the design decisions (and arguments) that are still relative to D&D today. Class balance and proliferation, how to handle more realistic martial arts, how much should be stolen from Tolkien...these are still valid concerns/design points for a lot of gamers. It doesn't hurt to see how things were done back in the old days.

If only to avoid making those same mistakes.

[Harshax]

Gygax didn't just have it out for CalTech. He would eventually go on to fight Judge's Guild, attempt to copyright any game definition found in D&D and sue every company that produced any material that attempted to clone too many of D&D core mechanics. He knew he had something he could brand and defended that brand exhaustively.

[Shrapnel]

"Werebears are the most usable type of lycanthrope for player characters."

That seems terribly arbitrary.

[Trill]

Hell, I could play run this like we did solo Fighting Fantasy gamebooks on In The Trenches if anyone is interested.

sure thing

[Ancient History]

"Werebears are the most usable type of lycanthrope for player characters."

That seems terribly arbitrary.

I'll admit, I don't follow their logic on this one either, except that in oD&D werebears generally were Lawful and didn't like to spread the disease.

[Shrapnel]

Personally, I'd much rather prefer to play as a wereass. Or a wereopabinia.