The Strategic Review, April 1976

This is the very last issue of The Strategic Review, and the opening editor's column explains TSR's decision to create two separate magazines: The Dragon and Little Wars, as well as the expansion of each to 32 pages (although this issue already expands to 24 over the previous 16).  I love the explanation that one of the reasons for the decision was the fact that The Strategic Review had become a de facto house-organ, and TSR wanted a more generic magazine covering all aspects of fantasy and science fiction gaming.  I'm not sure they ever really achieved that, as everyone knows that Dragon is/was a house-organ for D&D (certainly by the time I entered D&D it was unashamedly so).  I'll be interested to see how that transition plays out over the course of the magazine's life.

• The issue starts out with an article by Gygax on the magic system in D&D.  It's not quite as informative as I would have hoped, but it does explain the choice of Vancian magic for the magic system.  (Interesting side note - the concept of a mana-based magic system was still a decade away.  Wikipedia says that the PC game Dungeon Master was the first game to include it.)  It also explains Vancian magic, as apparently many players did not understand the concept of spells having to be memorized and used up (which I can't blame them, given the very loose writing of the original boxed set).  Gygax also states that there is no intention to add any spell levels beyond 9th, a decision which codified an aspect of the game for decades to come.
• While not D&D related, there's another humorous editorial on TSR's spat with Avalon Hill over which gaming convention is THE national convention - GenCon or Origins.  Then, in the first ever letter column, the very first letter goes to Gary Gygax, who writes even more about this issue!  Apparently TSR really had a chip on its shoulder over this.
• The very first artifact for the game makes its appearance: the Cup and Talisman of Akbar ("Al'Akbar" in later material).
• There's a brief table given without context that introduces adjustments to thief skills based on dexterity.  It also attempts to give thieves exceptional dexterity analogous to fighters' exceptional strength.
• Gygax has another article basically shaming Monty haul DMs (although that term doesn't actually appear), saying they're not playing real D&D.  I have mixed feelings about this.  On the one hand I agree with him, as it's out of the spirit and intention of the game, but I'm also a big believer in people playing games the way they want to play them - if they enjoy the Monty haul style, more power to them.  Ultimately I think games should establish what "normal" play looks like, but ultimately rules should be our servant, not our master.

This issue also contained an add for the about-to-be-released Eldritch Wizardry supplement, and that's where our archaeological expedition takes us next.  I look forward to seeing you there.

The Strategic Review, February 1976

Another two months, another issue:

• Gary Gygax has an article expanding the alignment concept.  Up until now there has only been Law and Chaos, but now he adds the orthogonal axis of Good and Evil.  This thus creates five distinct alignments: lawful good, chaotic good, chaotic evil, lawful evil, and neutrality.  The in-between neutral alignments are yet to appear, however, the pictorial illustration nevertheless gives the names of the eight outer planes associated with all eight non-neutral alignments: heaven, paradise, elysium, limbo, the abyss, hades, hell, and nirvana for lawful good, neutral good, chaotic good, chaotic neutral, chaotic evil, neutral evil, lawful evil, and lawful neutral respectively, even though NG, CN, NE, and LN are not discussed as character alignments.  Not only are we witnessing the evolution of the concept of alignment in D&D, but we also get our very first glimpse of the development of the outer planes.
• The bard class is introduced.  The author admits that the class is an amalgamation of the nordic skald, the celtic bard, and the European minstrel from history.  The basic concepts of the class are all here, although the details are significantly different from later incarnations.  Bards don't learn spells like wizards, but instead collect magical instruments that allow them to cast certain spells.  Instead of having a song that increases party morale, the bard's song charms others.  Thieving and lore abilities appear as well, although again, the details are somewhat different.  What interests me most about the new classes being added to the game (all of which end up becoming staples of D&D and roleplaying in general) is that some are being created by non-TSR authors.  This was true of the illusionist class and now the bard class as well.  These are just fans of the game submitting their ideas to the magazine, having no conception of the legacy they're creating.  Can you imagine writing an article forty years ago simply out of a love for the game and a desire to contribute to it, only to have it cement our notions of canonical classes in modern day RPGs?

Most of the rest of the content is devoted to board games, miniatures, and other things (such as the very first fiction story in the magazine - something that will become a regular feature), so with that, I'll call it a day.

The Strategic Review, December 1975

The magazine went to a bi-monthly publishing schedule with this issue, no doubt as TSR continued to pick up steam as a company and had more news and content to put out.  It also saw yet another increase in size - from 12 to 16 pages.  What do we get in all that space?

• There's an interesting article where the various famous personalities of TSR (Gary Gygax, Brian Blume, Timothy Kask, etc.) give their own bios.  As I said early in this blog, my focus is on the history of D&D rather than the history of TSR.  Nevertheless, I do find this info interesting - to know a little more about the original minds behind the game.
• There's an article describing a miniatures game where the referee secretly pitted a German unit from Tractics against a unit of D&D monsters without either side's foreknowledge - each side thought they were going to play a standard WWII or fantasy miniatures battle respectively.  It's an interesting read and reflects on the philosophy of D&D (even though this was a miniatures game) at this point.  There's definitely a lighthearted sense about the game, and DMs are not afraid to throw out-of-genre material into their campaigns.  All in all, the game doesn't take itself too seriously.  I see this as an outgrowth of the lack of story-based roleplaying that I've been discussing - if there's no real story to worry about, then there's no need to worry about verisimilitude and consistency.
• There's an article (an editorial, really) that pretty much involves TSR whining about rival company Avalon Hill.  AH had recently started the Origins wargaming convention, and apparently in some of their marketing had referred to it as the "premier" wargaming convention, and the only "national" convention.  The article goes to great lengths to explain that GenCon (having completed its eighth year) is in fact THE national wargaming convention.  It reminds me of the article Gygax wrote an issue or two ago taking some game reviewer to task over his negative review of D&D.  Apparently the TSR folks had a chip on their shoulder when it came to their reputation.
• Besides some new creatures and new magic items there wasn't a lot of D&D content in this issue, so I'll stop here and move on to the next.  However, I haven't been giving much artwork lately, so I'll leave you with this jewel:
  

The Strategic Review, Winter 1975

Let's see, what did we get in the latest Strategic Review:

• Even more polearms!  Apparently Gary Gygax felt he hadn't exhausted the topic in the last issue, so we get another article discussing more varieties.  I'm sorry, I get it from a wargaming perspective, but from a roleplaying perspective it's just funny to me.
• The first add for the Dungeon! game appears in this issue.  I've never played it (or even seen it), but I would be interested, because material elsewhere makes it basically seem like a board game version of D&D.
• The upcoming relaunch of TSR's magazine line with The Dragon is teased in this issue.  There's no context or explanation that that's what's happening, just a box with the line, "The Dragon is coming!"
• The illusionist is detailed as a new class for D&D.  Being only familiar with specialist wizards in 2nd edition, I was not aware that previously the illusionist was actually its own class.  All new illusionist spells are detailed here, most all of which ended up becoming regular mage spells (in the illusion school, of course) in later editions.  I'll be interested to see down the road if there's any informative material on the switch to the specialist concept, and why the same concept was not applied to paladins and rangers, for example, making them "specialist fighters".
• Finally, the article that readers have been begging for ever since the magazine launched - a detailed etymology of Tsolyani names!  What in the world is that, you ask?  It's a fictitious language from the Empire of the Petal Throne roleplaying game, which I've never personally encountered but would be interested to learn more about.  The setting sounds fascinating - a post-apocalyptic "future past" type setting where a previously highly technological society has degenerated down to primitive technology and magic.  However, if you've ever struggled through the appendices to The Lord of the Rings, you know that nothing says tedium like a detailed phonetics lesson on a made-up language.
• A truly classic D&D magic item is introduced here - ioun stones (although technically they were borrowed from Jack Vance's novels).  I've always loved the idea, although sadly none of my D&D characters have ever gotten to possess one.

Supplement II: Blackmoor

Ah, Blackmoor - a strange beast of a supplement if there ever was one.  Released in September of 1975, the supplement continues the format of Greyhawk in separating its content into additions and clarifications to the three books of the original boxed set: Men and Magic, Monsters and Treasure, and Underworld and Wilderness Adventures.  What sets this book apart though is the devotion of almost entirely the third section (and nearly half of the book) to a thorough detailing of a section of Dave Arneson's Blackmoor campaign.  It's fascinating because Blackmoor was the first and oldest D&D campaign in existence, so we get to see a glimpse of what one of the creators of D&D thought the game should look like.  It does make for a somewhat odd supplement, however, being half rules and half adventure module.

This supplement introduces the infamous monk and assassin classes.  These classes always seemed especially polarizing to me - people either loathed them or missed them terribly in 2nd edition.  When I started up my own 2nd edition D&D campaign one of my players tried to convince me to allow him to roll a monk under the 1st edition rules (I declined).  Seeing them in their original context, the monk seems to me to be another quadratic character like wizards - feeble at low levels, but increasing exponentially in power as they level up and attain their special abilities: ridiculous attacks and damage with unarmed strikes, a fighter-like AC, and a ludicrous number of immunities.  As for the assassin, I'm not really sure what the thought process was for them - they're basically weaker thieves who can undertake assassination missions for gold and XP.

This supplement tries to introduce a hit location system to the rules, which obviously never had a lasting impact.  Now I admit I am a simulationist and like my RPGs to be as realistic as possible, so I like this sort of thing - in theory.  In reality, I and most other people never play with it because it just requires too much bookkeeping and causes combat to grind to a halt.

The section for new monsters and treasures is bizarrely focused exclusively on an undersea theme with no explanation as to why.  I guess Arneson's campaign had a lot of undersea excursions?  Nevertheless, we do get some more classic D&D monsters like the sahuagin and the ixitxachitl (and on a side note, if you can spell either of those words without looking them up, you know you've been playing D&D too long).

Finally, we get to a lengthy description of the Temple of the Frog, a location in Arneson's Blackmoor campaign.  It's really a prototype for the first modules TSR would release.  It gives a brief backstory for the location, then proceeds into multiple keyed maps describing it in minute detail for exploration purposes.  There's no "adventure" per se - unlike modern modules which have an unfolding story, this just gives a static description of the location.  It's only purpose is to be systematically explored and looted, which fits with the hack-and-slash philosophy of the game we've been discussing.

This was a slightly offbeat supplement to be sure.  We're at an odd point here in the history of TSR - only one product was released every few months or so as the company got going, as opposed to later years in which multiple products would be released every month.  So join me next time as we dive back into some issues of The Strategic Review.

The Strategic Review, Autumn 1975

By all that is holy, I didn't think they could make the type they used for the magazine any smaller, but they found a way.  I understand they were trying to save on printing costs by keeping the page count down, but this is ridiculous.  You would have either had to use a magnifying glass or settle for an eye strain-induced headache to read this back in the day.

The opening editorial consists of Gary Gygax making some rather pointed comments about another game designer who had apparently given a bad review of Dungeons and Dragons.  The article is notable for the rather snippy and defensive tone Gary uses, which is a bit surprising, as I have always read that Gary was a rather easy-going guy.  But I guess we all get a little defensive when someone attacks our (brain)child.

This months' Creature Features brings us a couple of staple D&D creatures like the shambling mound and the ghost (not that the ghost is unique to D&D, but it's characteristic aging attack is and appears here from the beginning).  Also included are the piercer and the lurker above, two creatures which I feel very much represent the design philosophy of the game at this point.  The piercer looks just like a stalactite, and the lurker above is a large manta ray that looks just like a cave ceiling.  When something walks beneath them, they fall on them, stabbing them or smothering them respectively.  They're basically designed to be undetectable traps.  Both are somewhat ludicrous when considered as actual creatures with a biology and ecology, but this represents the philosophy - make the game harder for players by any means necessary and don't worry about reality.

The rest of the issue has remarkably little D&D-related, but has articles on Napoleonic warfare, old west gun fighting (in preparation for TSR's Boot Hill), and the layout of Martian cities based on John Carter of Mars.  It represents a brief moment of history when TSR (and the magazine) really were multi-faceted, before the wild success of D&D overshadowed all else.

Next post we get back into actual books, with Supplement II: Blackmoor.  Until next time.

The Strategic Review, Summer 1975

The second issue of The Strategic Review expanded a whopping 33% over the first issue - from 6 pages to 8!  What took up all this new space?

• The issue starts off with a dedication to Donald Kaye, who had recently passed away.  Kaye was a co-author of the Chainmail rules and co-founder of TSR.  When you read about the history of D&D, TSR, or roleplaying games in general you always hear plenty about Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, but very little about Donald Kaye, no doubt due to his early death.
• The first ever D&D rules FAQ appears (although it's actually called "Questions Most Frequently Asked", as the term "FAQ" had not been invented yet).  It's not really a FAQ so much as it is a list of clarifications, which is not surprising given the vague and loose manner in which the original boxed set was written.  Most of the content isn't all that interesting, except for the part clarifying the Vancian nature of magic.  The boxed set seemed to take this point for granted, as if everyone had read the Dying Earth series and understood how magic worked.
• The Creature Features article for this issue features the roper - a classic, if perhaps not iconic, D&D monster.  What's more interesting about this article is the decorative art: 

  

  Quality fantasy art was still a few years away

• The ranger is introduced as a new class for the game.  I was a little surprised the ranger was not part of the original rules, considering how heavily they borrowed from The Lord of the Rings in the first place.  Most of the essentials are here - tracking ability and fantastic followers, for example.  A few oddities that were dropped in the course of history are worth mentioning though:
• Rangers below 8th level got a 33% boost to their experience for some reason.
• Rangers originally received both cleric and mage spells at higher levels.
• If you rolled well enough on the special follower table, you could have a gold dragon as a follower.
• There's an extensive article (with illustrations!) by Gygax on the various types of medieval polearms.  I remember when I read the 2nd edition Player's Handbook for the first time wondering why it went into such detail on all these historical polearms that I had never heard of before.  After all, did you ever know a fighter who actually took proficiency in the guisarme-voulge?  Now that I understand D&D's wargaming roots better it makes much more sense.

I hope you enjoyed another walk down memory lane.  Issue 3 is up next.

The Strategic Review, Spring 1975

Not long after the creation of Dungeons and Dragons TSR decided to launch their own magazine: The Strategic Review.  It initially was intended to cover not just D&D, but also wargaming and related games.  However, TSR had yet to realize that the future was roleplaying games.  The Strategic Review lasted only seven issues before being spun off into two separate magazines: Dragon magazine for roleplaying (originally The Dragon) and Little Wars for wargaming.  Little Wars lasted only a short time before being cancelled, and technically wargaming content was then rolled back into The Dragon, but the magazine's future as a roleplaying magazine (with the lion's share of focus on D&D) was largely already set.

There's not much to this very first issue, as it is only six pages long.  Some highlights:

• News from TSR about their recent acquisition of the games Chainmail, Don't Give Up the Ship, and Tractics from Guidon Games.
• A "Creature Features" column giving us the mind flayer for the very first time ("illithid" does not appear here and must be a later addition).
• An article by Gary Gygax explaining the effectiveness of the spear in medieval combat.
• A very large feature (literally half the magazine) on how to create random dungeons so you can play D&D by yourself.  I find this infinitely amusing, as it shows how far the hobby has come in 40 years.  I'm just trying to image a modern roleplayer sitting down to roll up a random dungeon map for a solo hack-and-slash dungeon crawl.  I can't think of anything more tedious and boring, but as I've discussed in the last couple of posts, this was the state of roleplaying at its inception.  At let me be clear that I'm not against hack-and-slash games either.  I enjoy a good mindless dungeon crawl from time to time just like most other people (witness how many hours I lost to the original Diablo).  It's just I can't image playing D&D like this when I know what the game can be.
• Finally, a poll of readers asking what kind of content they would like to see in the magazine going forward

I know the decision to add magazines to my stated goal of reading every published D&D product will add a tremendous amount of reading.  However, in some ways it's the content that I'm most excited about, because the magazines - between official TSR articles and letters from readers - most clearly record the evolving nature of roleplaying games.  Future issues will contain articles discussing the reasoning behind certain rules, editorial debates on the philosophy of the rules, and other enlightening fragments of RPG history.  I'll hope you'll continue to join me, as next time we read issue number two.

Supplement I: Greyhawk

1975 saw the first release of a supplement to the original boxed set: Supplement I - Greyhawk.  Despite the name, it has nothing to do with the actual setting of Greyhawk, but rather is just a collection of material that Gary Gygax had added to the game in the course of his Greyhawk campaign (he does make a few passing references to it throughout).

The book takes the same format as the boxed set - one section for new character rules, one for new monsters and treasures, and one for dungeon-related material.  This book adds such hallmarks of the game as the paladin and thief classes, the half-elf race, and the concept of multi-classing.  We also see the first presentation of traditional ability score tables.  Most notably, it adds 7th through 9th levels spells for mages (including the mighty Wish) and 6th and 7th level spells for clerics.  Again, I'm just surprised by how old most of the spells in the game actually are.  Not that there haven't been changes, however.  For instance, Astral Spell first appears in this supplement, but it is far different from the Astral Spell that appears in later editions.  Instead of letting the mage engage in planar travel (a concept not yet invented for the game), it instead acts more like a kind of Oil of Etherealness.  However, for the most part spells are here in the same form as later editions - Meteor Swarm, Gate, Time Stop, and Power Word: Kill, just to give a few examples.

As far as creatures go, we get druids first appearing as an enemy instead of a class.  Liches - one of D&D's best contributions to fantasy tropes in my opinion - make their first appearance as well (technically the concept had appeared prior to D&D, but D&D without doubt popularized it).  We also get iconic monsters such as the rust monster, gelatinous cube, and the beholder.  In fact, a beholder is pictured on the cover:

Okay, so maybe it's not quite as menacing as later conceptions, but we all have to start somewhere.  This book was a little more sparse on artwork than the boxed set, but while we're at it, I might as well show you a couple more.  Behold, the mighty carrion crawler!

Wow, just...wow.  All is not hopeless, however, and there are signs of improvement, as shown by the ogre magi:

It might not be a masterpiece, but I wouldn't want to meet one walking down a dark alley, either.

This supplement also includes a hefty list of new magical items, including such staples as the Rod of Lordly Might, books such as the Book of Vile Darkness and the Manual of Gainful Exercise, and the Deck of Many Things.  However, among these powerful items there are also a large number of what I call "screw you" magic items - cursed items with horrible effects.  Among the worst: the Scarab of Death - pick up this item and it turns into a monster that burrows into your chest and kills you.  No save!  There's also the Bag of Devouring, which appears to be a Bag of Holding but destroys anything you put inside of it.  And of course the Poisonous Cloak - put it on and you die instantly.  No save!

To me this highlights the primitive philosophy of the game at its birth.  As I commented in the last post on the original boxed set, there's still no concept in the game of roleplaying, in the sense of having a character with a personality that's taking part in a larger story.  We're still in the hack-and-slash dungeon crawling phase, where life is "nasty, brutish, and short" to borrow a quote.  The DM's role is very different here from modern day sensibilities.  Instead of being a narrator who guides the players through the short story of an adventure or the novel of a campaign, the DM is the players' adversary.  The players are attempting to level up and amass both wealth and power, and it's the DM's job to stop them by any means necessary.  In such a scenario life is of course going to be cheap (keep in mind, the most infamous character-killing adventure of all time - The Tomb of Horrors - was the very first module TSR ever released).  For the player's part, losing a character is never fun, but it's somewhat easier when your character is just a collection of stats and items, not a person with a personality, history, and a part in the larger story of the world.

What I'm learning from these first few products is that the evolution of the D&D game through 2nd edition was not primarily in the area of its mechanics, but rather more in the kind of game played with those mechanics - progressing from hack-and-slash treasure runs to the modern story-based RPG.  I hope you're enjoying the journey still.  Join me next time as we start diving into TSR's first magazine - The Strategic Review.

Original Dungeons and Dragons Boxed Set

Today we come to the first true D&D product: the original Dungeons and Dragons boxed set, released in 1974.  The boxed set consisted of three books: "Men and Magic", "Monsters and Treasure", and "The Underworld and Wilderness Adventures".  The first is the equivalent of the modern day player's handbook, the second is a combination of a monster manual and the treasure tables from a dungeon master's guide, and the third is basically the remainder of what would go into a DMG.  It was in 1st edition, released only three or four years after this, that the "holy trinity" of PHB, DMG, and MM was established, so I'm not surprised to already see this format in the first boxed set.

As with Chainmail, the thing that most strikes me is just how far back D&D concepts go.  As someone who started in 2nd edition, it's all extremely familiar, if expressed in a very primitive form - for example, some concepts like THAC0 had yet to be formalized, but the proto-concept and more or less equivalent math is there.  But races, classes, levels, hit points, alignment, saving throws - it's all here.  I'm just surprised how little development there actually was in the rules between this and 2nd edition, which was two editions and fifteen years later.  Really the most development seems to have been in expanding the rules (more classes, more spells, etc.) and cleaning up their presentation rather than a fundamental change of the core mechanics, which has been the hallmark of every new edition since 2nd (for better or worse).

That said, here are some of my observations as I read:

• The rules amusingly recommend that the ratio of players to referee (not yet called a dungeon master) not exceed 20:1.  If you've ever DM'd before, you probably just fainted at the thought of having 20 players in a session.
• The rules state that copies of both Chainmail and a game by Avalon Hill called Outdoor Survival are required.  Chainmail is needed because by default melee rules are expressed in terms of the "man to man" rules from the book, although an alternate hit system is also included (the proto-THAC0 system).  Outdoor Survival was actually a board game about - shockingly - outdoor survival.  The rules are referred to for managing overland movement by the party.
• Since the dawn of roleplaying, games have been fighting the linear warriors, quadratic wizards problem, so it's funny to see that the concept not only started here, but was actually baked into the rules on purpose: "Top level magic-users are perhaps the most powerful characters in the game, but it is a long, hard road to the top, and to begin with they are weak, so survival is often the question, unless fighters protect the low-level magical types until they have worked up."
• I see that the notion of clerics only using blunt weapons gets its start here.  For those who do not know, the idea originally started with an interpretation of the depiction of Odo, Bishop of Bayeux on the Bayeux Tapestry, which shows him wielding a club during the Battle of Hastings.  Some historians interpreted this as meaning that as a bishop he was forbidden from wielding a sword, but later analysis has cast doubt on this theory.  I find it fascinating that a detail as tiny as the choice of weapon by an individual in a battle from a thousand years ago has cemented our notions about a class in roleplaying games in the modern era.
• For as much as the rules here are a condensed and primitive form of the more familiar expanded and refined rules of later eras, it's remarkable the little tidbits thrown in here and there that seem so out of place by comparison.  For instance, at the end of the section describing races and classes, there's a brief paragraph stating that if a player wants to play a dragon, he totally can, as long as the referee comes up with an experience progression for it.  Similarly, in going over combat rules there is a section devoted specifically to rules for subduing a dragon, then selling it on the open market!  The crazy thing is, it's not even that hard to do!  I can just imagine going into a fight with a dragon with my old 2nd edition DM and telling him that I wanted to try to subdue it.  As he wipes away the tears of laughter streaming down his cheeks, he asks while gasping for air if I want to try arm wrestling Thor next.
• Alignment is here, but is still limited to Law, Neutrality, and Chaos.  Also introduced here is the concept of alignment languages.  Thankfully these were gone by 2nd edition, as they always seemed such a bizarre concept to me.  How does one learn an alignment language exactly?  Is little Jimmy taught the Law language by his Lawful parents growing up in addition to Common?  What if his father was Lawful but his mother was Neutral?  What happens when he becomes a teenager and in a fit of rebellion decides he wants to be Chaotic instead?  Maybe alignment is something you choose once you turn 18, like registering to vote as a Republican or a Democrat.  I'm not a fan of alignment if you can't tell.

Impressions aside, I would be remiss in my review if I failed to comment on one of the best parts of the book - the artwork.  Oh, the artwork!  Let's just say the fact that TSR was on a shoestring budget at the beginning is painfully obvious.  Behold these classic masterpieces of fantasy art!

I see they recruited someone's mildly talented 12 year old nephew for this piece.

This is apparently a goblin.  I thought it was a drunk gnome at first.

No, this dashing fellow isn't Zorro, but a Nazgul.  Someone should tell him that wearing a feather in his cap somewhat diminishes his menace.

My final comment on this fascinating relic of history is just on the philosophy of the game at this point.  Even though this is the very first roleplaying game, it's debatable whether it really is or not, because it will depend on your definition of "roleplaying".  If to you "roleplaying" means just controlling a character in a game and making decisions for them, then it is, but if you think "roleplaying" means taking on the persona of that character in order to act out a larger story, then it isn't.  There's no concept of that in these rules.  There's nothing about acting like your character or speaking in-character, and there's certainly nothing at all about being part of any story.  All the game encompasses at this point is just creating characters with different powers that delve into dungeons that exist for no particular reason to slay monsters and collect treasure in order to become more powerful and slay bigger monsters with better treasure.  That's it.  The only concept of a campaign is just the idea that these characters persist from one play session to another.  Once they exhaust one dungeon they just move on to another for no other reason than the experience progression already mentioned.  Now I'm not passing judgement on that at all, nor am I weighing in on what the definition of roleplaying should be (there is no more meaningless argument to me than debating what a word "should" mean.  I take a very Humpty Dumpty approach to language).  I'm just fascinated that, as much as the rules of later editions are here almost fully formed (if still nascent), the concept of adventures and roleplaying as acting had yet to evolve.

I've waited a long time to dive into this piece of history, and I hope you've enjoyed it.  Join me next time as we look at the first rules expansion: Supplement I: Greyhawk.

Chainmail

Technically the very first D&D product ever published was the Dungeons and Dragons box set published in 1974.  However, it's not really possible to jump straight into that product without discussing the product that spurred its creation - the Chainmail rules for fantasy miniatures.

I don't want to devote a lot of time in this blog to talking about the publishing history of D&D - the interactions between Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, the history of TSR, etc.  For one, I'm far more interested in the game history - the history of the game elements themselves - and second, others have done it before and done it better.  Some of it will naturally come out in discussing the varying products though, and we really can't talk about the evolution of D&D without talking about Chainmail and how it led to it.  If the historical road from war gaming to role-playing is already familiar to you, feel free to skip on down to the actual impressions.

A Brief History of Time

Before role-playing games there were tabletop war games, a hobby which continues to this day in games like Warhammer.  If you're not familiar with them, war games are played on a large tabletop where two players control opposing armies (well, perhaps not quite entire armies, but the emphasis is on large troop formations).  The players move the various units around the field and engage other units in combat, proceeding until one side has been eliminated or driven off the field.  In 1971 Gary Gygax wrote a set of rules for war gaming with units representing forces from the early medieval period up through the Renaissance (mounted knights, pikemen, etc.) called Chainmail.  Chainmail was not the first set of war gaming rules by far (the hobby had already existed for many years), nor was it the first set of rules for medieval units.  However, what it did have that had not been seen before was the "fantasy supplement" at the end of the "normal" rules.  Being a fan of fantasy literature (Lord of the Rings, Conan, and others), Gygax provided rules for battles involving fantastic units such as elves, dragons, wizards, giants, and others.  Whereas the "normal" rules allowed people to replay real-life battles such as the Battle of Agincourt, the fantasy supplement allowed them to replay battles straight out of Lord of the Rings.  It was a huge hit, and the concept directly paved the way for role-playing.  Already the rules provided for "units" that were in fact just single characters (something not seen in war gaming before) - heroes, super-heroes, and wizards, for example.  The leap was an idea of Dave Arneson's for his players to control individual characters instead of whole units.  This naturally led to the idea of the character representing the player in the game, and thus role-playing was born.

Impressions

Having said all that we can now dive in and dissect the product itself.  Sadly, I have never found a scan of the 1st or 2nd edition of the rules.  I only have a scan of the 2nd printing of the 3rd edition which came out in 1975, right around the same time as the original D&D boxed set.  I know that they did expand the fantasy supplement between 1st and 3rd edition, but alas, I cannot know what the differences are.  So take this with a grain of salt, as I'm not sure what kind of feedback loop there might have been between the original boxed set and this edition of the fantasy supplement, published at approximately the same time.

I don't have too many comments on the war gaming rules, as they are not my primary interest, nor am I qualified to comment on them since I've never been a war gamer. But what did stand out to me was this statement at the very beginning of the rules that is astoundingly prescient in describing role-playing games and how they are played.  In commenting on the fact that players might find the rules incomplete or ambiguous in some points, it says, "These rules may be treated as guidelines around which you form a game that suits you."  Certainly other types of games like board games or card games invite the creation of house rules, but no other type of game does so like role-playing, where it's almost impossible to join a new group of players without asking what their house rules are.  This is a theme I'll be exploring throughout this blog as we look at the evolution of the game and talk about how it is played.

I think the thing I'm most struck by in reading this book is just how far back some D&D concepts go.  To give you perspective, I started playing D&D (my first role-playing game) in high school in the early 90s.  2nd edition AD&D was the standard at the time and what all my friends played.  1st edition material was the stuff of legend and tall tales to us, having been too young to play it ourselves.  We heard all the stories about how overpowered monks had been, and how the books used to call creatures demons and devils before the satanic panic of the 80s forced a change, and we wondered what it must have been like to live in such a glorious time.  Materials earlier than 1st edition - the original boxed set, the original Basic Set, or modules like Keep on the Borderlands - were firmly in the realm of myth - tales passed down by our gaming ancestors to preserve our culture.  "Chainmail" was just a name whispered around campfires that made us shiver in a Lovecraftian manner due to its unimaginable antiquity (i.e., before we were born).

With so much history prior to my personal encounter with it, I had always assumed the game had evolved significantly from its original primal steps away from war gaming table.  However, I was surprised in both a good and bad way by how many familiar things I found here:

• Straight from the war gaming rules, one round (a "turn", here) is equivalent to one minute, a concept that would stick all the way through 2nd edition.
• In AD&D 2e, I always found it odd that dwarves got a seemingly random +4 AC bonus versus giants and similar creatures.  Yet here is the basis of that rule, in a much older concept that giant units score only half kills versus dwarven units.
• Perhaps the thing I find most fascinating in the whole book is the fact that the venerable Fireball and Lightning Bolt spells (some of the most iconic spells in D&D) had their start right here.  A wizard unit could cast one or the other (decided before play started) at will.  But what is most fascinating is that these spells were meant to be fantasy equivalents of catapult and cannon fire, the rules for which are laid out in the war gaming section!
• Equally interesting are the additional spells wizards can use.  A shocking number of spells recognizable to players of later editions are all right here (if with perhaps slightly different names): Conjure Elemental (with the associated idea of the wizard having to maintain control), Protection from Evil, Slow, Haste, Polymorph Self, Confusion, Hallucinatory Terrain, Cloudkill, Anti-Magic Shell, and others.  The idea of spell level is even represented here primordially by a "complexity" number associated with each spell.  What's even more surprising is that most spells complexity numbers are identical with their spell level in later editions (for instance, Haste has a complexity of 3, while Confusion has a complexity of 4), representing a shocking amount of continuity to me.
• There are a couple of other elements that seem to have gotten their start in these rules, although I'm not 100% sure.  There are five different levels of magic user, each with their own name, which seems to me to be a proto-example of the named character levels in 1st edition.  Each level of wizard can in turn use a different maximum number of the spells listed above, which perhaps speaks of the origins of Vancian magic in D&D.
• I was also shocked to find all five chromatic dragons here, along with their traditional breath weapons.  A purple dragon is also briefly mentioned, which seems to be the ancestor of the purple worm, but I'm not sure.
• The idea of magical weapons giving pluses to hit is well represented here (although I find the remark that Excalibur would be a +2 or +3 sword amusing - obviously some power creep has happened over time).
• Ah, alignment, my old foe.  I've never been a fan of the concept of alignment in D&D, but I see it got its start here with the division of the various kinds of creatures into Law, Neutral, and Chaos.
• The "Man to Man Melee Table" has an armor progression instantly recognizable to any D&D player (or the player of virtually any computer role-playing game ever).  I find it fascinating how hard D&D cemented our notions of types of armor in fantasy games.

Besides the primordial origins of some rules, I'm also amazed at how some D&D concepts make sense now in light of its war gaming origins.  One of the things I was always struck by when playing AD&D growing up was how abstract combat positioning was treated.  There was an incredible freedom to wander around the battlefield - the modern notion of opportunity attacks was completely absent.  We almost never drew maps of fights unless positioning was absolutely critical for some non-combat related reason.  Now that I see how movement and melee is handled for war gaming I can see why.

On another note, I find it amusing how the fantasy supplement is largely The Lord of the Rings, the Game - the names Hobbit, Nazgul, balrog, and ent are used outright; Hobbits are noted for their accuracy with slings; orcs are mentioned as having factions such as orcs of Mordor and Isengarders; and rocs are explicitly said to be the eagles from The Lord of the Rings.

All in all, reading Chainmail was an experience akin to reading Lovecraft's Pnakotic Manuscripts - understanding forbidden lore that has come down from across a vast abyss of time.  I hope you enjoyed the journey, and I look forward into diving into our next product: the original D&D boxed set.

Thesis

I've had this idea for some time, and I've decided to finally put it into practice.  The mission: read every D&D product ever published in chronological order from the original Chainmail rules up through at least 2nd edition and blog about it (by "D&D" I'm referring to the entire historical Dungeons and Dragons game, encompassing all of its manifestations such as original D&D, basic D&D, and AD&D).  I'd love to keep going into 3rd edition and beyond as much as possible, but life is only so long, so we'll see if that happens if and when we get there.

For the past several years I've been working on a related project - collecting PDF scans of every D&D book through 2nd edition.  This has been no mean feat in and of itself, as to do that I first had to put together a collector's checklist.  There are some decent ones out there already, but I ended up creating my own because I couldn't find one that adequately captured the printing differences of early products (a headache any serious D&D collector can tell you about - in the early days when the game was new, products were published in multiple small printing batches and often errata and subtle changes were introduced between printings, to say nothing of TSR's penchant for publishing completely updated versions of existing products).  A lot of blood, sweat, and tears research has gone into my meticulously organized Google spreadsheet.  It's still not technically done, nor are my collection efforts, but I have the first few years of D&D's existence completed, so I want to go ahead and get the ball rolling on this project as well.

In addition to all the books, I also will be reading TSR's magazines - the original Strategic Review, followed by Dragon (originally "The Dragon") and eventually its counterpart Dungeon.  I'm fascinated by the history of D&D and of role-playing games in general, and these magazines provide an invaluable record of the game's development, both from the perspective of the creators and the players.

This is a huge and daunting undertaking, for sure (I don't even want to guess at how many millions of words it will involve reading), but an exciting one.  I'll hope you'll join me in the journey.