Things from My Re-read

So I'm about halfway done with my re-read right now, having just finished the Holmes Basic Rules.  In the interest of getting back into the habit of posting regularly I thought I'd do a brief update on some things I've gleaned during my re-read:

• When I first started this project I only had a 3rd edition copy of Chainmail, which came out well after the original OD&D boxed set.  As I was reading I naturally wondered whether some things from the boxed set had bled back into the Chainmail rules.  Well since then I've managed to find a 2nd edition copy of Chainmail, which came out before the boxed set, and which I read this time through instead.  In turns out that back-pollination from OD&D did occur in terms of wizard spells.  2nd edition has fewer spells than 3rd, and it also lacks the concept of spell "complexity", which is just spell level ported over from OD&D.  So all told a few spells as well as the spell level concept were reworked into the 3rd edition rules.
• As I was rereading the Blackmoor supplement I was struck by the description of the Sahuagin.  As opposed to just being a block of stats and a barebones description of how they fight in combat - which is the norm for monster entries of this era - it actually goes into significant detail about their society.  The result is that they feel quite fleshed out, which is rather refreshing for a product of this era.  D&D (in virtually every era) has always opted for quantity over quality when it came to giving us monsters.  We can see it already starting to gel here, but the AD&D Monster Manual would completely solidify the format of picture + stat block + very brief description, and I always wanted monster books to be so much more.  Don't just give me a brief rundown on the stats for the different types of giants, give me info on giant society.  How is it organized?  How do the various types relate to one another?  What does family structure look like?  Even with unintelligent animal-like monsters I want details like what does their lair or nest look like?  How do they fit into their local ecology?  Are they an apex predator or what hunts and eats them?  I'm sure the quantity over quality choice was made as part of an arms race with players who had memorized the stats for existing monsters (a problem which is explicitly mentioned in one of the products from my re-read, although I can't recall which one), but the detailed information I long for could have sparked the imagination of countless DMs, and in turn I believe help address the problem of player familiarity.
• I made a very brief mention of this in one of my past posts, but there are a couple of categories of products that came out in the time period I've already covered that I haven't included in this blog, those being the Geomorph accessories and the monster and treasure assortments.  The Geomorphs were basically individual sections of map that could be combined at the edges in multiple ways to allow DMs to generate large maps easily.  There were a couple for dungeons, one for caves and caverns, and one for a walled city.  The monster and treasure assortments were just that - just random lists of monsters and treasures for DMs to roll on.  While both products do have a page explaining how to use them, they're not exactly "readable" products and as such there wouldn't be much to say about them in a blog post, hence my decision to exclude them.
• The very last issue of The Strategic Review had an article recommending some music to play in the background while playing D&D.  I've certainly done this myself in a campaign I've run, but I was pleasantly surprised by the fact that the idea of doing it went all the way back to the very beginning.
• Dragon #3 had an entry for a samurai class, and while the class itself wasn't very interesting, it did introduce the concept of critical hits to the game for the very first time.  After doing some research though I was shocked to learn that D&D was not the first roleplaying game to include the idea.  That honor goes to Empire of the Petal Throne, which came out a full year before this issue (although they were not called "critical hits" yet).  But even more shocking is that EPT was not even the first game to introduce the concept.  According to Wikipedia, it first appears in a 19th century wargame!
• I'm quite shocked at the complete lack of marketing in the Dragon.  I don't mean there are no ads (there are plenty), but rather that TSR had no concept yet of using the magazine to preview upcoming products.  In none of the Dragon issues leading up to the Holmes set is there any mention of it - no sneak peaks, no brief excerpts, not even a "hey, we're working on this" mention in the editor's column.  Apparently they just threw the Holmes set out into the world with no fanfare whatsoever.  I checked ahead and there is a one page ad for it in the following issue (2 months later!), but it's just bizarre compared to how things are managed nowadays, where every TTRPG or video game has a carefully crafted hype machine leading up to its release.  Now to be fair the TSR staff at this time are largely just amateurs winging it - I doubt at this point they even had an official marketing department.  I seem to recall they did a little better with AD&D, but we'll see if I remember correctly as I read through the next year's worth of issues.

That's all for now.  My initial guess of the re-read taking a single month was perhaps a little naive, but I'm hoping another month will see me done with it.  I'll probably do another one of these posts when I do finish, and then at long last it will be time for new content!