Supplement V: Swords and Spells

Author: Gary Gygax
Artist: Dave Sutherland

"Supplement V" appears nowhere in the actual product, but it is commonly known to all fans of OD&D by that description.  This product is an attempt to close the circle back with D&D's origins in Chainmail by providing an updated set of rules for fantastic miniature battles.  The rules for D&D combat are referenced as being the standard for 1:1 figure fights, and the full range of spells from D&D is available to wizard and cleric figures, but other than that this product has little to do with D&D.  As such I don't have much commentary on it.

TSR obviously still felt that wargaming and roleplaying went hand in hand at this point.  It's understandable - if the purpose of roleplaying is to play characters like those found in fantasy novels, it would make sense that players would want to recreate not just the individual fighting they do, but also the large scale battles these kinds of characters often participate in, such as the Battle of the Five Armies or the Battle of Helm's Deep.  However, we stand at the cusp of history here.  With AD&D a year or two away at this point the hobbies are about to diverge forever (although TSR would continue to try to tie the two together with the Battlesystem rules).

We have quite a few Dragon issues to go through now, as we're a year away from the next D&D product - the classic Holmes Basic Set, which was intended to be an introduction / bridge to AD&D, yet ironically ended up splitting the game into Basic D&D and AD&D.  It's an interesting milestone in the history of the game, and I hope you'll stick around to see it.

Supplement IV: Gods, Demigods, & Heroes

Authors: Rob Kuntz and Jim Ward

This supplement was the forerunner of the Deities and Demigods / Legends and Lore of later editions.  It's clear a lot of research went into this supplement, extensively covering the mythical characters from Egyptian, Indian, Greek, Celtic, Norse, Finnish, Hyborean (Conan), Melnibonean (Elric), Mayan/Aztec/Incan, and Chinese pantheons, as well as notable "normal" monsters and magic items.  But honestly I can't say what the point of all that research was, because this has to be a candidate for one of the most pointless supplements in D&D history across all editions.

What this could have been was an overview of the various classic mythologies - explaining the personalities of the gods, their relationships with each other, the domains they had authority over, and how all of that might impact a campaign world: how clerics of different gods might differ from one another, how a particular pantheon of religion affects a society, and so forth.  Sadly, this kind of sensibility is still many years away at this point, and what we get instead is reflective of the infant (and perhaps infantile) state of the game.

What the supplement is is nothing more than a monster manual for gods.  After a very brief foreword where Tim Kask ironically wags his finger at Monty Haul DMs and an introduction consisting of a single table outlining divine psionic abilities, we dive right into a tediously long list of gods where each god is reduced to six stats (AC, move, hit points, magic ability, fighting ability, and psionic ability) plus a very short paragraph that discusses any special abilities they have.  That's it.  That's the entire book.

What was the point?  TSR would later clarify they didn't intend gods to be just bigger monsters that players fought, but if that's so, then what is the purpose of this format?  In the foreword Kask points out the absurdity of a 40th level fighter when Odin himself "only" has 300 hit points, and that's a good point.  So is the point of this supplement just to show how much more powerful than players the gods are supposed to be?  You don't need a supplement for that.  You don't need rules at all when it comes to dealing with gods.  There's no "roll for initiative" when it comes to facing a god.  The rule is: he's a god, you're not, he wins, end of story.  If you give gods stats like this, it can only be for the purpose of having players actually fight them, but to do so you would have to be the 40th level fighter the foreword disdains.

After Eldritch Wizardry introduced so many epic game elements (even if in a primitive, crude form), it's sad that the followup hit such a low point.  Join me next time as we cover the very last supplement and close out the OD&D era.

Supplement III: Eldritch Wizardry

Authors: Gary Gygax and Brian Blume
Cover Artist: Deborah Larson
Interior Artists: Dave Sutherland, Tracy Lesch, Gary Kwapisz

Finally we get back to an actual product.  I enjoy the magazine issues, but it's the products I'm really after in this project of mine.  This won't be an issue once we get a few more years into it, when TSR started cranking out multiple products per month.  But for now we still live in the original D&D era when supplements were few and far between.

Supplement III: Eldritch Wizardry was certainly a landmark, and for many different reasons.  Let's just jump straight to the thing that stands out the most about this product - the cover art:

Well alright then.  This was the very first product with color cover art, and I just find it interesting this is the direction they decided to go.  A naked woman tied down to a sacrificial altar?  I mean, it definitely matches the feel of the title if nothing else (although it is a little ironic that there's not any actual wizard-specific material in this supplement).  It's very clear that this was a different era.  All I can say is that I'm sure they were glad that this product was out of print by the time the satanic panic of the 80s rolled around.  But enough about that, let's look at the content:

• The druid class, originally an enemy in Supplement I, now makes its appearance as a character class, along with many classic druid spells.  What strikes me so much about the writing of these early rules is just how loose they are and how much they leave up to the DM.  For instance, it mentions how mistletoe is important to druidic spells, and how the effectiveness of a spell is modified by how properly the mistletoe was gathered, but that's it - no actual rules for adjustments are given.  It's totally up to the DM to make them up.  This is an interesting rules philosophy, and I'm not sure if it really represented a belief that this kind of minutiae was up to the DM to decide, or if it was honestly just to save on space (and thus printing costs).  It certainly is the polar opposite of what we would get in 1st edition AD&D, which if anything had too many rules.
• This supplement notably introduces psionics to the game.  I personally love the idea of psionics in general, and I really loved the 2nd edition psionicist class.  I still think its rules are an excellent example of a non-Vancian magic system.  But I knew nothing previously about psionics prior to 2nd edition, other than bits of legend and lore passed on by friends.  Psionic powers here are something that any character class can have, but at the expense of their normal class features.  Once again, I'm shocked at just how many powers I'm familiar with from the 2nd edition rules go straight back to the very beginning here.  I'm also shocked at how absurdly over-complicated the rules for psionics are.  Now I'll admit that as I read these products I'm not paying as much attention to the rules as I would if I were trying to actually learn and master the system.  Still, after reading the rules on psionics I couldn't even begin to give you an overview of how the system works.
• As if to underscore my previous point, there is a section on a primitive initiative system for combat that is again over-complicated and doesn't make much sense.  This is something I've been noticing ever since Chainmail.  The concept of streamlined, easy to remember rules has yet to make its way into roleplaying.  To make matters worse, it's not just the rules themselves, but the writing as well.  Concepts are described in the most roundabout fashion possible.  It just shows how very, very far the roleplaying industry has come in forty years.
• Most notably, this supplement introduces demons to the game.  Yes, "demons" with a "d"!  As a child of 2nd edition, I was familiar only with Baatezu and Tanar'ri, 2nd edition's renamed devils and demons respectively.  Seeing the effects of the 80s satanic panic on the game as it happens is something I'm eagerly anticipating down the line.  And speaking of demons, the majority of the supplement's art is devoted to them:

Bless their heart, they're trying.

After the cover art, I find the fig-leaf whip placement rather amusing.  Naked woman on a sacrificial altar?  Fine.  Demon wang?  Too far.

What about one of the most iconic demon princes of all time?

Well, it could be worse, I suppose.  It's just a long way from the pants-wetting depiction we get on the cover of the 4th edition Monster Manual:

Progress, huzzah!

• Mind flayers, previously the subject of the very first Creature Feature in The Strategic Review #1, now get a more fleshed out entry among the other added monsters, which also include the classic psionic monsters of the game like the brain mole and thought eater.
• Many of the most classic D&D artifacts are introduced here for the first time: The Mace of St Cuthbert, the Axe of the Dwarvish Lords, the Rod of Seven Parts, the Machine of Lum the Mad, Heward's Mystical Organ, and several others, including the classic Vecna artifacts: the Hand, the Eye, and the Sword of Kas.  And although that may sound epic, the whole section is greatly disappointing.  The artifacts have very little - if any - lore attached to them.  The story of the Wind Dukes of Aaqa and the battle with the Queen of Chaos has yet to be invented for the Rod of Seven Parts, for example.  Each item is just a name, a very brief description, and then a list of how many powers of each kind it has on the traditional tables for artifact powers and curses.  It doesn't even list suggested powers for each item!

Between druids, demons, psionics, and artifacts, this was certainly a landmark product in D&D history, and arguably the high point of the original D&D supplements.  Next time we return to the magazines for another landmark: Dragon #1.

Supplement II: Blackmoor

Authors: Dave Arneson
Artists: Dave Sutherland, Mike Bell, and Tracy Lesch

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.

Supplement I: Greyhawk

Authors: Gary Gygax and Rob Kuntz
Artists: Greg Bell

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

Authors: Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson
Artists: Keenan Powell, Greg Bell, C. Corey, Dave Arneson, Tom Keogh, and Dave Sutherland

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.