A Forgotten Variant: Loera, the Massively Multiplayer Tabletop RPG

November 1, 2017, 3:52 pm

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The original Dungeons & Dragons rules invited fans to make their own additions and modifications to the system, and many early adopters took TSR up on that offer. While some of the unofficial supplements and variants they produced became classics, others fell into total obscurity. Keith Abbott's Loeran Supplement is one that received notices in many fanzines of the day, but ultimately reached a very small audience. It is of interest, however, as Loera was an early attempt to create a massively-multiplayer tabletop game: as the supplement says, "to create the first effective world-sized campaign."


Full-page advertisements for Loera ran in prominent fanzines like The Dungeoneer around the beginning of 1977. The spot that follows came from the third issue; a copy in my collection has a postmark of January 5, suggesting that Abbott probably started his publicity push around the end of 1976.

As this notice makes clear, Abbott hoped to recruit more than fifty referees to run different segments of the world of Loera for groups of around twenty players, requiring referees to correspond back with him in his capacity as the "DungeonGrandMaster," to maintain central state for the game. This would make it a thousand-person campaign, were it to get off the ground, where Abbott would coordinate when players left the jurisdiction of one referee and entered another.

While his idea might seem too ambitious to be promising, Abbott enlisted some support in the community. F. Scott Johnson soon began assisting Abbott in administering Loera, not least by sending in the following blurb to Alarums & Excursions #27 extolling the virtues of the campaign.

That notice in Alarums mentions that Spellbound, a fanzine co-edited by Johnson, would carry information about Loera. In its second issue we can read the following, perhaps the most detailed public write-up of the game setting.

The next issue carried an example of the sorts of instructions to referees that might come down from the DungeonGrandMaster, including a detachable form for referees eager to accept the task of running a section.

While the Loera campaign never achieved Abbott's ambition, it provided the context for the generation of the Loeran Supplement. This edition was the fifty-page mimeo version, rather than the eighty-page offset version that Abbott and Johnson promised if sufficient interest ever called for it. The Supplement itself had to deal with a problem familiar to late OD&D systems: the scattering of the OD&D rules across a wide variety of periodicals and rulebooks. As this pre-dated the Dungeonmaster's Index, the Loeran Supplement provides an index of its own to the familiar OD&D publications and periodicals--but it points outside TSR as well to the Milgamex titles Ancient Warfare and Sword & Spear, the WRG Naval Wargame Rules for Fleet Action, and the Dungeoneer fanzine.

Of course, the Loeran Supplement is more than just an index, it also provides new house rules for the campaign. Apparently, it did away with the basic concept of level in D&D, and reduced the system down to just five character classes. But it provided a lot of granularity within those classes; for example, Magic-users as they progress have the opportunity to learn "colors" that enable them to cast various branches of magic, organized into subclasses: Enchanters, Transmuters, Psychotechnicians, Pyrotechnicians, Elementalists, Illusionists, and Mages. Casting spells uses a klutz system with the complexity ratings borrowed from the third edition of Chainmail, though for every successful cast of a spell, mages gain a bonus to future complexity checks for that spell.

These days, when you want to do a massively multiplayer game, the Internet provides a framework superior to the postal system. In the early days of Dungeons & Dragons, as people recognized the world-building possibilities in the game, naturally some would feel the call to build world-sized structures, a goal that was out of reach at the time. But the possibility was built into the way that people thought about role-playing games, pretty much from the start.

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Vintage Ad: Slain Any Wicked Dragons Lately?

November 9, 2017, 2:18 pm

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This D&D advertisement dates from the first half of 1977, a stopping point when TSR had wrapped up publishing the original Dungeons & Dragons game and hadn't yet put anything out to replace it. The body text is familiar from other contemporary advertisements, but the form given shown here let you order a white box, all the supplements, a Swords & Spells, and a subscription to bi-monthly The Dragon magazine. The cover of that magazine's first issue supplied the slayable fellow shown at the top.

The ad could be seen in the wild in science-fiction magazines of the day, for example on the inside cover of the July 1977 issue of Galaxy. Published versions of it all admit of one very slight variation: the department listed in TSR's mailing address. The one shown above directs your mail to "Room 8," while the July 1977 issue of Galaxy version of advertisement requests you appeal to "Dept. G." and the one appearing in the August Fantasy & Science Fiction sends you to "Dept. FF." Sorting incoming mail by this discriminator was the easiest way TSR could measure the effectiveness of their various ad-buys at the time.

This ad was not the first to reuse Bill Hannan's image from the cover of the first issue of The Dragon. It had earlier appeared in more modest spots like the one below from the year before, which listed the range of fantasy offerings currently available from TSR, including titles developed outside the company like the Battle of the Five Armies. Even this tiny ad came in multiple versions with different mailing addresses; I've seen one that directs you to "Dept. 2."

"Slain Any Wicked Dragons Lately?" appeared at the tail end of OD&D product marketing, but the slogan transitioned into the initial public push for the Holmes Basic Set. With the Basic Set, slaying dragons is of course easier than ever. We see the Holmes version in the December 1977 issue of Fantastic Stories, say, directing you to "Dept. F", and even as late as Amazing Stories in May 1978: please send your order to "Dept. AM."

The Invention of Randomly Generated Dungeons

November 20, 2017, 3:09 pm

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The debut issue of the Strategic Review carried the first expansions to Dungeons & Dragons to appear under TSR's imprint, including rules for solo gaming which Gygax credited to himself and George A. Lord. It can be hard to glean deeper insight into how these early systems came together, but the excerpt shown above relates a second-hand summary of Lord's initial correspondence with Gary Gygax about potential approaches to solo D&D. The account was written by Scott Rich, and it appeared in the eleventh issue of his Midgard Ltd. campaign's newsletter Midgard Sword & Shield from October 1974. Notably, Rich appends a parenthetical suggestion that has some striking similarities to the rules that TSR would imminently publish.

Midgard figures regularly into the early history of D&D because the two games were effectively cousins: two flexible fantastic medieval wargame campaign systems which developed simultaneously and shared some early adopters in common. Scott Rich had a copy of D&D in hand by June 1974 -- his Midgard zines were among the earliest publications to mention it -- and Rich quickly began to merge its rules into his Midgard Ltd. campaign. Along the way, he corresponded with many D&D fans like George Lord. Lord had been pen-pals with Dave Arneson for some time; Arneson can be found participating in Midgard Ltd. in 1974 as well.

Intriguingly, this excerpt from MS&S intimates that Gygax and Lord had originally been discussing a system based on solo players designing rooms and then exchanging sealed envelopes with each other, a system which required that "you must have the floor plans of your castle drawn" rather than using die rolls for on-the-fly generation of dungeons. Rich hastily sketches how the latter might work, allowing for stairs, passages, doors, rooms, wandering monsters, and traps: a sketch that bears a strong resemblance to the forthcoming Strategic Review system:

... a roll of 20, at the top of the next page, heralds a wandering monsters. Gygax does retain the idea of exchanging envelopes for "special rooms" to introduce a bit of creativity to the process, but the focus of the design is on random generation: "through the following series of tables (and considerable dice rolling) it is now possible to adventure alone through endless series of dungeon mazes!"

As the snippet from MS&S gives only Rich's perspective, he may have merely arrived independently at an idea Gygax was already exploring. Or maybe Lord relayed Rich's idea to Gygax, but he wouldn't have needed to, as Gygax received Midgard Sword & Shield himself -- in fact, Gygax even plugged Scott Rich and the Midgard Ltd. campaign in the second issue of the Strategic Review. Given how important the random generation of dungeons would become for solo computer gaming, we should extend some retroactive credit to Scott Rich, who at the very least got the idea into print first, and likely exerted some influence on its later development.

D&D in the News (1977): You, Too, Can Be a Wizard

November 27, 2017, 2:13 pm

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Leslie Kemp, in the summer of 1977, gives us a rare mainstream perspective on the progress of Dungeons & Dragons, this time in the city of Tampa, Florida, for the Tampa Tribune. She reports the existence of four D&D groups known to her at the time, and calls it a game that "is just now gaining popularity." No doubt a notice in a major city newspaper would boost that, especially with the promise that "You, Too, Can Be a Wizard."

Kemp sometimes struggles to explain the underlying concepts: she calls it a "board game" while stressing that it "is not played on a regular game board with standard game pieces but on a blank chart that is mapped as the game progresses." She understands that it is a "modified war game," though she perhaps misunderstands how closely the game follows the stories of Tolkien, as she suggests players "create a type of 'history continuation' of Tolkien's stories and implement their own ideas along the way." Similarly, she has the impression that you had to consult the supplements for content beyond the setting of Tolkien, like the medusa or various medieval characters. But she explains the basic mechanics well enough to intrigue someone unfamiliar with the game--at the time, that is virtually everyone who would have read this piece.

The photographs accompanying the article show OD&D in full use: we see white box booklets on the table in the first picture, and in another, a copy of Gods, Demi-gods and Heroes is lain across a few pages of Eldritch Wizardry. The dice visible are Creative Publications polyhedra, except for the six siders, most of which are pipped dice. Kemp is careful to emphasize that "books and figures may be purchased locally," and she repeatedly mentions the Regimental Supply Room as the local dealer.

The three players interviewed are all over twenty years old, which does stand apart from later press focusing on teenage players. One of the three is female, and indeed the photograph of play around the table (if the grainy reproduction here doesn't mislead us) shows two women out of seven players present. Lisa Jones explains to Kemp, "I have a rather vivid and busy imagination and I like having a chance to use it." Kemp knows that it is being put to good use: she reports on groups convening regularly on weekends and one weeknight, where "it is not unusual to hear laughter mingled with shouts."

Previously: D&D in the News (1976): Fazzle on the Ryth

A Forgotten Variant: Catacombs and Caverns

December 6, 2017, 3:19 pm

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The original Dungeons & Dragons books urged players to make the game their own, to devise their own characters, settings, and even rules. D&D was, as Games magazine mused in 1979, less of a game than a design-a-game kit. Some early adopters invented enough alternative and supplemental material that they declared their campaigns to be independent games--some of which became commercial products, but many more only managed to circulate as self-published curiosities. Catacombs and Caverns (1976) is one of the latter. In the runic script of the world of Tharin, the cover credits the game to "Scott Free", a pen name for Scott Aldridge of Minneapolis. Like the Rules to the Game of Dungeon, Catacombs gives us a window into how Twin Cities early adopters engaged with role-playing games.

Catacombs and Caverns is as much a campaign setting as it is a rulebook. The game is set in the world of Tharin, which, in a manner surely inspired by Tékumel, was a planet colonized by humanity and then lost to galactic civilization, afterwards descending into barbarism. The central continent of Tharin is called Varn, and its principle city Windemire. The divinities of the planet are Evitisop, Evitinet, and Evitagen (the middle one not entirely successful backward), who represent birth, life, and death respectively, and are rendered in the game's iconography with the following symbols:

We are to understand the symbol of Evitagen is a sword, not a cross. Corresponding directly to this trinity, three NPCs dominate Tharin's story: the lawful leader Voroc; the evil "Soixante Quinze"; and the neutral Manny O'Mally, the last apparently a surrogate for the designer.

The Catacombs and Caverns rules recommend a very particular starting situation for characters:

Much of the text is consumed by the list of monsters, which includes many outright borrowed from D&D: beholders, blink dogs, owlbears, umber hulks, purple worms, black puddings, and so on. Among creatures unique to Catacombs and Caverns is the "tork," an aquatic serpent that growths one foot per year: the passage of time is measured on Tharin by the length of the "king tork," who is now 10,000 feet long. Similarly the "schmudluck" has legs that grow one foot per year, with specimens as tall at 110 feet roaming the wild. The "screaming yellow zonkers" howl incessantly and for some reason covet the maces wielded by people. Adventurers should not be tempted by the "flying gold coin" which "will hover just out of reach leading adventurers to traps or to treasure." Perhaps the most bizarre or ridiculous of the denizens of Tharin is the egg-man:

The Catacombs system depends mostly on percentile rolls, starting with values for the core attributes (here Strength, Intelligence, Constitution, Dexterity, Charisma, Comeliness, and Agility). Combat works based on subtracting armor class from the weapon class, and then rolling percentiles: if the subtraction yielded a 0, you require a 100 to hit, if 1 then 90, if 2 then 80, and so on, where 100 always hits and 01 always misses. There are exactly one hundred spells, many familiar from D&D, to be allocated randomly to wizards, though a roll of "00" allows the wizard to "create new spell"--curiously, "this spell can only be cast on July 27th Earth time" at high noon, with the approval of the wizard's guild, and it will replace an existing spell on the list. Experience awards are based on a level difference between the character and the slain monster: killing a monster the same level as you gives 25 experience; for 10 levels higher than you, 25,600 experience; and for 18 levels higher than you, 6,553,600, an amount sufficient to raise a starting character to 19th level. 21st level characters are "taken in by the gods" and removed from play. 

Catacombs and Caverns sets itself apart from other rip-offs of the OD&D period with its detailed articulation in a rulebook more than 75 pages long, which can give us fresh insight into how people played in this free-wheeling period. Scott Aldridge seems to have bought a copy of D&D from Dave Arneson personally in the Twin Cities early in 1976; he also expresses familiarity with Empire of the Petal Throne, Tunnels & Trolls and Monsters! Monsters! But the draft probably seemed too juvenile and unpolished to interest the publishers he contacted, who included the Twin Cities imprint World at War. We are thus left with just this amateur edition, a testament to how enthusiastically people accepted TSR's offer to take charge of the rules.

Previously on Forgotten Variants: Loera

Vintage Ad: Think of TSR

December 13, 2017, 2:23 pm

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By 1977, the three letters "TSR" had long since lost their original association with Tactical Studies Rules. This let TSR Hobbies play with the acronym as a mnemonic for its three product silos: traditional tactical wargames, science-fiction games like Star Probe and Star Empires, and finally role-playing games, led by Dungeons & Dragons. That was TSR's umbrella, and when the industry thought of the gaming hobby, TSR hoped it would think of its tactical, sci-fi and role-playing games. The company was still small enough at this point for Gary Gygax to micromanage how they presented this message, as his hand corrections to the advertisement here show in a surviving TSR internal document.

A version implementing some of Gygax's requested corrections, such as enlarging the lizardman, could be found in the wild in the October 1977 issue of both Toys and Playthings. We find it in those industry trade journals rather than The Dragon or White Dwarf because it was not a consumer-facing advertisement, but instead one targeting hobby store owners.  We can recognize advertisements for this audience by their "TSR Guarantee" which became common in 1977 industry ads, promising retailers reimbursements if any product "does not meet your sales needs."

Since the advertisement appeared in black-and-white, it was hard to implement the "tint" that Gygax requested for the bar at the top reading "When you think of the gaming hobby..." Some versions of the advertisement simply have that text in normal lettering, like this example from the August 1977 Craft, Model & Hobby.

That version, rather than enumerating distributors, instead lists what TSR itself distributes beyond its own products, largely focusing on miniature figures as well as accessories for their care and upkeep, like paints and brushes. We can still see this basic ad in use early in 1978, as in the February issue of Toys, Hobbies, & Crafts, by which time the list of distributors has grown a bit.

Astute observers might have noted some slight variation in the department number in TSR's mailing addresses, a response-tracking technique which has covered here before. The pattern for these industry magazine advertisements seems to lead with a "C" and list a sequential numerical code: we see C-10 and C-11 above, for example. The Playthings advertisement lists Dept. C-12, the same code we see in other contemporary TSR ads in Playthings, which suggests these codes identified the journal where the advertisement appeared rather than the advertisement.Toys directs you to Dept. C-15, and a version in the January 1978 Toy & Hobby World lists Dept C-30.

All that would suggest there were probably more than twenty industry journals where TSR tracked placed advertisements at the time, and perhaps more than thirty. Their advertising budget grew proportionately with the success of Dungeons & Dragons, which enabled them to aspire to a loftier position in the hobby games business.

Previously on Vintage Ads: Slain Any Wicked Dragons Lately?

Gary Gygax on "Tomorrow" with Tom Snyder (1979)

December 20, 2017, 12:39 pm

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It was early in November 1979: the publication of the Dungeon Masters Guide had recently completed the core Advanced Dungeons & Dragons trilogy, and thanks to the "steam tunnel" incident, D&D was suddenly famous. Gary Gygax was no stranger to game industry press interviews, but now the mainstream media began to shift its focus from the controversy surrounding the game to its success, and to Gygax himself. You know you've made it when you're summoned to the late-night talk show circuit, and Gygax arrived on Tom Snyder's "Tomorrow." It can be hard to explain the game to a general audience, but when Snyder asks Gygax if he could demonstrate it, his response is, "Certainly, instantly, right now." Listen for yourself, and/or follow along with the transcript of this long-lost interview below.



Or listen [on Soundcloud].

This was a tough clip to hunt down. The audio track here was transferred from a cassette tape that a couple people recorded in front of their television while the interview aired; you can at one point (when Gygax is enumerating character classes) hear a voice saying, "That's you," presumably in reference to a character type that someone played. Until a video recording surfaces, this will have to tide us over. Recordings of this length of Gary Gygax from these early years are quite rare.

Gygax cannot have been thrilled that Snyder immediately refers to the game as "cultish," as the word "cult" appeared too often in the press surrounding the steam tunnel incident. But overall, it is a sympathetic interview, where Snyder tries to understand what the game is and why people play it; he seems eager to continue the brief story of his magic user. Gygax's explanations are not always very clear, but they are genuine and unscripted -- the messiness of live interviews can often be revealing. Note as well that Snyder represents Gygax as "the" inventor of Dungeons & Dragons, which became a common talking point in TSR marketing and media in the era, to the frustration of people fighting to recognize other contributions.

This transcript was generated with the help of Trint. There are a couple of places where the audio was difficult to follow, but this should be reasonably accurate.

Tom Snyder’s "Tomorrow" Gygax interview

Midnight, Thurs, Nov 8 1979 (well, so, Nov 9 – that’s why they call it “Tomorrow”) on NBC nationally, Gygax fourth and final guest.

Snyder: [00:00:00] Now, all the way from Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, here's Gary Gygax, who is the inventor of Dungeons & Dragons, which is a game that is going crazy on college campuses across this country. It is, it is cultish, people are forming groups to play it all the time. And it's, it's a game that has no board, no lights, no dials, don't deal cards, nothing like that.

Gygax: [00:00:19] That's true.

Snyder: [00:00:20] What do you do?

Gygax: [00:00:22] You sit and talk much as you and I are talking right now, but the difference is that you're dealing with aspects of life that aren't immediately apparent and you're doing it in a way that's fun. You're having adventures in a world that's pretty mundane - you have an adventure crossing a busy street perhaps, but that, you really risked your life there. Here in a fantasy world, you're approaching various, various moral and ethical judgments in your life and in working with professions which are make-believe professions and, and seeing how you really want to do what you're going to do for the rest of your life.

Snyder: [00:01:03] All right. Tell me about the game. What are the professions involved here.

Gygax: [00:01:07] Magic-user, someone who cast spells; a fighter, whose approach is pretty basic, you go in and hit things; a cleric whose major role is a supportive role; and a thief who does things through cleverness.

Snyder: [00:01:25] [unintelligible] [voice in the room “that’s you”]

Gygax: [00:01:25] Well there are many many side trips there and combinations of.

Snyder: [00:01:30] So now those four occupations and then the others. I mean, how does it work, is what I'm asking you?

Gygax: [00:01:34] OK, the simplest way to explain how it works is this: it's making believe, as children play cops and robbers. And sometimes the books tend to fool people into thinking, "oh, well there's a lot here," but there isn't really very much to it at all to play the game. It's just a matter of sitting down, and making believe. Suspending your disbelief and believing in this, in developing a character in a make believe world who's going to solve problems, you know, which are rather adventurous: so slaying dragons or going through a labyrinth, a maze, that nobody has found their way out of yet, let’s suppose.

Snyder: [00:02:14] Could you and I play this game?

Gygax: [00:02:16] Certainly, instantly, right now.

Snyder: [00:02:18] OK.

Gygax: [00:02:18] OK. We'll assume that you'll be - what profession, what would you like to be?

Snyder: [00:02:23] I would like to be a magic-user.

Gygax: [00:02:25] OK, you're a magic-user. You have three spells with you right now: you have a sleep spell; you have a fireball spell, where you can throw a huge fireball; and you have a teleportation spell where you can escape. Those are the three spells you have left. And your -

Snyder: [00:02:39] And what do you want to be?

Gygax: [00:02:41] Well, I'll be your dungeon master, I'll tell you what -

Snyder: [00:02:44] Now, you've introduced something, the dungeon master leads the game, is that the idea? Or he guides the game?

Gygax: [00:02:48] He guides the game and plays all the roles that you're not going to play. In other words if you're the, the magic user, you're going to run into things, perhaps a red dragon that will talk to you. I'll play that part.

Snyder: [00:03:01] So you're the dungeon master, and I'm the magic user, and I've got a sleep spell, and I've got a fireball spell, and I have a teleportation spell which lets me get out of here without getting up and leaving.

Gygax: [00:03:10] Right. You'll say, "Goodbye."

Snyder: [00:03:13] “Sayonara.”

Gygax: [00:03:13] OK, now, let's - I'll pick it up as if you were actually in a dungeon, and I'll relay to you, because I have to be your eyes and ears and everything, and you're going to tell me what kind of information you need. So we'll assume that you are in a four-way passageway underground and you can choose any direction you want to go. Ten foot wide stone corridors deep beneath the earth. Now, you have a choice of any of the four directions, you tell me where you go to.

Snyder: [00:03:38] OK, let's go to the left.

Gygax: [00:03:39] OK, you go to the left and we'll say you were going north, so you're going to head off to the west.

Snyder: [00:03:43] OK.

Gygax: [00:03:44] OK, you go west and I tell you how many feet, you've gone a hundred feet west - and suddenly there's a huge bronze door before you, with a big doorknocker on it, a big ring that obviously opens the door and serves as a knocker also. Do you want to turn around and go back the other way? Open the door? Knock first? What would you like to do?

Snyder: [00:04:04] I think I'll knock first.

Gygax: [00:04:05] OK. Now, without having all of this written down, of course, there could be, the - perhaps the knocker will trigger a stone block that drops on your head. Perhaps, that's the only way to do, politely at it, because it might be something that's not hostile, that might be very benign and friendly. Or it could be a warning system, so that whatever's behind the door is waiting to greet you with drawn arms. This is, the surface adventure is fun, it can encompass whatever imagination you really want to deal with, you can put any creativity you want into the game.

Snyder: [00:04:42] I still want to knock on the door. (laughs)

Gygax: [00:04:43] OK. OK. You're really putting me out [on the spot?] here.

Snyder: [00:04:49] I am, I am a little bit. But obviously the dungeon master must have spent some time preparing for those people who are going to play the game - preparing a scenario of things as they happen and preparing choices for them as they go through the game.

Gygax: [00:05:03] That's true - and, preparing for the choices that he won't have thought of, also, because he has to think fast, a dungeon master has to be very fast on his mental feet.

Snyder: [00:05:14] It sounds like this game could last a long time.

Gygax: [00:05:17] It's open ended. Two to three hours per hour of play is generally what the dungeon master has to prepare with. He sits down and draws out the dungeon maps or, it could be a village that he is going through, trying to find someone. There's no question that one of the reasons, as I was mentioning earlier, the young people play more than older people do, is because they have more time. Um, [to himself] what can I say about it?

Snyder: [00:05:45] That's a pretty good statement. The reason young people play is because they have a lot of time. And as you say it's open ended. What determines the end of the game? Is there a resolution of some kind? A victor of some kind?

Gygax: [00:05:56] No, it's a group cooperative game, it's generally played with a group. Several people maybe take turns feeding information or feedback as the Dungeon Master. Rather than competing within the group each player, if it is a good team, that is, will cooperate. So if they learn their respective strengths and weaknesses, and operate more efficiently. Each session of play of the typical adventure, as it's called, tends to go on for as long as the group can stand to play. And -

Snyder: [00:06:25] (laughs) A lot of games are like that.

Gygax: [00:06:27] The dungeon master's voice usually gives out before everybody's ready to quit. That's the end of an adventure. You've gained a little professional expertise, and the next time you come back, you're a little better, and... I don't know, I guess I heard somebody mention [NBC CEO] Freddy Silverman's job: that's probably the top of the TV "character", if it was in Dragons & Dragons: the President of the network. So everybody is working upward.

Snyder: [00:06:52] Well, there's another way to put it: that the president of the network could easily be put in the dungeon for a long, long time. There's a lot to fantasize down there, about dragons and things.

Gygax: [00:07:00] That's true.

Snyder: [00:07:00] Where did all this come from? Where, when did this come out of your head?

Gygax: [00:07:05] I started in fantasy, I suppose, from stories my father told me when I was just a little boy. Magazines that were read to me as a child. Walt Disney movies have great fantasy, there. Grimm's fairy tales, all of those things. Um, the first, the progenitor of this game was a game called Chainmail, which was a set of rules for medieval miniature figurines, small scale figures placed on tabletop and used to recreate medieval fantasy battles.

Snyder: [00:07:41] When did you sell the first Dungeons & Dragons?

Gygax: [00:07:44] The first Dungeons & Dragons game was sold in January of 1974 and it took quite some time to move the first thousand copies.

Snyder: [00:07:53] And you published them yourselves?

Gygax: [00:07:56] Yes we did. We do.

Snyder: [00:07:56] Did you advertise?

Gygax: [00:07:59] Not initially. Word of mouth. There's always been a strong word of mouth campaign on our behalf. Because, it is a hobby rather than a game, and everyone that plays and loves it really loves it, it kind of either leaves you cold or you become very enthused about the whole thing. And it works more or less on the theory that everybody that plays, will eventually want to be a dungeon master. And if you want to be a dungeon master, you want to get a new group, rather than the same group you were playing with, so you go out and find some more players.

Snyder: [00:08:28] So you know you're really swimming against the tide very successfully because now most of the games they advertise are these electronic things that go beep beep and boop boop and beep beep and that's, um... And this is just the boxes with some books in it and some equipment and some charts and you go out, and out of your mind, comes the game.

Gygax: [00:08:48] This is a - people like take to tests. We're trained to in school. So it's a testing type of a game and a fun game where you compete - but not against each other, as a group, so a group can work together and find a lot of enjoyment rather than making enemies, saying, "Hey I won the game." Because you all play and you win as a group. It makes people think and imagine and read alot and do research because they want to get better: they need to know numbers if they're going to understand probability curves that are in here. And there's nothing wrong with games that go beep and boop boop too, as long as you can put something back into them, instead of taking it all out. So it, it's the inputting, as well.

Snyder: [00:09:31] Gary, thank you for being with us, tonight.

Gygax: [00:09:32] My pleasure.

Snyder: [00:09:33] You've had a fantastic success and an interesting story. Mr. Gary Gygax, the inventor of Dungeons & Dragons. We will continue after these announcements: now, for the NBC television stations.

D&D in the News (1976): The Duke and the Evil Balrog

December 29, 2017, 2:09 pm

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Early press about D&D rarely has the luxury of wading deep into the play of ongoing campaigns. That is what makes this piece by Philip Hilts in the Washington Post from August 9, 1976 so remarkable. It is a lengthy piece, with a lengthy title: "War Games, Tolkien, and the Fantastic Conflict Between the Duke and the Evil Balrog Masked by his Phantasm." This glimpse into the play of early adopters in Washington D.C. is especially fascinating because it shows D&D played as a wargame, with the players providing opposition to each other, and the dungeon master acting as a neutral arbiter between them.

The piece is ostensibly a local-interest profile of a hobby shop in Bethesda called the Grenadier and its owner, Rick Sheridan. But the reporter's attention is immediately drawn to the remarkable game being played there on Thursday nights. Hilts gets a lot of the details and flavor just right: "the players choose a Tolkienic character at the beginning of the game and become that character for the duration of the adventure." He has the Dungeon Master asking the signature question, "What do you do?"

Hilts records that it was a large group, and one with significant female participation: "thirteen players, five of them women." Having so many players enabled the crew at the Grenadier to take on the parts both of heroes invading the dungeon and of the key villains below. So our intrepid reporter witnessed the conflict between Duke Richard, played by Sheridan, and a Balrog played by someone identified as Carl. The Balrog had wounded the Duke earlier, but after drinking a Potion of Heroism from a magic pool, the Duke had returned to seek revenge. In another indication of how wargaming principles lingered in OD&D play, we hear that Richard commands a significant following of retainers, both warriors and wizards, and that the Balrog also has a posse of orc followers. Richard's hirelings immediate desert him when he charges foolishly at his adversary.

Apparently, Sheridan believed he could charm the Balrog and was quite surprised to learn otherwise: the parenthetical exchanges between player and referee, breaking up the game narrative, convey more about how the game actually feels at the table than is usual for early reporting. The charm failed because Sheridan had cast it at a Phantasmal Forces illusion of the Balrog, we later learn. Consequently, the Balrog captures the Duke, loots him, and promptly offers him on the auction block as a slave. There follows an amusing scene when some of the other players get involved in the bidding, and as a result are themselves captured and subjected to the same indignity.

In the aftermath of the events that the reporter witnessed, Sheridan seems embarrassed, and not just because his Duke was stripped naked. Sheridan identifies himself as "a legitimate wargamer," and touts the educational benefits of historical wargaming. The grognardian disdain for fantasy role playing was a real backlash, at the time. "This D&D thing," he muses, "I don't know if I would even play it if it weren't for the shop." Hilts listens patiently to Sheridan's protestations, but  also astutely observes that Sheridan had already begun writing a plot for the Duke's revenge. If we have any doubt that Sheridan would be converted, it will be quickly removed by this coda, a piece from Alarums & Excursions #38, where John Sapienza--one of the original players at the Grenadier--explains what has transpired in the years since:

As there is much interest in trying to recapture how people played in the earliest days of D&D, this might prove an instructive example of games where the players provide the opposition and the referee remains neutral. It was a popular style in Twin Cities play that Arneson himself championed. D&D did not immediately sever itself from its wargaming roots: the example of the Duke and Evil Balrog shows this playstyle still in use well into 1976.

If anything, this article is so focused on wargaming that Hilts mistakes the publisher of D&D: the article lists it as Avalon Hill. The reporter probably is interested in Avalon Hill because they were also a local firm, headquartered in nearby Baltimore. Avalon Hill, incidentally, denies Gygax's later claims that he offered the game to them to publish at the time--but acknowledges that they wouldn't have taken the game at the time if it were offered to them, as they shared Sheridan's embarrassment about the fantastic elements.

Previously on D&D in the News: You, Too, Can be a Wizard

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A Forgotten Variant: Sir Pellinore's Game

January 5, 2018, 2:04 pm

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Of the gamers who assembled and self-published variant fantasy role-playing rules in the 1970s, few showed the dedication of Michael Brines. Over the course of four years, he came out with three Sir Pellinore's Game editions with increasing levels of sophistication: Sir Pellinore's Book of Rules for a Game of Magic Mideval Adventures (1978), Sir Pellinore's Game (1979), and Sir Pellinore's Favorite Game (1981). These early rules are especially noteworthy because they drew more from the baseline of early Tunnels & Trolls than original Dungeons & Dragons -- we would be hard pressed to find an earlier published variant of a variant.

These three incarnations of Sir Pellinore's Game are not so utterly obscure that they don't occasionally turn up here and there, but they seem to have escaped the notice of the various Internet resources that track such games. So while it might not be an absolutely forgotten variant, it's still probably worth shedding a bit of light here.

The name Michael Brines might be familiar to early fans of Tunnels & Trolls as that of the author of the original 1977 version of the gamebook module Overkill, and his own game's debt to T&T is unmistakable. Like in T&T, you make "saving rolls," not "saving throws"; and the six abilities follow Ken St. Andre's formula (substituting Luck for the Wisdom of D&D). The presence of a section title "Monster Making" is a sure sign of borrowing from T&T. Spells have something of the zaniness of T&T, like "Banana Peel" which "stops one pursuer for one turn and also delivers 1 die of hits on him."

There is nothing inside the 1978 Sir Pellinore's Book that attributes it to any publisher: it is simply twenty types pages stapled together; the pages aren't even numbered. The system, where it departs from T&T, sometimes calls back to D&D: the three classes are "fighting-men,""wizards," and "other (merchants, priests, etc.)" There is something like alignment, as characters are good, evil, or neutral ("nutral," actually). But then magic works uses a simple spell point system: wizards get one spell point per level, first level spells cost one spell point to cast, second level spells cost two, and so on. Combat rolls use percentile dice; so on the last page, Sir Pellinore's Book provides a table for converting rolls of 2d6 to percentile values similar to others circulating since the 1960s.

The 1979 Sir Pellinore's Game is twenty-three pages long, and actually has page numbers -- starting with page 3, anyway. It is digest sized, with a folded cardstock cover like many role-playing products of the time, and is also the only version show here that seems to have an intended price on the cover, albeit one marked over in pen. The system is quite similar to the first edition: the six attributes are the same, except "Personality" has replaced Charisma. It includes a helpful five-step turn resolution system for combat. One of the main additions in the new version is a bestiary containing around forty monsters, most of which would be familiar to readers of Dungeons & Dragons -- though perhaps the "Div," a race of "intelligent, cat-headed men" whose "main occupation is embroidering rugs to sell in large human towns" might be a new one. This edition adapts a familiar Tunnels & Trolls chart: the random height/weight charts that originally appeared in the 1975 Tunnels & Trolls Supplement, which Brines pegs to Strength (for height) and Constitution (for weight) rather than leaving them to separate random 3d6 rolls.

In the second-to-last page of the book, there is an incongruous picture at the bottom of a tank, its turret facing to the left. Next to that is the postal address for the "Roaming Panther Game Co." in Prescott, Arizona. "Roaming Panther" is a name that leaves some trace in the fossil record of 1980s gaming: as the publisher of Brines's It Came From Outer Space, and as the organizer of the EconomyCon convention. Brines also snuck into the section on "Designing an Adventure World" a hint that Roaming Panther sold 17" x 11" hexagon sheets for overworld mapping via mail order.

The 1981 Sir Pellinore's Favorite Game spanned over fifty pages, with a helpful index, and shipped with a pair of detached reference sheets: one detailing monsters and overland travel, the other a price list for equipment and hirelings. This version gives art credits to Fawn McCleve and Sandra Brines; the latter also received a credit for Overkill. Both furthermore served as playtesters for this version. The game is prominently listed on the first page as a publication of "Roaming Panther Game Co. Ltd.," which now distributed a free catalog of its wares.

When Ken St. Andre self-published his Phoenix Cosmic Circle hack of D&D as a game product, he discovered that the Pandora's box opened by D&D could be opened again, as Steve Perrin famously put it in the dedication to Runequest. St. Andre's pioneering audacity inspired a generation of gamers to follow in his footsteps, in hopes of finding their own Flying Buffaloes, real publishers who would distribute their work. Not all of their efforts would become enduring classics -- but some endured for years nonetheless, through the sheer determination of their authors.

Previously on Forgotten Variants: Catacombs & Caverns

Vintage Ad: Does Your Shop Sell Military Miniatures?

January 15, 2018, 11:40 am

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Early in 1976, no one had any idea that Dungeons & Dragons would go on to transform the gaming hobby. It had then sold a little more than 4,000 copies, which made it TSR's bestseller. but TSR wasn't putting all of its eggs in that one basket. This advertisement, which would clamor for attention on one eighth of a page -- all TSR could afford at the time -- in magazines for hobby store owners, relies on the truism that selling rules for miniatures would bring in more sales of miniatures themselves: paper was cheap, but metal was profitable. So this advertisement stresses miniatures rules like Boot Hill, Chainmail, Classic Warfare, and Panzer Warfare over "historic wargames" like Fight in the Skies or even the "fantasy games which have become the latest craze,"D&D, Dungeon! and Empire of the Petal Throne.

Previously on Vintage Ads: Think of TSR

War of the Empires (1969), Gygax's Space Conquest Campaign

January 25, 2018, 5:31 pm

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Two years before Chainmail was released, and a year before there was a Castle & Crusade Society, Gary Gygax was something of a rocket man. When he took over development of the War of the Empires system in 1969, and with it the administration of its play-by-mail campaign, he helped to usher in one of the earliest games where players would command space empires that deployed scouts to explore solar systems, expanded by colonizing those planets and exploiting their resources to build war ships, and finally used their military might to exterminate rival empires and dominate the sector.

Gygax's adaptation of the War of the Empires has gotten notice here before as one of his early works, but like many of Gygax's games, it was a revision of a still earlier system. Tullio Proni began advertising his original campaign in the pages of the Avalon Hill General at the end of 1966, in the very same issue where Gygax first expressed interest in connecting up with fellow wargamers. Proni promised you could:

Needless to say, Gygax had the background in science fiction to qualify. In an article in Dragon #3, aptly named "Does anyone remember War of the Empires?", he reminisced about his own brief involvement with Tullio Proni's original campaign in 1967, which fell into abeyance shortly thereafter. A wave of similar science-fiction wargames followed, like David Montgomery's Galaxy (1968), building on this basic idea of managing an intergalactic empire by seizing planets to strip for resources in order to build armadas of ships and eliminate rival forces. When Gygax began experimenting with game design, he wrote to Proni to secure permission to take over the defunct game and its play-by-mail campaign early in 1969, which resulted in a surviving revision to the rules.

War of the Empires can be played either face-to-face on the tabletop or by mail, though the game is structured around an overarching campaign in which a "Master Computer," or campaign referee, effectively pairs up opponents and sends them the layout of a sector of the galaxy where their forces will inevitably meet. Each player starts with four scout ships (at positions marked "x" and "y"); solar systems in the sector are black squares numbered according to three systems properties: the middle number, for example, signifies how many ships can be built at that system per turn once it has been colonized. The following example sector map is from a postal conflict actually played, starting in May 1969, between Lew Pulsipher and John Sanders:

We might quibble over whether we should consider War of the Empires one of the earliest 4X games, because both the map and the statistics for each solar system are revealed to the players at game start. Thus, their "exploration" does not involve discovering the location or nature of planets, but merely reaching the planets to colonize them. Note that the postal version of Montgomery's Galaxy does have this crucial property: a gamesmaster keeps a secret map of the hexagonal "search board" listing the contents of each solar system, so when players moves into blank hexes, the referee tells them about any systems they discover within. Galaxy also has a system for scientific research that can increase ship speed, range, weapons, and can even decrease ship cost -- concepts that may sound quite prescient to fans of the computer 4X genre. But more on Galaxy will have to wait for another time.

After taking over Proni's game, Gygax also took over his campaign journal, the War Reports. He cannot help himself from detailing his own overlooked successes two years earlier in Proni's abandoned game, for which "Commander Aspirant Gygax" is given various honors by the "League of all Worlds." Anyone who knows the look of the first four issues of the Domesday Book will find the layout of the New War Reports strikingly familiar.

The resemblance between the Castle & Crusade Society and the campaign of War of the Empires was more than just skin deep. Among the latter game's eponymous empires is the "Greatest Empire," a dynasty that encompasses a number of persons with various noble titles, which is opposed by the "League of All Worlds." Players could volunteer to involve themselves in the politics of rival imperial factions by notifying the Master Computer, effectively joining a side-game which promised both advancement and peril in the feudal hierarchy. The various positions and titles involved bear no small resemblance to those used by the "Great Kingdom" of the Castle & Crusade Society a year later.

Science-fiction fans will surely recognize here some trappings of A. E. van Vogt's Isher setting. The standard path to advancement in the game came though the acquisition of "credits." In War of the Empires, you receive credits for claiming solar systems and destroying enemy ships, and you lose credits when your ships are destroyed. For example, you gain 1 credit for destroying an enemy scout, 2 for a cruiser, and 3 for a battleship. After a sector has been conquered, the victor sells its planets to the Master Computer in exchange for more credits, which can purchase rank in the empires, or buy resources to bring to the next battle for a sector. This elevation in rank through in-game successes may also foreshadow systems familiar in the "Great Kingdom" and beyond.

War of the Empires provides a key example of the sorts of paper-and-pencil campaigns Gygax and others were playing in the years leading up to Dungeons & Dragons. Like the Atlantis campaign, it illustrates how intriguing role-playing and story elements were popping up in all kinds of places as the 1970s neared. It also shows us how innovations in strategy games bubbled up from the same well, though this piece can only hint at the vast literature of homebrew science-fiction tabletop games from around this time. There is a tremendous historical wealth in this early material that is just begging to be explored and exploited by posterity.

D&D in the News (1976): You're either a Fighter, Magic-user, Cleric, or Thief

February 2, 2018, 2:52 pm

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If anything could draw the attention of the mainstream press of 1976 to an obscure pastime like Dungeons & Dragons, it was the apparent endorsement of an elite university like Princeton. Is this how our brightest minds were squandering their gifts? Readers of the March 22, 1976 issue of the Trenton Evening Times, could find answers in Madeleine Blais's article covering the first PrinceCon: "In Dungeons & Dragons, you're either a fighter, magic-user, cleric, or thief."

We are indebted to Ethan Henson for unearthing this article. It hails from quite early in 1976, a time when "white box" Dungeons & Dragons copies in the marketplace were still outnumbered by the original woodgrain box release. We rarely see press clippings that show the Greg Bell "rearing rider" cover of OD&D rather than Dave Sutherland illustration of a standing warrior featured in the fourth and later printings -- but we can dimly glimpse that original art in the grainy picture to the right here.

Blais identifies Howard Mahler, a Princeton graduate student in mathematics, as the ringleader who organized this curious gathering. Mahler certainly knew a lot of nearby people who played D&D at the time through the Endore campaign (and its fanzine the Haven Herald -- here's an Endore character sheet) which involved a number of early adopters in New York and New Jersey. There was also a slight chance members of the general public might have heard about the event in advance, thanks to a little bit of publicity the week before:

Ultimately, about forty persons attended the festivities at Whig Hall on Princeton University campus, only ten of them enrolled students. To the reporter, the events there "didn't make much sense," except to "certain rare types of people" with interests that we would today associate with geek culture. She deems that "the majority looked more or less like mad scientists" and that they shied away from sports because they espoused philosophies like, "unnecessary physical exertion is a crime against God and man." But to the participants, Dungeons & Dragons offered something positively transporting: she quotes one expressing that "it makes me feel as if I'm part of the pages in some novel about medieval life."

Although the Princeton event didn't draw the throngs who congregated at Origins the summer before, it did attract many prominent New York gamers who thoroughly documented the event. You can read early accounts in places like Greg Costikyan's Fire the Arquebusiers; Scott Rosenberg covered it is A&E #12. It is most famous for its "SuperDungeon" that allowed multiple parties to explore an underworld at the same time. This famously led to some party-vs-party action: even Blaise overheard someone proposing "let's ambush a wandering party."

Before the end of 1976, Mahler had started his own fanzine, the Quick Quincy Gazette, and we can read about the planned sequel to the first PrinceCon in its fourth issue:

PrinceCon is still a thing: this March will mark its 43rd iteration, and its innovations have not escaped the notice of posterity. PrinceCon's house rules for D&D quickly became so voluminous that they began circulating them as a booklet distributed to convention attendees. That late 1970s system has become something of a forgotten variant...

Previously on D&D in the News: The Duke and the Evil Balrog

A Forgotten Variant: The X-Fragments

February 13, 2018, 1:16 pm

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Gary Gygax explicitly called the Guidon Dungeons & Dragonsdocument the "first draft" of the game in a cover letter. In that draft form, the game circulated to a number of playtesters in the Midwest. Some early adopters quickly engaged with the rules and produced their own versions: various structural properties show us that the Dalluhn Manuscript cribbed directly from the pages of Guidon. But it wasn't alone: the Prize Matrix shown here is from a partial draft similarly based on the original 1973 text, a draft we will here call the X-Fragments (compare this table to other post-Guidon drafts).

The X-Fragments show early D&D at its most raw: in unnumbered, carelessly-typed pages which could have scrambled into pretty much any order; presented without art or attribution; and filled with hasty, abbreviated descriptions relying more on charts than discursive text. The draft is so primitive that we might wonder if Guidon was based on it, rather than vice-versa. There are however several system properties that demonstrate that isn't the case. Look for example at the Cleric level titles from the X-Fragments below, sandwiched between Guidon (on the left) and published OD&D (on the right).

Cleric level titles are a good way to sequence early drafts because Gygax revised them, by hand, in Guidon -- but he only revised them in the table shown here, not in the "Statistics Regarding Classes" table (the one that lists hit dice and spells per level). So here, Gygax has successfully blotted out the second level title "Friar" with "Adept," but he neglected to do so elsewhere - an oversight he would later correct. Those who have seen the Dalluhn Manuscript may remember a lingering "Friar" in Table 4 which resulted from that inconsistency. The Twin Cities derivate of Guidon similarly retains "Friar" due to this contradiction in the first draft.

We can see that the X-Fragments lack the "Friar" or the other original Cleric level titles and instead follow the corrected version, so it is unlikely they could be earlier than the Guidon draft. We moreover see that while the typist of the X-Fragments faithfully copied the experience point values for each level from Guidon, a later hand correction has increased them. OD&D would raise those experience targets as well, but by different amounts. From examples like this, as well as a few instances of sloppy copying, we can show that these pages contain fragments of a variant system derived from Guidon, rather than any earlier or later iteration.

But like any variant, what makes the X-Fragments interesting is how they differ from the first draft. The two most striking ways are the weapon ability system and the "energy drain" in the magic system based on Strength as spell points (which intriguingly prefigures Tunnels & Trolls):

This is not the earliest spell point system, as we can already find them in Midgard back in 1971. But this system is notable for having only a chance of spell point loss when spells are cast, and that furthermore, the number of Strength points lost is left to a die roll, rather than being based on varying power requirements of spells. Although it would be an understatement to call this chart obscure, we might speculate that the right two columns, marked "magic user 2 - 24" and "magic user 3 - 24" show the tables that a Magic-user must roll against when casting the second spell in a day (a twenty-four hour period) and then the third: the spell point loss in the second case is incrementally greater.

The combat system also features elaborate variations, including charts for both innate ability with particular weapons, and for the possibility of training up:

As was common in early combat rules, in this system you compared your level against the level or hit dice of monsters to determine how many blows you might strike, a system that ultimately derived from the "fighting-as-so-many-men"arithmetic of Chainmail. Training grants bonuses equivalent to ratcheting up your level when fighting with the weapon you practice. For bows, a simpler system lets you add 1% to your accuracy with each month of practice, as missiles rolls are made in this system with percentile dice.

Not long ago, there was still much uncertainty around identifying pre-OD&D system. Now there are enough examples that some recurring elements, like the Prize Matrix, feel almost routine. But studying new sources like this reminds us how much we don't know, how much is still out there to discover about the history of Dungeons & Dragons. There are surely more things like this to unearth.

Previously on Forgotten Variants: Sir Pellinore's Game

Vintage Ad: 1980 Do-It-Yourself Edition (and Contest!)

February 20, 2018, 1:55 pm

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Early in 1980, TSR Hobbies circulated a slender booklet containing graphics and copy for hobby stores to reuse when advertising TSR products. It was called the Print Advertiser's Source Book. Effectively, it is a collection of high-contrast clip art, showing TSR products and logos in various sizes redrawn and optimized for monochrome printing. Retailers wanted these specialty graphics for advertisements in black-and-white newspapers: photographs of actual TSR product covers converted poorly to that medium. Take a look at the graphics here: and maybe try your hand at designing an ad in the first (and probably only) Playing at the World contest!

The Print Advertiser's Source Book provided "stylized line drawings" for the most important products of the day: the flagship D&D releases like Holmes Basic and the three hardcover AD&D titles available to date, TSR's other RPG releases like Gamma World, Boot Hill, and the latest Top Secret, as well as board games ranging from Dungeon! to Snits to Fight in the Skies (not yet renamed Dawn Patrol) to Divine Right.

TSR distributed the Source Book as part of a broader program that incentivized retailers to place advertisements: in 1980, TSR was willing to credit retailers for an advertising budget costing up to 5% of their total yearly invoices with TSR. Advertisements had to be consumer-facing, appearing in newspapers or magazines, employing the provided graphics along with the trademark Dungeons & Dragons or the TSR logo prominently displayed. This program effectively recruited hobby stores to do press on TSR's behalf. The booklet contained images for all of the listed products; these logos and D&D samples (given here in high resolution) should give a sense of how they looked.

In case retailers were at a loss for words, TSR also had some recommendations for how to describe these titles in advertisements:

At the time, retailers who placed black-and-white advertisements in newspapers and similar periodicals used the Source Book to make advertisements like these examples:

Sharp-eyed readers may have noticed that the "Something To Do" store ads above has a slightly different redrawing of the Players Handbook in their advertisement, without the yellow band in the upper left corner, and with empty eyes. TSR produced several versions of this press kit over time. As TSR released new products, they would accompany with them new line-art graphics that retailers could use in black-and-white ads, like this one from later in 1980 for the World of Greyhawk:

Have you guessed what the contest is yet?

The Contest:  Make up a circa-1980 hobby store that you are advertising for, or if you prefer, advertise for a real one. Design the coolest ad for Basic or AD&D sales--or both--at your shop using the art elements in the Print Advertiser's Source Book. Mash this up with whatever other elements will make the coolest ad, but it has to be black-and-white (okay, it has to be one color and white). Upload it somewhere, link to it in the comments here. Judgment of the "coolest" is entirely subjective and will be at my discretion, but if you see something linked here that you think is cool, I might be influenced by your comments. I figure this blog isn't so widely read that there will be too many submissions to consider, especially in light of...

The Prize: A vintage ad: an original "white box" OD&D flyer from 1975, with the first Empire of the Petal Throne advertisement on the reverse: [see picture here]. Yes, I mean a printed 1975 8.5" x 11" flyer, not a photocopy I made. Retail value? Not sure, never seen one go for sale; originally they gave them away for free. This is what TSR would have sent you in the mail back in the day; if you have the coolest ad, I will put it in the mail to you, or if you are at GaryCon, I can give it to you in person.

A winner will be selected by March 1.

Previously on Vintage Ads: Does Your Shop Sell Military Miniatures?

P.S.: I got the idea for the contest because I felt compelled to make this:

P.P.S.: Okay seriously I am not doing this for everyone, but here is our first submission, from Corey Winn:

From Arbela to Alexander: Gygax's Ancient Board Wargame

March 8, 2018, 11:59 am

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In the early days of gaming, a title could pass through a lot of hands before making its way to market. The original design of Arbela came from Dane Lyons, but Gary Gygax took it over by 1969 and brought out his own revision called Alexander the Great through Guidon Games in 1971. By the time Avalon Hill worked the title over in 1974, Don Greenwood had replaced much of Gygax's work. Ironically, that Avalon Hill version probably reached a wider audience that year than another little game released months earlier that Gygax worked on--but you would only know Gygax's role in Alexander if you read the fine print in the rulebook.

Dane Lyons's Arbela was reportedly the first release by the War Game Inventor's Guild, a very early group of amateur game designers. Gygax took over publishing the game from the WGIG in 1968, through his "Gystaff Enterprises" mail order venture--don't mistake it for a real business, though, it was just something that earned a few bucks for the International Federation of Wargaming (IFW) on the side. Arbela sales made the IFW something like $17.00 in 1968, at a time when the total treasury of the club was fluctuating between $200 and $300 dollars. Gygax's edition looked like this:

Anyone who has seen Gygax's revision of War of the Empires will recognize the typeface: he clearly produced this at the Fireman's Fund Insurance Company, as with many of his projects of the era. Not much production design was required for this version of Arbela: it was only six and a half pages of rules, another ten pages of loose charts, and then hex paper you had to tape together into a map. Only the unit counters did not come out of a photocopier. Gygax quickly learned, however, that it isn't easy to publish wargames: the rules are never as clear as you might have thought. In the beginning of 1969, he wrote of his experience:

By 1969, Lyons was no longer active in the wargame community, so the zine articles of the day clarifying and amending various aspects of Arbela had to be done by Gygax. When he compiled those revisions into a new rulebook, he listed it as "by Dane Lyons and Gary Gygax" (as we see in a later Gystaff advertisement). Soon therafter, we see the names flip to "by Gygax and Lyons." Gygax did moreover gradually remove himself from publishing the product: before the end of the year, Gystaff mail orders were being handled by Bill Hoyer, then President of the IFW--including an order from Dave Arneson. Then, Gygax convinced Don Lowry to take over production and marketing of the game in 1971.

By the time Guidon Games published the game under the new title Alexander the Great, Gygax felt that he had done enough work to make the game his own. Besides retitling it, Gygax had expanded the rulebook to thirty pages, incorporating the many additions and clarifications he had posted previously in fanzines, as well as a section on historical background. Lyons's name cannot be found in the Guidon version. Guidon Games was plagued with manufacturing problems making Alexander the Great, the first boardgame Don Lowry produced at Guidon, so it would never reach a large audience.

Worried by the many wargames that SPI sold by mail, Avalon Hill decided in 1974 to augment its annual flagship releases with an inexpensive and diverse line of more niche mail-order offerings. Don Greenwood, a former fanzine editor and confidante of Gygax's, happily licensed Alexander from Guidon Games, which was effectively defunct by this point. To the board wargame audience of Avalon Hill, Alexander imported from miniature wargames concepts like morale that deepened the level of the simulation: you can see the morale tacking charts integrated into the base of the Avalon Hill Alexander board.

As the Avalon Hill General in the spring of 1974 explained, "Don Greenwood sat down with Gary and worked on a redesign of his original prototype." Even the Guidon Games production qualified as a mere "prototype" in Avalon Hill's eyes. "After three prototypes we came up with the game currently being tested. The rules of the earlier version were greatly improved." Greenwood frequently opined that the individuals credited as game designers often contributed less than half of the eventual work toward a game. Still, looking across three version of the Alexander rules there is an unmistakable continuity: even passing through three hands, we should probably say it remains the same game.

To all of you who are interested in Gary Gygax's legacy, I hope to see you at GaryCon this weekend!

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D&D in the News (1978): Funny Dice in Iowa, with Zeb Cook

March 16, 2018, 1:19 pm

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"We're known down here as the strange people with the funny dice," begins Bob Waltman, describing the reputation of the group that met at the University of Iowa's Memorial Union. Before the game of Dungeons & Dragons became famous, it looked strange to pretty much anyone who saw it from the outside--especially reporters. But the game gets a favorable notice in this February 1978 article, "'Funny dice' creates Dungeons and Dragons' by Marlene J. Perrin.



The Iowa City Wargaming Confederation had its roots in the midwestern wargaming tradition. John Chalupsky, the group's treasurer, had been a member of the International Federation of Wargaming before it collapsed in 1973. But Dungeons & Dragons clearly captivated them now. One devotee talks about how the referee "can modify the rules to suit his purposes," another struggles to explain the appeal: "You have to play it to understand it."

Perrin's article mentions that  she has competition: "the group puts out its own newspaper... which carries articles about the intricacies of Dungeons & Dragons and other games." Although editorship rotated over the years, this surely refers to their early fanzine, the Dungeon Master, which was first published in 1976.

According to the back of the first Dungeon Master, "The ICWC was founded in late August, 1975 by a group of devoted gamers. Soon after came the introduction of D&D, the game which has spread like a plague across the land. A plague because it soon becomes so addicting that assignments are shunned in favor of a trip into our little fantasy-worlds." The second issue contains a listing of the staff that producing magazine, which includes one "Dave Cook, Second Presidente El Supreme and keeper of the Bone of Contention." That issue printed an article by that individual, on the subject of a recent release called Gods, Demi-gods and Heroes:

This may be the earliest published contribution to D&D by "Zeb" Cook, lead designer of second edition Dungeons & Dragons, innumerable first edition modules, and a driving force behind Star Frontiers as well as many of TSR's other early successes. The ICWC was eager to contribute to D&D, and some of their homebrew encounter tables and classes were reprinted in issue "N" of the Judges Guild Journal. This eagerness eventually caught the attention of TSR, who expressed some reservations about the use of copyrighted material in the Dungeon Master, as we gather from the profuse apology in the third issue.

Both the Iowa City Press-Citizen and the Dungeon Master further mention John Kisner, who typed the first issue of the Dungeon Master personally. By one year into the publication of the Dungeon Master, Kisner served as "current El Presidente Supremo"of the ICWC  and his self-published game, Crows & Owls, could be ordered through the Dungeon Master for $6. Incidentally, the ICWC by that sixth issue proudly advertised itself to be "those weird people with the funny dice" that Marlene Perrin would encounter soon thereafter.

Previously on D&D in the News: You're Either a Fighter, Magic-user, Cleric or Thief

Mordenkainen, in 1974 and today.

June 5, 2018, 2:20 pm

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This weekend at the Wizards of the Coast "Stream of Many Eyes" event I got my hands on a copy of Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, which is "built on the writings of the renowned wizard from the world of Greyhawk." That magic-user Mordenkainen, one of Gary Gygax's earliest and most famous characters, has been with us since the start of Dungeons & Dragons. Gygax jealously guarded the statistics of Mordenkainen in later years, but this excerpt from a mid-1974 letter shows his favorite character as he was specified in his prime.

This version of Mordenkainen dates from early July 1974, so about six months after the publication of the original Dungeons & Dragons rules. In May, Gygax had printed a story in Wargamer's Digest relating one of Mordenkainen's less-successful adventures (read the whole article online) which then listed him as a 13th level magic-user, so the statistics from this letter surely reflect the character of that era. Mordenkainen was a seasoned adventurer by this point -- though with his prime requisite Intelligence of 18, Mordenkainen enjoyed 10% experience boost that may have speeded him through the ranks.

Any document from this period will exhibit a few historical curiosities. We may wonder at the absence of Mordenkainen's hit points or armor class, but early character records, including official sheets made by TSR in 1975 and 1976, often did not record those values. Mordenkainen's current experience total is also revealing: the original 1974 rules only give experience thresholds for magic-users up to the 11th level, which is achieved upon accumulating 300,000 experience points. To attain the 9th level rank of Sorceror requires 100,000, and a 10th level Necromancer needs 200,000, so readers might assume that levels above 11th require a further 100,000 each. That would mean getting to 13th level at 500,000, and 14th at 600,000, and so on.

But in this letter Gygax is using a different metric for higher-level Wizards: under what he calls the the "old system," having 772,100 experience would place you at only 13th level. He also alludes to the fact that a new system then in use would require 1,200,000 to reach 14th level. That figure is closer to the one published in Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, where a magic-user requires 1,500,000 experience to reach 14th level. Already, half a year into the publishing history of D&D, Gygax had concluded that the original experience requirements were far too generous.

Mordenkainen became a celebrity character thanks to his namesake spells in the Players Handbook like "Mordenkainen's Sword" and "Mordenkainen's Faithful Hound." This led to considerable public demand to know more about Mordenkainen, but Gygax later insisted that Brian Blume dreamed up the depiction of Mordenkainen in the 1980 Rogues Gallery: "The information in the ROGUE'S GALLERY was quite fallacious, made up im many cases when we refused to give Brian our PCs' stats."That 16th-level version reflects Advanced Dungeons & Dragons rules, with overall higher statistics and a wide array of magic items at his disposal:

Versions of the character proliferated over the years, especially after his further cameos in spell titles in Unearthed Arcana. The version shown in module WG5, Mordenkainen's Fantastic Adventure, retains the statistics of the Rogues Gallery, with a slight bump to Wisdom:

By the time we look at Mordenkainen in the 2002 Epic Level Handbook, say, the core rules of D&D had shifted so much that comparison is basically pointless. But it is fantastic to see that Mordenkainen is still integral enough to Dungeons & Dragons that his name and his personality infuses new products coming out today!

To-Hit Rolls in Individual Medieval Combat, from Phil Barker to Chainmail

July 21, 2018, 2:18 pm

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Just months before Chainmail came out, when Gary Gygax put together the seventh issue of the Domesday Book, he included a ruleset submitted to the magazine without any indication of its author: a set of medieval skirmish rules Gygax jokingly attributed to "U.N. Owen." These incorporated a crucial precursor to Chainmail, a man-to-man table (shown above) requiring different to-hit rolls for various weapons against a progression of armor types, and thus an influence on the armor class progression and attack matrices of Dungeons & Dragons. Gygax hoped that "one of the readers can enlighten the rest of us" as to the author of the "U.N. Owen" rules -- ultimately, they trace back to a 1966 set by Phil Barker of the Wargames Research Group in Britain.

The debt of Jeff Perren and Gary Gygax's mass combat rules in Chainmail to Tony Bath's medieval system has long been documented, so it should be no surprise that the man-to-man system borrows from another UK source. As 1966 was the 900th anniversary of the Battle of Hastings, Donald Featherstone made the theme for Wargamer's Newsletter #51 the medieval setting. Phil Barker's contribution to that issue featured a number of elements that prefigure the "U.N. Owen" rules in Domesday Book #7 -- including a simpler to-hit chart for weapons versus armor types.

As the values here suggest, attackers rolled only a single six-sided die against Barker's original medieval to-hit chart. When "U.N. Owen" revised these rules for the Domesday Book, the four classes of armor became eight, and the four groupings of weapon types grew to eight (ten, actually: a separate table covers maces and morning stars), and instead of rolling to hit with one d6, players would roll two. But the core idea of a medieval weapon versus armor to-hit chart for individual figure scale combat where a hit is scored by rolling high is crystal clear in Barker's original.

It was hardly unusual that Gygax could not identify a source for these rules: in the open and collaborative environment of miniature wargaming, rules often became detached from their original authors. Don Featherstone himself, in his 1969 Advanced War Games, gives a version of Phil Barker's medieval rules (see p.86-87) including this to-hit chart, as well as incorporating some of Barker's later material in Wargamer's Newsletter #55 -- without any clear credit to Barker. From Advanced War Games, which was widely read at the time, any number of people might have picked up and adapted the rules, even in multiple iterations by different contributors.

Perhaps, because "U.N. Owen's" rules in some places derived so closely from Barker's original, the reviser purposefully chose not to take any credit. The correspondence between Barker's rules and the "U.N. Owen" rules are very clear in the rules for retaliation:

In other cases, the "U.N. Owen" reviser of Barker's rules has introduced more substantial changes, as in the initiative sequence, where "U.N. Owen" kept only three of the six factors in Barker's rules. 

Already in his commentary on the ordered "longest weapon" list in Domesday Book #7, Gygax has begun reordering them into the order of weapon class in Chainmail. How "U.N. Owen's" three factors evolved into the initiative system (a, b, and c) of Chainmail from there is fairly straightforward.

We also know that some elements of Barker's rules did not make it into the "U.N. Owen" system. Gygax observes that "some missile rules are needed" as none appear in the Domesday Book article, but Barker had supplied rules for archers in his original Wargamer's Newsletter #51 piece that "U.N. Owen" seems to have lost. Gygax also disagreed quite forcefully with the to-hit scores that "U.N. Owen" recommended, incredulously demanding, as if this were a well-studied matter, "Can you picture a chain-mailed knight with a shield being laid low by a quarterstaff 41 2/3% of the time?!" He invited subscribers to the Domesday Book to "work up a revised table" for a future issue:, presumably along the lines of the one that would appear in Chainmail.

It has been remarked that Chainmail is something of a grab bag of isolated systems: a mass-combat wargame, a man-to-man skirmish level game, a jousting mechanism, and a set of fantasy combat rules. As we uncover more inspirations for these subsystems, like Leonard Patt's work for the fantasy system, we understand why the parts of Chainmail are so disjoint: each derived from different influences in the creative commons of miniature wargaming, and although Gygax adapted and anthologized them, little effort was made to reconcile or interwork them. One might say something similar about the way that Chainmail and the "alternative combat system" are presented in Dungeons & Dragons.

Dave Arneson's "Adventuring Is..." Cartoons

August 7, 2018, 10:58 am

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Sometimes you need to stop dissecting the roots of Chainmail for long enough to appreciate the humor that the authors of Dungeons & Dragons infused into the game. We see that playfulness on display in the Twin Cities work of VanGrasstek, and surely the Minneapolis Dungeon group inherited their zany antics directly from Dave Arneson. In the spirit of "Love is..." cartoons, Arneson doodled a series of "Adventuring Is..." situations that would not have been out of place alongside William McLean'shumorouscartoons in the AD&D hardcovers. Unlike the idyllic couple depicted in "Love is...", the protagonists of "Adventuring Is..." are usually about to die.

Arneson had been drawing cartoons for the Domesday Book and Corner of the Table long before the release of D&D. Here is a 1970 cartoon of his from Domesday Book #4, one of the few he has signed with his name.

Missile Fire in Chainmail, courtesy of Charles Sweet

September 7, 2018, 5:34 pm

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When it comes to unearthing the influences behind Chainmail (1971), Gary Gygax and Jeff Perren's medieval rules with a fantasy twist, you need to cast a wide net. Many authors (myself included) have been guilty of singling out Tony Bath as the primary influence behind the mass combat rules in Chainmail, but that has always been something of an oversimplification. There are elements of Perren's medieval rules which drew directly from a 1957 archery system proposed by Charles Sweet, one that recurs in the Lake Geneva Tactical Studies Association (LGTSA) rules up to the publication of Chainmail. A clear connection can be observed in the values in this chart from Sweet's rules, originally published in War Game Digest Vol. 1 No. 4.

This 1957 system determines how many kills archers will score when firing on targets: when a "volley group" of 5 archers fires on some unarmored footman, they will kill either 2 of their targets (on roll of 1-3) or 3 (on a roll of 4-6). The same 5 archers firing on men-at-arms automatically kill 2, no die roll needed. Hitting fully-armored knights requires larger groups of archers and higher rolls. Our 5 archers would only kill one such target on a roll of 5-6, otherwise they miss. As Sweet writes, "this rule reflects realism in that to kill a fully armored knight some real sharp-shooting had to be done to find a chink in the armor." Finally, he proposes still higher difficulties for firing on hero figures like kings and marshals.

These rules are Bathian in spirit, as we can see from a quick glance at how missile fire worked in Bath's 1956 medieval rules, effectively the first rules specific to the medieval setting:

... but clearly Sweet's system specifies outcomes in finer detail. Perren famously collected four pages of medieval wargame rules that were used by Gygax and others in the LGTSA for their games with Elastolin and Airfix figures. He included Sweet's missile rules, but since Perren's four-page system lacked anything like the rules for kings and marshals devised by Sweet, his chart has only three classes of targets: unarmored, half-armored, and fully-armored ones.

Gygax published his first adaptation of these rules in Panzerfaust in April of 1970, and shortly thereafter, published a very slight expansion in the pages of the Domesday Book. Those two versions include Perren's chart almost verbatim: in Panzerfaust, Gygax explicitly specifies the sorts of missiles that this table covers, including axes and spears in addition to just bowshot.

These rules then made their way into Chainmail in 1971, where they apply to all missile fire apart from gunpowder and catapults. Fourteen years after Charlie Sweet first published them, the values for the number firing and the number of targets killed for the dice ranges remain constant.

In the open and collaborative community of wargaming, these sorts of appropriations were the rule, not the exception. Don Featherstone anthologized rules from early zines like the War Game Digest in his books throughout the 1960s with little by way of credit to original authors. What is perhaps most striking about Perren's use of Sweet's rules is that they were largely confined to this missile mechanism - largely. As both Perren and Gygax have Swiss ancestry, they lavished attention on the legendary Swiss pikemen of medieval times, and we should probably perceive a chain of connection from Sweet to Perren to the LGTSA rules to Chainmail on that subject as well.

Previously on Roots of Chainmail: To-Hit Rolls in Individual Medieval Combat