[Old D&D '74] Pubs & dates diagram

[Paul Czege]

I can't get everything into one diagram. If I could, I'd include crucial adventure modules like the Giants series, B1: In Search of the Unknown (which is in Holmes), B2: The Keep on the Borderlands (which is in Moldvay), The Village of Hommlet, the A series, and the N series.

My copy of Holmes Basic, purchased in 1979, and by my research a seventh printing, included B2: The Keep on the Borderlands.

This is a good page, still available via the Wayback Machine:
http://web.archive.org/web/20110624215519/http://acaeum.com/ddindexes/setpages/basic.html

Paul

[Ron Edwards]

Sigh, it never ends ... revising, revising. That page also surprises me in how long the Holmes game stayed in print - apparently all the way up to the Moldvay release, as many as nine printings before being revised unrecognizably. If any game should be called "OD&D," this is the one! And yet it's the one I hardly see talked about. I sure wish I still had my copy, probably from ~1978.

[Paul Czege]

Did Cecilia get you a Christmas gift yet?

http://www.waynesbooks.net/?page=shop/flypage&product_id=376601&keyword=DnD&searchby=keyword&offset=0&fs=1

[Ron Edwards]

Because people couldn't stop bugging me about the details in Marshall's thread, I've split this one out for diagram development. It looks like this, subject to change as we do along.

Please understand that I am not trying to build an exhaustive list of publications and games. I'm trying to make an explanatory diagram for how there is no single D&D or even "OD&D." I'm also trying to highlight both influential materials that were not games (mostly adventure modules) and memory holes, indicated by the thick horizontal bars.

All relevant comments and questions are welcome.

Best, Ron
Parent thread = [D&D '74] Experience-benefit analysis

[Paul Czege]

And the arrows represent what? It has always felt to me like the evolutionary path was from Holmes to AD&D1e, that the aggregation of the "cruft" and the refinement of the practice of play followed that path, and that the Moldvay box was a packaging of an introductory back-port of AD&D1e (that ended up becoming its own branch).

[Christopher Kubasik]

And the arrows represent what? It has always felt to me like the evolutionary path was from Holmes to AD&D1e...

I remember thinking the same thing back in the 70s. AD&D was the thing you "grew into" from the Holmes set. But in retrospect they seem to have been two distinct tracks, and two distinct games. Gygax himself apparently claimed AD&D was a "different game." I don't know how can compare the text between the Holmes books and the Dungeon Master's Guide and not see they have become something not more expanded but something different. But I only see that with hindsight now. (At some point this all becomes Talmudic.)

[Ron Edwards]

At the moment, my take is that AD&D as represented by the three hardbacks was almost nothing but cruft, which to me means a huge wad of claims and documents and expectations that Gygax was trying to stuff together - as I've described or speculated before, overwhelmed by the surf even as he was perceived to be refining and codifying. This is especially evident in the DM Guide. For the Monster Manual and the Player's Handbook, I think the material is mainly taken from the early-early supplements as I indicated. I confess I don't see a lot of Holmes in AD&D, although I'll have to wait until the text arrives (and why aren't you my Santa for this, huh Paul?).

Your description of the process interests me and I'm totally open to revising my views. So it would be ... Holmes to AD&D (I'm dubious), and then another track entirely to Moldvay? Could be. As long as the diagram shows that Holmes "disappeared" in terms of recognition and inclusion in the mythology of D&D's origins, which is what matters to me.

The track along the left side is interesting too. Obviously I'm leaving out supplement lines which are nothing but supplementary - the adventure sequences within Forgotten Realms, for instance, or the supplement lines which were entirely contained with the Mentzer series. I'm trying instead to show that things like the Judges Guild, early on, and The Temple of Elemental Evil, later, were part of the design process. And also to provide a little chronological insight into what other games were in the mix if you walked into the game store or visited a gaming club at any particular year.

It really gives me flashbacks to look across the 1980 horizontal vector. I remember when In the Labyrinth finally came out (summarized in the diagram as The Fantasy Trip), and seeing it there on the shelf with T&T 5th edition, RuneQuest and Cults of Prax and Cults of Terror, DragonQuest, the crap-looking Champions stuff, and various other things. I guess I should put Paranoia (1984) in there too, huh ... and what was I thinking, leaving out Call of Cthulhu? But especially the D&D adventure material ... I bet more people learned how to play by grappling their way through the Giants adventures or the A modules than ever sat down to read the rulebook as such.

[Moreno R.]

I think that Unearthed Arcana, with the wilderness and dungeoneer guides, could be considered a "AD&D 1.5". It really changes the balance of the game (new overpowered not-playtested classes and races, new racial levels, a new way to roll stats that gave much more powerful PCs, new unbalancing spells, and the guides added the non-weapon proficiencies that later were included in the core game in AD&D2.

What happened at the time was a sort of "bifurcation" between people who refused these chances and groups that embraced, splintering the base even more: after Unearthed Arcana there are two parallel arrows on the right part of the diagram, not one.

[Ron Edwards]

Except that none of that has anything to do with the diagram. I'm not trying to summarize how people played or reacted to the texts. I have the body of work which includes Unearthed Arcana* feeding right into AD&D2, and that's as much detail as I care to include. Although I am actually considering eliminating the direct arrow from AD&D to AD&D2, as my perception is that the "body of work" box (and a raft of supplemental material from most of the 80s) is the primary influence on AD&D2. Probably the more so after Gygax's departure from TSR, and the consequent lack of need to maintain the pretense that D&D was "his," or overseen by him in any way.

Best, Ron

* Which I agree is a huge influence, and also complicated as I understand two different sets of content were published under that title, and it's wrapped up with huge identity politics issues concerning Gygax too.

[Marv]

And the arrows represent what? It has always felt to me like the evolutionary path was from Holmes to AD&D1e...

I remember thinking the same thing back in the 70s. AD&D was the thing you "grew into" from the Holmes set. But in retrospect they seem to have been two distinct tracks, and two distinct games. Gygax himself apparently claimed AD&D was a "different game." I don't know how can compare the text between the Holmes books and the Dungeon Master's Guide and not see they have become something not more expanded but something different. But I only see that with hindsight now. (At some point this all becomes Talmudic.)

The notion that you "grow into" AD&D is a common misconception.

Basically the 1974 OD&D game grew and expanded, but in doing so the game required a reorganization. Many "core" ideas were hidden in the supplements and some stuff in the original rulebooks (such as the "Chainmail combat system") were obsolete.

Gygax was at work on AD&D, which was his attempt to standardize and codify the game, when Holmes approached him and asked about reorganizing the OD&D rules into its own rules set (now called Holmes Basic, but at the time just Basic D&D). They started out as seperate things but an editor (probably Gygax) rewrote parts of the Holmes rules to include some elements of AD&D.

Part of the "totally differet games" issue was a legal one. Dave Arneson had been granted a percentage of profits from Dungeons & Dragons, but essentially he stopped producing material. AD&D being a "totally different game" was in part a legal maneuver to avoid paying Dave his cut. Ironically, 2nd Edition AD&D in part was done to avoid paying Gary his cut, too.

Anyway, Holmes eventually evolved into Moldvay/Cook Basic/Expert, then into Mentzer's BECM version, and finally a couple of "Classic D&D" printings. AD&D got toally blown up and revived as 3E, then 4E, and now Next. So many editions.