Topic: New D&D article
Started by: ethan_greer
Started on: 6/5/2003
Board: Site Discussion
On 6/5/2003 at 3:16pm, ethan_greer wrote:
New D&D article
Hey Ron, that's a thought-provoking and well-written analysis. Well done.
Unfortunately, I can't really comment to the specifics since I wasn't into gaming until mid-90's when 2nd edition AD&D was well entrenched. Still, I remember talking to various people about how 2E had "screwed up" 1st ed. Depending on who you talked to, you'd get wildly varying reasons. From that perspective, the article makes sense to me.
Oh, and here's a link so there's no ambiguity about what article I'm referring to:
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/20/
Forge Reference Links:
On 6/5/2003 at 3:34pm, Cadriel wrote:
RE: New D&D article
I've been lurking here a while, and I posted some in the past, but there's something that interests me enough to coax me to de-lurk, at least for the present.
Specifically, it's this line in Ron's article:
Not to put too fine a point on it, Gygax's Simulationist priorities did not blend well with Arneson's goals, which to my possibly biased eyes smack of Narrativism, or with the parallel development of a lively, even fierce competitive Gamist culture.
I'm curious as to that "smack of Narrativism" bit, what the specific line of thought behind it was, and whether anybody knows of any significant undercurrent of Narrativist priorities in the early days of D&D.
-Wayne S. Rossi
On 6/5/2003 at 3:36pm, Ron Edwards wrote:
RE: New D&D article
Hi there,
Thanks! One of my reasons for writing it was to get some institutional memory established at the Forge - not only regarding a few of our best "history of gaming" dialogues, but also regarding the hobby itself. A lot of us were there. A lot of us were involved much closer than me, personally. It seems right for further discussions here to be using that as a position of strength, and to avoid what amounts to urban legendry as the history of what we do.
Best,
Ron
On 6/5/2003 at 6:30pm, Maurice Forrester wrote:
RE: New D&D article
Not to put too fine a point on it, Gygax's Simulationist priorities did not blend well with Arneson's goals, which to my possibly biased eyes smack of Narrativism, or with the parallel development of a lively, even fierce competitive Gamist culture.
It would be interesting to look at Dave Arneson's "Adventures in Fantasy" (1982) game in this light. Unfortunately, I got rid of my copy years ago and I don't remember it well enough to comment. But maybe someone else has a copy?
On 6/5/2003 at 6:55pm, Ron Edwards wrote:
RE: New D&D article
Hi there,
Wayne wrote,
I'm curious as to that "smack of Narrativism" bit, what the specific line of thought behind it was, and whether anybody knows of any significant undercurrent of Narrativist priorities in the early days of D&D.
I admit I'm going out on a limb with the passage you quoted. It's based on my reading of "The First Fantasy Campaign," which at the very least verifies that the textual content of any published D&D wasn't representing tons of the system actually being employed in the basements across the D&D belt.
Here's one of the things that caught my eye in the text, about their experience point system. Each character had "areas of interest," stuff like politics or art or vintnering, stuff like that. Their rule was that you gained EPs by doing typical dungeon-y stuff, but you couldn't spend them for character improvement unless your character went and contributed in some way to his area of interest. So say my character was into old paintings and sculpture; in order to use these EPs, I had to play him such that he went and gave money to a struggling artist, or took steps to ensure that some old museum got restored, or somethin like that.
Now, was this a Gamist constraint in terms of slowing down rates of improvement? Was it a Sim constraint in terms of "what the character would obviously do"? Or was it a Narrativist opportunity to define what your character's new adventure was going to be about? Again, I'm possibly speaking from preferential bias, but in combination with some of the other rules, and with the way that they were obviously building setting through play itself, it looked like a Narrativist-facilitating application to me.
Best,
Ron
On 6/5/2003 at 7:36pm, Cadriel wrote:
RE: New D&D article
Ron -
I don't know where my copy got to, and I'm coming from long after the time, but is it possible that some of the prescriptivist text in the 1st edition AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide leans toward quashing this style of play? Gygax was, after all, the king of all "One True Way"ers in roleplaying, and if you look at the text, it was devoutly opposed to non-class skills, and discussed bonus experience awards for acting according to class (both of which, I think, are making classes a very heavy-handed Sim construct).
I'm fascinated by the "some assembly required" system, and I think some artifacts of it remain in the roleplayers who make a habit of rearranging systems as they see fit. I'm starting to think that the 1st edition DMG might be the template for RPG books as they've emerged over the years: rules as accretion and rearrangement of prior rules, with novelties by player fiat, but always with the rules setting up how play would happen. And I think it's the acceptable corporate model, because most of the fan base won't be turned off by the fairly "safe" system design, and it generates the topics for lots of supplements. I also think that emergent systems, rather than prescriptive, will become more and more de rigeur as roleplaying slides into a comfortable niche as a hobby and not a business.
It's probably a bit too much by way of speculation, but it's something I see approaching in RPG history.
-Wayne
On 6/5/2003 at 7:41pm, Ron Edwards wrote:
RE: New D&D article
Hi Wayne,
... is it possible that some of the prescriptivist text in the 1st edition AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide leans toward quashing this style of play?
That's definitely my reading as well.
Best,
Ron
On 6/5/2003 at 9:55pm, jrients wrote:
RE: New D&D article
Cadriel wrote: I don't know where my copy got to, and I'm coming from long after the time, but is it possible that some of the prescriptivist text in the 1st edition AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide leans toward quashing this style of play?
As a younger player Mr. Gygax's "thou shalt not" haunted my group. Any addition or alteration to the game had to come from a properly sanctified source or it was forbidden in local play. If it wasn't in a TSR hardback or Dragon we considered it suspect. This attitude prevailed despite starting with '81 Basic D&D, which specifically encouraged people to do their own thing. Heck, even settings beyond Greyhawk and the Expert set's Known World were often sniffed at. To some extent I still approach D&D type gaming in this way.
On 6/5/2003 at 11:19pm, AmarPK wrote:
RE: New D&D article
Small technical note. The Castle Blackmoor link points to the Blackmoor golf course. The real link is: http://www.jovianclouds.com/blackmoor/.
On 6/6/2003 at 12:06am, Gordon C. Landis wrote:
RE: New D&D article
Cadriel wrote: . . . and whether anybody knows of any significant undercurrent of Narrativist priorities in the early days of D&D.
Tons, tons of Narrativist priorities in the early days of actual PLAY of D&D for me - in junior high, we took the "use Avalon Hill's Outdoor Survival game map as a world to set your dungeon & overland adventures in" advice and did so, as a shared-GMing endeavor. We pulled info from any source we could to use in our creation - an adolecent and silly creation, but ours none the less. One odd but major source that sticks in my brain is Greg Costikyan's "Swords and Sorcery" SPI boardgame/RPG hybrid - an old-school SPI game in some ways, but the first few pagea are introductory fiction like so many pure RPG products that followed it. And the odd blend of fantasy tropes and silliness was perfect for our age (and maybe for D&D in general).
In high school (a mostly different set of people), we used AD&D and the Giants/Drow modules in a more Gamist way, but with strong Nar bits as well. I believe Paul Czege has pointed out from time to time how those early modules were very "protagonizing" - your characters were the center of the action in that world, so a degree of Nar was quite reasonable to persue.
But I think the bottom line answer to the question is - Nar priorities are implicit in the very existence of an RPG, just like Sim and Game priorites are. Nar has always been one of the things you could do with a shared, imagined environment, and so there have always been some people who do so. "Create a world for your adventures" - is that a Sim instruction to have verisimiltude/fidelity/whatever in your play? A Game opportunity to include a broader set of challenges than just what lurks in the dungeon or on the battlefield? Or is it a Nar invitation to get authorial and bring "real world" issues of moral/ethical/psychological significance into your play?
You CAN take it in any of those ways, and I take Ron's point about early D&D play to be that the guidance was sufficiently minimal in early books that people did, in fact, take their play to all those places, and more. That certainly matches my memories of the late 70's/early 80's.
Gordon
On 6/6/2003 at 12:52am, Cadriel wrote:
RE: New D&D article
jrients wrote:Cadriel wrote: I don't know where my copy got to, and I'm coming from long after the time, but is it possible that some of the prescriptivist text in the 1st edition AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide leans toward quashing this style of play?
As a younger player Mr. Gygax's "thou shalt not" haunted my group. Any addition or alteration to the game had to come from a properly sanctified source or it was forbidden in local play. If it wasn't in a TSR hardback or Dragon we considered it suspect. This attitude prevailed despite starting with '81 Basic D&D, which specifically encouraged people to do their own thing. Heck, even settings beyond Greyhawk and the Expert set's Known World were often sniffed at. To some extent I still approach D&D type gaming in this way.
Well, I think the biggest problem was that Gygax repeatedly decreed from on high, essentially, that Exploration of Character was not necessary. Modules of the era were initially dungeon crawls, though after I6: Ravenloft it changed dramatically - I think toward Sim Exploration of Story and Setting. This shift is something I'll leave to part 2 of Christopher Kubasik's "The Interactive Toolkit," which describes quite well why story-based modules, in a word, stink.
But I think that the lasting problem is that Gygax's approach, which continued almost unquestioned for nearly two decades, filtered down into acceptable practice for the rest of the "industry" as it were. Many games make their rules as judgments on how play ought to be instead of on how it is. From where I am, it looks like most of the movement away from that is going on in places like the Forge, while the vast majority of the RPG world soldiers on with the load of 25 years of not necessarily valid assumptions. And I think that it's the future of roleplaying - as in, what will be able to survive any decline the publishing end of the hobby may see.
-Wayne
On 6/8/2003 at 3:03am, Jeff Klein wrote:
A few corrections
A few corrections courtesy of The Acaeum and elsewhere:
The 1971 first edition of Chainmail did have a fantasy section. Arneson was using a pre-publication version circulated among the Castles & Crusades Society in Domesday Book; Gygax added the fantasy section after Arneson reported about his Blackmoor campaign (Ross Maker - though he writes that the '71 edition had no fantasy?)
The Moldvay (red-box) Basic Set was released in '81, along with Dave Cook's Expert (blue-box) Set. They were revised in '83 by Mentzer, and preceded in '77 by J. Eric Holmes' original Basic (blue-book) D&D. The Holmes book presents itself as a lead in to AD&D, while being rather different from it; the Moldvay set carries on those differences and presents itself as a separate game from AD&D. Gamer legend relates this to TSR challenging Arneson's rights to AD&D in some way.
On 6/8/2003 at 5:28am, M. J. Young wrote:
Re: A few corrections
Jeff Klein wrote: The Holmes book presents itself as a lead in to AD&D, while being rather different from it; the Moldvay set carries on those differences and presents itself as a separate game from AD&D. Gamer legend relates this to TSR challenging Arneson's rights to AD&D in some way.
I've seen a court decision related to the later case which makes reference to the earlier one. From the court decision it appears that:
• TSR attempted to distinguish AD&D from D&D so that they could promote the new game and not pay Arneson royalties on it;• Arneson won in court, and was guaranteed royalties on all copies of PH, DMG, and MM(1), and any books derived from them, and any future editions thereof;• The second case arose when TSR balked on paying Arneson royalties on MM2, and the court concluded that this was included in the original decision.
So that's a bit more solid than gamer legend.
--M. J. Young
On 6/8/2003 at 1:15pm, Jeff Klein wrote:
RE: New D&D article
Yeah, that's here, but since TSR made the first settlement in 1981 there's little rationale for supporting Basic/Expert past then. The legend I'd heard was that if they let "Original" D&D go out of print, Dave would be able to publish it elsewhere, but I can't find any references for it now.
On 6/8/2003 at 4:08pm, Jack Spencer Jr wrote:
RE: Re: A few corrections
Jeff Klein wrote: The Moldvay (red-box) Basic Set was released in '81, along with Dave Cook's Expert (blue-box) Set. They were revised in '83 by Mentzer, and preceded in '77 by J. Eric Holmes' original Basic (blue-book) D&D. The Holmes book presents itself as a lead in to AD&D, while being rather different from it; the Moldvay set carries on those differences and presents itself as a separate game from AD&D. Gamer legend relates this to TSR challenging Arneson's rights to AD&D in some way.
Actually the Moldvay 2nd ed Basic Set is "red book" Not "red box" mostly because that particular box is not red. The box front is taken up completely by the cover picture and the side are a pinkish-purple. "Red box" refers to the 3rd edition Basic set with the Larry Elmore illustration on the cover.
Holmes's Basic Set was written while Gygax was working on AD&D. Holmes approached Gygax with an idea for an introductory set for the original 3-booklet set. Much of the text in that book is taken directly from the original 3-book set. However, some elements from AD&D wormed their way into the Basic Set, notibly the Alignment chart which adds the good-evil axis. This axis is derived from a concept made evident in Suppliment III Eldrich Wizardry where by asterixes (asterii?) Mind Flayers ar "highly evil but otherwise lawful."
While I'm nitpicking, I might as well note that the title of the article "A Hard Look at Dungeons and Dragons" spells out the word "and" instead of using the "&" that appears on all of the covers of any book with that title and is the trademarked name. This is an annoyingly petty nitpick, but it does amount to a mispelling. The name of the horse that had a near miss at the triple crown is Funny Cide, not Funny Side. does "Dungeons and Dragons" refer to D&D or the two suppliments from, I believe Atlas Games: one called "Dungeons" the other called "Dragons."
There. That's out of my system.
On 6/9/2003 at 1:47pm, Ron Edwards wrote:
RE: New D&D article
Hi Jack,
My thought at the moment is that all references to any color or "book" or "box" are obfuscatory. We should stick with author, title, and year of publication, and with any luck, over time, people will acquire a better understanding of which book is what.
Good call on the ampersand; we should fix that.
Best,
Ron
On 6/9/2003 at 2:50pm, jrients wrote:
RE: Re: A few corrections
Jack Spencer Jr wrote:
Actually the Moldvay 2nd ed Basic Set is "red book" Not "red box" mostly because that particular box is not red. The box front is taken up completely by the cover picture and the side are a pinkish-purple. "Red box" refers to the 3rd edition Basic set with the Larry Elmore illustration on the cover.
Just to nitpick the nitpicker for a sec, all the 2nd edition 1981 Tom Moldvay Basic D&D rulebooks that I've seen have been pretty orange. (Including the 3 copies I own with intact covers. My original copy has nearly been destroyed through usage.) The 3rd edition 1983 Frank Mentzer Basic D&D booklets and box are both quite red.
On 6/10/2003 at 4:05pm, Jack Spencer Jr wrote:
RE: New D&D article
Ron Edwards wrote: We should stick with author, title, and year of publication, and with any luck, over time, people will acquire a better understanding of which book is what
Agreed. I doubt we'll get everyone to understand it, though. going by author, or editor in this case, edition number, year of publication and such is a difficult prospect for some they simply ask what's on the cover. And that's about as much as most people will care about.
I'm not sure what I mean when by that except that it will take a lot of luck.
Good call on the ampersand; we should fix that.
Actually, didn't the black cover revision of AD&D 2nd Ed say "Advanced Dungeons and Dragons?" In either case it is an admitted nitpick and true for the editions discussed in the article.
On 6/10/2003 at 5:21pm, Cadriel wrote:
RE: New D&D article
Actually, didn't the black cover revision of AD&D 2nd Ed say "Advanced Dungeons and Dragons?" In either case it is an admitted nitpick and true for the editions discussed in the article.
Afraid not. The word "Advanced" was up above "Dungeons" in considerably smaller text; the ampersand was quite prominent in the logo. It came after the final iteration of "original" D&D, which basically cut it off as a functional line. Before that, there had been some modules and some boxed sets supporting plain D&D as its own, albeit still introductory, product line. The last two "versions" had quite a nifty solo adventure that introduced novice DMs to the rules and led into a group adventure called "Escape from Zanzer's Dungeon." I fondly recall that the modules of that line were also playable solo.
-Wayne
On 6/12/2003 at 9:52pm, rafial wrote:
bad link in article
It looks like the link to Dave Arneson's website contained in the article actually points to a golf course. Using Google revealed a www.castleblackmoor.com which doesn't resolve, and http://www.jovianclouds.com/blackmoor/ which actually seems to go somewhere.
On 6/30/2003 at 1:01am, efindel wrote:
RE: Re: A few corrections
Jeff Klein wrote: The Moldvay (red-box) Basic Set was released in '81, along with Dave Cook's Expert (blue-box) Set.
This should be 1980 -- I received them as a Christmas present in 1980. In addition to my own memory, Heroic Worlds says they were published in 1980.
Jeff Klein wrote: preceded in '77 by J. Eric Holmes' original Basic (blue-book) D&D.
This one tends to get argued about a bit. The book and boxed set both simply said "Dungeons & Dragons" -- however, TSR's catalog referred to them as "Basic Dungeons & Dragons" in at least some versions. The copy I have is the reproduction of the '78 printing which was released as part of the "Silver Anniversary" a few years back. The back cover copy listing products available lists "Basic Dungeons & Dragons", and describes this set.
--Travis
On 6/30/2003 at 5:18am, Jack Spencer Jr wrote:
RE: Re: A few corrections
efindel wrote: This one tends to get argued about a bit. The book and boxed set both simply said "Dungeons & Dragons" -- however, TSR's catalog referred to them as "Basic Dungeons & Dragons" in at least some versions.
The box had a yellow banner in the upper left corner that read "Basic Set Wit Introductory Module." But this is quite a dead horse.