The History of Original Dungeons & Dragons 

It's in the contract.

Iapetus McCool - by "reenactment/ miniatures" standards, war gamers HAD to have absolute "numbers" for- numbers grinding. Exact measurements, a must. Just like Officers were a must for a unit, there MUST be a magic user for "x" amount of bandits.

The originals would be worth something now, and worth sharing. If you can, please do. :-)

Omg, really?!! Oh f'ng coollll!!!

That is *EPIC!!!*

Wow

someone that would become 1 of my best friends introduced me to the game in 1981. we played at the end of the school day in 6th grade. RIP Todd. miss you bro.

F A M I L Y G O A L S

God damn I wish my family played with me

When you say "The old Gygax rules", do you mean 1st Edition AD&D?

Lucky!!!

@@rogermwilcox I believe she may be referencing Gary's original base rules.

thank you for sharing! Love stories like this.

@@joebob914 Your welcome. I remember making a character and I was told to roll 3d6 times 10 for the number of gold pieces I could spend. I remember buying from the equipment list some spikes and hammer and a 6 foot pole in my list of items. I never used them because everyone was playing adnd by then. No one was spiking doors open or using a wooden pole to test the black liquid on the floor anymore. Not knowing the rules, later I thought to myself, what the heck did I buy these things for? There was a lot of confusion about the game in those days!

Mate, I have a very similar story from England lol. I found out there were ways to calculate 6-sided die rolls to fulfill d-4 d-20 d-8 results from a magazine. Did you ever play the books? Turn to page whatever based on your decision? Warlock of Firetop Mountain was the first one, I think. This is a game that really gets your brain working and I'm chuffed to bits it's still around

I think the best thing about DandD is that poor kids could play as much as they wanted. All they needed was friends and some dice.

Sure wish I had kept all of my pewter and lead figurines I purchased for D&D... Played in the 70's with friends and we took turns being the dungeon master for each game, which often lasted for weeks.

we are about the same age, one of the greatest mistakes/wonderful things i ever did was sell my deities and demigods (i had the version with the melnibone along with Cthulhu mythos in it) and while i still wish i hadn't, i don't wish to hard because the money from that allowed me to move to where my, at the time girl friend was living. She's now my wife of 23 years. Everything else i left to my daughter. Edit: spelling is hard sometimes.

I started at the same time. Ordered my books through the Sears catalog. I think I'm 54, I'd have to do the math. First world map I bought was Greyhawk.

Not the only old timer here, just a few years older (59). Never got the white box but still have ALL the other little books. Still have my early printed 1st ed books (minus the spines on the 1st 3 which peeled off after MANY years of playing) . Needless to say have all the hardbound books for first ed including Deities and demigods (WITH the extra bits they censored later), a huge chunk of 2nd ed stuff, and even dabbled in 3/3.5. Wont even go into modules except for some of the good mono color cover ones (B1, B2, all the D and G series, Tomb of Horrors and village of Hommlet. Good thing about being a packrat is also saving over 200 Dragon mags starting in the lat 30's/ early 40's, Finias treasure, Best of Dragon Vol 1 thru 5, and Dragon Tales...Oh yeah, and the Snarfquest magazine. Hmmm...really need to think on what to do with this stuff some day so it does not get tossed. I am glad to see it making a comeback though, once the virus runs it's course may even start up a 1st ed game at the hobby shop.

@@kenredington4988 do it. It would be good to see the old games taken up by younger players. The newer D&D editions have lost their way in terms of the games structure. Gygax was adamant that the game you played was yours, the rules were to be guides. These days rules lawyers are everywhere and if you don't play it "by the book" your doing it wrong. It's one of the things that has gotten lost as time has past. Being a good DM was just as much about the world as it was how the world worked. Some of the best games i DM'd has classes that aren't in any books. Like my dwarven mage-smiths. Either way it would be good to see those early editions played and continued. :)

I still have my AD&D books, including the copyright infringing Dieties and Demigods (which is a treasure). I wouldn’t consider running a game though -- it was really clunky. Early on I switched to Runescape (I think that’s what it was called) and the Elric game. I didn’t return to Dungeons and Dragons until third edition. I’m 53.

Especially Holmes D&D and Warlock

There are other versions?!?!

I prefer the variety of this channel to some static format

@@Muzzlepaint every so often they release a new version of the game, called editions. Think of each edition as like a new Pokémon generation; Same game, but with new stuff and various changes made to how the game works. The newest one as of now is 5th edition.

The day is finally here where we get a video for AD&D.

agree

Same

This game spawned World of Warcraft, and really is the computer version of D&D. The online D&D pales in polish to Wow.

Agreed. If anything it allowed me to find some like-minded friends (in person as there was no internet back then), although life did a number on that original group, it expended into another group which I still play D&D with ( mostly 5th ed, but 2 of our group prefer 3.5ed, sadly I'm the only one that wants Advanced 2nd edition, so can't really play it) and some gurps too for some other settings. I don't know where I would've been without such great friends. Helped a ton thru the harder part of my life as well.

@@Francois424 The internet was started by the DoD contracting 2 universities to create a self routing network to maintain communications in case of a nuclear attack in the 1960's.

WOW... Really Cool!

Dave DM'd differently than Gary did, I can tell you that. I played at Gary's house regularly. When I played in a game Dave ran, much different.

@@epochinfinitysedge5008 How so?

@@GrandPoobahRoc Dave was more war gamer than Gary. He Needed the rules to all make sense and always a finality to and with the numbers, i.e. dice rolls. There was very few "fudging" the roll with Dave. He was a kill or be killed DM plain and simple. That's how tabletop war games were for him. Logic. The play was secondary for him. Sure, he could weave a tale but it was not the tale that was his game it was the numbers action. It was the winning as him against the players. One could see in his eyes, he wasn't the neutral narrator, he was The Master testing you.

And some soccer mom's are BDSM dominatrixes. So? Anybody can be a geek, even if they "own a concrete business".

Gotta love up on those keeping up with the Jones' soccer moms who are totally unsatisfied at home and can never find the right washing machine setting!

@@urdaddywingnut7820 gotta love finding a random funny comment

The DM or GM still has the final say unless you're mad. Regardless of what system you play.

@@ineptwizzard Even if you're mad, the DM has the final say. You're afforded a single right when you sit down to a table as a player: the right to leave the table at any given time. Anything else is a privilege afforded to you by not the Dungeon _Manager,_ or Dungeon _Moderator,_ but Dungeon *Master.*

In the old books it even stated that the books were meant to be guides, not hard and fast rules. They expected people to homebrew their own games, since that is what Gygax and Arneson had done. That's why Blackmoor and Greyhawk were so different.

Luckily, none of that has changed.

Its not like the books had much to begin with. Adjudications were inevitable.

Gendarmes? Men-at-arms?

@@patrickholt2270 man at arms was also used as well during the medieval times.

I like the fact that Magic User actually made it through the series, not Mage or Wizard.

@@patrickholt2270 A man-at-arms usually meant a heavily-armed cavalryman, for example a knight or lancer.

Read the book A Fighting Man of Mars

I remember running a game based of the film Phanstasm II. It was hilariously fun watching the group being chased by Spheres and the grand showdown with The Tall Man and his army of undead dwarves. Good times, good times.

If it wasn't for Germanic mythology*

@@athora4271 I find many creatures from other mythologies as well. Greek or Slavic for example.

@@hadeseye2297 Can you give an example?

​@@athora4271 Just look at the monsters and you will have plenty of examples. Minotaur, centaur, chimera, dragon, lycanthropes, dryad, pegasi, griffons, djinn, medusa, mummy, basilisk, vampire, gorgon, manticora. All in original Monsters & Treasure from 1974. D&D authors threw everything interesting into one pot. Later monster manuals feature creatures like Rusałka - Polish which means Slavic as well, Baba Yaga yet another Slavic creature, but this time Russian/Belarusian in origin. And there are more of those. Also don't forget that same creature had different names in different regions. This also applies to Gods, or Deities however you want to call them. For example: Zeus - Greek, Thor - Scandinavian, Perun - Slavic. Poseidon - Greek, Aegir - Scandinavian, Neptune - Roman. Hades - Greek, Hel - Scandinavian (also a Peninsula and city in Poland), Weles (pronounce w like v in vendetta) - Polish/Slavic. D&D at its base is just an amalgam of everything European. No wonder it was primarily based on Chainmail. Medieval - checked. European Mythology - checked. If you pick B/X or AD&D you can play God of War campaign. War of Troy, or How I Stabbed My Best Friend Julius Caesar one. Hell, there were even books written with this in mind. To help referees run Greek, Roman, or Scandinavian campaigns. The AD&D 2nd line added Al-Quadim to that. So you are even secured with Middle Eastern, or Persian background if you want to put those in your stories. As a side note. One of the funniest things that many Witcher fans are not aware of, is that Andrzej Sapkowski was a DM himself. Cleric/Paladin = Hexer. I use word hexer as it is the name of Geralt's profession picked by the author himself. He picked it because of hexer - German word - for casting curse at someone. He also wrote his own rpg system. But that's another story.

Eh, maybe. It would probably just have a more Arthurian flaire.

They clearly did their homework I’m so tired of people calling tolkiens work medieval fantasy

I loved the redemption arc in there. 😏

It does, but this is not it. Chainmail had little to do with D&D. That is the Gygax myth.

I was always the DM because I had all of the books and I was always working on new adventures and such. One time I decided to create an in-depth "critical hit" chart that worked both for and against my players. Those poor guys LOL!!! We decided to no longer use that chart as my players were hobbling around with missing limbs, eyes, ears, etc ... 😄 I still have that chart 🤣

The newer art is definitely worse. The new artists are professionals? More like they are the idiot cousins of the compan's owner.

@@kevinsullivan3448 edgy

I actually prefer it

Mister G Rool me too! Where is this music from?

Wargaming goes back to Napoleanic times. The rules were just based on actual military experience, not what armchair commanders think war is like.

@Sepher Agon You might want to check out Kriegspiel this is where the Game Master was invented and Check out the incredible dice that were made for this. This was the early 1800's!

modern wargamming can be seen as far back 200 or so years, wargamming in general have been around for centuries, even the roman army soldiers would play a type of wargame on their downtime

Nothing says killing like a Lamentations of the Flame Princess Fighter. My LOTFP group the mages are now in awe of the 7th level fighter. The fighter player killed a pair of demons. The mages could not even scratch the demons.

That's why Intelligent Weapons were invented.

@@aiden_macleod That's why you can clearly see the influence of Michael Moorcock in Gygax's game creation.

Rockford game bookstore, I remember you. There's number rules, for tabletop "War Gaming" and then Gary. Gary always said he rolled the dice because he liked the sound of them. To each their own. But I always find the numbers squeezers are so boring and just unhappy in life in general. Rule quoters are not really "role playing". The "Play" comradery is what it is all about.

The answers you need may very well be in here drive.google.com/file/d/1QYqK_MY-SlMe304qT8kMxj42_S2gnS1V/view?usp=share_link Join the discussion t.me/bognbobn t.me/bognbognchat It might not look like the channel is about Aspergers but it is. Get your old family albums. Watch their fingers. Be prepared for a shock.

I bought the white box in '77 or '78. Monsters and Treasure still had the % liar (sic) column. I followed the iterations and now my nephew plays as well.You're right, it is weird to look at it now. But very cool.

You do know that there is no such thing as "hard rules" in D&D or most systems. It even states such in just about every version of D&D rules since the beginning from OD&D and it's later offshoots/revisions Basic, B/X and BECMI D&D to AD&D and 5th edition there is always some form of "these are not Hardline rules to be followed to the letter, they are just guidelines" or in the case of 1e AD&D a giant wall of text on page 230 from Gary Gygax saying the same thing.

Have you seen Iron Falcon or Planet Eris?

​​@@The_Real_DCTYes, but some DM's and players absolutely REFUSE to play any other way than by the book with the rules being treated as hardline. I've dealt with more than one such DM and it was incredibly irritating in certain circumstances Edit: I just noticed that the video and the comment are 3 years old lol, no idea if my reply will even be seen XD

I remeber playing it but only vaguely.

I had both Gamma World and Metamorphosis Alpha.

Still have the guidebook

What about Gammarauders? I miss you Blip, the Teleporturtle.

Gamma World and Top Secret were an awesome change of pace from AD&D .

Yeah, no, its bad...Should have stuck to your guns, Gygax. Didn't even want it, yet stole it... Now Beholders...A player made that, gave it to TSR, and they published it. Very Original...And, yeah, creepy...The whole concept looks very Original, though it could have some Lovecraft influence, yet we would be tempted to just describe it as original Cosmic Horror not knowing what did or didn't go on in the creators head. It is pretty scary, especially the old Sun, Moon Face it had...

The quality of DM made all the difference, and still pretty much does, since they guide the shared storytelling of a tabletop RPG experience.

I mean, it is. It sounds like a nickname for the dude that goes to the pub just to have a scrap with people.

@Sepher Agon I like doing that too, theater of the mind makes for much more interesting combat, as it's easy to add wuxia features, or throw in some suspense or comedy as needed.

Gygax explained that he took the idea directly from Vance's book, yes.

4th seems to be the most divisive. People think it's either the best or worst.

@@thebrutallyhonestdm That started with 3e/3.5e. That edition is so interwoven the game basically starts to collapse as you ignore rules, because there's all sorts of inbuilt world-defining rules that act as power limiters on the player characters. If you have the ability to run it entirely by the book, rules as written, it works like a swiss watch. But that requires reading all 3 core books cover to cover for the DM, and the PHB cover to cover for the players. No one wants to do a month of homework to play D&D, and if you start changing written rules on the fly it breaks the trust of the players to have a consistent world where they have agency. Additionally, lighter (usually older) versions facilitate that 'my rules' thing better - no reason to buy and have to sift thru nearly a thousand pages in full size book format if you're going to throw well over 2/3rds of them out. There's also more implicit trust in the DM, since the players don't have as many preset assumptions built on a dense rulebook.

@@thebrutallyhonestdm My issue is to point out that, because everyone wants something a bit different, it's highly probable for the rule set chosen to hamper rather than facilitate the goals of the table. People can also have assumptions brought from one game/system to the next which heavily impact how someone expects things to work when playing a new game or with a new DM. In my first comment I was referring to how D&D 3.5e's structure worked and how it colored the perspectives of many people who learned from it or thru others who learned from it. There's a lot of odd assumptions of how "D&D works" that stem from a weirdness you get from not reading it in order, because 3.5e's books are written to introduce and build on concepts in a sequential manner. A big example of this is the nature of alignment being treated by the rules like an actual energy that permeates reality, and this is explained ahead of the section where you're told to pick one and the behaviors are described. Without reading thru that "fluff", a lot of alignment seems disconnected and makes little sense. But this is just one example, there are loads throughout the books. I agree that changing the rules requires advance notice, I took your anecdote above to be something where the players weren't (and most likely could not have been) notified ahead of time. At the same time you have to consider the amount of mental investment someone is going to want to put together for a game, and especially a game that, these days, a lot of people expect to fizzle out 2-4 sessions in or so. It's less 'work' to have changed less rules, or to make a whole custom game booklet and not even use the commercially produced manuals. Agency is tied to players' abilities to inform themselves and make informed decisions. I was referring to how, if the world works inconsistently (a point you already addressed, just explaining my reasoning), it becomes difficult to make choices that 'feel like real options' rather than a simple roll of the dice each time. If blindsight behaves in one way, and the game has it codified as a unifying trait that interacts with various things, then it stands to reason that this modified in special cases without any telegraphing of it being special becomes a 'violation' of the game's internal logic. As I said you already clarified yourself, I'm just speaking to the concept so what I was talking about may make more sense to you. Believe me I am well aware of not needing to buy anything, in fact I'm really more for lighter systems after having tried loads and being generally disappointed by the thicker-books with denser rules over time. There are systems that have interwoven rules and sticking to some but ignoring others can result in a cascade into characters being well out of the DM's ability to truly handle over an extended campaign. I've no idea why you'd say there isn't, it's possible you just understand games well enough to see what would be disastrous or not, but most people simply go "that doesn't seem fun" and ignore bits. Which, in some cases really just means they'd prefer playing a game whose rules support what they actually want to do better. (example: Removing experience points and simply levelling characters by session or plot removes a reason to risk for reward - such a table might prefer something with a different advancement system like GURPS or FATE.) This went on way too long but I really do agree with you overall - the game is run how people want to play it at their table.

@@thebrutallyhonestdm Yea that all makes sense. By agency I mean things like if players understand that, say, "skeletons are undead" and then you have skeletons virtually unchanged, save for the fact that they're now treated as constructs - but without any mention of this beforehand. A player of a cleric would be confused and potentially upset, since his class's training in turning undead would most likely give him the foreknowledge of such a common type being unturnable. This basically is a "gotcha" moment, not fudged but the kind of thing where the DM is in more of an adversarial role rather than neutral arbiter. The Rules set up player expectations, it's up to the DM to clarify any and all differences he has made so that the unspoken, mutually-understood game world is consistent for all. Everyone starts DMing from not, and has to learn best practices along the way - having less workload is good for this. You do sound like a good DM, but it probably took a lot of learning to get what being a "good DM" means.

@@thebrutallyhonestdm The idea of changing the rules is written black on white in Basic module of B/X-Moldvay-1981 edition. "Dungeon Master rolls dice for their sound." - Gary Gygax. You see rules lawyer you scream - This, is, SPARTA!!!

@@TA-by9wv 2E had a better rules system compared to earlier editions. If only they had flipped AC back then. Everything publish by Wizards of the Cost is just an abomination designed to satiate the munchkins.

I never got to play much Traveller as the guy running that game was a jerk and would force scenarios on the players; never allowed any decision making that might stray from his prepared material. When Striker came out I would spend hours designing new vehicles and weapons. I ended up selling all my original materials but I have the Far Future Enterprises collections of all the books, games, and supplements that came out in 2000. I did keep my map of the Spinward Marches that was given out at a convention decades ago. Call of Cthulhu was my other favorite.

@@wwiiinplastic4712 All my Traveller stuff has gone too except for my collection of 15mm Ral Partha Traveller figures. Actually, I think I might still have striker too. I'll have to look. I was deeply in love with that game, I used to enjoy making new sectors and populating the planets. I never used any of them though. Call of Cthulhu came out in the US before the UK and I was really stoked to try it. In fact, so much so, I had a box imported! I probably had one of the first copies in Britain. No boast. I was initially disappointed, the advertising gave me the impression it was going to be like Indiana Jones, it wasn't. The more I read though, the more I came to appreciate it. Then I read some actual HPL and suddenly I had a new obsession. I ended up being known for my CoC games for the next 30 years.

@midnightmosesuk That "animosity" you hit on the head. Original war gamers, as I remember from my first attendance, are pure numbers, logic, facts and results people. Role play requires at least a bit of fantasy imagination . The "what ifs" in war games is changing factual unit placement. "What if Lee had done this instead of that, how would the battle have ended then. That's as far as war game imagining goes. Factual imagining or altering unit placement, decisions of commanders, etc. "Real world" battling. They only want to do their "Turn', the action, not act out how the separate participants - act. Much like how computer and entertainment game systems - games are now. Press the button to do the action and move on. It's difficult, at best, for war gamers to interact with actual Role Players. It's -"illogical" to them.

@@epochinfinitysedge5008 Exactly, you put it far better than I did. At the club I was attending at the time, it got so bad that at the annual general meeting one year, one bloke pulled a sheath knife and started waving it around. He'd proposed that role-players should be expelled from the club and assisted in setting up a club of their own. His proposal was voted down and an enormous argument broke out, that was when the knife made an appearance. It scared the living shit out of me, I was only 13 at the time, I think. As it turned out I ended up setting up a club exclusively for role playing on the back of this incident. I just wanted a club without all the damn politics, it lasted about 15 years.

@@midnightmosesuk 👍Nice! - Deja vu- that actually happened in the club - I - went to also. (Minus the knife though 🤨:O ) I wonder, DID that happened in Every Miniatures/War Games Clubs that adopted/inducted rpg type players?

Nice 😄

That's like a friend told me the lyrics in I'm Blue were "I'm blue, if I were green I would die!" and now that's all I hear.

Yes, they are called spell slots.

It functionally follows Vancian casting. The only change 5e makes is that spells and spell slots aren't married. You still have restricted magic, a set amount of ammo per day, and must prepare spells before being able to cast them.

ZeroNumerous on the surface this is why many still think 5e uses Vancian magic but the use of slots isn’t what made the system Vancian. The system is based off the Dying Earth series where spells where literally stored in a casters mind almost like scrolls and once cast where no longer in the caster’s mind. This aspect of casting is completely gone in 5e with the only remaining mechanics being spell slots (something that was unique to D&D and not in the works of Vance and spell preparation which is now akin to studying instead of literally cramming the spell in your brain till you release it.

The only redeeming value of 5E.

@@kevinsullivan3448 sure buddy

to fill in the circles on the dice

the D20 was numbers 1-10 twice, so color in one side for 11-20.

A lot of the dice in older sets had no colours in the number indentations. The crayon was meant to be used to fill them in so there was some contrast making the numbers much easier to read.

Kevin Kerr was the Star Trek type called gamma world?

@@jasonmartell4022 Nope it was this I believe: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Fleet_Battles

Kevin Kerr I had that back in the day,about 87/88 I think,i couldn’t get to grips with it though.it was ship to ship battles but I’m sure there was a role playing game released too.

Panzer Leader was a Avalon Hill War Game , the West front version of East Front Panzer Blitz. Yep, still have em.

I was the same age at the same time and also got the redbox from my aunt. She thought it was a board game and when she realized it had no board she sold it to me for a quarter at a garage sale. It was literally my first experience with anything fantasy. Even the dragon on the cover didn't make sense but I'd heard of the loch ness monster so figured it had something to do with that. The fighter on the cover also seemed like it would fit in UK history. All the gold and the wizard was unknown to me, but then again I was only 11 and those things only existed in thick books that I wasn't interested in reading.

It meant you could roll up a party of three or four new characters at the start of school lunch hour, and have them all dead and gone by the start of the afternoon classes.

The concept is sound. If Everyone is a Hero, then no one is. Newer Editions got some things right, but making Combat like a Marvel Movie isn't one of them.

By any chance do you recall Myers first name? I want to say it is Seth, but I could be wrong.