tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26880797075433528222024-03-19T00:25:57.701-07:00Playing at the WorldJon Petersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09824427209908111302noreply@blogger.comBlogger120125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2688079707543352822.post-70733491127681420422024-01-27T11:23:00.000-08:002024-01-27T11:23:38.411-08:00D&D Turns 50, and Something Else Turns 200<p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVHsXeharuZqQEQu-LXcI2xQQx-i7VmLYiluZ0EEKV7uFum39ruQ08nhwR1joR6rlwRTVPmDl3oaow8V3TWfNV3jpSUalpOMdZfLfdx1fAstj3bcHWVThe1Cjnnn-90I6hKIBNMPqCE3eKf6q_IJZpecfyPomPDiHq6s7X3UB21lxExEGZK4UrYiig_VM/s1831/2024-s.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1379" data-original-width="1831" height="241" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVHsXeharuZqQEQu-LXcI2xQQx-i7VmLYiluZ0EEKV7uFum39ruQ08nhwR1joR6rlwRTVPmDl3oaow8V3TWfNV3jpSUalpOMdZfLfdx1fAstj3bcHWVThe1Cjnnn-90I6hKIBNMPqCE3eKf6q_IJZpecfyPomPDiHq6s7X3UB21lxExEGZK4UrYiig_VM/s320/2024-s.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p>2024 marks the 50th anniversary of the publication of <i>Dungeons & Dragons</i>. Nailing down the exact release date of a product as informally produced as D&D is difficult: I've <a href="https://playingattheworld.blogspot.com/2013/12/when-dungeons-dragons-turns-40.html">written about that before</a> (and <a href="https://playingattheworld.blogspot.com/2021/10/game-wizards-d-development-timeline.html">amended it a bit further</a>). Personally, I still choose to celebrate it on the last Sunday of January, which this year is the 28th. A lot of things will be happening in 2024 to mark D&D's birthday: among them, a re-issue of my first book, <i><a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262548779/playing-at-the-world-2e/">Playing at the World</a>. </i>But 2024 also marks another momentous occasion, one that we should honor along with D&D's release: the 200th anniversary of the 1824 publication of Reiswitz's <i>Kriegsspiel</i>, the game that pioneered many fundamental system concepts that would later underpin role-playing games.</p><span><a name='more'></a></span><p>Reiswitz published his <i>Anleitung </i>in 1824 as a training tool to instruct Prussian officers to command troops in times of war. Over the preceding forty years, a number of German authors had built complex chess variants that took the name of <i>Kriegsspiele, </i>but it was the work of the Reiswitz family, and in particular the younger Reiswitz, that laid the groundwork for RPGs with:</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>The idea of a neutral referee (Reiswitz uses the word <i>Vertraute</i>), the only participant who had complete knowledge of the game situation. The referee created the "general idea" of a game, and gave to each of the participants a specific character (a commander) with particular aims. Most importantly, the referee made sure that each player only knew what such a commander in their position would know. </li><li>Players use words to describe what they want to attempt to do. Player interactions with the referee took the form of written dispatches: just like an early 19th century commander, players would receive field reports from a referee (e.g. "Squad 3 reports they have seen French troops marching towards Jena"), and would then "move" in Reiswitz's game by writing a response (e.g. "Squad 3 is ordered to hold the nearby hill and wait for reinforcements."). </li><li>Dice are rolled to determine how successful players are in the things they attempt to do. When forces clash, the referee rolls dice against a statistical model to determine how efficacious riflemen, artillery, and similar armaments would be. His game had a concept that troop formations could withstand "points" of damage before they were destroyed, and the dice in his game determine how many such points would be inflicted.</li></ul><p></p><p>Recently, as part of getting <i>Playing at the World </i>ready for its re-release with MIT Press, I was re-reading Ernest Dannhauer's 1874 account of the origins of the Reiwswitz game, and I was struck by the fact that he was writing it to mark the 50th anniversary of Reiswitz's game. Around the same time, Verdy du Vernois substituted a spoken conversation with the referee for written orders in his version of the wargame, and from there, it would be another hundred years before these principles came down to the Midwestern gamers who created D&D. All of this just makes me wonder where, with another century or two of innovation, the principles of D&D might take us.</p><p>Happy birthday, D&D - and happy birthday to one of your grandparents as well!</p>Jon Petersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09824427209908111302noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2688079707543352822.post-83065429848745834722022-12-11T11:14:00.001-08:002022-12-11T11:14:20.736-08:00Trivial Pursuit: Dungeons & Dragons Ultimate Edition<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4fCeGBTTvyS18_o9GbNQWCvgXGMis960v0nsecEqtZr2rfdyoCFzWQbmQA5WJZKgQvLl3zgzISOpiJZXE-arzRLdCjjAJ2C9yGgM1kKg6yL2KgaMhe337XryUqnEqX_nqnywyFcjPR6a5hUm6_81CEyEdkDZAXvBWjm6vAsUYgWDZURybtnSnXo_k/s761/61b0UIziJ0L._AC_SX679_.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="761" data-original-width="679" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4fCeGBTTvyS18_o9GbNQWCvgXGMis960v0nsecEqtZr2rfdyoCFzWQbmQA5WJZKgQvLl3zgzISOpiJZXE-arzRLdCjjAJ2C9yGgM1kKg6yL2KgaMhe337XryUqnEqX_nqnywyFcjPR6a5hUm6_81CEyEdkDZAXvBWjm6vAsUYgWDZURybtnSnXo_k/s320/61b0UIziJ0L._AC_SX679_.jpg" width="286" /></a></div><p>Of all the things that I never imagined I would end up working on, I was asked to help put together the <a href="https://theop.games/products/trivial-pursuit-dungeons-dragons-ultimate-edition">Trivial Pursuit D&D edition</a>, which has just been released. It is, well, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trivial_Pursuit">Trivial Pursuit</a>, but with D&D-specific questions: on monsters, spells, campaigns, characters, and of course the game's fifty-year history. If that sounds like something you'd be interested in, you can find it at the usual places online and in person -- my FLGS just got it in this weekend.</p><span><a name='more'></a></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhS3hNde_p3oPufIvwXs14JBPKTVvsokDUEwyxR4em6WTharBpxv-N5H9dtczCqEyDlWVZZ-44Xng-CidMWSdLgZhvBlNWZlGGaVdFStbK-4DuFufaghIfGJ4NrcxEimY-_yuen83UBi3xn-RPveP3wobOxKgVbo_Yo4BXlzfLlbqaiVt5KMvep5ddg/s1200/tp-credits.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="335" data-original-width="1200" height="89" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhS3hNde_p3oPufIvwXs14JBPKTVvsokDUEwyxR4em6WTharBpxv-N5H9dtczCqEyDlWVZZ-44Xng-CidMWSdLgZhvBlNWZlGGaVdFStbK-4DuFufaghIfGJ4NrcxEimY-_yuen83UBi3xn-RPveP3wobOxKgVbo_Yo4BXlzfLlbqaiVt5KMvep5ddg/s320/tp-credits.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p>Although the "special thanks" on the rules page credits only me for the questions and answers, in fact I had a lot of help -- including from Trivial Pursuit fans on Wizards of the Coast staff, and certain unsung heroes, though I'll leave it to any of those folks to out themselves about their contributions. You can play as the mind flayer, beholder, mimic, gelatinous cube, owlbear, or demilich. I think that sets about the right tone.</p><p>Just to give a sense of what's inside, the six categories of questions are:</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Magic & Miscellany: This is mostly about spells, though some questions related to magic items ended up here as well. Brush up on things like spell components and schools of magic before venturing into this one...</li><li>History: That is game history, from 1974 to the present, not in-world history. A copy of <i>Art & Arcana </i>might be a good refresher for this.</li><li>Monsters: From matters of ecology to physiology to powers to diet, this one draws on the immense bestiary of D&D to cover some iconic, and some obscure, critters of the multiverse.</li><li>Dungeons & Adventures: This covers everything from the earliest tournament adventures up to the present (well, at least the beginning of this year). You may find a few general questions in here about adventuring and dungeoneering too.</li><li>Characters: Throughout the modules, campaign books, novels, shows, coloring books, and computer games, there are no shortage of characters to pose questions about. Again, you may find some general questions about the character system (classes, stats, and so on) here as well.</li><li>Cosmology: From the nature of the planes to geographical details about Faerûn, Krynn, Greyhawk, and other settings, this category leaves a lot of opportunities for deep cuts into D&D lore.</li></ul><div>... though of course there's a lot of overlap between these categories, and a lot of questions really could have appeared in more than one. I don't want to drop any spoilers, but I hope it succeeds in the goal of having a mix of easy, medium, and hard questions. It also tries to give a fair balance of questions about the present and past of the game, so it is hopefully as accessible to those started decades ago as to relative newcomers. Obviously, you'll have an advantage if you are well versed in all eras of D&D.</div><div><br /></div><div>This is not the first D&D trivia game by any means. Long-time fans may recall the <a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/9540/advanced-dungeons-dragons-trivia-game">AD&D 2E <i>Trivia Game </i>(1991)</a>, a board game that certainly taps into the successful market <i>Trivial Pursuit </i>created in the mid-1980s. And you would occasionally see trivia questions published in the <i>Dragon</i>, as with the AD&D trivia in the January 1986 issue, or the more sprawling <a href="https://www.tsrarchive.com/add/add-promo.html"><i>Triviathlon: The Arcane Challenge </i>(1996)</a> competition that shipped with issue #227. But a lot has happened since then, and it was definitely a fun project to work on as we get ever closer to D&D's fiftieth anniversary.</div><div><br /></div><div>Best of luck to those who play it!</div><p></p>Jon Petersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09824427209908111302noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2688079707543352822.post-3863598934526840242022-04-30T07:53:00.001-07:002022-05-02T02:48:58.139-07:00E'a, Chronicles of a Dying World<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqYkKA5znT42ID7aE3GsJSQOkJV3nViqiT9WLizExcljtNg3JWVZG118DT5ygnLMRco8uW7k7SYwbtaB6hp-yCmHAPhwAP3OTaaAWb-vJNWYto5zuo0Tl_BgFwbchMdnOL3nWWwO2Efr3oX_X6u5LFsYM7miy_wjiwlLRUm3nOWth68sPxVoDqcBCZ/s1133/ea-cover.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1133" data-original-width="717" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqYkKA5znT42ID7aE3GsJSQOkJV3nViqiT9WLizExcljtNg3JWVZG118DT5ygnLMRco8uW7k7SYwbtaB6hp-yCmHAPhwAP3OTaaAWb-vJNWYto5zuo0Tl_BgFwbchMdnOL3nWWwO2Efr3oX_X6u5LFsYM7miy_wjiwlLRUm3nOWth68sPxVoDqcBCZ/w127-h200/ea-cover.jpg" width="127" /></a></div><p>David M. Fitzgerald's <i>E'a: Chronicles of a Dying World </i>is one of the more obscure digest-sized unofficial supplements to early D&D, little known even in the community of its day. <i>E'a</i> did warrant a blurb in <i>Heroic Worlds </i>(1991), and now even has an <a href="https://rpggeek.com/rpgitem/349596/e-chronicles-dying-world#collection">RPGGeek entry,</a> so it cannot be considered entirely forgotten, but very few were printed. As with many small-press items of this era, trusting the 1979 copyright date inside the book is risky at best -- but through equally-obscure catalogs, it is possible to establish roughly when it became available.</p><span><a name='more'></a></span><p><i>E'a </i>has forty-seven numbered pages, in which it details an Arduin-like grab-bag of new system elements: classes, spells and monsters; mechanics for critical hits and fumbles; a write-up of comeliness as a D&D ability; that sort of thing. It also features quite a few illustrations by Brian Nolen, including some humorous ones reminiscent of Will McLean's <i>Dungeon Masters Guide </i>cartoons:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh17LiPE8kht01eJ7pZ5G62YpnCn6hXY-9dsjsrceLgOHrDTVa6NlX2t1i9NG-IKorcs7DOW3p8k6z0vPytwwiZtKOclpYOXr-SasgbXUpdfvNx_MFm25TWxFZoBoHz8BGkz2so4otHDSl9F6RhLSMHGVzNyNvG32SSirt81Fazpg1pSSMj8ogHpuPR/s842/ea-pg32-troll.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="636" data-original-width="842" height="151" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh17LiPE8kht01eJ7pZ5G62YpnCn6hXY-9dsjsrceLgOHrDTVa6NlX2t1i9NG-IKorcs7DOW3p8k6z0vPytwwiZtKOclpYOXr-SasgbXUpdfvNx_MFm25TWxFZoBoHz8BGkz2so4otHDSl9F6RhLSMHGVzNyNvG32SSirt81Fazpg1pSSMj8ogHpuPR/w200-h151/ea-pg32-troll.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><p>As with many small press RPGs, the makers of <i>E'a </i>could not afford to advertise it broadly. My copy was sold at Hobby Castle in Merced, California, near the author's home town of Atwater, and probably most of the initial stock traded over the counter locally. Eventually, Fitzgerald did start his own fanzine, called <i><a href="https://rpggeek.com/rpgperiodical/3699/game-oracle">Game Oracle</a>, </i>and in the pages of its first issue, you can find an advertisement for <i>E'a</i>:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvR8z0vpBKuG2u4zrDsDu8Imz5jT7O0BikqWt8hjQEI44lPuVGUTU86ef3jF3Jde-PZdfdamv3CQLtRVhWAMuo26tzhS1gEdxFyTIfpFrfsgy83DmHhv10B20OYZQ1ZEh79AwuKDNFs1XW8Sk6luYWhFQSwbuKBBXaxQN1k_aOYg2ccg0v0bzi7fAL/s684/go%231-ea.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="684" data-original-width="571" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvR8z0vpBKuG2u4zrDsDu8Imz5jT7O0BikqWt8hjQEI44lPuVGUTU86ef3jF3Jde-PZdfdamv3CQLtRVhWAMuo26tzhS1gEdxFyTIfpFrfsgy83DmHhv10B20OYZQ1ZEh79AwuKDNFs1XW8Sk6luYWhFQSwbuKBBXaxQN1k_aOYg2ccg0v0bzi7fAL/w167-h200/go%231-ea.jpg" width="167" /></a></div><p>The problem is that <i>Game Oracle </i>did not start publication until 1982. And it is not unheard of for early games to assert a copyright date long before their actual publication (like <i><a href="https://rpggeek.com/rpg/1089/crimson-cutlass">Crimson Cutlass</a></i>, which circulated in draft form in 1979, but would not see a commercial print edition until 1989). So is there any good reason to think that <i>E'a </i>was available anywhere near its asserted date of copyright? As usual, the best sources for this are contemporary catalogs. The 1980 Gamescience catalog makes no mention of <i>E'a</i>, but in <a href="https://rpggeek.com/rpgdesigner/56640/walter-luc-haas">Walter Luc Haas's</a> <i>Cheeshole News </i>issue #62-3, we can find a notice of its availability:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigET1fRaY-EVAg5T7rUC0vUW0V6x7o_kYsDXsoa6MpM4X4wfG3CxX1ZHbD_RVj1mU4O3ZJ0ZOspzo8hr2p0cmDA7oO34yBCLHuqqZluxXKY1EoxLmcmQIDchbzzMywROHK7APORi2whSkcXuUlC80iomUJUWDgvT6PBhew-5ZY4Cw4a2Wgx4aHU5-_/s1262/chn%2362-3-ea.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="882" data-original-width="1262" height="140" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigET1fRaY-EVAg5T7rUC0vUW0V6x7o_kYsDXsoa6MpM4X4wfG3CxX1ZHbD_RVj1mU4O3ZJ0ZOspzo8hr2p0cmDA7oO34yBCLHuqqZluxXKY1EoxLmcmQIDchbzzMywROHK7APORi2whSkcXuUlC80iomUJUWDgvT6PBhew-5ZY4Cw4a2Wgx4aHU5-_/w200-h140/chn%2362-3-ea.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><p>These are autumn additions to Haas's 1980 inventory, but given that Haas, who was based in Basel, Switzerland, typically couldn't stock games until some months after they became available in the USA, this listing provides a credible reason to think <i>E'a </i>was out for sale by early 1980, which makes the 1979 copyright date look plausible enough (I went with it in <i><a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/elusive-shift">The Elusive Shift</a></i>). But just because it was out there doesn't mean it was widely known: according to the author, only around 400 copies of the book were printed (see his comments on <a href="https://tomeoftreasures.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=361">Tome of Treasures</a>), few enough that in the copies I've seen, the afterword at the end was personally signed by the author. So, like <i><a href="https://playingattheworld.blogspot.com/2020/12/a-forgotten-variant-mythrules-1978.html#more">Mythrules</a></i>, is not exactly a game that is noteworthy for its influence on posterity so much as for exemplifying how the early RPG community made the game its own.</p><p>Previously on Forgotten Variants: <a href="https://playingattheworld.blogspot.com/2021/04/a-date-for-monsters-monsters-monsters.html">Monsters! Monsters! Monsters! Galore (1980)</a></p>Jon Petersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09824427209908111302noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2688079707543352822.post-37334266472555682632022-01-30T11:33:00.002-08:002022-01-30T11:33:40.984-08:00Alistair MacIntyre's 1974 Dungeon Designs<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgReCwFSN8ZCxU3iALWxsXkXu_fJ2FUbZ8z5BooyplhdOPDTsUK-22w7Omw3Nl8ZNJ4P8B3lm87N8r_XCaHMJgUih7EUFnndDJ7JzV1J0Zj_oNi0-gktQzoum3TAjyKPbOgGpK8Ji6J_ZgUuopb6HFkDWMPESY7rkQbzFZJk-DbKzkPz2axbqYywlLJ=s936" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="633" data-original-width="936" height="135" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgReCwFSN8ZCxU3iALWxsXkXu_fJ2FUbZ8z5BooyplhdOPDTsUK-22w7Omw3Nl8ZNJ4P8B3lm87N8r_XCaHMJgUih7EUFnndDJ7JzV1J0Zj_oNi0-gktQzoum3TAjyKPbOgGpK8Ji6J_ZgUuopb6HFkDWMPESY7rkQbzFZJk-DbKzkPz2axbqYywlLJ=w200-h135" width="200" /></a></div><p></p><p>As another anniversary of the birth of Dungeons & Dragons passes, let's look back 48 years to the heady days of 1974, when the idea of dungeon adventuring had only just started to capture the imagination of gamers at large. Alistair MacIntyre had long run "Operation Contact" for the International Federation of Wargaming, so he knew everyone and viewed the release of D&D with some interest -- though he confessed, "I don't have the time or knowledge of fantasy to participate in your underground adventures." He was however "fascinated by the dungeon mazes," and came up with a number of devious dungeon layouts that he photocopied and shared directly with Gary Gygax and others that summer of 1974. Above you can see a dungeon entrance from the wilderness that MacIntyre proposed -- and at the bottom of the cut below, there's a little trick from Gary himself as well.</p><span><a name='more'></a></span><p>MacIntyre envisioned a number of very elaborate mechanisms for duping unwary adventurers, including this two-page description of the diabolical "three-way place," a series of connecting doors that mask intersections, making it nearly impossible for adventurers to retrace their steps -- or to avoid being steered towards a waiting monster:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgkircGgJfCHtLRpvQyti5uGlhHRe1v4r1CkWqVqxz9QQ1SJaETuStFhDY6f8BKXRPQf-3cYXeSXzCGclvfS93Ukqzu9f5aAzbtUBA8K9KuWwOyNdbubk9A3BhBjRLQ8klxurxMncxPyNVsbsM9vRvT2BPZuQDoJa1egXgz554irxkpF46jyiBCaQuT=s1231" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1231" data-original-width="956" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgkircGgJfCHtLRpvQyti5uGlhHRe1v4r1CkWqVqxz9QQ1SJaETuStFhDY6f8BKXRPQf-3cYXeSXzCGclvfS93Ukqzu9f5aAzbtUBA8K9KuWwOyNdbubk9A3BhBjRLQ8klxurxMncxPyNVsbsM9vRvT2BPZuQDoJa1egXgz554irxkpF46jyiBCaQuT=w156-h200" width="156" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhBL6b2p5mlqSSwzv_nxq30JScvXSG4UjgJgAYLNmsSMn3iZOI_PjNOTuVAxR7hjiZWh9fe9f7F1gk2FLDdvQMESWGRSK0LK1K0HQYv0n5a3_BbLpf9_khAQQ5EfeAv2UVme9SzCZSBijwfZPbALc-G7iPKGL8oACrzCDEDvffsCeEj-3fHT5a48Hv5=s1244" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1244" data-original-width="949" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhBL6b2p5mlqSSwzv_nxq30JScvXSG4UjgJgAYLNmsSMn3iZOI_PjNOTuVAxR7hjiZWh9fe9f7F1gk2FLDdvQMESWGRSK0LK1K0HQYv0n5a3_BbLpf9_khAQQ5EfeAv2UVme9SzCZSBijwfZPbALc-G7iPKGL8oACrzCDEDvffsCeEj-3fHT5a48Hv5=w153-h200" width="153" /></a></div></div><br />Anticipating the trend of "fun-house" dungeons, MacIntyre offered a grab bag of mirrors, rotating disks, and pivoting doors that would surely prove baffling to anyone trying to navigate an underworld:<div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhGY-FqIR6WBlvR6jy1dqa7m-cGo6JCmU71DIXccjqt0Xmh_X-JqbM4Np9zGQT6gVLq7MTD5trWki0qRB6IEC-bky8VaNJnZM1tJz6fP8NVxXK4uFi8XWSN1Znrei6LWII4pT8UmbJeTJ_Bl8x8eIFOdv02YBVkmnZzRo9iWZfDekcDBguxrdmjwyh7=s1224" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1224" data-original-width="936" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhGY-FqIR6WBlvR6jy1dqa7m-cGo6JCmU71DIXccjqt0Xmh_X-JqbM4Np9zGQT6gVLq7MTD5trWki0qRB6IEC-bky8VaNJnZM1tJz6fP8NVxXK4uFi8XWSN1Znrei6LWII4pT8UmbJeTJ_Bl8x8eIFOdv02YBVkmnZzRo9iWZfDekcDBguxrdmjwyh7=w153-h200" width="153" /></a></div><div><div><br /></div><div>You can also find in his notes a few insights on how monsters might repopulate a dungeon after an adventuring party leaves survivors behind (and note his reference to <i>Outdoor Survival </i>as the inspiration for wandering monsters):</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEivR3Mq7j5jCMgpPScTiNd6gI7gaW-izfiveEx5UIADZCdZBR2UZBfJz012RX5ePzzM_VU0MrLvICrXnwR2ys8OUBXp9e-pxSzRHllxRyPr6ROqj2uDOpWvmF1wK_jMHxcGI4OOllmvDVXzjw59AINkZjfkS71hnxjv1yuRxMT7-j-0-rIN1ed8UwOL=s940" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="557" data-original-width="940" height="119" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEivR3Mq7j5jCMgpPScTiNd6gI7gaW-izfiveEx5UIADZCdZBR2UZBfJz012RX5ePzzM_VU0MrLvICrXnwR2ys8OUBXp9e-pxSzRHllxRyPr6ROqj2uDOpWvmF1wK_jMHxcGI4OOllmvDVXzjw59AINkZjfkS71hnxjv1yuRxMT7-j-0-rIN1ed8UwOL=w200-h119" width="200" /></a></div><br /><div>Precious little survives from the first year that D&D hit the market, and while MacIntyre's design concepts do not constitute a complete dungeon, that are a great example of the creativity that dungeon adventuring triggered in the minds of the earliest adopters almost fifty years ago. In light of them, maybe the <i>Tomb of Horrors </i>doesn't look so bad -- but that doesn't mean its designer wasn't thinking along these lines. From early 1974, here for example is a similar scribble from Gary Gygax's notes, showing how to confuse players about which dungeon level they occupied:</div><div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgDxtzdVt69fDfZVLWmpC5MpRuoWWovVb8Nxu53LxGgF9v4kc_-cP1798ERxvaWZ0od7Nmgq4ySObdPghGEqFqII82aoKd-OnP9dvNl-fDwsCfXPDZKTAYgqCH6aEd3DqeCBQeQYDoVDRUDUxs4Ohs7Q7F5vybczY0SvPiB6xvtMNsQqTateOMTapUE=s1186" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="432" data-original-width="1186" height="117" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgDxtzdVt69fDfZVLWmpC5MpRuoWWovVb8Nxu53LxGgF9v4kc_-cP1798ERxvaWZ0od7Nmgq4ySObdPghGEqFqII82aoKd-OnP9dvNl-fDwsCfXPDZKTAYgqCH6aEd3DqeCBQeQYDoVDRUDUxs4Ohs7Q7F5vybczY0SvPiB6xvtMNsQqTateOMTapUE=s320" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p></div></div>Jon Petersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09824427209908111302noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2688079707543352822.post-79778305790161712612021-11-23T14:24:00.002-08:002021-11-23T16:27:48.854-08:00The Deadly Illusion of GenCon 1978<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-Ewex4tIrjQjpCr3xBUQbSRYx-nX2mEQLG95IOcrjIzfPVULcElLlLBqf-IIlek3sKVntle7i8zO0vSsUFJIGQHT6OOsp9wQmgXv57RN751jz1DehZYIBvrUXhbaIdD9zr1wWgoaLnOk/s1462/A%2526E%252339-pickens-d3.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="289" data-original-width="1462" height="63" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-Ewex4tIrjQjpCr3xBUQbSRYx-nX2mEQLG95IOcrjIzfPVULcElLlLBqf-IIlek3sKVntle7i8zO0vSsUFJIGQHT6OOsp9wQmgXv57RN751jz1DehZYIBvrUXhbaIdD9zr1wWgoaLnOk/s320/A%2526E%252339-pickens-d3.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p></p><p>As much attention as <i><a href="https://playingattheworld.blogspot.com/2021/09/game-wizards-my-new-book.html">Game Wizards</a> </i>lavishes on conventions, there was more still before the manuscript was cut down to size. Convention tournaments in particular received more attention, and GenCon 1978 had a anecdote that began as follows: <span style="font-family: inherit;">"Even
the tournament was something of a shambles, with only one group surviving the
second round: seven out of eight parties died to an illusion, mistaking for a
teleporter something that was actually a deadly pit." This account follows Jon Pickens's description in <i>A&E </i>#39, which makes for something of a funny story, and lets us see with fresh eyes the encounter with Silussa the succubus and her vampire beau Belgos in D3 <i>Vault of the Drow</i>.</span></p><p><span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p>Pickens's account is broadly corroborated by Bob Blake in <i>Dragon </i>#19, "Each team but one ran into a horrible encounter with a demon and died." Blake also confirms that "we used Advanced D&D modules D2 and D3 for the scenario," so it would make sense that the beginning of D3 would be in the second round of three. </p><p>As described in the published D3, a permanent illusion had been cast over the area where Silussa poses as a statue, which makes the place appear like a wholesome and welcoming garden. The description doesn't mention anything about an abyss surrounding Silussa, but it does say her room is depicted in encounter piece VIII, which looks like this:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZzXJ8kbwNvXbOBHppo7KENpDI9ld8GjRnhwoHX6icmjETDTyOAkerxNxsLU81zPDU5xA2RgPqL1XQAiZOAyRQMg4clpdnIsUDaks79W-XXVsOmC5kdsXxv5oEnUxveHIgA2YUmBo4RSw/s546/D3-encVIII.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="546" data-original-width="511" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZzXJ8kbwNvXbOBHppo7KENpDI9ld8GjRnhwoHX6icmjETDTyOAkerxNxsLU81zPDU5xA2RgPqL1XQAiZOAyRQMg4clpdnIsUDaks79W-XXVsOmC5kdsXxv5oEnUxveHIgA2YUmBo4RSw/w187-h200/D3-encVIII.jpg" width="187" /></a></div><p>... and the description does indeed mention the "island-like center of the cavern." So, are we supposed to run this room as if Silussa is "separated from the party by a 200' abyss" obscured by an illusion as Pickens relayed? It would be a strange thing to omit from the room description. More likely the abyss, which dealt 70 points of falling damage and required 9 rounds for survivors (if any) to scale, was somewhat hastily excised due to its excessive lethality, and what we see in the published version are a few leftover traces of it.</p><p>Back to GenCon 1978: what happens in a tournament when you have a sole-survivor winning party, but need to award second and third place? It turns out that the leading contenders for those slots were theoretically resurrected, and run through the charming situation of round three: the city of Erelhei-Cinlu. Pickens watched Russ Stambaugh make quick work of one of these runner-up groups:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-Z3897V3YgyLen3LBuudQrMVlZIu7ZqQc_mejvrf3FLkV4NMzPkFs-zE5GxIPTkAmeEQPSy8JWGzSENHArb8Fxbxtu0Hpv6lrrR69VMgXzRAavxtP9DQLrAtBTZSpXPau4rmXBCuBbTU/s1242/A%2526E%252339-pickens-d3-2.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="301" data-original-width="1242" height="78" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-Z3897V3YgyLen3LBuudQrMVlZIu7ZqQc_mejvrf3FLkV4NMzPkFs-zE5GxIPTkAmeEQPSy8JWGzSENHArb8Fxbxtu0Hpv6lrrR69VMgXzRAavxtP9DQLrAtBTZSpXPau4rmXBCuBbTU/s320/A%2526E%252339-pickens-d3-2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p><br /></p>Jon Petersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09824427209908111302noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2688079707543352822.post-39979002175360501332021-11-07T14:03:00.005-08:002021-11-07T15:29:00.257-08:00Arneson v. Gygax: The Freeman Deposition<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpbQCIMcfCnsv7TQKKV52wFD-Crsdz18tW8o_DbiVnZc1YLw4G7BGq51y0CzvlicMQ1rTYuv-VTpS5LHgAGB1F8LjZyWu-IPr41fRNY1NnQnSur_SXihx_Q9UsjFkSshRmjn9oItyvMCE/s1369/1980-jf1.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1032" data-original-width="1369" height="241" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpbQCIMcfCnsv7TQKKV52wFD-Crsdz18tW8o_DbiVnZc1YLw4G7BGq51y0CzvlicMQ1rTYuv-VTpS5LHgAGB1F8LjZyWu-IPr41fRNY1NnQnSur_SXihx_Q9UsjFkSshRmjn9oItyvMCE/s320/1980-jf1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p></p><p>When Dave Arneson's lawsuit against TSR was nearing a trial date at the end of 1980, his legal team recruited an expert witness in the person of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Freeman_(game_designer)">Jon Freeman</a>. Freeman, who wrote for <i>Games </i>magazine and had recently produced <i>The Complete Guide to Board Games</i>, was a longstanding D&D fan who drove one of the earliest computer adaptations of dungeon-crawling to see a commercial release: <i>The Temple of Apshai </i>(1979), first of the "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunjonquest">Dunjonquest</a>" series. Today, we'll take a look (a layman's look, not a lawyer's) at Freeman's argument, beginning with his chart above, which shows how Gary Gygax's earlier <i>Chainmail </i>rules contrasted with both D&D and AD&D.</p><span><a name='more'></a></span><p>The subject of Freeman's argument is related, but not identical, to the core question of Arneson's lawsuit, which was whether the language in the 1975 D&D contract requiring TSR to pay royalties on "the cover price of the game or game rules for each and every copy sold" applied solely to the D&D ruleset published at the time it was signed, or if it further applied to later (derivative) works like the Holmes <i>Basic Set </i>and the AD&D game. Freeman instead looks at the more conceptual question of whether AD&D was the same game as D&D: if it were, that would bolster the interpretation of the contract that Arneson hoped to establish.</p><p>Freeman's chart comparing D&D and AD&D to <i>Chainmail </i>above fairly represents points where D&D and AD&D are conceptually unified in ways that distinguish them both from earlier wargames. No one was going to argue that <i>Chainmail </i>and D&D (or AD&D) were the same game. Which is not to say there isn't plenty to nitpick here, in his characterization of both <i>Chainmail </i>and D&D. But fundamentally, Freeman is correct that you can attribute any of the things under that second column equally to either D&D or AD&D -- it's fair to lump them together.</p><p>However, you could lump numerous other early RPGs under that second column as well, given how high level its criteria are. This was a talking point that Gygax advanced in <i>Dragon </i>magazine, that, "there is no [more] similarity (perhaps even less) between D&D and AD&D than there is between D&D and its various imitators produced by competing publishers." To answer that, Freeman offers a breakdown of how character statistics are managed across several early RPGs:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiO7TiNjJe2YILuC6oL1Hj3aVTvXYPihErc-RwwQA5Z8m6HHTQUo850VUlEcEJDiUP02QRadNwaW3-san0UzeDNZ0gb34bZbdmtbhXBqW9HZ36pVVaa9-YaT8kk6a6xq_M56CTHnD6T3lw/s1469/1980-jf5.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1029" data-original-width="1469" height="224" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiO7TiNjJe2YILuC6oL1Hj3aVTvXYPihErc-RwwQA5Z8m6HHTQUo850VUlEcEJDiUP02QRadNwaW3-san0UzeDNZ0gb34bZbdmtbhXBqW9HZ36pVVaa9-YaT8kk6a6xq_M56CTHnD6T3lw/s320/1980-jf5.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p>Again, we could nitpick the chart here based on the fairly limited slice of early games it includes, but the core point is valid: AD&D used the same basic system concepts as D&D and called them the same thing, be they abilities, levels, spells, monsters, magic items, experience points, or what have you. Freeman goes on to say:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVXFfeXgfq3kXdMxHIJoZeafgXhZPeEWUqUAxly_c8LwHgQjyDoPxeQpI5DCNo4CRhvUdonSH9Q6qfIA8-arHDAUpkJaj9aYzNK244uSoXUvCNj4Aj4YUNbXLIqaUR1kzCnp2gD0HOik0/s1206/1980-jf6.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="754" data-original-width="1206" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVXFfeXgfq3kXdMxHIJoZeafgXhZPeEWUqUAxly_c8LwHgQjyDoPxeQpI5DCNo4CRhvUdonSH9Q6qfIA8-arHDAUpkJaj9aYzNK244uSoXUvCNj4Aj4YUNbXLIqaUR1kzCnp2gD0HOik0/s320/1980-jf6.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p>Freeman's point about trademark here has some validity -- if <i>Tunnels & Trolls </i>had instead called itself <i>Ken's Dungeons & Dragons</i>, it would have been just such an infringement and TSR would undoubtedly have gone to court over it. But Arneson had no contractual interest in the D&D trademark, only in its copyright. Moreover, this excerpt concludes in a place that further exposes the distinction between Freeman's conceptual analysis and the contractual question before the court. <i>Greyhawk </i>certainly was D&D, in any meaningful sense, but <a href="https://playingattheworld.blogspot.com/2021/10/game-wizards-evolution-of-tsr-contracts.html">Arneson was not paid any royalties for <i>Greyhawk</i></a>, and if the case had gone to trial, you could imagine TSR's counsel asking Freeman, "If Arneson doesn't get royalties for <i>Greyhawk </i>under the D&D contract, why should he get them for AD&D?" The question of whether conceptually "<i>Greyhawk </i>is D&D" has no bearing on the question of whether Arneson should be paid royalties for it, of whether its cover price counted as "the cover price of the game or game rules for each and every copy sold" under the 1975 D&D contract (which was executed on the same day as the <i>Greyhawk </i>contract).</p><p>The AD&D rollout began at the end of 1977 with the <i>Monster Manual</i>, and Freeman argues that it marked no clean break from the original D&D system, that "monsters from the <i>Monster Manual </i>could be used, can be used, and were used in D&D games with no alterations whatsoever." Arneson's legal team spent a lot of time photocopying side-by-side comparisons of the OD&D books with AD&D, which included a hard look at the <i>Monster Manual</i>. Take the lich, for example:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKlaOdejSGClwvEGOD4ywl4O8R8WBc7ReCHfJ7hivmwVl33NwccrhmtcsQY1WBdyIB6cPtKCLSwxAXDSAbfCLlVdocq7XBEvDHTSg1nJZPXzhDp7zMQnD1eEwWKd37FFos9NqO5cZF7bA/s1000/1980-dnd-compare-lich.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="604" data-original-width="1000" height="193" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKlaOdejSGClwvEGOD4ywl4O8R8WBc7ReCHfJ7hivmwVl33NwccrhmtcsQY1WBdyIB6cPtKCLSwxAXDSAbfCLlVdocq7XBEvDHTSg1nJZPXzhDp7zMQnD1eEwWKd37FFos9NqO5cZF7bA/s320/1980-dnd-compare-lich.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p>The irony is that the lich here comes from <i>Greyhawk</i>, and even if <i>"Greyhawk </i>is D&D," it was not something that Arneson received royalties for. When the <i>Greyhawk </i>supplement appeared in 1975, it added a number of new monsters (31, more than half as many as there were tabulated in the original <i>Monsters & Treasure </i>booklet) and moreover respecified all of the existing monsters in OD&D (via the "Attacks and Damage by Monster Types" chart). Was the respecification in <i>Greyhawk</i> different in kind from the respecification seen in the <i>Monster Manual</i>?<i> </i>Imagine for a moment that the <i>Monster Manual </i>had, per Freeman, been marketed as a supplement to OD&D... would that have made Arneson any more entitled to royalties for it than he was for <i>Greyhawk</i>?</p>Jon Petersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09824427209908111302noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2688079707543352822.post-3017015714772298282021-10-28T13:14:00.012-07:002021-11-07T13:59:02.986-08:00Game Wizards: The Evolution of TSR Contracts<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgc1H4ujpBUShRzlwMkUXfMhRgHZhqrxiuKnUUbYhLMRozGFLN3DghG5BRkTO89Te_DxUU3LQPnWJvZ8Lge-oGchZndRSCwQNqBaJY4J7bh_21hiBdun4_c_1bB7LNJ8Q0LA-p4XADb07A/s1000/1975-tsr-greyhawk-contract.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="738" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgc1H4ujpBUShRzlwMkUXfMhRgHZhqrxiuKnUUbYhLMRozGFLN3DghG5BRkTO89Te_DxUU3LQPnWJvZ8Lge-oGchZndRSCwQNqBaJY4J7bh_21hiBdun4_c_1bB7LNJ8Q0LA-p4XADb07A/w148-h200/1975-tsr-greyhawk-contract.jpg" width="148" /></a></div><p></p><p></p><p>This single piece of paper constitutes the entirety of the understanding between TSR and the authors of the 1975 <i>Greyhawk </i>supplement: most significantly, it covers a copyright assignment to TSR and an agreement from TSR to pay royalties based on "the cover price of the game rules or game on each and every copy sold." It is quite short, having been drafted <i>pro bono</i> by Gary Gygax's uncle at a time when Tactical Studies Rules was still a partnership, and D&D had sold perhaps 1500 copies. This language is of especial interest because the same form was used for the 1975 D&D contract, and famously Dave Arneson would later sue TSR on the grounds that his rights to royalties extended to titles like the Holmes <i>Basic Set </i>and the AD&D hardcover books. This is a major focus of <i><a href="https://playingattheworld.blogspot.com/2021/09/game-wizards-my-new-book.html">Game Wizards</a></i>. </p><p>Over the next five years, TSR refined the language of their new agreements to be clearer about what rights authors were assigning, and for which sales they would receive compensation. I am definitely not a lawyer, but I am going to offer below a few layman's thoughts about the evolution of TSR's contract language during this period.</p><span><a name='more'></a></span><p>Though no one noticed it at the time, there is a glaring point of ambiguity in this 1975 contract: what is meant here by "the game rules or game entitled <i>Greyhawk</i>"? Does that language refer simply to the contents of the supplement booklet that TSR would publish in 1975? Or might it be read to apply more expansively to Greyhawk, and to any work that might be based on its campaign or setting? This dangerous vagueness would be built into all of TSR's 1975 contracts governed by this form: for products like <i>War of Wizards, </i>the <i>Blackmoor </i>supplement, and most famously, the 1975 D&D<i> </i>agreement.</p><p>The next iteration of TSR's contract, in 1976, did not help with this particular ambiguity, as this example for the contract of <i>Bio One </i>shows (which includes some emendations as the game had originally been published by <a href="https://playingattheworld.blogspot.com/2015/05/world-at-war-tsr-of-twin-cities.html">World at War</a>):</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYbcxWQfoCepnqlVUG_IGlCA8HNdOvm0a3c9NGp1qllOZdctnuT_dJ52e_ZaAQ7Rr_WEtk0F0fkNVwB72RGQEhKAGuwzFiWJEHUQS2sFWLct_xCNLWZRTaSSTVrOanOk-JOE0gv85K3dU/s1000/1976-tsr-bio1-1.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="718" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYbcxWQfoCepnqlVUG_IGlCA8HNdOvm0a3c9NGp1qllOZdctnuT_dJ52e_ZaAQ7Rr_WEtk0F0fkNVwB72RGQEhKAGuwzFiWJEHUQS2sFWLct_xCNLWZRTaSSTVrOanOk-JOE0gv85K3dU/w144-h200/1976-tsr-bio1-1.jpg" width="144" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqr_5EwriZdItgIsbUeWTsQp3t6jTHyBuDefa45rRZMnKo-SttcrLxtNgp_GGuIGXmwfNjFe3SO0J2Aeiv5MDCzhs75OHeDI1TDHZB-8xoipQTXUA6yMNv053r1vJXgA2vEyrJtoME1aw/s1000/1976-tsr-bio1-2.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="734" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqr_5EwriZdItgIsbUeWTsQp3t6jTHyBuDefa45rRZMnKo-SttcrLxtNgp_GGuIGXmwfNjFe3SO0J2Aeiv5MDCzhs75OHeDI1TDHZB-8xoipQTXUA6yMNv053r1vJXgA2vEyrJtoME1aw/w147-h200/1976-tsr-bio1-2.jpg" width="147" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBeKmV6F1TZ7855Y4Xq5d5ez-GGr-BRnFme_s0pKzS0wS4dQ99LFGAao-37IBmaaMI9HnSqoh6FJYhlYyJL5XiRZh4TBYImX-N2gXlOrHAKG1b9SEejmFwbY_-mlPXVJlpn8fiDK3fleA/s1000/1976-tsr-bio1-3.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="780" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBeKmV6F1TZ7855Y4Xq5d5ez-GGr-BRnFme_s0pKzS0wS4dQ99LFGAao-37IBmaaMI9HnSqoh6FJYhlYyJL5XiRZh4TBYImX-N2gXlOrHAKG1b9SEejmFwbY_-mlPXVJlpn8fiDK3fleA/w156-h200/1976-tsr-bio1-3.jpg" width="156" /></a></div></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivaQORThlBXG7t7hTMw0DX9BHRwexRx53htFfUOYAvUuL-TASuZVN8GQLugLAf_008yPlYC5hdE6ugdK6U7zOw9ZMqkWu9gu8nlGOqkhid3DYxScPPdB5WIhTv7L9D2AoYybmdHU2QN_Y/s813/1976-tsr-bio1-4.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="813" height="123" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivaQORThlBXG7t7hTMw0DX9BHRwexRx53htFfUOYAvUuL-TASuZVN8GQLugLAf_008yPlYC5hdE6ugdK6U7zOw9ZMqkWu9gu8nlGOqkhid3DYxScPPdB5WIhTv7L9D2AoYybmdHU2QN_Y/w200-h123/1976-tsr-bio1-4.jpg" width="200" /></a></div></div><p>Probably the most interesting additions here are that this new version of the agreement, drafted by local Lake Geneva firm Allen and Lenon, does give TSR some additional powers, such as adapting the rules into a board game or selling associated figures, as well as clarifying any foreign rights to the game. It furthermore includes a "Restrictive Covenant" clause that prevents the author from publishing competing games on the same subject elsewhere. But it offers little clarity on what counts as the "work": it only stipulates that TSR reserves the right to change the work in any way it sees fit, while offering the author a path to approval of those changes, within reason. </p><p>If we then look ahead to the summer of 1978, we can see a new form of the contract for the forthcoming title <i>Top Secret</i>:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVkDVnEQKYe2YSwLRuyb3badXHrB4qoM4PK8whNz4ny7bdfLCOP2p-HoPwUCQskjtfvJcpY4YoEBmRgGxllk9CtanD7Dju0Abh04vARRUdJhBw9_Ltr1dC7MTDquIhN7DLHP9AOKPBTNk/s1000/1978-tsr-ts-1.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="707" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVkDVnEQKYe2YSwLRuyb3badXHrB4qoM4PK8whNz4ny7bdfLCOP2p-HoPwUCQskjtfvJcpY4YoEBmRgGxllk9CtanD7Dju0Abh04vARRUdJhBw9_Ltr1dC7MTDquIhN7DLHP9AOKPBTNk/w141-h200/1978-tsr-ts-1.jpg" width="141" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhP0vp0M_l-eDaHPsAECt1q_D8KmETssbQ8M8qUVJ0iYGJ-qzySbBASr_KrunCLixSlMtHJhDjJ0qCqDy5eg7oDp3HrzKyofU8h_h4IBz1BvRB0pOSZM2hAy5OqjJWCvSAv5JxT53Cr7Mk/s1000/1978-tsr-ts-2.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="782" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhP0vp0M_l-eDaHPsAECt1q_D8KmETssbQ8M8qUVJ0iYGJ-qzySbBASr_KrunCLixSlMtHJhDjJ0qCqDy5eg7oDp3HrzKyofU8h_h4IBz1BvRB0pOSZM2hAy5OqjJWCvSAv5JxT53Cr7Mk/w156-h200/1978-tsr-ts-2.jpg" width="156" /></a></div></div><p></p>By this point in time, it had become clear that Arneson intended to raise a legal action against TSR over the Holmes <i>Basic Set. </i>Here, the contract language clarifies from the start that by assigning <i>Top Secret </i>to TSR, Rasmussen was also assigning the rights to "any adaptation of said game or game rules for other forms of games or accessories." Accessories had started to become a big business for TSR -- they began selling modules shortly before this contract was executed -- and the Holmes <i>Basic Set </i><a href="https://www.polygon.com/2021/10/12/22722602/dungeons-dragons-game-wizards-book-excerpt-jon-peterson-arneson-lawsuit">bundled in accessories</a> from the very start. But the 1978 contract remains silent on what obligation, if any, TSR had to pay the original author for such things.<p></p><p>After Arneson's lawsuit dropped in 1979, the language around what constituted "the game rules or game" became much more specific. Take the 1980 <i>Deities & Demigods </i>contract:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHl-Ub5xwQ_8GFNPNU8CtkatDhoy9O1DZQPvTqO2nmYasZSxBRPCjpiIe-tcXYvsMeidnd2xfodcRIshyJtcQjMfYC7kDR5qLPEuGq75O9N7b-mbu8bC_2LP-6T7LNlSrMngTCXxsu2bk/s1000/1980-tsr-ddg-1.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="714" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHl-Ub5xwQ_8GFNPNU8CtkatDhoy9O1DZQPvTqO2nmYasZSxBRPCjpiIe-tcXYvsMeidnd2xfodcRIshyJtcQjMfYC7kDR5qLPEuGq75O9N7b-mbu8bC_2LP-6T7LNlSrMngTCXxsu2bk/w143-h200/1980-tsr-ddg-1.jpg" width="143" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtKVNsvUnC-y8lwdx80XjWJSp5jCwIv9MGS8SsMGSMIfc0iCLGbJJtPT1Y4HC0C0A3isJU9qX5yTwNlPF2uha19aQUtaRdVmOBDethbq01PC1ttS-eKRL9jZkHyOqX-4_Z2kWGuVFpxtY/s1000/1980-tsr-ddg-2.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="687" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtKVNsvUnC-y8lwdx80XjWJSp5jCwIv9MGS8SsMGSMIfc0iCLGbJJtPT1Y4HC0C0A3isJU9qX5yTwNlPF2uha19aQUtaRdVmOBDethbq01PC1ttS-eKRL9jZkHyOqX-4_Z2kWGuVFpxtY/w138-h200/1980-tsr-ddg-2.jpg" width="138" /></a></div></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfMAE59Qwi6GHFQiNIVKYClVGW65nfYO7cWGuiEEo3MOjWtpQg_aisJU7Oqt7surO3loVXj_HeqJHHCrftxdAbn4nN1D6yVfssCZYWb5QYNQnHXkxt31OAlvR2IRsaEFimdtRFMBcJEcY/s1000/1980-tsr-ddg-3.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="695" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfMAE59Qwi6GHFQiNIVKYClVGW65nfYO7cWGuiEEo3MOjWtpQg_aisJU7Oqt7surO3loVXj_HeqJHHCrftxdAbn4nN1D6yVfssCZYWb5QYNQnHXkxt31OAlvR2IRsaEFimdtRFMBcJEcY/w139-h200/1980-tsr-ddg-3.jpg" width="139" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidXRQrBQEFvlqRyQDrS5B1kv36rw1Q9cUKZ9xUTtomHeIEMbyrNDcm12XighpuE-ounwhalLae4V7xp654FsugaGjnpRy7UBKkNtdMfB1aD2wU4CrT8tFIhWzLtL9vhDrHrbu34LQTixI/s1000/1980-tsr-ddg-4.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="678" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidXRQrBQEFvlqRyQDrS5B1kv36rw1Q9cUKZ9xUTtomHeIEMbyrNDcm12XighpuE-ounwhalLae4V7xp654FsugaGjnpRy7UBKkNtdMfB1aD2wU4CrT8tFIhWzLtL9vhDrHrbu34LQTixI/w136-h200/1980-tsr-ddg-4.jpg" width="136" /></a></div></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhAqL0bXmJht-cenK_3LdT-seNsWtdqUXmQV0BR-BeZJLs5_bmtXSRlxkv_GwDjS68q6A6nW8Xb_HWp24f6YbcfvUYR4sYso_fkN_opcqZECeWSsuDe0Lkv0GjiP7Wpfk6PnFxjg4QJ_Y/s1000/1980-tsr-ddg-5.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="730" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhAqL0bXmJht-cenK_3LdT-seNsWtdqUXmQV0BR-BeZJLs5_bmtXSRlxkv_GwDjS68q6A6nW8Xb_HWp24f6YbcfvUYR4sYso_fkN_opcqZECeWSsuDe0Lkv0GjiP7Wpfk6PnFxjg4QJ_Y/w146-h200/1980-tsr-ddg-5.jpg" width="146" /></a></div><p>The 1980 assignment language is quite clear that the authors are granting to TSR not just the copyright, but the "title and theme" of the work and any conceivable related rights. On the second page, it furthermore crisply delimits what the authors will be paid royalties for: "the sale of every copy of the Work," where "a 'copy' of the Work is hereby defined to be limited to and to consist of material published by TSR which is substantially identical to the manuscript or other materials presented by the Author herewith." A formal derivative works clause follows, granting TSR "the exclusive right to prepare derivative works based on said Work," and more importantly stipulating that the "Author hereby agrees that he releases TSR... from having any obligation whatsoever to Author in regard to work... which might be deemed to be a derivate work based upon the Work." And don't miss the part where "the giving of authorship credit, if any, shall rest in TSR's sole and uncontrolled discretion."</p><p>Obviously, if the 1975 D&D contract signed by Gygax and Arneson had language to that effect, then the legal landscape for Arneson's challenges to the <i>Basic Set </i>and AD&D would have been quite different. But modest as the TSR partnership's ambitions were, the 1975 contract didn't give us any purchase on whether it applied to works like the <i>Basic Set </i>and AD&D -- they simply were not envisioned at the time. I will stress again that I am not a lawyer, but lawyers have told me that in such cases, judges often try to discern what the unwritten intention behind the contract was. Whatever strong feelings the situation of D&D might inspire, how do we think they intended it back in 1975 when they executed contracts for <i>War of Wizards</i>, or <i>Greyhawk</i>? The very existence of a separate royalty agreement for <i>Greyhawk </i>(one that does not involve Arneson, and was executed on the same day as Arneson's 1975 D&D contract) may give us some inkling of how they understood the situation of derivative works. Anything beyond inklings I leave for readers to determine for themselves.</p>Jon Petersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09824427209908111302noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2688079707543352822.post-37846552840011198192021-10-21T12:16:00.001-07:002021-10-24T12:34:56.475-07:00Arneson's Hit Points for Characters<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJ_h61mcABRrimX8bOFJmyxaqqLvJz9di4QbHYQSVKRm-cJ8usgNsP-tqMqfLSWGKZX2dfQVzg8D9gHrTfEAiAoazz2xgUSH6yzWrtN2yj2ePo01wqbo3w13xtqQiEB4l00LuFOIOw4PI/s1504/1977-fcc-arneson-hp.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="302" data-original-width="1504" height="64" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJ_h61mcABRrimX8bOFJmyxaqqLvJz9di4QbHYQSVKRm-cJ8usgNsP-tqMqfLSWGKZX2dfQVzg8D9gHrTfEAiAoazz2xgUSH6yzWrtN2yj2ePo01wqbo3w13xtqQiEB4l00LuFOIOw4PI/s320/1977-fcc-arneson-hp.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p></p><p><i><a href="https://playingattheworld.blogspot.com/2021/09/game-wizards-my-new-book.html">Game Wizards</a> </i>is very decidedly not a book about who invented which system in D&D. But early drafts of the book did track one design choice in D&D that Dave Arneson perennially criticized: the system wherein characters gain more hit points as they go up in level. Arneson held that character hit points should instead be fixed at character creation, and that characters should become harder to hit as they rise in level. While that story thread failed its save against manuscript bloat, restoring it does add context for Gygax and Arneson's subsequent disputes. Probably the most well-known place Arneson mentioned his system was in the introduction to the <i>First Fantasy Campaign </i>(1977), as shown above.</p><span><a name='more'></a></span><p>When the ink on OD&D was barely dry in 1974, Arneson was already complaining about the hit point system. Indeed, he asked one person he corresponded with to share a letter about it to the <i>Great Plains Gameplayers Newsletter. </i>That was venue where Gary Gygax then previewed system revisions to D&D leading up to its first supplement <i>Greyhawk</i>, and Arneson's interest in sharing it there is a stark indicator of his willingness to publicly criticize the published D&D rules:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWhmzGB2eGKXQvbPosxVupH6uu3Te3hgAvvAYzsr5vRTjJSBCW0cqdg7FcIDBHVxiNwSLZ6PTgxjKhdWIhOnFsTBvTAnvxXDedLl3wJH0cGE4jtyVCOVlDZo9xLhjWbenednzX-ajxCfg/s796/gpgpn-%252315-arneson-hp.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="315" data-original-width="796" height="127" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWhmzGB2eGKXQvbPosxVupH6uu3Te3hgAvvAYzsr5vRTjJSBCW0cqdg7FcIDBHVxiNwSLZ6PTgxjKhdWIhOnFsTBvTAnvxXDedLl3wJH0cGE4jtyVCOVlDZo9xLhjWbenednzX-ajxCfg/s320/gpgpn-%252315-arneson-hp.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p>While his description may be a bit difficult to parse, Arneson is apparently saying that starting characters in Blackmoor would fix their hit points from 1-36 hits. His willingness to criticize D&D only increased after his 1976 departure from the company, and in the text at the top above from the <i>First Fantasy Campaign</i>, he was eager to show how TSR had botched his original vision. There he suggested fixed character hit points were rolled with percentile dice -- probably the original d6 system owed to the fact that they had "no funny dice back then," as he says elsewhere on the same page. At a seminar at Origins that year, one participant recorded that Arneson came back to hit points as a talking point:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgV1jLPgkiG7NGl8JWicj7rpYiiTLMWJWDYaBqZsA9pX-aXemgqNZ0afqJaY1bjJK5HP86CsCgyFuJwJhA3fTXD_oAl_798CwlEpdDIQXrMPGZEbKaD6281JKEthE4JwnT0IZiaqsXyGBo/s1188/AnE-%252327-arneson-hp.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="280" data-original-width="1188" height="75" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgV1jLPgkiG7NGl8JWicj7rpYiiTLMWJWDYaBqZsA9pX-aXemgqNZ0afqJaY1bjJK5HP86CsCgyFuJwJhA3fTXD_oAl_798CwlEpdDIQXrMPGZEbKaD6281JKEthE4JwnT0IZiaqsXyGBo/s320/AnE-%252327-arneson-hp.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p>Looking ahead a bit to <i>Adventures in Fantasy</i>, where Arneson hoped to correct what he deemed "the many errors in the original rules," we find an algorithm for calculating hit points based on starting character statistics (which were rolled with percentile dice) which seems to favor on average characters having a bit more than ten hit points:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjD_tgLTFcd71e2Zv7cgsDNQZx4mRm-2rMGNIEjBEQf9JXhNqJctEhJpAJxF_OXhtAHfQb8luZwkoIj0ABnucZeiAyM8hXBIli4f50w5boOybJP_Z2KsCfkKdZgaYWaMUCbyHszsCUGPPs/s818/aif-p4.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="162" data-original-width="818" height="63" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjD_tgLTFcd71e2Zv7cgsDNQZx4mRm-2rMGNIEjBEQf9JXhNqJctEhJpAJxF_OXhtAHfQb8luZwkoIj0ABnucZeiAyM8hXBIli4f50w5boOybJP_Z2KsCfkKdZgaYWaMUCbyHszsCUGPPs/s320/aif-p4.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p>The rift over character hit points is symptomatic of something more fundamental: during his <a href="https://playingattheworld.blogspot.com/2021/10/game-wizards-d-development-timeline.html">development of the first draft of D&D</a>, Gygax wrote the rules as he saw fit. He drew on system Arneson had sent him, and his experiences playing with Arneson and Dave Megarry, but he showed little deference to Arneson. Once the post-TSR feud between Gygax and Arneson had begun, Gygax claimed (in Dragon #7) that "D&D was not Dave's game system by any form or measure" and that Arneson had "complained bitterly that the game wasn't right." Once this had escalated towards a lawsuit, Arneson would in retaliation portray Gygax as a mere editor of the rules, who had used his editorial prerogative to trample on Arneson's vision. Even in the throes of their dispute, Arneson is clear that Gygax was not just transcribing Blackmoor's vision: "It was very much a case of me providing various ideas and concepts but not having any say as to how they were used." </p><p>After the settlement in 1981 cooled the legal flame war, Arneson elaborated that back in 1973 the Lake Geneva crew "came up with their own version of the rules" and sent them to the Twin Cities, where they became integrated into the play of the Blackmoor campaign as Arneson saw fit - Gygax more than once went on record that Greyhawk and Blackmoor used somewhat different rules in the early days. If we look ahead to 1992, to his remarks to <i>The Gamer </i>magazine, Arneson is more explicit in allocating credit for certain system concepts:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUenOpcvhIp9fhxGirxuJeEDCVPaiApyrDpbjrx2nWT2EgBYvCtgFqK5w1MgkWmwijoj_wiLvomFzfg33091QYY5rTLreGA6l3GEdiZchB21aBgvJEclzoVJ5VZPjm9ZqhKBJX9Mqfh7g/s347/gamer92-arneson.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="266" data-original-width="347" height="153" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUenOpcvhIp9fhxGirxuJeEDCVPaiApyrDpbjrx2nWT2EgBYvCtgFqK5w1MgkWmwijoj_wiLvomFzfg33091QYY5rTLreGA6l3GEdiZchB21aBgvJEclzoVJ5VZPjm9ZqhKBJX9Mqfh7g/w200-h153/gamer92-arneson.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><p>Blackmoor had a diverse character skill system, which in Lake Geneva in 1973 would be honed down into the six canonical D&D abilities. It also seems that the idea that a starting character would choose one of three classes was part of Gygax's contribution. And despite the fact that Arneson would later claim to have derived <a href="https://playingattheworld.blogspot.com/2018/09/why-did-armor-class-descend-from-9-to-2.html">armor class </a>from a naval wargame. here he seems to be attributing that to Lake Geneva as well. But of course, as with the character hit point system, Gygax would never have developed any of this without Blackmoor: as Arneson affirmed, "It was very much a collaboration." </p>Jon Petersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09824427209908111302noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2688079707543352822.post-4033532733727194202021-10-15T13:53:00.002-07:002021-10-15T13:53:45.353-07:00"Game Wizards" the Game<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3kQMT7v5Tb5IVQd1iNkh0Q4zWRdxfDwI_ex6V4FBEJhGp26z00W-hZfiE01K-ChivXXDoobomWNyIc1OappOZn4cLPCxn-iTF8u7BGoJuyJUE6oJS2GUj6RUMtb2AYXVDQqL832W5WLc/s1397/GWdippy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1397" height="206" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3kQMT7v5Tb5IVQd1iNkh0Q4zWRdxfDwI_ex6V4FBEJhGp26z00W-hZfiE01K-ChivXXDoobomWNyIc1OappOZn4cLPCxn-iTF8u7BGoJuyJUE6oJS2GUj6RUMtb2AYXVDQqL832W5WLc/s320/GWdippy.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p><i><a href="https://playingattheworld.blogspot.com/2021/09/game-wizards-my-new-book.html">Game Wizards</a> </i>has "turn results" at the end of the annual chapters to track the big picture, while casting the business of D&D as the sort of game that Gygax and others often made it out to be. Early drafts of the book actually had a 1970s-style <i>Diplomacy </i>variant serialized from the beginning, with installments throughout, which both served as a sort of ersatz <i>dramatis personae </i>and also would have made the chapter closer look more like what you would have seen for turn results in an actual Dippy zine back in the day. I was eventually persuaded it was too obscure and gimmicky, and scaled it back to its current form. But for the amusement of anyone digging into the book now, this is an (unpolished) excerpt of what that might have looked like.</p>Jon Petersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09824427209908111302noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2688079707543352822.post-24718892979191746892021-10-12T13:19:00.002-07:002021-10-12T13:29:32.033-07:00Units of Value and the Tactical Studies Rules Partnership<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlNGYpTY-h7zMgTSILdzo-B1Kpc1UHARMghn2uqEhYkBDlTvlCJ9P3utmG9bR9O1y2OHkRqEfKBPuohQQuerFoOgVl5pzM1is-VV6jjgWlWg_nRElCs18BHfOmCJVLtjp22z8SlA42Vh8/s1116/1975-05-01-arneson-units.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="976" data-original-width="1116" height="175" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlNGYpTY-h7zMgTSILdzo-B1Kpc1UHARMghn2uqEhYkBDlTvlCJ9P3utmG9bR9O1y2OHkRqEfKBPuohQQuerFoOgVl5pzM1is-VV6jjgWlWg_nRElCs18BHfOmCJVLtjp22z8SlA42Vh8/w200-h175/1975-05-01-arneson-units.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><p></p><p>From September 1973 to September 1975, Tactical Studies Rules was a partnership of hobbyists, not a corporation. Under Wisconsin law at the time, partnerships apparently couldn't sell stock shares -- but TSR devised a way to sneak key people some equity in the venture. The above shows the partnership granting five "units of value" to Dave Arneson, on May 1, 1975. So, what were these "units of value"?</p><span><a name='more'></a></span><p>The way the Tactical Studies Rules partnership was structured at the beginning of 1975, three equal partners each held 100 of these "units of value": Don Kaye, Gary Gygax, and Brian Blume. Based on a pretty subjective valuation of TSR's assets, they assigned these units a dollar value of $90 each. So effectively, the stakes of the three partners were originally $9000 each -- though much of that was based on assessments of growth potential, it's not as if the partnership had anywhere near the cash on hand to buy out any of the partners if they hoped to sell their stake.</p><p>After the death of Don Kaye at the end of January 1975, his stake and position in the partnership were taken up by his widow Donna. Although Gygax expressed confidence that she could handle the responsibilities, her working without salary for a gaming partnership was not an arrangement that could last forever. As Donna Kaye was a partner in TSR for only about nine months, documents like this one bearing her signature are not very common.</p><p>Donna Kaye wasn't the only one basically toiling for TSR without a paycheck: Arneson was doing a lot of work in 1975 assisting his friends in the Twin Cities with game projects destined for TSR. In recognition of that, TSR granted him these five "units of value" outright -- effectively a $450 disbursement. That might not seem like a significant sum, but it's in the same ballpark as the total royalties he received for D&D for all of 1974. Arneson was furthermore granted an option to purchase up to 50 more units of value at the $90 price point, which (had he bought them) would have put him on much closer footing to the original three partners.</p><p>This helps us to understand why, in mid-1975, Gygax would report that the TSR partnership was not just a triumvirate -- that there were actually five people in it (Ernie had a few of these "units of value" himself):</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjshv_6IzFaR_6brzThHf4A_z8U867eAJIUVZHG7B4kUYRa0-5nm2IK0Hb-JQIZCeGm9bsP5-_2-ZIwoSUS5sM0akYWP5YTP2uTW6E6GbWKYmPGMhwmPBlc4SyQoEGosHv05c3-8hkX5zc/s700/PZF%252369-tsr-partnership-l.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="700" data-original-width="530" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjshv_6IzFaR_6brzThHf4A_z8U867eAJIUVZHG7B4kUYRa0-5nm2IK0Hb-JQIZCeGm9bsP5-_2-ZIwoSUS5sM0akYWP5YTP2uTW6E6GbWKYmPGMhwmPBlc4SyQoEGosHv05c3-8hkX5zc/w151-h200/PZF%252369-tsr-partnership-l.jpg" width="151" /></a></div><p>Once TSR Hobbies was incorporated and (thanks to an infusion of Blume family capital) acquired the assets of the partnership, all of these "units of value" were cashed out -- I gather that Donna Kaye ultimately accepted somewhat less than $9000 for her family's share. TSR was eager to bring Arneson on board, and he was given an option to buy shares of the new company, but only 10 shares, rather than 50. Gygax and Blume would keep tighter controls over the shares of TSR Hobbies than the "units of value" of the partnership... though as <i><a href="https://playingattheworld.blogspot.com/2021/09/game-wizards-my-new-book.html">Game Wizards</a></i> details, the controls ultimately turned out not to be tight enough.</p>Jon Petersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09824427209908111302noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2688079707543352822.post-61593680134578738982021-10-06T10:18:00.002-07:002021-10-06T13:43:13.250-07:00Game Wizards: D&D Development Timeline<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGOkNDjB05d8dLOEZT_fKBce3htKGyiZy4pnEIW6Iqo1hsa-qnV3jXE4cZIu7hdK-i95HKuUumanaO4uy3Z5Y_zXgD1QRgyH2mUJzaRT2iswYxC0CSIDLx7yF78BJy-KKg3O6xlyWS1rw/s1286/GW-timeline.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="603" data-original-width="1286" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGOkNDjB05d8dLOEZT_fKBce3htKGyiZy4pnEIW6Iqo1hsa-qnV3jXE4cZIu7hdK-i95HKuUumanaO4uy3Z5Y_zXgD1QRgyH2mUJzaRT2iswYxC0CSIDLx7yF78BJy-KKg3O6xlyWS1rw/s320/GW-timeline.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p></p><p>While <i><a href="https://playingattheworld.blogspot.com/2021/09/game-wizards-my-new-book.html">Game Wizards</a> </i>has plenty to say about the big picture of TSR's <a href="https://playingattheworld.blogspot.com/2021/09/game-wizards-tsr-financials.html">corporate financials</a>, it also pays a lot of attention to the early, scrappy days when D&D was more of a hobby than a business to the people who made it. This visual timeline of the 1972-4 process is intentionally pretty high-level, showing sequences of events rather than exact dates, but it is the working model I used for this era as I wrote the book. It is a little different from the timeline certain books (including mine) have given in the past.</p><span><a name='more'></a></span><p>Probably the most dramatic adjustment to the traditionally accepted timeline shown here is dating when Dave Arneson and Dave Megarry made their famous visit to Lake Geneva to demonstrate dungeoneering. I am well aware that this contradicts no small number of sources, including <i>Playing at the World</i>, but ultimately, I no longer believe timelines dating that event circa November 1972 are viable. To quickly summarize:</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>At the end of 1972, Gygax planned to do a third edition of <i>Chainmail </i>for Guidon Games, and having read Arneson's pieces in the <i>Domesday Book </i>and <i>Corner of the Table </i>(as well as private correspondence), he wrote to ask him for any <i>Chainmail </i>modifications developed for Blackmoor, promising credit and a free copy of third edition <i>Chainmail</i> when it appeared. Ever cost-conscious, Gygax often mailed quick blurbs using index cards as post cards:</li></ul><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-6eQabeTaMLHfvNDM1_fxVoYte1NmUgrbICiFzlfUWnA_TKImnn0zPblxkCV7ufgzw1yCG-u_z5ZvFWEkOETR2MWXTCJUOysoC3z2sAWAg16bjASlWKflfJGgsLWqmLDUoR0PNvQ5ziw/s1640/1972-12-15-gygax-arneson.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="994" data-original-width="1640" height="194" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-6eQabeTaMLHfvNDM1_fxVoYte1NmUgrbICiFzlfUWnA_TKImnn0zPblxkCV7ufgzw1yCG-u_z5ZvFWEkOETR2MWXTCJUOysoC3z2sAWAg16bjASlWKflfJGgsLWqmLDUoR0PNvQ5ziw/s320/1972-12-15-gygax-arneson.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div>I don't think it's an understatement to say that grungy index card marked the beginning of their collaboration toward D&D as a product.</div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Arneson basically replied that his <i>Chainmail </i>modifications were "fairly minor," citing his changes to the hit point system, but he characterized Blackmoor as mostly driven by the development of the dungeon, its incorporation of <i>Outdoor Survival </i>(then a very new thing), and its famous referee-driven style of play. He volunteered to send Gygax some "chance tables" from the campaign, which Gygax received and studied in the New Year, but he couldn't see quite how it worked.</li><li>In early 1973, because Megarry hoped that Guidon Games would publish his <i>Dungeon! </i>boardgame, he and Arneson came down to Lake Geneva to demonstrate it to Gygax - the planned date got pushed back, but they apparently got together in the second half of February. After the <i>Dungeon! </i>demo, Arneson ran the group through a Blackmoor adventure, and Gygax was hooked.</li><li>A few weeks later (early April), Gygax wrote back to Arneson, describing the creation of the Greyhawk dungeon and proposing that the pair of them collaborate on publishing rules for dungeon adventuring. (One not insignificant impediment, as the top half of the postcard above hints, was that Guidon had failed to pay Arneson royalties for their earlier <i>Don't Give Up the Ship</i>, and Arneson was not then interested in doing any more work for them). Gygax busily gets writing, and though Arneson sends him more notes, Gygax's attitude was, "I won't even go into the rest of what you said re fantasy until you've seen the rules I've done." </li><li>Gygax sends Arneson the 100-page first draft around mid-1973. Arneson's group begins incorporating some of its concepts into their Blackmoor campaign. Or, as Arneson later described the collaboration in his <i>Pegasus </i>#1 interview: “At the time, they had a lot more spare time than I did and they had a lot of ideas, so they came up with their own version of the rules. They sent theirs to us and we fooled around with them for a while. We exchanged letters for a while and just kind of slipped into it.” Arneson continued to send material on things like magic swords, naval and aerial battles, and so on.</li></ul><p></p><p>Pushing the date of Arneson and Megarry's visit forward leads to a more compressed timeline, where the collaboration of Gygax and Arneson happens largely between the spring and fall of 1973. By the fall, Gygax had embarked on a complete rewrite of the game into its three-volume format (an idea which appears to have originated in the Twin Cities, incidentally).</p><p>The other significant difference in the timeline reflects when first print brown box D&D was actually published. Though TSR printed the three little brown booklets one at a time throughout January, Gygax suggests the last volume did not come back from the printers until the second week of February:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHpdZl6OWEPTrsANkvJWiAjjynvIZymZgu9ccrQV1l6zS5kGPJN3RYDVrnITws-pbUoCqg5hCtpuorueqJX_Gs1KFo1hyH-LcUnttf3DIYQ-heN0Ai6ow7TxknJGiobIUHCLseCG1-XPg/s1643/1974-02-07-gygax-arneson.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="996" data-original-width="1643" height="194" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHpdZl6OWEPTrsANkvJWiAjjynvIZymZgu9ccrQV1l6zS5kGPJN3RYDVrnITws-pbUoCqg5hCtpuorueqJX_Gs1KFo1hyH-LcUnttf3DIYQ-heN0Ai6ow7TxknJGiobIUHCLseCG1-XPg/s320/1974-02-07-gygax-arneson.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p>Regular readers of this blog may be wondering if this new timeline induces me to push back when I celebrate <a href="https://playingattheworld.blogspot.com/2013/12/when-dungeons-dragons-turns-40.html">the anniversary of the publication of D&D</a>, that is, on the last Sunday in January. My earlier posts about this stressed the difficulty of assigning a "release date" to a game produced so informally, pointing out ambiguities like Gygax's claim that January was when TSR received its first order, which could have been true even if the game hadn't been printed yet, etc. Ultimately, I probably won't move my own celebration date, for the reason given on the bottom half of the postcard above: because Gygax could still run the game for a group of 16 on Sundays before the booklets were all back from the printers. But I wouldn't look askance at anyone who raised a glass to D&D on the first (or even second!) Sunday in February instead.</p>Jon Petersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09824427209908111302noreply@blogger.com25tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2688079707543352822.post-31423114316951070712021-09-29T13:15:00.001-07:002021-10-01T09:53:48.125-07:00Game Wizards: TSR Staffing<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFg5JKdm6Z3jDCnZVy0aXgEeK7bG19HPXAuLZqWTWfmM9in11dibXW3dIkzU2t_k60XDpvtCz2Z7fvNGhF51mTJVcmUzfPnWvebeg9wcdNEh7lBNnojAf68v5bOjmaHY2OmCnaloJQuxk/s1280/tsr-headcount.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFg5JKdm6Z3jDCnZVy0aXgEeK7bG19HPXAuLZqWTWfmM9in11dibXW3dIkzU2t_k60XDpvtCz2Z7fvNGhF51mTJVcmUzfPnWvebeg9wcdNEh7lBNnojAf68v5bOjmaHY2OmCnaloJQuxk/s320/tsr-headcount.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p></p><p>The above model, drawn from the narrative of <i><a href="https://playingattheworld.blogspot.com/2021/09/game-wizards-my-new-book.html">Game Wizards</a></i>, shows roughly how many people TSR had on staff between 1976 and 1985. Obviously, staffing fluctuated over a given year, and these plotted points are not anchored to any particular date on the calendar, but they impart a general sense of TSR headcount across its peaks, midpoints, and valleys. At the macro level, staffing ramped up steadily after the Egbert incident, accelerated recklessly in 1982, and then plummeted sharply thereafter. But this isn't the way that Gary Gygax remembered it... and that warrants a bit of explanation.</p><span><a name='more'></a></span><p>Building models like this is always tricky, and TSR's external reporting about its staffing, as with <a href="https://playingattheworld.blogspot.com/2021/09/game-wizards-tsr-financials.html">its finances</a>, was kind of all over the place. I found that the monthly-updated employee telephone directories circulated at the company headquarters do an especially good job of showing when particular clusters of people exited. But of course, TSR had remote offices, including its entire TSR UK subsidiary, that are not always reflected on these lists, and I've adjusted the numbers just a bit for that. So I give my familiar caveat: this is a model, one grounded in the best data I could find.</p><p>The model's estimate of peak TSR staffing at nearly 400 can be reconstructed from the last "official" communication about staff size, in the March 1983 issue of the TSR internal newsletter <i>Random Events </i>(and this apparently reflects a February 14 tally of staffing)<i>:</i></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZtTAtcihCv-xbL00UOZpyvG9izisQ6PrRiieMrVsxEN_NjoYjXrQEWRu3yQHyq7CGGgEkI-B3iW3_RGTDaULj24ha2XMK452OFcaYstL-MyRs89w_Dw6dYaHvB2ThMyGlMWFFyMJGfAg/s586/REmar83-headcount.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="178" data-original-width="586" height="97" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZtTAtcihCv-xbL00UOZpyvG9izisQ6PrRiieMrVsxEN_NjoYjXrQEWRu3yQHyq7CGGgEkI-B3iW3_RGTDaULj24ha2XMK452OFcaYstL-MyRs89w_Dw6dYaHvB2ThMyGlMWFFyMJGfAg/s320/REmar83-headcount.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p></p><p>That figure does not however include the TSR UK subsidiary, which had around 25 employees at the time. And staffing would not peak until June: as the <i>Wall Street Journal </i>helpfully reported later in the year, "10 new people were hired in April, 18 more in May, and 25 in June." Add these all up, and you get a number nearing <b>400 </b>for the midpoint of 1983.</p><p>To track the precipitous decline in TSR staff after Kevin Blume took over as president at the end of June 1983, you need to take into account both large-scale layoffs and more staggered firings, as well as attrition -- no small number of employees who sensed TSR was circling the drain left of their own accord. The big layoffs weren't swept under the rug: TSR actually issued press releases announcing them. Those external communications were summarized in gaming zines like <i>Space Gamer </i>and <i>The Insider</i>, and even picked up by the local weekly <i>Lake Geneva Regional News. </i>Basically, the <i>Game Wizards </i>model relates the headcount drop as follows:</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><b>First Big Cut (June 24, 1983):</b> "TSR Reorganizes", <i>LGRN </i>June 30, 1983 notes "termination of about 40 jobs." <i>Space Gamer </i>#65 relates that TSR "released in excess of 40 employees -- including vice president Duke Seifried." <i>The Insider </i>#7 hints that this is just an initial installment, that "the final tally will be more than 70 individuals. Prior to this the total TSR employee count was rapidly approaching 400." </li><li><b>First Big Cut (Part II)</b>: Throughout July, deeper cuts happened that were quieter on the press release front, but news of them still leaked. The <i>Wall Street Journal </i>reported "in July, [TSR] laid off 100 people." <i>The Insider #8 </i>said: "More firings continue at TSR... this brings the employee count to nearly <b>260 </b>people, a reduction of almost one third of their staff." Basically, TSR's bank required them to shed 30% of their staff before advancing any more money, which took a month's worth of layoffs to achieve.</li><li>(Attrition and gradually squeezing brings headcount down to around <b>225 </b>by March 1984 - mostly cuts included severing the "white metal" miniatures team and slashing the assembly staff).</li><li><b>Second Big Cut (April 4, 1984, "A Day that Will Live in Infamy"): </b>"TSR Reduces Work Force", <i>LGRN </i>April 12, 1984 (56 cut). <i>The Insider </i>#11 reports "Jim Ward, Ed Sollers, Mike Roller, and some 50 others have been given their walking papers. This cuts staff by 25%." <i>Space Gamer </i>#69<i> </i>reports "TSR Lays off 56." I count around <b>170 </b>afterwards (some news reports give 220, which seems to be the number before the cut).</li><li>(Squeezing and attrition continues, and by January 1985, we see around <b>120 </b>- miscellaneous cuts included the last vestiges of the miniatures business, and a tranche of finance people.)</li><li><b>Third Big Cut (March 8, 1985): </b>"TSR Lays off 36 Employees", <i>LGRN </i>March 14, 1985. <i>Space Gamer </i>#74 also reports "TSR has laid off 36 employees from all areas of the company except the design department." The <i>LGRN </i>tells us that "TSR still has about <b>95 </b>employees on its payroll." My count in the months after the layoff bounces around <b>85.</b></li></ul><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlDu7rznjh0Usm5mUbEdW_yojRGv7kxwz7O2iWn4bE41XNVdS5MwtNgE3i-NwVLvH7D9WZm5PeP8BFK5yyeznbz3pb8HINkoou5WWT0xJTAFzztZjWkZO2lRNWpfjqvcQ0Wxrsf7UD6zE/s4606/lgrn-031485-layoff.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4606" data-original-width="3473" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlDu7rznjh0Usm5mUbEdW_yojRGv7kxwz7O2iWn4bE41XNVdS5MwtNgE3i-NwVLvH7D9WZm5PeP8BFK5yyeznbz3pb8HINkoou5WWT0xJTAFzztZjWkZO2lRNWpfjqvcQ0Wxrsf7UD6zE/w151-h200/lgrn-031485-layoff.jpg" width="151" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div>But that's not exactly how Gygax recalled it. In the 2000s, he <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/the-ultimate-interview-with-gary-gygax.661637/">gave a long interview to Ciro Alessandro Sacco</a> that discussed Gygax's final years at TSR, one that is widely known on the Internet. Famously, Gygax painted a broad picture where Brian and Kevin Blume were responsible for radically overextending the company while Gygax unknowingly pursued his Hollywood ambitions. </div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span>As Gygax enumerated the causes of "the debt position that the corporation found itself in in 1984," he mentioned "TSR was over-staffed, 300 plus employees." But Sacco had done his homework, and seen some of the press coverage above, so he asked Gygax about the </span><i>Space Gamer</i><span> #65<i> </i>piece detailing 1983 layoffs
at TSR. Gygax basically denied it: </span></span><span><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Discharged
employees were rehired or replaced all too soon.”</span> </span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span>Now, it is true that a select few were rehired - Ed Sollers (an editor), who is above mentioned exiting in April 1984, would be back on payroll by the beginning of 1985. And of course, tactical new hires were made to keep TSR functional over this period -- just ten or twenty times fewer hires than there were staff reductions. A</span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span>t the macro level, Kevin Blume presided over TSR at a time of near-constant terminations, and employment would not reach the heights of June 1983 again. </span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span>It wasn't a pleasant time to be running the company, which was constantly menaced by banks, creditors, lawyers, and outside directors. </span></span>The hiring that fatally overextended TSR had happened during the turbulent "Year of the Three Presidents" in 1982, while Gygax was at least nominally in charge -- though effectively, the company was out of control then, and there is no shortage of people to blame for that. But by mid-1984, the total headcount was less than half its 1983 high. And by the time Gygax resumed the presidency of TSR in March 1985, staffing had already returned to circa-1980 levels, so (once some nasty accounting charges were dealt with) TSR's lower overhead had positioned the company for its return to profitability in 1986.</div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span>There are similar difficulties with other proposed causes for TSR's financial troubles that Gygax lists in the Sacco interview, which I won't get into here. </span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span>All of this is just to explain that <i>Game Wizards </i>will differ from the narrative that Gygax related to Sacco -- but not for want of familiarity with it and similar statements Gygax made elsewhere.</span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span> </span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span>I am not asking readers to take my word over Gygax's: I don't have a "word," I just have models like the staffing one sourced as shown above, and readers can judge for themselves whether that sourcing is more reliable than Gygax's recollection on these points.</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">Let me finally add that I don't mean to pick on Gygax here:</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> lots of people</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> remembered their traumatic TSR experience their own way, decades after the fact. As Gygax held the Blumes responsible for his ouster in 1985, it's no shock that he doesn't remember them fondly.</span></div><p></p>Jon Petersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09824427209908111302noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2688079707543352822.post-41351785699277663612021-09-16T10:21:00.003-07:002021-09-16T17:31:08.469-07:00Game Wizards: TSR Financials<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0NOnUHMgGrxMP9LgTNyf62Afr9JWoEDeNfEKz-fHkljaVTPqV7xhyphenhyphenij43KIliq1Pxt5Fk-6bUV4Ay0jZ2H4WXf9EaEehvI2eJH1t-IjPugw3h7gaonkUNZ9XR0UnYoYIWyCFh3gntd8k/s1280/TSR-Financials-slide1.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0NOnUHMgGrxMP9LgTNyf62Afr9JWoEDeNfEKz-fHkljaVTPqV7xhyphenhyphenij43KIliq1Pxt5Fk-6bUV4Ay0jZ2H4WXf9EaEehvI2eJH1t-IjPugw3h7gaonkUNZ9XR0UnYoYIWyCFh3gntd8k/s320/TSR-Financials-slide1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p>Underpinning the business story of <i>Game Wizards</i> is the financial model shown here of TSR as a company, from the founding of TSR Hobbies in 1975 to the ouster of Gary Gygax at the end of 1985. Although it leaves out coverage of the earliest years, this chart is in effect the narrative of <i>Game Wizards </i>visualized: it also locates major events on the timeline, and along the very bottom shows who was running the company when. So where does this data come from?</p><span><a name='more'></a></span><p>Before the comments below begin to fill in with citations of magazine articles, newspaper reports and late Gygax interviews where contradictory numbers are volunteered for various revenue years, let me reiterate that what is shown above is a model. TSR's external communications about these figures, even in very reputable publications (the <i>Wall Street Journal</i>, say), were all over the place. So, I built this model from the best data sources I could find. Of those, I believe the most authoritative are the audited financials that TSR's external accounting firms vetted. Here, for example, are the results for 1978:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4lqmdKH24xlotsx71qgJynG88ui7hMgzp_LGi3tQjliG91YUtJcDHAythcbKlc1G-GI0l_4gA5Wy8kmWca9OmR4BhcW92jSu6L5jSNWescE0-aP9AazD31wJa7dbzjI2mVl2CRdc3iOY/s988/tsr-1978-fincancials.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="988" data-original-width="802" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4lqmdKH24xlotsx71qgJynG88ui7hMgzp_LGi3tQjliG91YUtJcDHAythcbKlc1G-GI0l_4gA5Wy8kmWca9OmR4BhcW92jSu6L5jSNWescE0-aP9AazD31wJa7dbzjI2mVl2CRdc3iOY/w163-h200/tsr-1978-fincancials.jpg" width="163" /></a></div><p>So, in my model above, the <b>blue line</b> charts the net sales (less returns, allowances, and so on) marked here by blue arrows, and the <b>orange line</b> tracks profits per the orange arrows. Sometimes, publicly reported revenue figures will track the top number instead; that's not what I chose for the model. These audited financials are always handy in that they show the previous year for comparison's sake. Unfortunately, we don't always have these figures to work with - for the early years TSR's finances were not professionally audited (there may have been some "creative accounting" around then), and building any model like this there are always going to be some gaps and ambiguities.</p><p>Looking at the model on a macro level, there's a pretty big jump after 1979 earnings: that of course was due to the disappearance of James Dallas Egbert III and the resulting media frenzy around D&D. This time is one of the few places in <i>Game Wizards </i>where I go into a deep dive on sales numbers, to try to track the precise impact on sales from all the resulting notoriety. To source those figures, we go to examples like this, of TSR's quarterly unit sales: </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7P6bxIwI0LIAhx0POuj6ircdNSaop9KlLf6dXywspm5i8CXh6chtLK7aUiaBwTKne1gTHyKMIGm60FzsMxKtF3aeisXuo2gGCmEXQ_OV6uDb-0aueaUKr3HfOjW1wtj34VJae5vKH0DU/s1000/tsr-1979q3-sales.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="790" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7P6bxIwI0LIAhx0POuj6ircdNSaop9KlLf6dXywspm5i8CXh6chtLK7aUiaBwTKne1gTHyKMIGm60FzsMxKtF3aeisXuo2gGCmEXQ_OV6uDb-0aueaUKr3HfOjW1wtj34VJae5vKH0DU/w158-h200/tsr-1979q3-sales.jpg" width="158" /></a></div><p>This is a format TSR used to socialize quarterly sales: they took a standard contemporary order blank and filled in unit sales for the past three months in the far right column. The date circled at the top (September 79) shows the month ending the quarter for these sales, so these are for Q3 1979. Since the Egbert incident only started to play out in the second week of September, a sharp rise of in sales of the Holmes <i>Basic Set </i>and other D&D products has only started to register here: probably more than half of the sales for the <i>Basic Set </i>shown here came in September alone. And in the quarters to come, those sales would rise dramatically.</p><p>There are plenty of pedantic details in all this, and this model draws attention to one in particular: not long after sales started to take off, TSR moved forward their fiscal year end from September to June, so effectively 1981 was only a nine-month fiscal year. TSR made this their fiscal calendar going forward, which was closer to when rivals like Avalon Hill reported their earnings. This makes 1981 revenue look like it barely moved up at all - but that's only because the second half of 1981 was counted towards their 1982 reporting. It turned out that Q3 1981 was particularly strong for earnings, and this became the source of the some of the most egregious distortions in TSR's public statements about its revenue: you will often see numbers of $16M or so claimed for 1981, but that is just borrowing for that year a quarter that doesn't belong to it.</p><p>After consistent year-over-year doubling (or even quadrupling), game sales began to plateau after 1981 -- but that isn't to say that sales of the core D&D products were steady over the following years. The core books were down sharply in 1982, and then back up in 1983 with the release of the new covers for the main AD&D books as well as Mentzer's new <i>Basic Rules</i>, and then promptly dropped a year later. We don't see that reflected much in my model because this was a period when D&D revenue began to rely more on sales of accessories, especially modules. Take a look at some TSR module and accessory sales figures for calendar year (not fiscal year!) 1983:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiSLR4vxASS_RoOFcpxhTBQzmT8kw5_Wk9wwho0jJAyhqN_ibBcA5RYhI0EAXGiDjkXTgBAZusgjqpQOCnQzAvWlsmA5XCOTdYlvIj6uwp7vmhvcm07gJvwqBN727VEqAIn2H9GcSV7g4/s1087/tsr-1983-module-sales.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1087" data-original-width="767" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiSLR4vxASS_RoOFcpxhTBQzmT8kw5_Wk9wwho0jJAyhqN_ibBcA5RYhI0EAXGiDjkXTgBAZusgjqpQOCnQzAvWlsmA5XCOTdYlvIj6uwp7vmhvcm07gJvwqBN727VEqAIn2H9GcSV7g4/w141-h200/tsr-1983-module-sales.jpg" width="141" /></a></div><p>Modules sold well - really well. I've <a href="https://medium.com/@increment/quagmire-the-making-of-a-1980s-d-d-module-c30e788ea5f2">written before</a> about how TSR tasked its growing design staff with churning these out in the early 1980s. The top 45 modules alone delivered over 3 million unit sales for TSR in 1983. That income smoothed over the volatility in core book sales. </p><p>But games weren't the only part of TSR's business story by that time: the advent of the publishing business at TSR, initially via the <i>Endless Quest </i>books, began to have a significant impact on revenue. We can then start to mark the <b>grey line</b> in the model, tracking game sales, which are broken out in some of the audited financials (but not all - the dotted line is just my projection). Everything above it is publishing, licensing, and so on. Dragonlance of course only starts to factor in at the tail end of this model.</p><p>For some years, I couldn't always find the authoritative figures I wanted. In 1985, for example, the audited financials were so bad that TSR apparently suppressed them -- I've never seen a copy. But we can still arrive at numbers through other sources. During the last of the law suits that <i>Game Wizards </i>covers, Lorraine Williams testified on January 20, 1986 as follows:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRor48hLfnFylqc6mcJFNi2JhXni-sdNpEMZXUepDDFwiGU70U3TexUNVkaPPxPpgazukTDDok5WZ5G-lLmex2SeNNUnZnQsIAlg8QZm9GRnmfDxPfNtqeb7liDPo7cHVXDLAYS0EzTR4/s711/tsr-1986-earnings-williams.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="394" data-original-width="711" height="177" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRor48hLfnFylqc6mcJFNi2JhXni-sdNpEMZXUepDDFwiGU70U3TexUNVkaPPxPpgazukTDDok5WZ5G-lLmex2SeNNUnZnQsIAlg8QZm9GRnmfDxPfNtqeb7liDPo7cHVXDLAYS0EzTR4/s320/tsr-1986-earnings-williams.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p>I wouldn't really be sold on a data point like that, even in sworn testimony, without some way of corroborating it. By comparing the retained earnings of the 1984 audit with the figures for 1986 (an old cantrip employed by financial sorcerers), the precise sum my model derives for TSR's 1985 loss is <span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt;">$3,856,169</span>.</p><p>So, sometimes you have to fill in gaps doing a model like this - I have no illusions that the results will be perfect. But I hope this gives a sense of the sorts of sources that <i>Game Wizards </i>used. Since I didn't want to make the book feel even more dense by cramming it with charts like this, I thought I'd share it here instead. It was useful to me as I tried to keep all this straight.</p><p><br /></p>Jon Petersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09824427209908111302noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2688079707543352822.post-25767818166511614842021-09-12T11:10:00.012-07:002021-11-07T14:13:40.009-08:00Game Wizards: My New Book<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBOdgtNftBlHRt48PVCkSILmEUQ7Cy9vekLjYImg55E19kmOv-N1NFkCs9jsOF-gJ1EL-L7y3MGj5rXPNXMyxIPR4m0UrLQKEcf-uBASUpwDmARf7uxdtVVMmdNTOgIJmvR2iZHB81bzQ/s827/cover.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="827" data-original-width="550" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBOdgtNftBlHRt48PVCkSILmEUQ7Cy9vekLjYImg55E19kmOv-N1NFkCs9jsOF-gJ1EL-L7y3MGj5rXPNXMyxIPR4m0UrLQKEcf-uBASUpwDmARf7uxdtVVMmdNTOgIJmvR2iZHB81bzQ/w133-h200/cover.jpg" width="133" /></a></div><p>I have a new book coming out next month called <i><a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/game-wizards">Game Wizards</a></i>. Unlike my previous books, which are histories of game design, this is an early history of Dungeons & Dragons as a product: of how it came to be a product at all, of the people who made it, of its unlikely success, and of the battles that its success caused. If you've read my "<a href="https://medium.com/@increment/the-ambush-at-sheridan-springs-3a29d07f6836">Ambush at Sheridan Springs</a>" article from 2014, this is a book-length expansion of its story. It follows the business journey of D&D, as well its creators, from their hobbyist origins up to Gary Gygax's ouster from TSR in 1985.</p><span><a name='more'></a></span><p>I won't sketch much of an outline here of the period <i>Game Wizards </i>covers: most people reading this already know it well enough. The purpose of this work, as with other things I've written, is to furnish enough context to show why things happened the way they did. <i>Game Wizards </i>details:</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>How small the wargame rules "business" was, and the unlikelihood of making a living from it,</li><li>The impact of Gen Con and its rival conventions on the rise of TSR,</li><li>How the collaboration between Gygax and Arneson on D&D began,</li><li>The circumstances of Dave Arneson's departure from TSR, and his subsequent legal challenges,</li><li>The advantages and disadvantages of the Satanic Panic for TSR and D&D,</li><li>Just how lucrative D&D was, and how TSR Hobbies nonetheless managed to fatally overextend,</li><li>How mechanically Gygax lost control of TSR (in more detail than the "Ambush"), and</li><li>How the protagonists in this story shaped a narrative around these events, both in real time and in hindsight.</li></ul><p></p><p></p><p>As usual, I've grounded this narrative in archival work with correspondence, internal TSR documents, fanzines, media reporting, court filings, and related ephemera. But where I'd usually be leveraging those to show the evolution of games systems, here I'm chasing pay stubs, audits, stock certificates, contracts, business propaganda, and so on. Looking at the story of D&D through this corporate lens reveals causes and effects that simply don't show up otherwise. The story isn't pretty--in fact, in many places it's a total train wreck. But you need to immerse yourself in that drama to see what it all obscures.</p><p>Although <i>Game Wizards </i>is kind of long (not like <i>PatW </i>long, mind you), the original manuscript was far longer, and I made a lot of hard decisions winnowing it down into its final form. In the coming weeks, I'll do a few more blog posts about the sources used by this narrative and some of the side quests that got cut, which I'll link to from here:</p><p><b><a href="https://playingattheworld.blogspot.com/2021/09/game-wizards-tsr-financials.html">TSR financials, fiscal 1975-1986</a></b></p><p><a href="https://playingattheworld.blogspot.com/2021/09/game-wizards-tsr-staffing.html"><b>TSR Staffing 1976-1985</b></a></p><p><a href="https://playingattheworld.blogspot.com/2021/10/game-wizards-d-development-timeline.html"><b>Early D&D Development Timeline 1972-1974</b></a></p><p><a href="https://playingattheworld.blogspot.com/2021/10/units-of-value-and-tactical-studies.html"><b>Units of Value and the Tactical Studies Rules Partnership</b></a></p><p><b><a href="https://playingattheworld.blogspot.com/2021/10/game-wizards-has-turn-results-at-end-of.html">"Game Wizards" the Game</a></b></p><p><b><a href="https://playingattheworld.blogspot.com/2021/10/game-wizards-evolution-of-tsr-contracts.html">The Evolution of TSR Contracts</a></b></p><p><b><a href="https://playingattheworld.blogspot.com/2021/11/arneson-v-gygax-freeman-deposition.html">Arneson v. Gygax: The Freeman Deposition</a></b></p><p><b>[More coming]</b></p><p>Three things <i>Game Wizards </i>does not try to do:</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Trace a history of ideas and innovations. Really, this is not a history of who invented what. It is, however, a history of how people started arguing over who invented what.</li><li>Take anyone's side. This book approaches Gygax, Arneson, the Blumes, and Williams as rational actors who all were struggling to make their way in a basically unprecedented business. Missteps of various kinds were made by everyone -- but D&D is still with us, almost fifty years later, so everyone at least succeeded in getting the ball rolling.</li><li>Settle everything forever. In my opinion, the study of D&D and RPGs is still in its infancy (maybe it's beginning to toddle). This is the most plausible story I could patch together from the data points I've seen. More evidence will come to light, and more work will need to be done.</li></ul><p></p><p>Three things <i>Game Wizards </i>does try to do:</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Let people speak for themselves. This is basically a chronological history, with most chapters covering a single year, and I try to let Gygax, Arneson, and everyone else explain themselves in direct contemporary quotations wherever possible. There may be a certain tension between these statements at the time (especially before 1978) and things they said later.</li><li>Have at least a little bit of fun. This is a dense book, make no mistake. But, it's got this thing where we treat the years like <i>Diplomacy </i>turns, and there are turn results at chapter ends. There are some fun illustrations by my old friend <a href="http://www.coreypress.com/">Drew Meger</a>, (who did the <i>PatW </i>illustrations). And check out the <a href="https://mudpuppycomics.com/games/">Jim Wampler</a> minis on the cover! Okay, I know I'm not fooling anyone, this is a dense book. </li><li>Correct some of my previous misapprehensions. The narrative here has a more solid evidentiary foundation for certain historical points than <i>PatW </i>did. It cites sources I would have loved to have seen back then (and includes a few pictures of them as well). </li></ul><p></p><p>If it sounds interesting, you can find <i>Game Wizards </i>at the usual places (including for <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Game-Wizards-Dungeons-Dragons-Histories/dp/0262542951/">pre-order on Amazon</a> or <a href="https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/game-wizards-jon-peterson/1138610499">Barnes & Noble</a>).</p>Jon Petersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09824427209908111302noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2688079707543352822.post-72486754671884169552021-05-10T15:22:00.010-07:002021-05-10T16:14:39.649-07:00The Sansu Set d10<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZHGvU6EKzMPgGaqWaxzmUazhNPJhkB_M8aWRBSMTjx8C7DAvIWYNWadkLzXYO8O0w_2ZSr_3naggIphnMjk-YszLVwgyFlDT_K37K1FEaUWuXbpx6P5CidfSmF-SMdNo5AY1KKehwwYU/s1200/sansu-d10s.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="700" data-original-width="1200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZHGvU6EKzMPgGaqWaxzmUazhNPJhkB_M8aWRBSMTjx8C7DAvIWYNWadkLzXYO8O0w_2ZSr_3naggIphnMjk-YszLVwgyFlDT_K37K1FEaUWuXbpx6P5CidfSmF-SMdNo5AY1KKehwwYU/s320/sansu-d10s.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p>Scouring through the <a href="https://playingattheworld.blogspot.com/2020/02/identifying-dice-of-1970s.html">polyhedral dice available to early gamers</a>, you can sometimes stumble across a peculiar looking ten-sided die numbered 0 through 9. While these are obscure dice in America, they are well known in Japan, where they were included in an elementary school toolkit called a "Sansuu Setto" (<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: MS Gothic;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">さんすうセット</span>,</span></span> or <span style="font-size: x-small;">算数セット</span>), which just means "arithmetic set." Today, let's unbox a Sansu Set, and look at a few variations on the d10s you can find within.</p><span><a name='more'></a></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVCICYMrgBlsCHWcNCy1rSkX7wFFdPi9q8QopgieA_UDtwv8aDJRbhvegCyVFxAcPFhGkqDnbGW7NfzgL5FZxkByyA0qll_spYx-niH9jjhK9IyT740qhpGp4b2OvuniZi-tJbRBq8gm8/s1200/sansu-colors.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="293" data-original-width="1200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVCICYMrgBlsCHWcNCy1rSkX7wFFdPi9q8QopgieA_UDtwv8aDJRbhvegCyVFxAcPFhGkqDnbGW7NfzgL5FZxkByyA0qll_spYx-niH9jjhK9IyT740qhpGp4b2OvuniZi-tJbRBq8gm8/s320/sansu-colors.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p>The Sansu Set d10 is a truncated octahedron used to help children learn counting as well as basic addition and subtraction. Japanese arithmetic sets have <a href="http://mabochan.heya.jp/old/sun/sch_29.htm">a rich history</a> -- they apparently go back to 1940s, and even some pre-war examples survive, though those early sets relied on six-sided dice. The dice shown above come from a Sansu Set manufactured by <a href="https://www.aob.co.jp/syohin/kyouzai_sansuu.html">Aoba</a>, which shipped as an adorable box:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigr9MK8dBMxZpxsC5tNqXZ2hngmVY7P3rdl6PozDvDTPxzbi7wthKTN_Ue0LeUZwaLZgVAwSRB5TGFufZRaVc3rzUSbql1370D2LhCy4dotUCD93wgmAkFI76XDDFxpkBjSN2_CycUdFI/s1200/sansu-box-cover.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="903" data-original-width="1200" height="151" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigr9MK8dBMxZpxsC5tNqXZ2hngmVY7P3rdl6PozDvDTPxzbi7wthKTN_Ue0LeUZwaLZgVAwSRB5TGFufZRaVc3rzUSbql1370D2LhCy4dotUCD93wgmAkFI76XDDFxpkBjSN2_CycUdFI/w200-h151/sansu-box-cover.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><p>Inside, you can find a variety of small plastic containers with everything you might need to master math:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisZuYWQTRanFR4_1gdPT9SxATLeBlsu3h83Cp5LLM2BtK82oeaXyghvRXtxR6Eaq8OMq6sSWcFdhE0_ByhtII4FuZmwIK90bYsJMEUhrQKntg0r-SQcG246UezHVUBoAcVZUICHEB9CCA/s1200/sansu-box-inside.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1123" data-original-width="1200" height="187" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisZuYWQTRanFR4_1gdPT9SxATLeBlsu3h83Cp5LLM2BtK82oeaXyghvRXtxR6Eaq8OMq6sSWcFdhE0_ByhtII4FuZmwIK90bYsJMEUhrQKntg0r-SQcG246UezHVUBoAcVZUICHEB9CCA/w200-h187/sansu-box-inside.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>Note that the sheet of paper on the bottom of the box introduces these red and yellow d10s. Each die even has a little sticker attached when you first open a new set. A number of companies would go on to make d10s in this style, and you can find examples beyond yellow and red in blue, green, black, and white. Some variations put bars under the "6" and "9" to help differentiate them:<div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3dGTPFcGYuBEZ_sv7f5XDbc54EJ_hqmJEXU6R_NUlsKq8yZu9ZbLYmsx8GF-UGcy66uojtbiai6fbDlM-WQ_qC6L5egZ6CoPK4dw-Tl2ahyphenhyphenwwcBgp7MVsJsxG7PwvTVfz8rlZn9Q-aTQ/s1000/sansu-d10s-alt.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="929" data-original-width="1000" height="186" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3dGTPFcGYuBEZ_sv7f5XDbc54EJ_hqmJEXU6R_NUlsKq8yZu9ZbLYmsx8GF-UGcy66uojtbiai6fbDlM-WQ_qC6L5egZ6CoPK4dw-Tl2ahyphenhyphenwwcBgp7MVsJsxG7PwvTVfz8rlZn9Q-aTQ/w200-h186/sansu-d10s-alt.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><p>Truncated octahedrons don't roll particularly well, and it's a bit of a puzzler why these sets didn't use something more along the lines of the <a href="https://playingattheworld.blogspot.com/2020/02/identifying-dice-of-1970s.html">Japanese Standards Association dice</a>. But a great many manufacturers worldwide have made similar truncated pyramid d10s over the years: in the wargaming community, Lou Zocchi proposed constructing a d10 this way as far back as May 1971:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiz2RH0FJ0y9qDSpnFjC9mjk9TM17fy8lH2OCWU4FnC2W7m-vOsK7M-AeJw6Et-Py3i1NhGMRGtq0In0zVvBuXAALpaP-8Bs4wpcWcJY8Q_NrUOLRHbi6Dw3dJQ6q9U-KWLwykYTDnNpsI/s646/wgn%2523110-zocchi-d10.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="328" data-original-width="646" height="101" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiz2RH0FJ0y9qDSpnFjC9mjk9TM17fy8lH2OCWU4FnC2W7m-vOsK7M-AeJw6Et-Py3i1NhGMRGtq0In0zVvBuXAALpaP-8Bs4wpcWcJY8Q_NrUOLRHbi6Dw3dJQ6q9U-KWLwykYTDnNpsI/w200-h101/wgn%2523110-zocchi-d10.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><p>It's a little beyond my ken to propose any dates for the various incarnations of the Sansu Set -- the example I show above seems to be from the 1980s -- though I'd appreciate any insights from readers who know more about Japan than I do. The dice were also sold separately, for example, as Dr. Kobayashi's "Thinking Play" (<span style="font-size: x-small;">考える遊び</span>) ten-sided dice. Sansu Sets with these dice are very common on the secondary market in Japan, and although sets continue to be manufactured today, more recent sets do not carry these peculiar d10s. You are more likely to find in them a d12 which has both a "0" and a "10", as well as two "5"'s:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh01wLiNaXVFY-lQlbqVF6bEfDOf0ghy_SPhJIg5scEh8ZQEmc4J2BpKPW9vTK9S2_LK09SBrcnT5zg_DJwOCPfkGxgsnCVQZqlls6l75JACKUbWZLGOYfA9as0MXu57hNDnAyOcVVOOsU/s1200/sansu-d12s.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="716" data-original-width="1200" height="119" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh01wLiNaXVFY-lQlbqVF6bEfDOf0ghy_SPhJIg5scEh8ZQEmc4J2BpKPW9vTK9S2_LK09SBrcnT5zg_DJwOCPfkGxgsnCVQZqlls6l75JACKUbWZLGOYfA9as0MXu57hNDnAyOcVVOOsU/w200-h119/sansu-d12s.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><p>Another variation still in production today for educational purposes is these truncated dodecahedrons numbered "1" to "10", with two very small faces labeled "0" and "<span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: "Nimbus Roman No9 L", "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 16.52px; white-space: nowrap;">∞":</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9k6YFgq0fx931OzvZJ4RFPSjMVfoBJSksz2bmpgr7VJPT2TapSQuan3MQRABdaNopJSYIwFyGieHz_BoN2x_7tzjVss-SS10wsRByydvJtuh_AIVlsLlHX2y9SAtBhyphenhyphenr2HZSoqtXCfPc/s1200/sansu-truncd12s.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="643" data-original-width="1200" height="107" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9k6YFgq0fx931OzvZJ4RFPSjMVfoBJSksz2bmpgr7VJPT2TapSQuan3MQRABdaNopJSYIwFyGieHz_BoN2x_7tzjVss-SS10wsRByydvJtuh_AIVlsLlHX2y9SAtBhyphenhyphenr2HZSoqtXCfPc/w200-h107/sansu-truncd12s.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><br /><span style="color: #202122; font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; white-space: nowrap;">Now what game systems might you try to build with those dice...</span></span><p></p></div>Jon Petersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09824427209908111302noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2688079707543352822.post-29717083093488667312021-05-03T12:43:00.002-07:002021-05-03T12:50:16.408-07:00The Edmund Scientific Polyhedron Set (1966)<p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgD2c1lHzqmJ_U_RxFc4yeYT3-C1n_Eh3MYadOcqxowdmDX5SdIYLUYniOUsqpKetNdV5qa8Dd8wSIZ6mAZAl9b_C-07CP3w7KI5vaGs8GkqgpLu-inDJfjtzRFW-YKAJ2_BaghKp_Rg9k/s2000/es-set-cls.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="2000" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgD2c1lHzqmJ_U_RxFc4yeYT3-C1n_Eh3MYadOcqxowdmDX5SdIYLUYniOUsqpKetNdV5qa8Dd8wSIZ6mAZAl9b_C-07CP3w7KI5vaGs8GkqgpLu-inDJfjtzRFW-YKAJ2_BaghKp_Rg9k/s320/es-set-cls.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p>In cataloging the p<a href="https://playingattheworld.blogspot.com/2020/02/identifying-dice-of-1970s.html">olyhedral dice available to early gamers,</a> we shouldn't neglect a few products that weren't marketed as dice at all. In the 1960s, educational supply companies made models of the regular polyhedra available for classroom use, like the classic Edmund Scientific set shown above. Although they are unnumbered, a flick of the pen (or marker) might fix that. The question is, how well would they have served as dice?</p><span><a name='more'></a></span><p>Unmarked plastic polyhedra could be found for sale in the Edmund Scientific Catalog for 1966, which shows them packaged in a set with a variety of other non-Platonic geometric shapes, though the Regular Polyhedron set could also be purchased separately for $2.50: </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkVLqkO56_aRTLm4Xr_qj38zoUD7vRxd7naNpvLZxUBq0xjZaxGHiIOrmrPCuQGWKb2ONgni9DmGAnCjnJyqLX-xfRZP5Ad1q6qhQgKhCsXV2Kj4b0tsqBhnHySN4F2EswqiJJnrIxLf0/s1061/1966-edmund-scientific-polyhedra-cls.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1022" data-original-width="1061" height="193" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkVLqkO56_aRTLm4Xr_qj38zoUD7vRxd7naNpvLZxUBq0xjZaxGHiIOrmrPCuQGWKb2ONgni9DmGAnCjnJyqLX-xfRZP5Ad1q6qhQgKhCsXV2Kj4b0tsqBhnHySN4F2EswqiJJnrIxLf0/w200-h193/1966-edmund-scientific-polyhedra-cls.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><p>We may note that among the suggested uses of these solids, dice are not mentioned. But since they are Platonic solids made from "solid orange plastic," they should be able to roll fairly while keeping their edges; they promise to "take all the punishment even a class of youngsters can give." Considering them as dice, the Edmund Scientific octahedron is a bit smaller than later polyhedra sold as dice, and the tetrahedron is noticeably larger. As a size comparison, here's what they look like next to the Creative Publications polyhedral set:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoPbTOYgi-SN1krsN_FeGeWOsNE-UFQHU_6koBLrM8nHIaQyp2zagsg4Z5z-Ca1y6sdn6oG3sl4JJuNWDCO-j_tdAtpgpj7pkvB6R4jfKwXwLwtSvJtebvq9WW3iw-Qd5SJ00UdBm2OPY/s2000/es-cp-compare2-cls.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="456" data-original-width="2000" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoPbTOYgi-SN1krsN_FeGeWOsNE-UFQHU_6koBLrM8nHIaQyp2zagsg4Z5z-Ca1y6sdn6oG3sl4JJuNWDCO-j_tdAtpgpj7pkvB6R4jfKwXwLwtSvJtebvq9WW3iw-Qd5SJ00UdBm2OPY/s320/es-cp-compare2-cls.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p>The <a href="https://playingattheworld.blogspot.com/2020/11/fredda-sieve-and-her-1963-zazz-dice.html">Zazz polyspheres from 1963</a> demonstrate that you could take simple plastic molds of the Platonic solids and turn them into dice: only the d6 in that set has molded numerals, the remainder are all hand-inked. And indeed it is not unheard of today for manufacturers like Chessex and Koplow to sell blank polyhedra as dice to be inked by gamers in whichever fiendish way they see fit: </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieWT7JzbaBszKNOmEJSkScQ9CtvQUayr1b5j25pO7331SnzlNOwPIi2JKdgh0r0FmKysGAXlXoKv9C1CkwAQ02n5p9iK-4FXGb_xtHOBPC8N4GexTcoBE3Crgj6sACeLApj4p_s7OyyyE/s1200/handinked.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="357" data-original-width="1200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieWT7JzbaBszKNOmEJSkScQ9CtvQUayr1b5j25pO7331SnzlNOwPIi2JKdgh0r0FmKysGAXlXoKv9C1CkwAQ02n5p9iK-4FXGb_xtHOBPC8N4GexTcoBE3Crgj6sACeLApj4p_s7OyyyE/s320/handinked.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p>When it comes to the Edmund Scientific dice, the plastic is so polished and reflective that you might have been hard pressed to find a suitable marker for them. Also, international safety orange is perhaps not the most versatile color as a backdrop for inking. And in order to use the tetrahedron as a die, you would need to <a href="https://playingattheworld.blogspot.com/2021/03/the-invention-of-d4.html">solve the d4 problem</a>. But the Edmund Scientific polyhedra might well have been the first polyhedral dice that some gamers rolled.</p>Jon Petersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09824427209908111302noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2688079707543352822.post-51956626315225793562021-04-04T12:14:00.007-07:002022-04-30T06:21:24.214-07:00A Date for Monsters! Monsters! Monsters! Galore<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAKgZP_jSABNgchvBfunnIRTiETAogFYNMf4NyoL6bENcoTJMknkgrLHftVX2dTGzQV322FgDegWN8D106ubUq7iPshbNsdOdxY0p0MbhntUt27weOqHj-sqw5ql3HjwjjBf-HwtZB-IQ/s1000/1980-MMMG-cover.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="636" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAKgZP_jSABNgchvBfunnIRTiETAogFYNMf4NyoL6bENcoTJMknkgrLHftVX2dTGzQV322FgDegWN8D106ubUq7iPshbNsdOdxY0p0MbhntUt27weOqHj-sqw5ql3HjwjjBf-HwtZB-IQ/w127-h200/1980-MMMG-cover.jpg" width="127" /></a></div><p></p><p>Everything leaves a trace. That's been my guiding principle researching the history of early wargames and role-playing games: any commercial product that survives, no matter how obscure, had to be available somewhere and somehow, and that means a paper trail. All too often the products themselves give us little indication of when they were made, as was the case with today's subject, <i><a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/rpgitem/297264/monsters-monsters-monsters-galore">Monsters! Monsters! Monsters! Galore</a></i>. But with the help of distributor catalogs, we can show how it became available in 1980.</p><span><a name='more'></a></span><p>Plenty of copies of this booklet survive. It's in <a href="https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/game-monsters-monsters-monsters-galore/SwHakUEG1No59Q?hl=en">the collection of the Strong</a>, and has been attested on the <a href="http://www.tomeoftreasures.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=4722&sid=1e58b1bdc8cc5bfcb1e897f86d35798f">sorts of sites</a> that track obscure RPG supplements. But although the game is attributed to Raymond Robertson and Clifford Robertson, it offers no indication of when it was published: <i>Heroic Worlds </i>can only give a one-sentence take on the booklet with the postscript "no publisher or date listed." The Foreword to the book at least explains that Raymond and Clifford are brothers.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgt0hgZdyQC7AWjVItvKQ2qjaYRmYRUBdC0tVConatamP33CV47aacRMhcmlG6PswM0dmQERekwsZzNGYL-6poqoOMMriEoSVFqWxOXmd4fLjOaSCuOgitng6mukii3V6I9CkUvEyozp8g/s800/1980-MMMG-foreword.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="356" data-original-width="800" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgt0hgZdyQC7AWjVItvKQ2qjaYRmYRUBdC0tVConatamP33CV47aacRMhcmlG6PswM0dmQERekwsZzNGYL-6poqoOMMriEoSVFqWxOXmd4fLjOaSCuOgitng6mukii3V6I9CkUvEyozp8g/s320/1980-MMMG-foreword.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p>The Robertson brothers filled the book with seventy or so creatures of their own invention, though many are slight variants on familiar <i>D&D </i>monsters. There was a small tradition of creature compendiums of this kind in the 1970s, from famous ones like <i><a href="https://rpggeek.com/rpgitem/56821/all-worlds-monsters">All the Worlds' Monsters</a> </i>to very obscure ones like <i><a href="https://playingattheworld.blogspot.com/2018/09/a-forgotten-variant-observers-book-of.html">The Observers Book of Monsters</a></i>.<i> </i>We can tell from the format of monster statistics that the Robertson brothers' book likely appeared after the official <i>Monster Manual</i>, so sometime after 1977. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYY0wkAxdQ4B5vUiR5W1q2WZJSdsW6Vr8a8u82WssGYzXY64mrXthHrxDU5TC8fFXeDwtIK99u8pgRNURCfEl8byjzfFAqMiIAwP0HvIIhZEyzDCotlR9A0t0YkgAq5472TejOUl1q5kA/s800/1980-MMMG-cobon.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="702" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYY0wkAxdQ4B5vUiR5W1q2WZJSdsW6Vr8a8u82WssGYzXY64mrXthHrxDU5TC8fFXeDwtIK99u8pgRNURCfEl8byjzfFAqMiIAwP0HvIIhZEyzDCotlR9A0t0YkgAq5472TejOUl1q5kA/w176-h200/1980-MMMG-cobon.jpg" width="176" /></a></div><p>But you don't see this small press offering advertised in the zines of the day - something self-published on this scale didn't have an advertising budget. Yet there must have been some way that copies came down to posterity. And we can indeed find a tiny trace of it in Lou Zocchi's <i>Hex-o-Gram </i>#15, from June 1980:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgImFJWT-H-D175ZPUNp6Eb4FAWC_YZNOwWurFHJHSKz0vW5MckqZV315QOAtYhC2WxgoNJK20IN_Y4aC2_-0CZexCJBSJpBpslR1WKGWaQOW_J9UHmDzdobxx27lTDfGjiIxt33v3pwE/s506/1980-hex%252315-MMMG.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="210" data-original-width="506" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgImFJWT-H-D175ZPUNp6Eb4FAWC_YZNOwWurFHJHSKz0vW5MckqZV315QOAtYhC2WxgoNJK20IN_Y4aC2_-0CZexCJBSJpBpslR1WKGWaQOW_J9UHmDzdobxx27lTDfGjiIxt33v3pwE/s320/1980-hex%252315-MMMG.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p>Catalogs like Zocchi's provide a unique source of illumination on the difficult small-press period of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Early on, Zocchi distributed games through D. Housman Associates, but he branched out with his own <i>Catalog</i> which, as of issue #3, began to advertise the availability of <i>Dungeons & Dragons </i>and of course its <a href="https://playingattheworld.blogspot.com/2020/02/identifying-dice-of-1970s.html">polyhedral dice</a>. As Zocchi aimed to produce new issues of the <i>Catalog </i>annually, he supplemented the <i>Catalog </i>with short addenda called <i>Scout</i>, the first of which appeared after <i>Catalog </i>#3. <i>Scout </i>#1 announces the availability of <i>Greyhawk </i>as a new title, and <i>Scout </i>#3 (supplementing Zocchi's <i>Catalog </i>#4) and has under "New Games" titles like <i>Eldritch Wizardry </i>and <i>Gods, Demi-gods and Heroes</i>. By 1979, Zocchi had replaced <i>Scout </i>with <i>Hex-o-Gram</i>, which notes below its masthead that it appears pretty irregularly - perhaps on average, they showed up every six weeks or so. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgT0Oflc2ZEdLviHQvf53C4FVXjtwN7cS03-SmT7W737GQEiZqen72MWhgiz-v313iqKCY8vDdjtBHgD1cCXRotBh1ksCjlPEq5PrEXEc89GTX7fMvYh7Be0x5ZWUAdRmEAP2HDmd5nsRU/s1000/1979-hexo%25234.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="554" data-original-width="1000" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgT0Oflc2ZEdLviHQvf53C4FVXjtwN7cS03-SmT7W737GQEiZqen72MWhgiz-v313iqKCY8vDdjtBHgD1cCXRotBh1ksCjlPEq5PrEXEc89GTX7fMvYh7Be0x5ZWUAdRmEAP2HDmd5nsRU/s320/1979-hexo%25234.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p><i>Hex-o-Gram </i>usually gave a blurb about any new addition to Zocchi's stock. And thus we can spot <i>Monsters! Monsters! Monsters! Galore </i>for sale in <i>Hex-o-Gram </i>#15. Its notice<i> </i>would later be repeated in Zocchi's fall 1980 <i>Catalog</i>. Zocchi became a strong advocate for small press and self-published games, and was always willing to stock a few copies of even the most obscure games.</p><p>Zocchi wasn't the only one dedicated to regular updates on new RPG releases. <a href="https://rpggeek.com/rpgdesigner/56640/walter-luc-haas">Walter Luc Haas</a>, who is best known for his <i>Europa </i>newsletter, ran a small distribution business that made American games available in Europe. His <i>Cheesehole News </i>began as an appendix to <i>Europa</i>, but eventually split out into an independent catalog zine. Haas's inventory lagged a few months behind American releases, necessarily: the update for the autumn of 1980 shows <i>Monsters! Monsters! Monsters! Galore</i>, though the item hasn't been priced yet:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUlKEhcXQkGjuJEKdUg1iZypfBfaoLZWHy8bvlxysurc3RDSDQivB3F35qMy6NJtzMdX-8Xd0bkjCAumdqPitRNJus3Wp0GGLAjkBOL7MdvqgpivpO79K0c6sNWMzo0W0Ukd1naNmRiryiTSVIn8i2VuEAwTZiH_3HCidKLl20WkYEYpH9RyEf8BwP/s1309/chn%2362-3-mmmg.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="674" data-original-width="1309" height="165" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUlKEhcXQkGjuJEKdUg1iZypfBfaoLZWHy8bvlxysurc3RDSDQivB3F35qMy6NJtzMdX-8Xd0bkjCAumdqPitRNJus3Wp0GGLAjkBOL7MdvqgpivpO79K0c6sNWMzo0W0Ukd1naNmRiryiTSVIn8i2VuEAwTZiH_3HCidKLl20WkYEYpH9RyEf8BwP/s320/chn%2362-3-mmmg.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p>It is catalogs like these, issued on a monthly or bimonthly basis, that make it even remotely possible to date some of the more obscure titles that emerged from the initial rush of creative energy after the release of <i>Dungeons & Dragons</i>. Even when a copyright date is asserted in a product, it can sometimes be misleading. But when distributors listed items in stock, we know they were in the wild, and they had a chance of making it to hobby shops or directly into the hands of consumers. These catalogs are well worth studying for anyone trying to make sense of the period.</p><p>Previously on Forgotten Variants: <a href="https://playingattheworld.blogspot.com/2020/12/a-forgotten-variant-mythrules-1978.html#more">Mythrules (1978)</a></p>Jon Petersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09824427209908111302noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2688079707543352822.post-77615586192597859882021-03-05T11:38:00.008-08:002021-05-15T06:21:27.103-07:00The Invention of the d4<p> </p><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAgVlkwqTyWyYviBE3ch1t60gJApdZgI5flr9cejuNAL6ufE9hYsqgI3r3XNshWB__IDttnqiWLSXGUGWJOtfdDqAYCqWlWlq2bVzLjm2kXmI4X_D8pO7NgNytnUUF7pGYjefVaNSo4kU/s873/triangles.jpg"><img border="0" data-original-height="873" data-original-width="800" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAgVlkwqTyWyYviBE3ch1t60gJApdZgI5flr9cejuNAL6ufE9hYsqgI3r3XNshWB__IDttnqiWLSXGUGWJOtfdDqAYCqWlWlq2bVzLjm2kXmI4X_D8pO7NgNytnUUF7pGYjefVaNSo4kU/w183-h200/triangles.jpg" width="183" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p>When it comes to using Platonic solids as dice, the d4 is something of a special case. There are precedents that stretch back into ancient history for the use of the d6, d8, d12 and d20 as dice, as all four of those solids, when rolled, will land with a single face up, visible to all parties watching. A tetrahedron, however, lands with a vertex up, one face down and three faces on display. As the example of the <a href="https://playingattheworld.blogspot.com/2020/11/fredda-sieve-and-her-1963-zazz-dice.html">Zazz Polyspheres</a> shows (their d4 is on the left above), simply putting a number on each of the four faces of a tetrahedron does not immediately turn it into what we know as a d4. For a tetrahedron to generate a random number between 1 and 4 that will be visible to people observing the die from all angles, some innovation was required.</p><span><a name='more'></a></span><p>The use of tetrahedrons as dice in games goes back to the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Game_of_Ur">Royal Game of Ur</a> -- though scholars believe its tetrahedron yielded only binary results, by marking only two of its four vertexes and determining if a marked vertex is pointing up when the tetrahedron lands. More commonly in history, implements of chance with four possible results would be crafted not as tetrahedrons, but instead with four-sided staves or teetotums, of which the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreidel">dreidel</a> is the most familiar example. Turning a tetrahedron into a d4 required inspiration, and there are a few places we can look for it in the 1960s.</p><p>Educational textbooks in the 1960s gave instructions to students for constructing all of the regular polyhedra out of paper, including the tetrahedron. They rendered these two-dimensionally as ladders that could be cut out, folded, and then taped or glued into shape. A good example would be Magnus Wenninger's 1966 <i>Polyhedron Models for the Classroom</i>: </p><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPBWyFGEA-7A0ycbXr-zeJrdy-z46CoZSftoLm4jq3IU4Z4XRUFGoFyKqvunFcrmVvobmjdP7TtyIqruX3vocY3eDyjKCuGCUW7gQOwaGdYgRB3UZpZXgO7lzJi9VMVsOrcf5IldzZvvs/s900/1966-wenniger-polyhedron.jpg"><img border="0" data-original-height="653" data-original-width="900" height="145" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPBWyFGEA-7A0ycbXr-zeJrdy-z46CoZSftoLm4jq3IU4Z4XRUFGoFyKqvunFcrmVvobmjdP7TtyIqruX3vocY3eDyjKCuGCUW7gQOwaGdYgRB3UZpZXgO7lzJi9VMVsOrcf5IldzZvvs/w200-h145/1966-wenniger-polyhedron.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><p>Wenninger proposed coloring in the faces to differentiate them, but offered no numbering scheme. A number of companies had similar offerings in the 1960s: <a href="https://playingattheworld.blogspot.com/2020/02/identifying-dice-of-1970s.html">Creative Publications</a> offered a book of punch-out, brightly colored polyhedra, per this 1968 advertisement:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgknmlMvOWd6lu_wXpi3nPvW6omaK6KrpYOXqQgY48K90ZYwRic65nsyLBJ32puIF_HscpzrzSWuRykSO-_WDA3VWuVtSFLhLOYdKV1xhbKnfQ3QCg1OA4DgD2_twfKzoLO4F8je3Hzs_M/s800/1968-cp-polyhedra.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="268" data-original-width="800" height="68" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgknmlMvOWd6lu_wXpi3nPvW6omaK6KrpYOXqQgY48K90ZYwRic65nsyLBJ32puIF_HscpzrzSWuRykSO-_WDA3VWuVtSFLhLOYdKV1xhbKnfQ3QCg1OA4DgD2_twfKzoLO4F8je3Hzs_M/w200-h68/1968-cp-polyhedra.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><p>... but to turn them into a viable means of generating numbers 1 to 4 required something new and non-obvious: a way of assigning numbers to either edges or vertexes. Effectively, that meant taking the four triangles that make up the tetrahedron and labeling each of them with three specific numbers between 1 and 4. If we look at the problem in Wenninger's two dimensions, as triangles that we are aligning together, then there were potential precedents to draw on from the games of the 1960s.</p><p>A <a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamefamily/24450/components-triangular-dominoes/linkeditems/boardgamefamily">tradition of triangular dominos game</a>s goes back to the nineteenth century. Much like in regular dominos, players lay pieces that must match an edge of a previously played piece. Broadly, we can divide numbered triangular domino game pieces into two categories: those that assign a number to a corner, and those that assign a number to an edge. An early game like <a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/3203/contack"><i>Contack</i> (1939)</a> shows a way of assigning a number to each of the three edges of a triangular domino. By the 1960s, you could for example play the <a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/31609/game-triangles"><i>Game of Triangles</i> (1964)</a>.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgi-FYhvm-yknCN3thj0KSOKiGMz2YM6dq_0e_Em6-6WBn6wijab2dAKotlx8BFy1A02lgnD5u4oMYSsYrXHvsV8tb6VSdfb9Bz0Aoknmzb8lQPjHoM0gY2gtd6olA7UVO-SUUaBf-bHFk/s900/1964-triangles-rules.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="846" data-original-width="900" height="188" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgi-FYhvm-yknCN3thj0KSOKiGMz2YM6dq_0e_Em6-6WBn6wijab2dAKotlx8BFy1A02lgnD5u4oMYSsYrXHvsV8tb6VSdfb9Bz0Aoknmzb8lQPjHoM0gY2gtd6olA7UVO-SUUaBf-bHFk/w200-h188/1964-triangles-rules.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><p>So could we take the triangular pieces from the <i>Game of Triangles </i>with the numbers 1 through 4 and assemble them, with a bit of glue or tape, into a viable Creative Publications style d4? Not quite...</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVq_Ej1i79y71XFMRulArvx9xj4gYf8hTOFFsbd_ojTYz3XpYrBKFy_ZlF1Upa6jBfM0-l_Nw0sh4-w-FVWdhfX_TVZAuGZlwtrpRQzjX5ZzI3CWLq_LuFAJZ9XgmKrCISpBDqlEVeCRc/s762/1964-triangles-sample.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="704" data-original-width="762" height="185" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVq_Ej1i79y71XFMRulArvx9xj4gYf8hTOFFsbd_ojTYz3XpYrBKFy_ZlF1Upa6jBfM0-l_Nw0sh4-w-FVWdhfX_TVZAuGZlwtrpRQzjX5ZzI3CWLq_LuFAJZ9XgmKrCISpBDqlEVeCRc/w200-h185/1964-triangles-sample.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><br /><p>... since the order of the numbers would have to be amended: the 1-2-4 and 2-3-4 triangles are identical to the faces of a Creative Publications d4, but we'd need to swap the 3 and 4 on the 1-3-4 triangle, and the 2 and 3 on the 1-2-3 triangle. That much said, there were a lot of these triangular domino games in circulation, and perhaps there's one that fits better. Ultimately, the precedent of labelling triangles for these games shows us a potential path toward the d4 as we've come to know it -- which is not meant to downplay the insight needed to realize that.</p><p>After D&D became popular, and many manufacturers made d4s for role-playing games, the layout of numbers on tetrahedrons began to shift from what we call "bottom-read" d4s to "top-read" d4s. D&D itself seems to have made the change in the early 1990s from tetrahedrons whose numbers are assigned to edges, to ones where numbers are assigned to vertexes. These triangles follow the layout of another popular triangular domino game of the 1960s, <i><a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/4040/tri-ominos">Tri-ominos</a></i>.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEsMsi4i2jljieI5gRdf5b0h_XlhsFLskhvGWq8qpRN0q6DKenKyHAllaTepZJ5Yg3f9EumYjlNVUtCpalAQmvsFSDW0DeFJ0BO2YbQirSamPO3n5-b9FaEkhaFToBX_7W3TKmJlZn7lI/s800/1969-triominos-sample.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="606" data-original-width="800" height="151" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEsMsi4i2jljieI5gRdf5b0h_XlhsFLskhvGWq8qpRN0q6DKenKyHAllaTepZJ5Yg3f9EumYjlNVUtCpalAQmvsFSDW0DeFJ0BO2YbQirSamPO3n5-b9FaEkhaFToBX_7W3TKmJlZn7lI/w200-h151/1969-triominos-sample.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><p>But was it all worth the effort? Tetrahedrons do not roll well as dice, so much so that the Moldvay <i>Basic Set </i>in 1981 had to give instructions on its use: "The best way to 'throw' or roll a 4-sided die is to spin it and toss it straight up," whereas "the other dice are rolled normally and the top face gives the result." They aren't very easy to pick up, either, and every gamer who has stepped on one curses the day that they were ever invented. This inspired a number of people to try to build a better d4 from Platonic solids other than tetrahedrons. Lou Zocchi, for example, produced his own octahedral d4 in 1984, which he would brand the "four-most."</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcwKgZ8rrZ36rBd-ygnvs5bDOquWUFcsfp8GgORMxhtApa80B3wvXrRtE4V5PIo9bXUqZkB-P-wzY4u6WoE96Ngea8t8yIUANDlKUOvatC80BlsD9_xEmbteb8bBVeLGNHGSOaZ0hu8_M/s1000/1984-zocchi-fourmost.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="467" data-original-width="1000" height="93" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcwKgZ8rrZ36rBd-ygnvs5bDOquWUFcsfp8GgORMxhtApa80B3wvXrRtE4V5PIo9bXUqZkB-P-wzY4u6WoE96Ngea8t8yIUANDlKUOvatC80BlsD9_xEmbteb8bBVeLGNHGSOaZ0hu8_M/w200-h93/1984-zocchi-fourmost.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><p>Zocchi truncated the vertices of these dice to differentiate them from the d8s he sold - it looks like two pyramids glued together. And today, Koplow sells a pipped dodecahedral d4 that rolls quite smoothly, and there is no shortage of dreidels. But nonetheless, the d4 endures: something about having all five Platonic solids at hand seems to have become integral to the identity of role-playing games. Yet the d4, in light of the innovation required to create it, will always be something of an oddity.</p>Jon Petersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09824427209908111302noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2688079707543352822.post-3232120601453617522021-02-14T10:58:00.034-08:002021-02-15T10:26:59.585-08:00Western Gunfight (1970): the First RPG?<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3xuhyphenhyphenuY63aYGBoGmYBWz7KrWPMQZLVjCm3ucAPfbFSIdqfp0XZZjAl7D_jNARiD23QFbj7Jberq0E74BxPbWYhsvpKyqUWmhSDth6aJwfaK2GOkTtr9CpjRfA6FcVML_u_oxUzNdZbDM/s1269/bwsj%25238-manolito.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1269" data-original-width="971" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3xuhyphenhyphenuY63aYGBoGmYBWz7KrWPMQZLVjCm3ucAPfbFSIdqfp0XZZjAl7D_jNARiD23QFbj7Jberq0E74BxPbWYhsvpKyqUWmhSDth6aJwfaK2GOkTtr9CpjRfA6FcVML_u_oxUzNdZbDM/w153-h200/bwsj%25238-manolito.jpg" width="153" /></a></div><p></p><p>In 1970, a group of UK gamers located in Bristol published the first edition of their <i>Western Gunfight </i>rules, which recorded systems they had been running locally since the late 1960s. In the pages of their own obscure <i>Bristol Wargames Society Journal</i>, and in the widely-read <i>Wargamer's Newsletter</i>, they began to position these games not as traditional conflict simulations, but instead as ways of telling Old West stories involving continuous characters, like the villainous "El Manolito" enjoying the spoils of his success in this 1970 rendering above. When they shifted their focus to these characters and stories, had they crossed the threshold into what we should call "role playing"?</p><span><a name='more'></a></span><p>The <i>Western Gunfight Wargame Rules </i>furnish a striking example of the emergent properties that can appear in a man-to-man scale wargame campaign when it is staged in a setting familiar from genre stories. The Bristol gamers quickly recognized that their approach had become different from the norm, and began documenting their perspectives on embodying characters. Their sessions were run by an umpire, and as the account of El Manolito from <i>Journal </i>#8 shows, could have ten or more players controlling the "goodies" and "baddies" in their sessions.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWMOZLl8C3qVwLzGO5au_pbmvJIV9kaQzrTeumoQ2fQKsTJXBfudp5Dxoc0hG78dLTc4ILMFSigb0lRJYHAEUKLBPIwar-KLeSDoknsj5J23U1EO15wb2vFtdNyJzyK1O9GTjTKvdoNVU/s1139/bwsj%25238-curtis.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="454" data-original-width="1139" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWMOZLl8C3qVwLzGO5au_pbmvJIV9kaQzrTeumoQ2fQKsTJXBfudp5Dxoc0hG78dLTc4ILMFSigb0lRJYHAEUKLBPIwar-KLeSDoknsj5J23U1EO15wb2vFtdNyJzyK1O9GTjTKvdoNVU/s320/bwsj%25238-curtis.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p>Their gunfighters were individuated by level of experience (novice, average, or professional) and various quantified abilities like specific weapon proficiency and nerves. Although man-to-man scale "skirmish wargames" remained a niche within the small miniature wargaming market in 1970, the Bristol Old West rules found an eager audience. Lead designer Steve Curtis informed Don Featherstone of <i>Wargamer's Newsletter</i> that demand for the rules was high enough to justify an expanded spiral-bound edition in the fall of 1971. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgw9N98SfJXRjo4SKtimCwVsNWMKCEnSy9nWiiK_R5LgkpOzGkXTX6GvVk1NqBs16bccPLYZKMTivoV4yCO085XGRnzquOGTaMtoUo9i2XPUV4_gOQbQoxhuhiXxTrEZM7rj0yaVIvER0Y/s1207/1970-wg-cover.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1207" data-original-width="958" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgw9N98SfJXRjo4SKtimCwVsNWMKCEnSy9nWiiK_R5LgkpOzGkXTX6GvVk1NqBs16bccPLYZKMTivoV4yCO085XGRnzquOGTaMtoUo9i2XPUV4_gOQbQoxhuhiXxTrEZM7rj0yaVIvER0Y/w159-h200/1970-wg-cover.jpg" width="159" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEW6fHIcXtMF-ACwSdFS_3TxC1QgolfgDxTYmzKuKN609AVYXlXmOPHeSqYqGXNjBHboEuSgSYcNcOAeCPHyNrL9EjnS3l4ub3kuGRQMBIQ65BQvD3s6TEpxDqagmdvR1dtmAZKOzW0AU/s1200/1971-wg-cover-r.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="967" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEW6fHIcXtMF-ACwSdFS_3TxC1QgolfgDxTYmzKuKN609AVYXlXmOPHeSqYqGXNjBHboEuSgSYcNcOAeCPHyNrL9EjnS3l4ub3kuGRQMBIQ65BQvD3s6TEpxDqagmdvR1dtmAZKOzW0AU/w161-h200/1971-wg-cover-r.jpg" width="161" /></a></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgw9N98SfJXRjo4SKtimCwVsNWMKCEnSy9nWiiK_R5LgkpOzGkXTX6GvVk1NqBs16bccPLYZKMTivoV4yCO085XGRnzquOGTaMtoUo9i2XPUV4_gOQbQoxhuhiXxTrEZM7rj0yaVIvER0Y/s1207/1970-wg-cover.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><br /></div></div><p>The Bristol group would soon expand on their ideas in their <i><a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/25814/rules-conduction-colonial-period-skirmish-wargames">Colonial Period</a> </i>spin-off in 1972 (incorporating combat resolution with their <a href="https://playingattheworld.blogspot.com/2020/02/identifying-dice-of-1970s.html">early d20</a>), which gives a sense of how they viewed player agency and its relationship to the rules:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYgh6ZknUhNmmHT2ZYIeUBUhGAwsenh_trjzPnQC_oB2s45My99SrV7T9Bbv1W4lF2ScuQE725Lk1FoI1EHqlhKCc4OBqxhkrdIMxV9KgcnYreSSfNoMmIyj1mIQuASqaJV5WBt4-w5r8/s1000/1972-cs-intro.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="134" data-original-width="1000" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYgh6ZknUhNmmHT2ZYIeUBUhGAwsenh_trjzPnQC_oB2s45My99SrV7T9Bbv1W4lF2ScuQE725Lk1FoI1EHqlhKCc4OBqxhkrdIMxV9KgcnYreSSfNoMmIyj1mIQuASqaJV5WBt4-w5r8/s320/1972-cs-intro.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p>Largely thanks to Featherstone, word of their antics got out to America. For example, Gary Gygax read the five-page writeup of the "Incident at Peseto Grande" in the January 1973 <i>Wargamer's Newsletter</i> with interest, which surely prefigured his own group's experiments in the Old West setting. But it is moreover timely because it showed that Gygax had been exposed to the Bristol group's thinking in the era that <i>Dungeons & Dragons </i>was taking shape.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFojISzoyrAUrJa_tuIZKVaMmq0VkQQSW_XjtI2AsNMYOKgQJB0DZWXkNwzdktXXGwTIksEYNVLQr72SBmf7LeNHE7-C5e_3AfMWpQ5iIol7e1Xd5DnN-qzXpEOHnCy6OtF5a-8z_lLSI/s1102/wgn%2523134-gygax-westgun.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="244" data-original-width="1102" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFojISzoyrAUrJa_tuIZKVaMmq0VkQQSW_XjtI2AsNMYOKgQJB0DZWXkNwzdktXXGwTIksEYNVLQr72SBmf7LeNHE7-C5e_3AfMWpQ5iIol7e1Xd5DnN-qzXpEOHnCy6OtF5a-8z_lLSI/s320/wgn%2523134-gygax-westgun.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p>Throughout 1973, as <i>D&D</i> gradually made its way onto paper, the Bristol gamers continued to talk about the potential they discovered in "having characters with lives of their own who find themselves in situations and then behave <u>in character</u> rather than simply acting in their own best interests." </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinwF0UwwdzsXnOKCqWivpj4kxUzYA-mcgoxQQQKy5Vh3QuPZfMSZcZvUOashnBnbEWmONfsKtNsg_WbIk5jfoGem4XXFwI2uFMq0ZJ1bSepsHyfqclhQt23YXI1eX6yOSdzY1ixx67vE4/s816/wgn%2523135-bristol.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="272" data-original-width="816" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinwF0UwwdzsXnOKCqWivpj4kxUzYA-mcgoxQQQKy5Vh3QuPZfMSZcZvUOashnBnbEWmONfsKtNsg_WbIk5jfoGem4XXFwI2uFMq0ZJ1bSepsHyfqclhQt23YXI1eX6yOSdzY1ixx67vE4/s320/wgn%2523135-bristol.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p>They stressed how each campaign session was built around "cooking up interesting situations involving one, some, or all, of our stock characters in Pima County, New Mexico. The situation might follow from a previous game, e.g. after an incident at Thornbury Way Station... one of the Hole in the Fence gang, Slade, was wounded and arrested by Sheriff Seth Harker. Long Haired Steve [Curtis] and the boys have decided to spring him! Alternatively, the game could revolve around an entirely new factor, e.g. fresh Apache raids from out of the Guadalupe Mountains."</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgU7-5uTOnPb1o-YXYkRJw9Uh_lPfd8PP8hJVZGUveWTjwnMKrlc94m_RoEx5bbsbiZz4_4vku1FGpdIpVmJVrl7lU99TyEWE5O5GL5fg4T00aLI-PrB4HFGne0PV8B-sSBDXLv3ic4eqw/s1117/wgn%2523141-bristol.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="248" data-original-width="1117" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgU7-5uTOnPb1o-YXYkRJw9Uh_lPfd8PP8hJVZGUveWTjwnMKrlc94m_RoEx5bbsbiZz4_4vku1FGpdIpVmJVrl7lU99TyEWE5O5GL5fg4T00aLI-PrB4HFGne0PV8B-sSBDXLv3ic4eqw/s320/wgn%2523141-bristol.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p>As Curtis himself would put it, "Who wins doesn't really come into it." All this ultimately led the Bristol gamers to ask, in the title of one of their articles, "But is it really wargaming?" They hoped it was -- they considered themselves wargamers and hoped to sell to other wargamers. But the fact that they had to pose the question, that they were sufficiently aware that some would hesitate to classify their activities as wargames, was perhaps the earliest published inkling of the dawn of a new genre. It furthermore starkly illustrates that the shift toward character and story driven games was not unique to the Twin Cities and Lake Geneva -- it was instead a broader movement.</p><p>Once RPGs became a thing, many previous "miniature wargaming" titles were rebranded as RPGs, including some Old West games. The most famous is of course <i><a href="https://rpggeek.com/rpg/1104/boot-hill-1st-edition">Boot Hill</a></i>, a 1975 TSR pamphlet which would be redone as a boxed RPG in 1979. But that was far from the only one: the British <i><a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/14970/once-upon-time-west">Once Upon a Time in the West</a> </i>rules, published as a wargame in 1978, were hastily amended with a supplement called <i><a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgameexpansion/18796/return-once-upon-time-west">The Return of </a></i>that presented the rules as role playing "cause that's what they are," as the game's publisher insisted.</p><p>And inevitably, when Lou Zocchi reissued a boxed set of the <i>Western Gunfight </i>rules in the early 1980s, the cover would call it the "Old West Gunfight Role Playing Game." Rebranding earlier miniature wargames as RPGs was often merely a commercial ploy, though we'd be hard pressed to find an earlier ruleset reissued as one. Moreover, given how the Bristol gamers recommended using the <i>Western Gunfight </i>rules, would deeming it an RPG really be so different from how a certain set of "rules for fantastic medieval wargame campaigns"<i> </i>itself came to be understood in retrospect as a role-playing game? This comes down to questions about the distinction between rules and play that make it difficult to definitively classify RPGs even in the present, like whether role playing was an emergent or intended property of <i>D&D</i>. The shift from these wargames to role playing was, as they say, an elusive one.</p><p>We might well wonder what Steve Curtis thought of the rise of role-playing games, and whether his <i>Western Gunfight </i>would have qualified as one, but he did not live to see those days. Curtis had muscular dystrophy, spending much of his life in a wheelchair, and died on August 18, 1975, at the age of 28.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5_gaogCr8ZYN-UJmrMiq9tbvqIRMoX273K6SR7fZEhlnl87zex1SyJ6wdxT7HIF965NAav6D5BAW-20HzeEf5QAgBRMfo2GDzKjIZtVwVVn8Nd2xk2FwRr82r9ipUwdTv_pEilXoH8Q8/s1000/1971-wg2nd-back-curtis.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="468" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5_gaogCr8ZYN-UJmrMiq9tbvqIRMoX273K6SR7fZEhlnl87zex1SyJ6wdxT7HIF965NAav6D5BAW-20HzeEf5QAgBRMfo2GDzKjIZtVwVVn8Nd2xk2FwRr82r9ipUwdTv_pEilXoH8Q8/w94-h200/1971-wg2nd-back-curtis.jpg" width="94" /></a></div><p>[And if you'd like to hear me doing this live, this was the focus of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nj8zUMajkjk">a talk I gave at RopeCon in 2019</a>.]</p><p><br /></p>Jon Petersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09824427209908111302noreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2688079707543352822.post-37384162834944660972021-02-07T11:31:00.006-08:002021-02-15T10:29:48.244-08:00Does System Matter?<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHZ3KBHyYylw1sc_Dgq2VSAcIq-aaK4L_UF7Wo9306-RZ8rdZl8X17unYSx5ePMKLjZtCa4K_BeQwFxGptuAlIxMZOwIBE9MT6ZHcGQn3dzy0UdE_ACxJGPJ_xCVsQbbS30VnYkxWYAug/s938/AnE%252374-miller-systemgraph.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="792" data-original-width="938" height="169" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHZ3KBHyYylw1sc_Dgq2VSAcIq-aaK4L_UF7Wo9306-RZ8rdZl8X17unYSx5ePMKLjZtCa4K_BeQwFxGptuAlIxMZOwIBE9MT6ZHcGQn3dzy0UdE_ACxJGPJ_xCVsQbbS30VnYkxWYAug/w200-h169/AnE%252374-miller-systemgraph.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><p></p><p><i>Dungeons & Dragons </i>started out as a game with such an adaptable and open-ended set of rules that early adopters questioned whether any further published RPG systems were even necessary: DMs could make D&D into anything they wanted it to be, after all. But once <a href="https://playingattheworld.blogspot.com/2021/01/player-typologies-from-wargames-to-role.html">the Blacow model</a> took hold, and people began to understand system design through its lens, more attention was paid to how different designs could potentially yield results for players aligned to Blacow's "forms" (wargaming, role-playing, power-gaming, and storytelling). These would become the earliest arguments that system does matter, understood in frameworks like Donald W. Miller's typology of RPGs and wargames shown above.</p><span><a name='more'></a></span><p>By 1977, the first crop of self-identified role-playing games had reached gamers, and many players began running campaigns with systems like <i>Traveller </i>and <i>Chivalry & Sorcery </i>instead of D&D. But almost immediately, people started to question the impact that other systems would have on the nascent role-playing hobby. In <i>The Wild Hunt</i>, Jim Thomas spoke to the chances that <i>Chivalry & Sorcery </i>would move the needle with considerable skepticism:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrCMF3JP3XRt1MnH0dcMkrrqOu5fuSxtLPpHWOjWKFKW8p4ABYy9QTQBDN9CW9QPGTib0nlYioDdoe4VWSilqFvBgQJJLvn2MX8dan_hiGFGZfRJngIgZC7nq22gBoiY8-Ddn-PSs2v1Q/s1200/TWH%252322-thomas-CnS.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="234" data-original-width="1200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrCMF3JP3XRt1MnH0dcMkrrqOu5fuSxtLPpHWOjWKFKW8p4ABYy9QTQBDN9CW9QPGTib0nlYioDdoe4VWSilqFvBgQJJLvn2MX8dan_hiGFGZfRJngIgZC7nq22gBoiY8-Ddn-PSs2v1Q/s320/TWH%252322-thomas-CnS.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p>This ultimately led Thomas to conclude, "I don't think new games/rules are going to make much of a difference in the long run." Arguments along these lines were understandably frustrating to budding RPG designers -- and perhaps none were so frustrated by it as Ed Simbalist, co-designer of <i>Chivalry & Sorcery</i>. Simbalist viewed the open-endedness of D&D as a pernicious myth that perpetuated the game's dominance.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQz726bmQuZA-66skYjjpoEme8m9n1Nc3C4hVlGWNe_I9a6sEaT5-KkU7hunivHe12MyTXAUW1IqC2TGhjusyl7PsWenkZiingtBT2oPtdskgJ_L1HsBLp46muHG_nRjn_rTagZirMop8/s1206/AnE%252337-simbalist-system.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="292" data-original-width="1206" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQz726bmQuZA-66skYjjpoEme8m9n1Nc3C4hVlGWNe_I9a6sEaT5-KkU7hunivHe12MyTXAUW1IqC2TGhjusyl7PsWenkZiingtBT2oPtdskgJ_L1HsBLp46muHG_nRjn_rTagZirMop8/s320/AnE%252337-simbalist-system.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p>Simbalist believed that "because D&D was the first set of popular role-playing rules, it became the game to which most players were exposed," and that "most players' concepts of role-playing have been conditioned by this popular set of rules." This was unfortunate because, to him, the D&D system was geared primarily toward dungeon adventuring, and if a particular D&D game had any greater depth, it was the players who "created the systems necessary to give that world some semblance of realism and consistency" and "probably with little or no help from the rules" as published.</p><p>Simbalist's contention that the first RPG system you played would "condition" how you approached other systems in the future would become a longstanding principle of RPG theory, but it wasn't until the Blacow model that it would truly come into its own. Donald W. Miller's 1981 essay "Theory on FRP", published in his "Journal of Aesthetical Simulation" (as distributed in <i>A&E </i>#74), advanced the theory that a given player's "style of play may be permanently prejudiced by their first introduction to FRP."</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhz9S8fZIe5B2IuCFbRxcdLdYAB3ycmiATZbPwuevdXXuv4LTibcf6ZaJJI_OH83sWu6akNI8Ui6r9jzDEF5cGd8zn3f4EJbyuaueSUtpH5eF2l98HOfTi3NAFdmS2hlxaoj7C4EeIxuBQ/s1066/AnE%252374-miller-theory.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="339" data-original-width="1066" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhz9S8fZIe5B2IuCFbRxcdLdYAB3ycmiATZbPwuevdXXuv4LTibcf6ZaJJI_OH83sWu6akNI8Ui6r9jzDEF5cGd8zn3f4EJbyuaueSUtpH5eF2l98HOfTi3NAFdmS2hlxaoj7C4EeIxuBQ/s320/AnE%252374-miller-theory.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p>Miller, as shown in his graph above, charted system designs across four "constructs," on a continuum between abstraction to reality on the x axis, and then simplicity to complexity on the y axis. He incorporated the Blacow forms to "help the reader understand what the dynamics of the constructs will tend to produce," how, for example, "complex and realistic games will motivate players to wargame." (His model does not contain a category for Blacow's "storytelling" form because Miller was focusing on player outcomes, and considered storytelling a function of the DM.)</p><p>Miller's connection between design choices and the Blacow forms marked a point of maturity in the evolution of RPG theory. Like the Blacow forms themselves, this theory would be iterated upon ceaselessly, by Miller himself and many others. The tagline "<a href="http://www.indie-rpgs.com/_articles/system_does_matter.html">system does matter</a>" would later become the subject of an influential essay by Ron Edwards, and his notion that exposure to a seminal system could "condition" players would itself trigger <a href="http://www.indie-rpgs.com/archive/index.php?topic=18707.0">a famous controversy</a>. Edwards saw these design choices through the lens of the GNS model, but probably any such model would lead designers and players to the conclusion that, as Simbalist put it, a "game's underlying philosophy affects everything that the game's systems do or fail to do."</p>Jon Petersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09824427209908111302noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2688079707543352822.post-55413773308776024162021-01-31T11:59:00.004-08:002021-02-01T06:58:50.981-08:00Immersion and Role Playing in the 1970s<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfihNrrP9NCub-O951h6QXfUKCDX79RvJoj501ABdvu7h-WP3-svDFzXmvzX0Hzwso07mduA6eD6eawMM_Avzum-xywr0xf-bqxgzcUTaUD7-lI-K_d2DO5oFJzx6e3LmMkK2UzVwnpaQ/s1000/twh%252315-roos-immersion.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="189" data-original-width="1000" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfihNrrP9NCub-O951h6QXfUKCDX79RvJoj501ABdvu7h-WP3-svDFzXmvzX0Hzwso07mduA6eD6eawMM_Avzum-xywr0xf-bqxgzcUTaUD7-lI-K_d2DO5oFJzx6e3LmMkK2UzVwnpaQ/s320/twh%252315-roos-immersion.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p></p><p>The idea that role playing involved a property called "immersion" occurred to the early adopters of the 1970s fairly early. The earliest explicit use I've found was that of Pieter Roos, as shown in this excerpt above from <i>The Wild Hunt </i>#15 (1977), where he identifies it as the overall goal of playing RPGs. Before the end of the decade, calls to "immerse yourself" began to appear in games and modules published by TSR. <i><a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/elusive-shift">The Elusive Shift </a></i>pays particular attention to the uptake of "immersion" as a term because of its relationship to how people in the 1970s understood the nature of role playing.</p><span><a name='more'></a></span><p>Almost as soon as people started experimenting with <i>Dungeons & Dragons</i>, they recognized the potential for losing yourself in a role, feeling in some sense as if you were actually in the situation of the game character. Sandy Eisen, a D&D player at Cambridge University in 1975, reported that as a beginning player, he felt like he was really "living the part" and that through "willing suspension of disbelief" he found himself "in the dungeon."</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnGjVhUaUXxuYX51kMuHHou6DkJDgbzj_q1w0XOuYsaYEwZ6KgoMt5NEXQvRXKZXN6JHjMATSa1Hz4sjn7OFnKjWv9ko22kGR1Bxha3C9V1n7u4-i-QnxyVNwYKO1dfLNk9KdoWmfA3e8/s1000/eu%25236-8-eisen-livingthepart.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="183" data-original-width="1000" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnGjVhUaUXxuYX51kMuHHou6DkJDgbzj_q1w0XOuYsaYEwZ6KgoMt5NEXQvRXKZXN6JHjMATSa1Hz4sjn7OFnKjWv9ko22kGR1Bxha3C9V1n7u4-i-QnxyVNwYKO1dfLNk9KdoWmfA3e8/s320/eu%25236-8-eisen-livingthepart.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p>Eisen did not have any particular word for this property (no one was even saying "role playing" then), but he found it compelling enough that he vowed that when he ran D&D for new players, he would not tell them the rules -- he found that understanding the system bogged him down in "wargame mechanics," rather than focusing on the "real-life considerations" that a person in the game situation might. This does have <a href="https://playingattheworld.blogspot.com/2021/01/the-origins-of-rule-zero.html">some precedents in <i>Kriegsspiel</i></a>, in how wargamers would relay troop orders to a referee in order to experience the closest approximation to actual command, but Eisen valued it for a unique way it made him feel... even if he didn't know quite what to call it.</p><p>Two years later, Kevin Slimak wrote in <i>The Wild Hunt </i>#12 about role playing a character such that you "can put yourself into his place, submerging yourself to the extent which you are able." He referred in particular to acting within the rolled characteristics of characters -- like not making smart decisions for a stupid character and vice versa -- which is at least requires some rough understanding of the system. This idea of "submerging" your personality into that of a character also has some antecedents in wargaming, especially in the lead-up to the release of <i>D&D</i>. Mike Carr, designer of the First World War aerial wargame <i><a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/6638/fight-skies">Fight in the Skies</a>, </i>had recommended that a player direct his pilot to "perform according to his personality, not yours," and recommends developing "Personality Profiles" and backstories for pilots that would help determine how their characters should be played.</p><p>When we begin to see appeals to immersion in TSR publications, maybe we shouldn't be surprised to find them coming from Carr. The tips for players in his module <i>In Search of the Unknown </i>(B1), for example, concludes with the following:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTQDjd_orLAkhSWlZ5ixdlSgiuBQCe7iP2qsTDgmg0amQ8TBQhZ8Q51iyOPqPoEi1ozHKXqa53hZNp-6D9_Oj7fz1eMHanxZ8-poznJ_9tuWYF9QyVaso9k04vWnqse41oG3fLtn1RTKQ/s842/1979-b1-carr-tips.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="172" data-original-width="842" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTQDjd_orLAkhSWlZ5ixdlSgiuBQCe7iP2qsTDgmg0amQ8TBQhZ8Q51iyOPqPoEi1ozHKXqa53hZNp-6D9_Oj7fz1eMHanxZ8-poznJ_9tuWYF9QyVaso9k04vWnqse41oG3fLtn1RTKQ/s320/1979-b1-carr-tips.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p>Similar language can be found in <i>Boot Hill </i>(1979), which Carr edited. Carr clearly connects "playing your character's role" with his call to "immerse yourself in the game setting," but no one really explained exactly what that immersion entailed. Maybe it meant something like what Ed Greenwood talks about in <i>Dragon </i>#49, speaking very much to the properties that Eisen sought back in 1975. Greenwood explicitly positioned "role play" as the answer to the question "How can one play a game without knowing the rules?"</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbxAUO80qsLVPevodXH-H-rFul_5zst_gSOECAZTIOxZOo_T_G4HnDotkehGlKbWRaISEhyqeJLbSDqJcHHFIh6x0Wb37qvjczQsFrC5e8tWmr9a2RnkEB_PUkWycllYCJjM3Y0I0UuIQ/s1402/dr%252349-greenwood-rules.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="488" data-original-width="1402" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbxAUO80qsLVPevodXH-H-rFul_5zst_gSOECAZTIOxZOo_T_G4HnDotkehGlKbWRaISEhyqeJLbSDqJcHHFIh6x0Wb37qvjczQsFrC5e8tWmr9a2RnkEB_PUkWycllYCJjM3Y0I0UuIQ/s320/dr%252349-greenwood-rules.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p>"As a player, state what you (the character) are trying to do, and the referee (who knows the rules) will tell you what is actually happening," Greenwood explains. As late as 1981, Greenwood still knew well the roots of this practice in free <i>Kriegsspiel</i>, and was aware that that it had attracted controversy, as referee decisions could seem "arbitrary" to players. And indeed, this approach to role playing has always had its critics. While Greenwood does not directly label his approach "immersion," that is perhaps for the best, as we have been told to "<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20110719130405/http://www.liveforum.dk/kp07book/lifelike_holter.pdf">stop saying immersion</a>" since it can mean so many different things: whether Roos, and Eisen, and Slimak, and Carr were talking about precisely the same thing is debatable. But their attempts to "live the part," to "take on your character's persona," played a significant part in how the practice of role playing defined itself.</p>Jon Petersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09824427209908111302noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2688079707543352822.post-12505131445879818602021-01-23T11:52:00.004-08:002021-02-13T18:38:19.846-08:00A History of Hero Points: Fame, Fortune and Fate<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUn9929TJsSYAr8SaeMH0X2e2httsWUR16Dh6Wvh_LdTawjZFrj5BAxkdwobCXGH0LqUREF0Fq1B16wIbzcjP__fcg4YCa_E4kU42tX08s1pCpEtTrgAKSAyDQZMfnPxK-CEBZg4BA7FE/s1200/1978-rasmussen-ts-2.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="864" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUn9929TJsSYAr8SaeMH0X2e2httsWUR16Dh6Wvh_LdTawjZFrj5BAxkdwobCXGH0LqUREF0Fq1B16wIbzcjP__fcg4YCa_E4kU42tX08s1pCpEtTrgAKSAyDQZMfnPxK-CEBZg4BA7FE/w144-h200/1978-rasmussen-ts-2.jpg" width="144" /></a></div><p>"Hero Points" was the name given by <i>James Bond 007 </i>(1983) to a quantified resource players could expend to alter the results of a particular system resolution. It built on an earlier innovation in the pioneering espionage RPG <i>Top Secret </i>(1980), which introduced "Fortune Points" and "Fame Points" in lieu of D&D<i> </i>saving throws. Over time, this idea took manifold forms in RPGs that followed, from <i>Fudge </i>and <i>Fate </i>Points to Artha in <i><a href="https://rpggeek.com/rpgsystem/794/burning-wheel">Burning Wheel</a> </i>to Inspiration in D&D 5th edition. Today, we'll look at how this system innovation took shape, beginning with Merle Rasmussen's original pitch for <i>Top Secret</i>, shown in this design letter above.</p><span><a name='more'></a></span><p>There's a lot to unpack in the page from Rasmussen's letter shown above (the last sentence ends on the next page with the word "known", by the by), but there are three crucial things to take away from it:</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Rasmussen created his Fame and Fortune Points as a replacement for saving throws. </li><li>He presents these Points as something players can expend to avoid negative in-game consequences for a character: for example, "when a lethal bullet should strike the character he can use one 'Fortune' point to deflect it."</li><li>The difference between them is that Fortune Points are supposed to represent "beginner's luck" that is lost when you're not a beginner any more; whereas Fame Points model the notion that some random assassin will not be the person to kill the legendary James Bond. He also as an aside notes "it may be possible to award these points" to players as well.</li></ul><p></p><p>For 1978, Fame and Fortune Points were pretty radical ideas. But ideas rarely pop up in only one place: similar mechanisms can be found in games like <i><a href="https://rpggeek.com/rpgitem/47680/commando">Commando </a></i>(1979) with its "Miraculous Escapes" which can be invoked by heroes once per mission, and in the ability of a "Protagonisti"-level character to redo incoming damage rolls "not to his liking" in <a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/18796/return-once-upon-time-west">(the Return of) <i>Once Upon a Time in the West </i></a>(1979). Both of those, however, still had a chance the hero would take the damages -- unlike Rasmussen's points. Rasmussen allowed a player to use points to simply override a die roll, a power that previously resided only with a referee concealing rolls behind a screen. System evolutions that granted players more control over executing the system are a major thread that <i><a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/elusive-shift">The Elusive Shift</a> </i>follows in late 1970s design.</p><p>Fame and Fortune Points were essentially reactive, like D&D saving throws: undoing negative effects targeting a character. But by this point, saving throws in some RPG designs had begun to move beyond the merely reactive and into the realm of the proactive. This was a feature of the Tyr role-playing games like <i><a href="https://rpggeek.com/rpgitem/88924/space-quest">Space Quest </a></i>(1977) and <i><a href="https://rpggeek.com/rpgitem/49973/bushido-1st-edition">Bushido </a></i>(1978). <i>Space Quest</i>, for example, describes a saving throw as something that "may be applied positively, to do something (feat of strength, burst of speed), or negatively, to avoid some damage."</p><p>The concept of players expending points to either offset a damaging effect or to preemptively improve performance can be found after <i>Top Secret</i> in <i>Pirates & Plunder </i>(1982), which grants players a pool of "Lucky Breaks" which can be expended either reactively or proactively: as a reactive way to fudge an undesired die result, or as "Adrenaline," a proactive way to boost an ability temporarily during a crisis situation. By 1982, when <i>Top Secret </i>had enjoyed some time to sink in to the melting plot of tabletop play, you could also find gaming groups adapting it out of its original context, like this report from Robert Kern:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoHFTiSL_l8z6jL4XrMacvDU0x8Ah7P-W7LbBCk0CIWl-pkUOLX4uC4hS8RMK5g4liPrAnhrFfgcKN-YelE1-q-THt55vG3KBitnfHv9KIKIUQzYacBlvObCX9_ul2J9-MmEtvHr3PYPI/s1208/1982-kern-AnE%252378-heropoints.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="288" data-original-width="1208" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoHFTiSL_l8z6jL4XrMacvDU0x8Ah7P-W7LbBCk0CIWl-pkUOLX4uC4hS8RMK5g4liPrAnhrFfgcKN-YelE1-q-THt55vG3KBitnfHv9KIKIUQzYacBlvObCX9_ul2J9-MmEtvHr3PYPI/s320/1982-kern-AnE%252378-heropoints.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p>What is novel in the Hero Points that Kern describes is how they are awarded: GM's gave them out for "heroic deeds," and to his knowledge, you could only have one at a time. Kern neglects to mention that his group was in fact made up of Victory Games staffers who were currently working on <i>James Bond 007 </i>(for which Kern received credits here and there). <i>JB007 </i>has a concept of Fame Points, but they have any entirely different system function than those of <i>Top Secret </i>-- instead, <i>JB007 </i>awards its players Hero Points. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6FgrHiDSnAYWv6XaytJTpD6W7kWHiceYZShcbteyelq51i_9CAIxCD3rAPGjWRQcUNGWkSYVYhe7uY62Kr6V7CPNWwgOKfCWGQL24I0PY70H9bRuzqTnM3orkifgFu6sp0389lj2njs8/s1000/1983-jb007-74.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="1000" height="128" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6FgrHiDSnAYWv6XaytJTpD6W7kWHiceYZShcbteyelq51i_9CAIxCD3rAPGjWRQcUNGWkSYVYhe7uY62Kr6V7CPNWwgOKfCWGQL24I0PY70H9bRuzqTnM3orkifgFu6sp0389lj2njs8/w200-h128/1983-jb007-74.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><p>In <i>JB007</i>, these Hero Points are awarded whenever a player rolls the best outcome on skill checks, or for such actions as "successfully completing a mission or coming up with an ingenious escape from a trap." Some GMs might want to limit players to holding four or five Hero Points, but for exceptional characters, it might make sense to allow reservoirs of up to twenty. Characters expend them to adjust the outcome of rolls "immediately after determining the results," and can spend multiple Hero Points to dramatically shift the result of a system check. So in <i>JB007</i>, Hero Points have a more dynamic economy than Rasmussen envisioned for <i>Top Secret</i>, where a small reserve of Fortune Points are allotted at character creation and Fame Points come only gradually with progression.</p><p>Inevitably, once an economy of Hero Points became an element of play, gamemasters would begin to repurpose them as a reward system. In much the same way that some 1970s RPGs fostered role-playing by linking experience rewards to proper in-character behavior (the aforementioned <i>Bushido </i>is one example), by 1984, we can see reports of GMs awarding Hero Points to encourage role playing, as in this description from Martin Wixtead:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhShy0QMJ4-7ITSJNLoNmFQU_BZW7Kv2aEoeBqiuW0T7UXBGhruZlBS28id1yDfeAs2F38uMBQBxxLglFjMYS-3sq1J0pi_o0X9DFUhq4Xn1LD-xFGues0OKL9sub3W55aMlDih8UPfjSU/s630/1984-wixtead-AnE%2523111-heropoints.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="630" data-original-width="584" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhShy0QMJ4-7ITSJNLoNmFQU_BZW7Kv2aEoeBqiuW0T7UXBGhruZlBS28id1yDfeAs2F38uMBQBxxLglFjMYS-3sq1J0pi_o0X9DFUhq4Xn1LD-xFGues0OKL9sub3W55aMlDih8UPfjSU/w186-h200/1984-wixtead-AnE%2523111-heropoints.jpg" width="186" /></a></div><p>That text would be substantially repeated in Wixtead's <i><a href="https://rpggeek.com/rpgitem/57061/year-phoenix">Year of the Phoenix</a> </i>(1986), though its version goes on to explain that the "Specials" rule is optional in part because "some players feel that using Specials is a way of cheating the game's reality." Hero Points did have their critics, who felt that a meta-game power yanked players out of character, but to those designers who hoped to grant players more "narrative control," Hero Points have proven quite attractive "as a game construct to promote good roleplaying in a definite and controlled fashion." In retrospect, Rasmussen's player-control point system cast a long shadow, sparking one of the most influential design innovations in the history of role-playing games.</p><p><br /></p>Jon Petersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09824427209908111302noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2688079707543352822.post-48074735962496968952021-01-16T14:05:00.009-08:002021-01-18T11:09:27.977-08:00The Origins of Rule Zero<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdvrLFXNYvn7VvvDjPys57nRkNF4Jkdwwy8aOSaZMSqM35Sxxs8DFZvFi6lMjlhd2zPPhZRUS8azWBDngjwumtXaoDBwPoEBW3UEg5gNlVoho63Vfvu4yMe4ipr_3ArPmilAWoUC2SZ7o/s1293/1978-simbalist-AnE%252338-firstlaw.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="278" data-original-width="1293" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdvrLFXNYvn7VvvDjPys57nRkNF4Jkdwwy8aOSaZMSqM35Sxxs8DFZvFi6lMjlhd2zPPhZRUS8azWBDngjwumtXaoDBwPoEBW3UEg5gNlVoho63Vfvu4yMe4ipr_3ArPmilAWoUC2SZ7o/s320/1978-simbalist-AnE%252338-firstlaw.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p></p><p>The idea that a gamemaster has the discretion to alter or discard published rules was not an invention of role-playing games: it derived from a wargaming tradition going back to the free <i>Kriegsspiel </i>of the nineteenth century. But role-players enshrined it as a principle that is today known as "<a href="https://geek-related.com/2013/10/12/rule-zero-over-the-years/">Rule Zero</a>", a proposed meta-rule of role-playing games -- albeit not an uncontroversial one. The critical position that we should hold this as a universal meta-rule occurred to the early adopters of role-playing games fairly early, as shown here, in the "Gamer's First Law" of Ed Simbalist (designer of <i>Chivalry & Sorcery</i>) in <i>Alarums & Excursions </i>#38 in 1978.</p><span><a name='more'></a></span><p>Famously, <i>Dungeons & Dragons </i>in 1974 described its system as a "framework around which you will build a game of simplicity or tremendous complexity." Its rules aspired to deliver merely a framework, not a set of iron dictums, because "as with any other set of miniatures rules they are guidelines to follow in designing your own fantastic-medieval campaign." <i>D&D </i>even suggests writing any new or changed rules into the rulebook in pencil, not pen, because "who knows when some flux of the cosmos will make things shift once again." </p><p>The use of the phrase "as with any other set of miniatures rules" signals that <i>D&D</i>'s attitude towards the rules was not a novel one. Miniature wargames had long embraced referees who concealed secret information from players and ran the system in accordance with <i>Kriegsspiel </i>principles. <i>D&D</i>'s language about guidelines most directly paraphrases <i>Chainmail </i>(1971), which stated, "These rules may be treated as guide lines around which you form a game that suits you." But this idea was certainly not exclusive to Gygax's work, it was commonly accepted that miniature wargame referees could adapt wargame rules to their liking. To take just three examples:</p><p><i style="font-weight: bold;">Modern War in Miniature</i> (1966): "There is only one rule to our war game: <i>simulate reality</i>. The statistics and tables are designed to help the player in this task. When they get in the way, if they ever should, then you should discard them."</p><p><i style="font-weight: bold;">Grosstaktik </i>(1972): "You should regard these rules as a bare framework. Apply them flexibly, and modify them freely in accordance with your own tastes."</p><p><i style="font-weight: bold;">Kam-Pain </i>(1974): "The Gamesmaster is the final authority on all rules interpretations... he may freely alter or delete existing rules, and add new ones."</p><p>This principle was essential enough to <i>Kam-pain </i>that they codified it under the name of "The GM's Cloak." <i>Kam-pain </i>would, incidentally, fuel the "<a href="https://playingattheworld.blogspot.com/2017/07/the-gin-and-pygmalion-in-and-out-of.html">Midgard Ltd.</a>" fantasy campaign, one of <i>D&D</i>'s closest cousins. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnQJ0D1Fje1cL91hyphenhypheng5kEqk33mZ2HY2uGnpC8xzwV3CsNCp7V6mVWzmokzibc5B1m2lC7QZXU61hLqwTKzqI-sUgmP0THCv8irMyR0cCtUXAuw6UlUTCVNwS2OuU64h7ZsiQ-timxudbM/s1200/1974-kampain-gmcloak.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="253" data-original-width="1200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnQJ0D1Fje1cL91hyphenhypheng5kEqk33mZ2HY2uGnpC8xzwV3CsNCp7V6mVWzmokzibc5B1m2lC7QZXU61hLqwTKzqI-sUgmP0THCv8irMyR0cCtUXAuw6UlUTCVNwS2OuU64h7ZsiQ-timxudbM/s320/1974-kampain-gmcloak.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p>But codifying it into the rules is one thing, and proposing it as a law that transcends any individual set of rules is another: its transcendence could only become apparent with sufficient examples to draw on. This concept that the rules could be altered as the referee saw fit, once it appeared in <i>D&D</i>, would echo through the games that imitated and followed it, a growing tradition of fantasy role-playing games. Again, to take three examples:</p><p><i style="font-weight: bold;">Chivalry & Sorcery</i><i style="font-weight: bold;"> </i>(1977): "<i>Chivalry & Sorcery </i>provides the guidelines by which players may easily create the kinds of worlds they want and does not attempt to 'dictate' in any way what must be."</p><p><i style="font-weight: bold;">Runequest </i>(1978): "Take those portion of the rules you can use and ignore the rest. Like any FRP system, these can only be guidelines. Use them as you will." </p><p><b><i>Villains and Vigilantes </i></b>(1979): "The rules presented in this book are made to be broken, as are all rules... If the Gamemaster feels that he disagrees with any part of these rules or any point made, he should, by all means, experiment and adapt the rules to suit his tastes and needs."</p><p>Given the stance of <i>Chivalry & Sorcery</i>, we should not be surprised to find Simbalist, in an offhand note in <i>A&E </i>#35, stating that "if a rule is silly, change it or ignore it." He received a reply from John Sapienza suggesting that that principle should be "engraved in bronze for all writers and designers to ponder." As this idea was per <i>Runequest </i>"like any FRP system," Simbalist was inspired to elevate it to the "Gamer's First Law," a meta-rule governing the operation of all role-playing game systems, "the foundation and mainstay of all FRPing."</p><p>However, flexibility was not the only possible approach to running FRP rules. Greg Costikyan contrasted these "open-ended" systems that permitted modification by the referee with "closed" systems with rules that were not intended to be modified. Early refereeless systems like <i>En Garde </i>(1975), gamebook modules like <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_Castle">Buffalo Castle</a> </i>(1976), and of course computer role-playing games, showed how designers aimed for "closed" systems quite early on, and this too became a valid approach to FRP, one that has since existed in a tension with those who hold the "Gamer's First Law" as absolute.</p><p>So why is this maxim now remembered as "Rule Zero" and not the "Gamer's First Law" or "the GM's Cloak"? Internet RPG discussion forums inherited the idea of "Rule Zero" from earlier Usenet group discussions. My best guess is that Carl Henderson's <a href="https://groups.google.com/g/rec.games.frp.misc/c/dXvFJTrgH9w/m/jzZMEe6oyBcJ">discussion of FRP meta-rules</a> beginning with a Rule Zero kicked this off, though his categories were quickly transformed by others, and his statement that "the gamemaster has the power to overrule any rule, precedent, combination of rules, or dice rolls" was originally his Rule Two. Ideas like this, once they enter the melting pot of the Internet, can be difficult to trace to their sources.</p><p>These Internet discussions, easily Googleable, effectively eclipsed any earlier theorizing in analog media like <i>Alarums & Excursions</i>. It is the ambition of <i><a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/elusive-shift">The Elusive Shift</a> </i>to start the process of rectifying that.</p>Jon Petersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09824427209908111302noreply@blogger.com25tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2688079707543352822.post-76201874904351011972021-01-11T13:35:00.010-08:002021-02-07T16:18:36.962-08:00Player Typologies, from Wargames to Role-Playing Games<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmWH3QIYP8Gh5QYu5SlmAnxoFUwRsMGVFpOlTGs7wri-qXrty_pvGI2iWHHCQk4chmg7ScjKKRWxZXjueJ-cyHh1XOMufmgGFVS0PmBWfRssCb8LYVp16frnCu4AmkVYCwak41ZaORHB4/s880/1981-dw%252311-fourfold.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="880" data-original-width="762" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmWH3QIYP8Gh5QYu5SlmAnxoFUwRsMGVFpOlTGs7wri-qXrty_pvGI2iWHHCQk4chmg7ScjKKRWxZXjueJ-cyHh1XOMufmgGFVS0PmBWfRssCb8LYVp16frnCu4AmkVYCwak41ZaORHB4/w173-h200/1981-dw%252311-fourfold.jpg" width="173" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p>One of the threads that <i><a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/elusive-shift">The Elusive Shift</a></i> follows is the development of typologies that sorted players, or sometimes game designs or playstyles, into categories that reflect what kind of experience people want to have when they sit down to game. These form a significant component of contemporary RPG theory. I myself was surprised, doing research for the book, to discover threefold model typologies already discussed in the wargame community years before <i>Dungeons & Dragons </i>came out. In these early discussions, we can see the roots of much of the RPG theorizing that would follow, like the classic fourfold Blacow model, shown in a later visualization above.</p><span><a name='more'></a></span><p>Whenever a group of people around tabletop plays a game, participants may have conflicting approaches to play. Early wargamers had long observed a trade-off in game design between <i>realism </i>(attempting to design systems that simulated real conflicts with as much detail as possible) and <i>playability </i>(the countervailing drive to build systems that are simple and unambiguously executed), and it wasn't long before they observed the potential for tensions in play between people who prized one goal over the other. By the beginning of 1971, Steven Thornton had perceived that there was more nuance to this than a simple dichotomy:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHOcrsZ9xeUZcVHjhYE0CHt_WtvXcLuLaXhzvO1Cc4drEByC-qiQoTFma_JOAcoaxVB8mbC8GDMkos5GtEQ_Z_ZaXr4gVo7DQm_6y-wePCCdpqeDbNkgaOyZjWRC0TivUV0vBjlW-b75I/s1000/1971-thornton-wgn%2523106.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="275" data-original-width="1000" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHOcrsZ9xeUZcVHjhYE0CHt_WtvXcLuLaXhzvO1Cc4drEByC-qiQoTFma_JOAcoaxVB8mbC8GDMkos5GtEQ_Z_ZaXr4gVo7DQm_6y-wePCCdpqeDbNkgaOyZjWRC0TivUV0vBjlW-b75I/s320/1971-thornton-wgn%2523106.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p>Thornton saw three categories of wargames: "simulators" who are obsessed with realism; "competitors" who engage in endless rules lawyering for the sake of securing victory; and then the mainstream of "fun" wargamers who are doing this casually "just for enjoyment." Thornton had learned already of the "ill-feeling" that extremist views could cause, and that these could be a threat to the very hobby. Nor did Thornton's words fall of deaf ears: they would be picked up by Fred Vietmeyer a year later:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIXyLVJsxGiS1UDY6P6s-QVQND4c5b_UkP3PMqs-69xQ9l7LBm_vlKVrixaRnwPoZcVMcKFf4DMHlwF7ZTuzMF4ARbj-Md63pa1jOCdyrWD95boz2bVRQ5Y7vjFSnS079eabpOuwyNZJE/s1129/1972-courierv4n1-vietmeyer.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="435" data-original-width="1129" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIXyLVJsxGiS1UDY6P6s-QVQND4c5b_UkP3PMqs-69xQ9l7LBm_vlKVrixaRnwPoZcVMcKFf4DMHlwF7ZTuzMF4ARbj-Md63pa1jOCdyrWD95boz2bVRQ5Y7vjFSnS079eabpOuwyNZJE/s320/1972-courierv4n1-vietmeyer.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p>But Vietmeyer has a more pluralist view of this typology, arguing against what would later be called a "One True Way", as "for one type of player to place his own viewpoint as superior to another's hobby enjoyment is simply being too egotistical." Some players might want to invest hours in painting meticulously researched miniature flags and uniforms for the sake of realism; others might find that "a waste of time." Vietmeyer would return to this theme in another article in <i>The Courier </i>two years later, right at the time that <i>Dungeons & Dragons </i>hit the shelves. </p><p>The release of <i>D&D </i>drew another community into dialog with wargamers: science-fiction and fantasy fans. Their presence and incentives upset the traditional typologies of the wargaming community, to the point where people began to see a new type that had come to the table: story focused-gamers. As Lewis Pulsipher wrote in 1977:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhphydvi4kOTMyQSmAypSJm8aLnyj8enyrS4loDX7HI5lQQb2Wu61pf9KATOgDtyfcU4uqB2LP7SRJuqfc5vWTycmYbqdjWBA8SSgp-uDr-iqvBKA8psEAvJoohlzMwKNTLrPwLA3cTIwU/s902/1977-wd%25231-pulsipher.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="366" data-original-width="902" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhphydvi4kOTMyQSmAypSJm8aLnyj8enyrS4loDX7HI5lQQb2Wu61pf9KATOgDtyfcU4uqB2LP7SRJuqfc5vWTycmYbqdjWBA8SSgp-uDr-iqvBKA8psEAvJoohlzMwKNTLrPwLA3cTIwU/s320/1977-wd%25231-pulsipher.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p>Pulsipher sees a distinction between those who wanted to play <i>D&D </i>"as a game" and "those who want to play it as a fantasy novel." His <i>"D&D </i>Philosophy" is very concerned about the lack of agency that players might experience when a game session is too tightly pegged to a narrative, so that "the player is a passive receptor, with little control over what happens." But many in science-fiction fandom sought a way to engage with stories through RPGs that would strike a balance between a game experience and the high drama of fantasy literature.</p><p>By 1980, Glenn Blacow had developed his famous fourfold model, which retained the traditional wargame/simulation type, the power-gaming/competition type (originally Blacow called it "ego-tripping"), but introduced in place of Thornton's "fun" wargamer two new categories: role-playing and storytelling. A contemporaneous visualization of it is shown at the header above. Blacow saw the "interaction of these four elements" as determining the "feel" of the game.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifKpYtOJqxGvrxyEp2jDTad7pxUt52GHPZ44Cgk8H0xCCnNmN6k-4MBlyMmIkZfJZdXAoJjMPL2QgxkYu9Ol5QE4-ZrcYOt_yNyNr3aa2xxECEX5XWzqxe4xmDiStLwoNHBPdp7yfcVuU/s1200/1980-twh%252350-blacow.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="453" data-original-width="1200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifKpYtOJqxGvrxyEp2jDTad7pxUt52GHPZ44Cgk8H0xCCnNmN6k-4MBlyMmIkZfJZdXAoJjMPL2QgxkYu9Ol5QE4-ZrcYOt_yNyNr3aa2xxECEX5XWzqxe4xmDiStLwoNHBPdp7yfcVuU/s320/1980-twh%252350-blacow.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p>Blacow knew well that these "forms" all manifested to some degree in any tabletop RPG, it was really a matter of which dominated, and how much of each was necessary to give a particular player a satisfactory experience -- perhaps the definitive refutation of a "One True Way". His model immediately revolutionized the way people talked about RPGs in the fanzines of the day, which were the closest thing people had at the time to Internet discussion forums. </p><p>Various corollaries or extensions of Blacow's model appeared through the 1980s (including the visualization above, from <i>Different Worlds</i>, which shows some forms as mutually-exclusive). By the time the Internet came into its own, and those ideas moved onto forums like Usenet, we can see the "<a href="https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en#!msg/rec.games.frp.advocacy/Ity8GLdFs2g/HLzReYXSfDE">threefold model</a>" of gamist, simulationist, and dramatist (or narrativist) agendas begin to take hold. These would be recontextualized by the Forge in the <a href="http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/1/">GNS model</a>. But <i>The Elusive Shift </i>shows this RPG theorizing as existing in a continuum that predates <i>D&D</i>, which was steered by the messy reconciliation of traditional wargamers with the new story-focused gamers who entered the hobby from science-fiction fandom. Typologies like this demonstrate why it is impossible to develop the perfect RPG -- the tension between the "forms", however, has fueled tremendous creativity in RPG design for the past four decades.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Jon Petersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09824427209908111302noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2688079707543352822.post-60992717247223569392020-12-17T11:12:00.003-08:002020-12-17T11:56:34.072-08:00A Forgotten Variant: Mythrules (1978)<div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5KJ6q_hnxsRjiwcUigwA5KLH2QsM44HwXk8XdjHcXItrJmvKh-SeiqM1ARxCazCwZSy0HPc4Fp4uc-nmJs6k0YJpyujXHf0UTZjvq765va6e4Y-ma7mFF-BsjUBycqbjxZGo048Fxw0E/s1200/mr-cover.jpg"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="904" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5KJ6q_hnxsRjiwcUigwA5KLH2QsM44HwXk8XdjHcXItrJmvKh-SeiqM1ARxCazCwZSy0HPc4Fp4uc-nmJs6k0YJpyujXHf0UTZjvq765va6e4Y-ma7mFF-BsjUBycqbjxZGo048Fxw0E/w151-h200/mr-cover.jpg" width="151" /></a></div><p><i><a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/elusive-shift">The Elusive Shift </a></i>talks about around 50 games published before 1980 that we might consider role-playing games -- "we might" because there was so much contention then about precisely what qualified as an RPG. Among the early games that self-identified as RPGs was the obscure <i>Mythrules </i>(1978) by Colin R. Glassey and Aaron Richardson Wilbanks. It escaped the attention of <i><a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Heroic_Worlds.html?id=73kDNQAACAAJ">Heroic Worlds</a></i>, and reportedly had a print run of just 100 copies. It is thus a game that is of interest not for any vast influence it exerted on posterity, but instead, as a manifestation of the creativity unleashed by the publication of <i>Dungeons & Dragons</i>, and the way that early adopters made role playing their own.</p><span><a name='more'></a></span><p>One of the very few contemporary places to attest the existence of <i>Mythrules </i>is <i>Dragon </i>#33, which surveyed the magazine's readership on the games they played - Jeff Mallett, of Stanford, California, lists it among the titles that he owned. <i>Mythrules </i>seems to have remained largely a Bay Area phenomenon: it was made in Berkeley, and <a href="http://historicfantasybooks.com/about/">reportedly distributed</a> at the area convention <a href="https://www.dundracon.com/">DunDraCon</a>. <i>Mythrules </i>cites as one of its more immediate influences the local <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arduin">Arduin Grimoire</a></i>, and perhaps having learned from Hargrave's experiences as a game publisher, <i>Mythrules </i>makes no reference whatsoever to <i>Dungeons & Dragons</i>.</p><p>The system of <i>Mythrules </i>uses the familiar five polyhedral dice, generating characters by rolling not just for standard abilities like strength and intelligence, but also for race, on a table that includes a small chance of getting non-humanoid characters like eagles or unicorns. In a manner reminiscent of <i>Chivalry & Sorcery</i>, you then roll for social class, and as starting characters (who are presumed to be 18 years old) of a high social class have enjoyed more leisure time to develop their knowledge and skills, the nobility can start the game with a larger allotment of ability points (not to mention gold) to spend on professional skills, ranging from mundane occupations like carpentry (35 points), to social skills like diplomacy (35) or bargaining (30), to apprenticeships in schools of magic (42-52 points).</p><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7EYOp_QA8gvduoW5ONpdp-YNl_Gamk7jUwNIoD_zOGiil8evVU9dXABPH97mTOJWQo0YiXb90F45L7x8exjhDvt4nUUvBRsqLRL7Ko9llD8BXLlCXiPjj1ceojP6ImAQGovSyEI3fVaQ/s800/mr-ability.jpg"><img border="0" data-original-height="618" data-original-width="800" height="154" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7EYOp_QA8gvduoW5ONpdp-YNl_Gamk7jUwNIoD_zOGiil8evVU9dXABPH97mTOJWQo0YiXb90F45L7x8exjhDvt4nUUvBRsqLRL7Ko9llD8BXLlCXiPjj1ceojP6ImAQGovSyEI3fVaQ/w200-h154/mr-ability.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><p>The second third of the book is dedicated to spellcasting. Magic in <i>Mythrules </i>closely follows the Earthsea stories of Ursula K. LeGuin, depending in particular on "true names," and apprentices in magic follow either the Master Patterner, Changer, Windkey, Summoner, Chanter, Herbal, Doorkeep, or Namer. Casting is klutz-based, with an initial 5% change of successful spell casting which goes up by 5 each time a caster manages to use the spell successfully: thus, after twenty successful casts, a mage has mastered the spell and can cast it without error. As beginner casting times are also prohibitively long, and spellcasting is further restricted by a spell point system -- and learning spells as well has an ability point cost -- this is not a rapid progression system.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLjjzZC8YNrf3lQS6YwMTzoPrchIdIJkFHbbDY448WUuyb3F61G3MQ3LXFm8ubxHNsbLyZRP7y0WexG0jNIlkcz2D1h4In3gnebhXmeqcmuisgFNMngwT1X78bjB572CXgFtKWxftFqNg/s695/mr-magic.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="695" height="173" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLjjzZC8YNrf3lQS6YwMTzoPrchIdIJkFHbbDY448WUuyb3F61G3MQ3LXFm8ubxHNsbLyZRP7y0WexG0jNIlkcz2D1h4In3gnebhXmeqcmuisgFNMngwT1X78bjB572CXgFtKWxftFqNg/w200-h173/mr-magic.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><p><i>Mythrules' </i>final third mostly covers combat and encounters. Combat relies on a hit location system targeting 17 parts the body, from shoulders to elbows to shins, that can withstand a number of damage points determined by a character's constitution. The hit resolution system is fiendishly complex -- another likely nod to <i>Chivalry & Sorcery --</i> depending on a slew of speed factors, dodging bonuses, offensive bonuses, weapon defense bonuses, shield defense bonuses, armor damage bonuses, all of which are invoked prior to rolling percentile dice against the Hit By Body Area (HBBA) chart.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9gvXN8PS77SEYDbJqKJbsS3JA5ISqItmnsnRVRoRyL4_98vcdmLoWGfAjBqGzuxmbz6H94lmi0VcPeA40efnLLj4PsQ2bh_oWPeWfRIIiUM3JPjpRrnQZchY6vbscJiYJNLApK-2R18A/s800/mr-hbba.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="726" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9gvXN8PS77SEYDbJqKJbsS3JA5ISqItmnsnRVRoRyL4_98vcdmLoWGfAjBqGzuxmbz6H94lmi0VcPeA40efnLLj4PsQ2bh_oWPeWfRIIiUM3JPjpRrnQZchY6vbscJiYJNLApK-2R18A/w181-h200/mr-hbba.jpg" width="181" /></a></div><p><i>Mythrules </i>made it into <i>The Elusive Shift </i>largely for the story of its creation: the authors detail how the "tremendous potential for change and expansion" they found in role-playing games at the end of 1975 inspired them to incrementally develop more system until "it became apparent that we were no longer merely writing addenda to other author's rules but were actually creating an independent game of our own." <i>D&D </i>encouraged precisely these sorts of additions and modifications, ending with a call to treat its rules a framework, on which "building should be both easy and fun." <i>The Elusive Shift </i>views that invitation as a sort of meta-game that tacitly shipped with the original <i>D&D </i>rules, the play of which created games like <i>Mythrules </i>and ultimately, the RPG industry that is with us today. </p><p>Previously on Forgotten Variants: <a href="https://playingattheworld.blogspot.com/2018/09/a-forgotten-variant-observers-book-of.html">the Observers Book of Monsters</a></p>Jon Petersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09824427209908111302noreply@blogger.com4