I recently unearthed my White Box D&D set, which has somewhat renewed my curiosity from when I bought it about 1980, for what it actually is, how it was supposed to be used, and whether anyone really considered it usable by itself (or what else someone was supposed to know, and from where).

I bought it already having heard what essentially D&D was, and already knowing The Fantasy Trip and having learned several much more complex and thoroughly explicit wargame rules (Squad Leader, other Avalon Hill games etc) and I had also invented dozens of pen & paper games for myself and friends. I saw that there seemed to be 100 or more D&D products available, but I didn't realize that Basic and Advanced were distinct later and different systems. I thought it would probably make sense to start at the beginning with the White Box labeled the "Original Collector's Edition". I got that the DM was supposed to fill in most details, and I tried several times to find a usable starting place, but there was so much that seemed missing that there didn't seem to be one. Not only did the terminology seem strange and inconsistent, but there seemed to be several really basic pieces of context and mechanics entirely missing, as if there needed to be another book or two that were left out. The set mentioned the Chainmail miniature wargame rules and Outdoor Survival board game by Avalon HIll, but those were supposed to be optional. Without them, I didn't really see a way to play without inventing my own system, and in that case I didn't see why I'd choose to include much of anything from the D&D books.

From the wood box auction thread, I gather that my gold-stickered "Original Collector's Edition" was ironically a later version with an earlier version's Tolkien terms (hobbits & balrogs) removed, but I assume they didn't also remove some rules?

Looking at the books again now, I get the same impression, and I'm still curious. These can't really have been intended to be usable by someone who doesn't already know many assumptions and several details that were left out, was it? What would someone need to also buy or have experience with in order to buy the White Box and have a usable game system? Was it written as if the reader already was familiar with and had access to an earlier edition? Or was it written for people who were expected to react to incomplete rules by just making stuff up?

Quote from: Skarg;1002765These can't really have been intended to be usable by someone who doesn't already know many assumptions and several details that were left out, was it?

As far as I'm concerned, this is the key. The assumptions would not have been found in other RPG books (there were no other RPG books). Instead, as far as I can tell, the OD&D rules grew from the soil of what I call "Referee-driven" war-games like Free Kriegspiel.

When we say "war-game" it is important to make a distinction from the Avalon Hill games -- which were complete in their rules and required no Referee. In contrast, a game like Kriegspiel depended on a Referee to make rulings using detailed rules as two players or sides battled it out. The rules were thick and combat long, so "Free Kriegspiel" came into vogue, where the Referee referenced the rules far less often, making rulings on the fly.

This sort of play is led to Braustein and other games of this nature, and later rules sets like original D&D and original Traveller.

Here's a blog post I just found that touches on these matters in reference to D&D and AD&D. I write about these matters in posts about the original Traveller rules here and here.

Ultimately, Gygax was writing for an audience of hobbyists who knew this stuff. It was part of their vocabulary, part of their experience, and part of the culture. That's why he could name drop Chainmail and Outdoor Survival without bothering to explain what the hell he was talking about.

This is also why, to touch on a recent thread here, there were no rules for how to handle killing a bound, helpless opponent. It was the Referee's job to adjudicate such things. Rules would not be needed to handle every self-evident situation. The Referee's adjurations would come first, and if he was uncertain as to outcomes the rules would be pulled out -- not the other way around, which is how the hobby developed.

And the hobby developed that way because D&D caught lightning a bottle. It was passed on to, and bought by, people who were not as deep into a particular gaming culture as Gygax was (or the guys at GDW were). The rules seemed incomplete and strange -- and rightly so if you were steeped in the assumptions Gygax was working from.

Thus, a shift was made to make the rules more complete, less Referee-driven, and more driven by the rules with the Referee now getting the job of applying the rules. There's nothing inherently wrong with this shift, of course. But it is a very different kind of play.

Of note:

Marc Miller, Frank Chadwick, and others formed GDW they ran political simulation roleplaying games on their college campus. These games were not at all like roleplaying games as we know them today. There were no character sheets, and no "digital" version of characters stats. Instead, Players would take on roles in political conflicts (sometimes as world leaders, sometimes as bureaucrats within the same government) and play out stressful scenarios. They would make alliances, plot against each other, keep secrets, trade secrets... all while playing a specific roll. Significantly, Referees (people like Miller or Chadwick) would make calls as to how someone's plan against someone else paid off. Since there were no numbers to fall back on, a Referee in such a game simply made up what happened.

In a recent interview Miller spoke of reading the original D&D and said:

QuoteWhen Dungeons & Dragons came out, I was a wargame designer. In a sense, the fantasy role-playing idea was new, but in another sense, it was a familiar concept. I had done political role-playing exercises in college: model UN and model Organization of American States, and some campaign simulations.

What struck me (and everyone else) about D&D was the application of numbers to the individual character and role. Gary Gygax’s conversion of role-playing from a touchy-feely analog system to an easy-to-use digital character system was brilliant, even if we couldn’t quite put it into words. D&D literally took over everyone at Game Designers’ Workshop, and after a couple of weeks, we (the designers and owners) had to make an important rule: no D&D during work hours. Nothing else was getting done.

So, as an example of what I'm talking about, the team at GDW, even though they did not know Gygax and had not encountered D&D before, immediately got Dungeons & Dragons as soon as they read it. They played it... and they played it a lot. And I think it is because they shared a lot of the same game culture.

Quote from: Skarg;1002765I recently unearthed my White Box D&D set, which has somewhat renewed my curiosity from when I bought it about 1980, for what it actually is, how it was supposed to be used, and whether anyone really considered it usable by itself (or what else someone was supposed to know, and from where).

I bought it already having heard what essentially D&D was, and already knowing The Fantasy Trip and having learned several much more complex and thoroughly explicit wargame rules (Squad Leader, other Avalon Hill games etc) and I had also invented dozens of pen & paper games for myself and friends. I saw that there seemed to be 100 or more D&D products available, but I didn't realize that Basic and Advanced were distinct later and different systems. I thought it would probably make sense to start at the beginning with the White Box labeled the "Original Collector's Edition". I got that the DM was supposed to fill in most details, and I tried several times to find a usable starting place, but there was so much that seemed missing that there didn't seem to be one. Not only did the terminology seem strange and inconsistent, but there seemed to be several really basic pieces of context and mechanics entirely missing, as if there needed to be another book or two that were left out. The set mentioned the Chainmail miniature wargame rules and Outdoor Survival board game by Avalon HIll, but those were supposed to be optional. Without them, I didn't really see a way to play without inventing my own system, and in that case I didn't see why I'd choose to include much of anything from the D&D books.

From the wood box auction thread, I gather that my gold-stickered "Original Collector's Edition" was ironically a later version with an earlier version's Tolkien terms (hobbits & balrogs) removed, but I assume they didn't also remove some rules?

Looking at the books again now, I get the same impression, and I'm still curious. These can't really have been intended to be usable by someone who doesn't already know many assumptions and several details that were left out, was it? What would someone need to also buy or have experience with in order to buy the White Box and have a usable game system? Was it written as if the reader already was familiar with and had access to an earlier edition? Or was it written for people who were expected to react to incomplete rules by just making stuff up?

Learning to play required being part of a Bardic like oral tradition. It was the Dungeon Master or Referees job to interpret, and/or explain the rules. This came from wargaming where someone highly experienced in playing the game would serve as a judge or referee and make rulings just so the players of the game would not get into arguments or disputes over the rules, have the game derailed, or unsatisfactorily delayed. This was actually the Dungeon Masters job. Anyone who just picked up the books, and who would try to learn to play solo, or without an experienced coach, would be confused, because the rules were very poorly organized, as well as incomplete, so incomplete in fact, that Gary included the following commentary concerning this in Introduction on page four of Men & Magic.

"The rules are complete as possible within the limitations imposed by the space of three booklets. That is, they cover the major aspects of fantasy campaigns but still remain flexible. As with any other miniatures rules they are guidelines to follow in designing your own fantastic-medieval campaign. They provide the framework around which you will build a game of simplicity or tremendous complexity - your time and imagination are about the only limiting factors, and the fact that you have purchased these rules indicate that there is no lack of imagination.  - the fascination of the game will tend to make participants find more and more time. We advise, however, that a campaign be begun slowly, following the steps outlined herein, so as to avoid becoming too bogged down with unfamiliar details at first."

From the original little brown box, only references to Tolkien creatures were omitted. An errata sheet was included in any later orders from TSR for brown box D&D. Whitebox contained some rules and grammer clarifications, and was slightly re-organized. I don't recall any other rules being dropped from the three books except for the Tolkien fantasy critters, and references to J.R.R. Tolkien himself.

We added whatever we liked for our early games, and also eagerly checked out supplements and enhancements provided by other publishers like Judges Guild and the Balboa Game Company. It was explicitly (as you can see above) understood that we were expressly permitted to create whatever we wanted to add to our games, in order to make our games interesting, and more appealing. This accounted for a major portion of the explosive growth and popularity of D&D, and changed dramatically with the release of AD&D which insisted players follow the rules provided in the AD&D books, and with the re-release of Moldvay/Cook version of Basic D&D after the Holmes Blue Book edition was out of print.

One could play D&D perfectly well with just the original White Box (or Brown Box) bookset. I of course, already had bought the Holmes Bluebook D&D as well as a number of Judges Guilds supplements like Ready Ref Sheets which greatly improved the play experience by the way, and understood that as a DM, I could optionally add whatever supplements I liked to play with to run our games with. Later after AD&D was released, I added the newer AD&D spells to basic, as well as the Ranger character class, since the D&D and AD&D rules were more or less, fully interchangeable even though they weren't fully compatible. I cherry picked what I like for my D&D game in the spirit of the original rules, and still do now.

D&D was not originally designed to be a "complete" game and was instead designed to be an ongoing gaming development project or campaign for the referee or DM, that was part of its appeal.

I have never bought Wilderness Survival, and only bought Chainmail in 1999, and found it didn't add anything I already didn't have to my game, because almost all of relevant portions of Chainmail is included in Judges Guild supplements.

Here is the errata or changes of you happen to have the 1st-4th printing of D&D (all of these would be brown box, with just a few minor exceptions since I received an intermixed whitebook lot with the 5th printng and heard a rumor they found some missing boxes of the original books that had been improperly stored at TSR, and added those books were randomly added in later 5th & 6th collectors edition printings of the White Box. No one there at the time had a clue they would end up being so valuable later on.

DUNGEONS & DRAGONS
--Errata Sheet--

A few added notes are in Italics! To the best of my (The Archivist@Murkhill) knowledge, all of these changes are for the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th printings since the errata sheet was inserted in the box for the 2nd and 3rd printing. All of these errata were corrected for the 5th and 6th printings, except as noted below. I also added the % in Liar correction, which to the best of my knowledge is uncorrected in all printings.

MEN & MAGIC, Volume 1

Page 9: Add “Griffons” under the neutrality column. Delete the first listing for “Wights” under the Chaos column.

Page 11, line 35: “30% to 40%” should be 40% to 50%.

Page 22, line 21: The “T” cross index for Zombie/Adept should be 7.

Page 23, line 34: “…2+1), (“and” deleted) from 1-6, 3rd level types, and but 1 4th level type (up to 4+1 hit dice).”

Page 28, line 9: “each” should be east (it may be this in the 1st , 2nd, 3rd and 4th printing I do not have any of those to check. However, in the 5th and 6th printing the reference is page 27, line 18: “each” should be east and it was corrected.

MONSTERS & TREASURE, Volume 2

Page 3: Table heading “% In Liar” should be “% In Lair”

Page 3: Skeletons/Zombies hit dice should read 1/2/1 (read as one-half / one)

Page 14, line 24: “doing two, three or four dice of damage (depending on size)!” Refers to Balrogs description, which is not in the 6th printing.
Page 14, line 31: add Only magical weapons/attacks affect Gargoyles. In the 6th printing, this is Page 14, line 15
Page 14, line 33: add Only silver weapons or magical weapons/attacks affect Lycanthropes. In the 6th printing, this is Page 14, Line 18

Page 14 In the 5th printing and earlier Balrogs appears immediately after dragon treasure, but in the 6th printing Balrogs is replaced with an illustration.

Page 18, line 22: add Only magical weapons/attacks affect Elementals.

Page 24, SCROLLS: There is a 25% chance that any scroll of spells found will contain those useable by Clerics.

Page 32, Heroism: add The potion will cause fighters of 5th – 7th level to increase two levels, and 8th – 10th level to increase by one level of ability.
SCROLLS: N.B. After reading a spell from a scroll the writing disappears, so the spell is usable one time only! In the 5th and 6th printing, this correction was made except that the “N.B.” was not inserted.


THE UNDERWORLD & WILDERNESS ADVENTURES, Volume 3

Page 11: Balrogs should have “Die” 9. In the 6th printing “Spectres” were inserted in place of Balrogs.

Page 18, line 10: An Encounter occurs in a City on a 6. Actually, line 7, at least in the 5th and 6th printings.

Page 24, line 16: The missing word is ten. Actually, line 18, at least in the 5th and 6th printings and is inserted as the number 10 instead of the word ten.

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Read more: http://ruinsofmurkhill.proboards.com/thread/243/original-dungeons-dragons-errata-annotated#ixzz4wGEYi3q0

Hey, are you The Ruins of Murkhill? I came across that site recently. Lots of good stuff to read on there.

Thanks Christopher and GameDaddy. Those explanations do help.

However it seems to me that there are a few fundamental things missing from the books, or else either I have blind spots when I look for them, or Gygax et al and the people who DO have the rest of the context have blind spots keeping them from seeing some basic things are missing. I get that they're supposed to be imaginative seeds but what GameDaddy's Gygax quote above and what GameDaddy wrote suggest they think it there is a more complete ruleset than I have found. I'll have to re-read the books again, and I wanted to ask about this topic before doing so to know with what lens I should do so, but IIRC and from a few brief skims, I don't see any indication of what to roll for damage - there's an equipment table with weapons with zero weapon stats other than rough encumbrance ratings. What do you roll to determine the amount of damage if something is hit with an arrow, dagger, club, battle axe, halberd, etc? I don't see any indication of any differences between the weapons except cost, encumbrance, and whether they are a ranged weapon or not.

Quote from: Skarg;1002785I don't see any indication of what to roll for damage - there's an equipment table with weapons with zero weapon stats other than rough encumbrance ratings. What do you roll to determine the amount of damage if something is hit with an arrow, dagger, club, battle axe, halberd, etc? I don't see any indication of any differences between the weapons except cost, encumbrance, and whether they are a ranged weapon or not.

Volume I, p. 19: "All attacks which score hits do 1-6 points damage unless otherwise noted."

There is probably a chain of reasoning for writing the rule this way based on previous games that influenced D&D's development, but I am unfamiliar with it.

Apart from that, I'm fine with it. Using the rules this way means that a) getting hit is dangerous, because, really, a knife wound can really be dangerous; and b) the focus is on the individual character's abilities -- that is, ultimately during a combat the better the odds a character has to hit in a given round, the more times he will deal damage across a fight.

Ultimately, when many of us go back to look at games like Original Dungeons & Dragons or original Traveller I truly think we approach them with strange kinds of "lenses" over our eyes. We cannot see what is there, or see what is not there on occasion. We bring in so many expectations of "What an RPG is" that we we overlay those expectations on a text that has nothing to do with those expectations -- and become confused because we can't see what the game actually is doing. I have said for some time now that the games of the hobby's first four years grew from a completely different soil than the games that came after.

Also, if you are looking for some sort of "guide" while digging back into the books, you might want to check out "Philotomy's Musings" which is a book of a guy who really digs OD&D and explains why you might dig it too. He also addresses lots of the rules, variations, and such.

Finally, the rules are rather haphazardly laid out. There are a couple of compiled and edited PDFs of the Original D&D rules floating around out there that make it much easier to read them. My favorite is a single volume with Frazetta art. Nothing is changed in terms of rules, but all relevant details are gathered near each other, making it much easier to understand.

Quote from: Skarg;1002785What do you roll to determine the amount of damage if something is hit with an arrow, dagger, club, battle axe, halberd, etc?

It 1d6 and supposed to be on the bottom of 19. Some copies, including mine, omitted this vital piece of information due to a misprint or something.

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Quote from: estar;1002799Some copies, including mine, omitted this vital piece of information due to a misprint or something.

Whaaaaaat???

Quote from: Skarg;1002785However it seems to me that there are a few fundamental things missing from the books,

It easy to navel gaze when talking about original Dungeons and Dragons. The best thing to do is ask specific questions like you asked about damage and but formulate your own opinion. OD&D is a light rules system that works well for referees willing to make up shit that is fun (to paraphrase Gronan).

If you want a thoroughly researched account of the origins of D&D and the community that is was created in then read Jon Peterson's Playing at the World. Then branch out to other accounts like Hawk & Moor. Thanks to the internet enabling the D&D collecting community a lot of the old newsletters and documents are seeing the light of day. So people don't just have to rely on 40 year old memories to figure out what happen like it was 10 years ago. A lot of people have strong opinions about the origins of D&D. My view is simple, there where a bunch of gamers who figured out that wargaming was fun, and in their quest to create fun and interesting challenges the community invented the things that allows Arneson and Gygax to create Dungeons & Dragon. Because of the limited number of published resources most had to do their own original research and there was a lot of back and forth sharing.

Two resources I recommend are Matt Finch's Old School Primer and Philotomy's Musing. Both offer practical ideas for using OD&D to run a campaign.

Yah there was a lot missing to play out of the box.   Got introduced to it by my friends college age brother.

Quote from: ChristopherKubasik;1002804Whaaaaaat???

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Quote from: Dumarest;1002780Hey, are you The Ruins of Murkhill? I came across that site recently. Lots of good stuff to read on there.

Yes, I'm over there as registered as Dragondaddy. It's a good resource for Original Dungeons & Dragons as well as other early games like Gamma World, Metamorphosis Alpha, Boot Hill, and such...

Quote from: ChristopherKubasik;1002797Volume I, p. 19: "All attacks which score hits do 1-6 points damage unless otherwise noted."

I am totally not seeing it anywhere in Volume I, not on p. 19 or anywhere near it. Maybe I have a defective edition of the book. My page 19 has Spells & Levels, Levels Above Those Listed, Alternative Combat System [zero rules], Attack Matrix 1.: Men Attacking [says nothing about damage]. Page 20 is the Monsters Attacking table [no damage mentioned], Saving Throw Matrix [no damage] and then it switches to the magic system for the rest of the book. I don't see anything about damage done before that either.

There is a few sidelong clues in Volume II - Monsters & Treasure, some of which are good examples of rules that I could interpret several ways none of which seem to make much sense to me (like the dragon damage rules that I have no good idea what they are trying to say) or the best hint (now that you said the rule is always 1d6) is under Elves, where it says that Elves with magic weapons do 1d6+1 (which seems weird because saying that under Elves implies to me that Elves get an extra +1 damage with [only their own?] magic weapons. Oh I see there are more clues in the magic weapons rules, which I think I often don't get to when I skim because I start to lose my mind when I see that after very vague rules on most things, we get almost four complete pages of detailed rules on the intelligence, egoism, alignment hostility (which DO get damage rules), and other (alien to me) weird things about magic swords. The magic weapon damage notes again seem like they're referring to some other context or table we're supposed to have.

E.g. "Axes can be utilized as a hand weapon or thrown 3" with the +1 bonus."
* Is that all axes or just magical axes?
* Why "the +1 bonus"? Sounds like it's referring to something else? This is under a section header about weapons wit +1, +2, or +3 bonuses. (I guess we're supposed to get that this is actually just a key to the specific random miscellaneous weapon loot table seven pages earlier, so the "the" refers to that table and how there is only a +1 Axe listed there.)
* Is that a +1 for all axes in addition to magic bonuses?
* Does the +1 apply only to thrown attacks?
* Like several of the other entries, it's not clear whether this is +1 to hit, +1 to damage, or both.

QuoteThere is probably a chain of reasoning for writing the rule this way based on previous games that influenced D&D's development, but I am unfamiliar with it.

Apart from that, I'm fine with it. Using the rules this way means that a) getting hit is dangerous, because, really, a knife wound can really be dangerous;

You mean the idea that a knife can potentially inflict deadly wounds, so may as well just have them be mechanically the same as every other weapon?

So, "Magic Users may arm themselves with daggers only." is only relevant in that there are fewer and less cool magic dagger items, but for mundane weapons it makes no difference and fighters may as well just carry knives to reduce encumbrance, or clubs because they float in water?

Quoteand b) the focus is on the individual character's abilities -- that is, ultimately during a combat the better the odds a character has to hit in a given round, the more times he will deal damage across a fight.

Any individual character abilities other than what level they are? My Volume I page 19 does mention under "Alternative Combat System" that "This system is based upon the defensive and offensive capabilities of the combatants; such things as speed, ferocity, and weaponry of the monster attacking are subsumed in the matrixes." But then the matrixes are just Level versus Armor Class, with a 1-2 AC modifier for range (but I don't see any rules for range bands anywhere except for a few specific magic weapons or monsters). So (I just want to be sure I'm understanding) it sounds like both you and the rules say that the detailed abilities and equipment are relevant, except that they are abstracted into a table that does not take them into account. It doesn't even seem to matter what class the attacker is, just their level (and the table columns only shift every 3 levels) so unless there are magic weapons, every level 7-9 PC attacker, whether a Fighter with a Halberd or a Magic User with a dagger, not only does the same damage but has the same chance to hit a target with the same armor class. The differences would be the target's armor (and I see no rules that MU's can't use non-magical armor), hit point totals which are different per class, and the fact that MU levels do take more XP to earn (though Clerics cost less, so if that's supposed to be a measure of fighting ability, clerics seem better than fighters... oh there's also the "Fighting Capability" column of the class level tables, where fighters clearly do get some sort of major bonus to attacks (in the form "3 Men or Hero -1" or "Wizard +1), but I have no way to know what it means ... oh yes, I see, it's the "non-alternative" combat system, except it says to consult Chainmail, so that doesn't apply.

QuoteAlso, if you are looking for some sort of "guide" while digging back into the books, you might want to check out "Philotomy's Musings" which is a book of a guy who really digs OD&D and explains why you might dig it too. He also addresses lots of the rules, variations, and such.

Thanks. I'll give that a look.

Quote from: estar;1002799It 1d6 and supposed to be on the bottom of 19. Some copies, including mine, omitted this vital piece of information due to a misprint or something.

Aha!! Thank you!
(Skarg just regained a sanity point!)

Quote from: estar;1002799It 1d6 and supposed to be on the bottom of 19. Some copies, including mine, omitted this vital piece of information due to a misprint or something.

Amazing, but not surprising. I actually never used that chart to hit in any of my games, even back in 1977. The first thing I could afford to buy were the Judges Guild Ready Ref Sheets along with the Holmes Blue Box, and Ready Ref Sheets had this chart in them instead, which listed variable weapon damage, as well as the much better to-hit charts organized by character class attacking, and everything else needed that was needed for play except the spell lists and exp tables to level, I actually played D&D for about four months just using the Holmes Bluebook and the Ready Ref Sheets;

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So, the only game I ever played with just d6 damage was the original first three or four D&D games we played with my first DM back in 1977. From maybe June on, when I was GMing I used the variable weapons damage chart from Ready Ref Sheets, and of course picked up Greyhawk no later than 1978 and adopted the Greyhawk Alternate Combat System Damage Done by Weapon Type tables (which were the same as the Judges Guild tables, lol!). This was actually a very sophisticated damage chart which included taking into account the changed to-hit probabilities for using different kinds of weapons versus different kinds of armor.