Lost original D&D manuscript revealed

[robertsconley]

Personally I think the most valuable part of what Jon's research uncovered is not any particular manuscript of D&D but the whole social climate of gamers thinking up interesting scenarios or campaigns to try and then coming up (or assembling) the pieces together to make it happen. Hopefully in a fun and interesting way.

Sure people always been able to do that, but to read documented accounts of actual people doing just that. Then looking at the results of their efforts rings home in a way then just saying "Make some shit up you think is fun." does not.

So while the Dalluhn manuscript is not as significant as original thought. The fact it was put together at all as a DiY effort when tabletop RPG was very much a small and strange niche is nice to learn about.

[Geoffrey]

I think the manuscript's spell lists are interesting, as they show an earlier version of the lists than those published in 1974's D&D:
http://odd74.proboards.com/thread/7842/ ... y-pre-1974

[Melan]

These materials have a certain antiquarian/historical interest, but I also have to admit they don't reveal much that is new. Meanwhile, we still know very little about actual dungeons and campaigns being run with these rulesets. There are scraps, memories and reconstructions, but something like an actual, preserved campaign dungeon in its original form (or a legible but reasonably close transcript), or a personal campaign world is still missing. It all feels like missing the forest for the trees. Surely, examples of what gamers actually did with the rules would be of interest to people who are interested in D&D's origins.

[thedungeondelver]

Maybe we should change the thread title to "stolen OD&D pre-release" since that's what it was? I know there was a heavy push to make this into a sort of "Gotcha!" moment about "who really wrote" D&D*, but ultimately I can go to the local used book store right now and buy a notebook full of someone's photocopied 2e modules, character sheets and house rules and get exactly the same thing, contextually.

Forget this nonsense, that's what I say. It's no more significant to the history of D&D than the blink-and-you'd-miss-it reference to the game in Taps starring Tom Cruise and Sean Penn.


...

*=spoiler alert: it was Gary Gygax. Alone.

[robertsconley]

Forget this nonsense, that's what I say. It's no more significant to the history of D&D than the blink-and-you'd-miss-it reference to the game in Taps starring Tom Cruise and Sean Penn.

It not that simple. From a technical standpoint learning about how the mechanics of D&D were developed yeah the latest information makes the document marginal. Especially now that we have an copy of the actual draft.

However as window into what the roleplaying hobby was doing at the time it is indeed of interest. Outside of the Dave Arneson fanatics, not everybody is laser focused on the evolution of D&D. Some of us, including myself, are just as interested in the larger hobby that surrounded Gygax and Arneson. For that Dalluhn is an insight to that. A small on as things go but still something. Your attitude is just as unhelpful as those who viewed Dalluhn as some kind of holy grail.

What important that we keep striving to find more material thought to be lost, and get it out into the open so people can look at and get whatever use out of it they deem important. I am far more bothered by the fact that most of the material remains under lock and key open only to a select few.

[thedungeondelver]

It's somebody's fucking house notes. Mine are of equal importance.

Which is to say, none.

[increment]

It's somebody's fucking house notes. Mine are of equal importance.

Which is to say, none.

If your house notes include pre-publication D&D system copied verbatim from Gygax's first draft, as well as edits by Arneson that didn't make it into D&D, I'd really like to study them.

[EOTB]

It's somebody's fucking house notes. Mine are of equal importance.

Which is to say, none.

Let them have their butter churn. This entire speculative angle of what might not have made the cut for D&D was always destined to be the hobby's grassy knoll/point of divergence.

[Juju EyeBall]

Every picture my kid draws of a pokemon should be in the smithsonian.

[Falconer]

edits by Arneson that didn't make it into D&D

... except, except, you said upthread, ...

... except that we don't know how many steps there were between GD&D and Dalluhn, that is, how many of the differences we see in Dalluhn were in fact inherited by the people at CONTAX from edits made in the Twin Cities.

In other words, as far as we know, none, right?

[increment]

edits by Arneson that didn't make it into D&D

... except, except, you said upthread, ...

... except that we don't know how many steps there were between GD&D and Dalluhn, that is, how many of the differences we see in Dalluhn were in fact inherited by the people at CONTAX from edits made in the Twin Cities.

In other words, as far as we know, none, right?

You snipped a bit too early, there, cutting the part where I said "I think it will turn out that we can show at least some of them were based on Twin Cities edits, even Arneson edits." I'll upgrade that to a more affirmative statement: there are some edits that we will be able to convincingly demonstrate are Arneson edits. At the moment, they are not terribly interesting ones, which is why I'm not making a big deal about it. That could change, though, hence me saying it's "premature."

To the broader point here, I'm not in this thread to try to convince people that historical information about how D&D came together is more important than developing good rules to play by, nor that draft D&D text - or indeed, published D&D text - is more useful around the table than anybody's homebrew. The historical evolution is just my personal interest. I'm only in this thread (following the refers back from my blog post) because my takeaway from the revelations about Dalluhn is that this remains more than just a rip-off, it offers some historical insight into D&D's development. Not as much as early reports might have suggested, but still enough to be worth the time of people who share my interest in the evolution.

[Steve]

The alehouse isn't a place for nuanced discussions of esoteric subjects; its a place for locals to gather, get drunk, and brawl!

[robertsconley]

Every picture my kid draws of a pokemon should be in the smithsonian.

But if one of them happens to be based on a piece of original concept art that was later lost, that might be of interest to people looking at how pokemon developed. It still just a kids drawing and not a 100% accurate because in the end it is a kids drawing but it not nothing either as the original is lost.

So yes Dalluhn is somebody bunch of house rules. But one happened to created a specific time that makes it interesting as it sheds some light on what people were doing with tabletop roleplaying.

[thedungeondelver]

Every picture my kid draws of a pokemon should be in the smithsonian.

But if one of them happens to be based on a piece of original concept art that was later lost, that might be of interest to people looking at how pokemon developed. It still just a kids drawing and not a 100% accurate because in the end it is a kids drawing but it not nothing either as the original is lost.

So yes Dalluhn is somebody bunch of house rules. But one happened to created a specific time that makes it interesting as it sheds some light on what people were doing with tabletop roleplaying.

*for some

But regardless of that, there is (and I don't accuse you of this, Rob) a huge goalpost shift here. You can't deny that there was an "Ah-HA!" moment where people were salivating, and on the edges of their seats, to try and prove prior-to-Gygax provenance of this. I'm sorry if this sounds particularly conspiratorial but there's definitely a sector of the OS gaming community who pick at the corners and try to find a way to tear Gary down and "prove" he "didn't" create D&D; that he stole it from Dave Arneson, which is of course a pernicious lie.

[grodog]

Some more news: a second copy of Beyond This Point Be Dragons has been discovered @ http://boggswood.blogspot.com/2017/11/m ... -news.html

Allan.