Lost original D&D manuscript revealed

[Aldarron]

Trying to get the word out to those who might be interested. I have begun a series of reports on a lost, unpublished original (3LBB) D&D manuscript of which I was priveledged to recieve a copy for study. On my blog:

http://boggswood.blogspot.com/2012/05/b ... ons-d.html

[Chainsaw]

The background and text color combination makes the blog almost impossible to read, at least on my computer. Any chance you can change that?

[Juju EyeBall]

The background and text color combination makes the blog almost impossible to read, at least on my computer. Any chance you can change that?

ditto. even at increased size it's difficult.

P.S. I am not an old person.

[capitalbill]

It was a bit difficult for me too, but not too bad until I got down to the citations where many were hardly legible.


Interesting infirmation and conjecturing though.

[T. Foster]

I'm looking forward to the close textual analysis, because the handwriting analysis doesn't really convince me that this isn't what EGG claimed it to be (i.e. somebody's home-typed bootleg/ripoff version).

[Benoist]

Part 2: http://boggswood.blogspot.ca/2012/05/la ... nt-be.html

[T. Foster]

I'm still not convinced this isn't a bootleg/ripoff. In all of those A:B text comparisons the BTPBD text reads like an informal paraphrase/summary of the D&D text. The use of "chop" for attack is more compelling, but not necessarily definitive - we know this document was produced by someone in the Twin Cities (since it was found in the collection of M.A.R. Barker) - couldn't it have just been someone familiar with that bit of Arnesonian terminology, perhaps at a couple places removed, rather than Arneson himself? The fact that this document appears (from what little we've seen of its actual contents...) to be so close to the published D&D set, except for the less-formal language and use of percentages instead of die-ranges, makes it seem less likely to me that this is some Arneson ur-D&D draft, because from everything we've heard from pretty much everyone who was there at the time (and seen from products like FFC) Arneson's game wasn't nearly as close to D&D-as-published as this document seems to be.

I get the sneaking suspicion the author has an agenda here to "prove" that Arneson really created D&D and all Gygax did was rephrase his work into flowerier prose (and then claim credit for all of it), when, at least on the basis of the evidence presented so far, it seems every bit as likely that what we're actually looking at is just what Gygax claimed it was - that someone who had access to a D&D set and a typewriter decided to create, effectively, history's very first retro-clone

[Benoist]

It is possible that it could be someone from the Twin Cities familiar with the language who could even have used some of Arneson's maps photocopied or whatnot. I'm not convinced, though I am really curious about it. I'll quote your post on the RPG Site where the author of the blog post, "Aldarron", is posting, Trent.

[Benoist]

The author of the posts answered on the RPG Site:

This was a response I've anticipated and entertained myself, in the first few months of studying the doc.

There will also be some parties (and I should add that I don't beleive T. Foster to be one of them at all) who will want to reject the notion that anyone but Gygax had any real input on D&D.

The short answer is that of course it is possible. It is also extremely unlikely. First, unless the owner is lying, the document is quite old. Second, can we really believe someone would be so clever and so well versed in D&D and Arneson to be able to create a hoax document that has original material, uses Arnesonian language, has loads of material missing (40 some spells for example), uses some completely unheard of and unorthodox terms "non-real Players". etc., go to a great deal of trouble and then just hand it to MA.R Barkers and walk away?

Sure, possible, but just barely. I've been studying Arneson's work for several years now and I could not have made anything like it. Who would have thought of leaving out dexterity from the character traits for example?

Keep in mind the owner has been trying to get a positive ID on this thing for more than a decade - including mailing scans to both Gygax and Arneson. He has emails to the Acaeum and web posts.

It's the real deal. As it happens, word has been coming to my ears that there may be more than one copy of this Mss out there.

[T. Foster]

The additional evidence in that post is more convincing - "missing" spells and a missing character-stat do make it sound more like some sort of intermediate early draft of D&D than something created after-the-fact by someone who had seen a D&D set (or, perhaps, a D&D manuscript -- presumably there were at least a couple of those floating around the Twin Cities c. 1973) and decided both to copy it (either because he couldn't buy it or didn't want to) and "fix" it (because, well, who wouldn't want to make some fixes to D&D if you were already going to the trouble to type up the whole thing), which is what I think the doc is if it isn't an early Arneson draft - I never even considered the possibility that it's a deliberate hoax.

[Benoist]

Yeah me neither. I actually pointed that out in the thread at the RPG Site.

Part three, Establishing Dating: http://boggswood.blogspot.ca/2012/05/be ... art-3.html

[PapersAndPaychecks]

who wouldn't want to make some fixes to D&D if you were already going to the trouble to type up the whole thing

*raises his hand*

[T. Foster]

who wouldn't want to make some fixes to D&D if you were already going to the trouble to type up the whole thing

*raises his hand*

[Aldarron]

The background and text color combination makes the blog almost impossible to read, at least on my computer. Any chance you can change that?

ditto. even at increased size it's difficult.

P.S. I am not an old person.

I don't like it either. Blogger is giving me fits with formating and text color when I try to copy and paste. I'm going to have the whole series as a pdf download. That should make it much easier.

[Benoist]

So, it would be to Aldarron Manuscript D, or at least a post-B Arneson manuscript: http://boggswood.blogspot.ca/2012/05/be ... art-4.html