Lost original D&D manuscript revealed

[ligedog]

Nice to have some closure on this! Thanks for the write up!

[francisca]

Since we know that gamer-variants of D&D were common from the first day people got their hands on it and hacked the rules, what makes this one any more special than dozens of other mixes of published rules and house rules?

It was found and brought to the general gaming public by the Geraldo Rivera of old-school rpgs?

[thedungeondelver]

Since we know that gamer-variants of D&D were common from the first day people got their hands on it and hacked the rules, what makes this one any more special than dozens of other mixes of published rules and house rules?

It was found and brought to the general gaming public by the Geraldo Rivera of old-school rpgs?

Works for me!

[ThirstyStirge]

Since we know that gamer-variants of D&D were common from the first day people got their hands on it and hacked the rules, what makes this one any more special than dozens of other mixes of published rules and house rules?

It was found and brought to the general gaming public by the Geraldo Rivera of old-school rpgs?

It was the only thing found in Al Capone's vault.

If this is the "Dalluhn ms." (or as I've called it The Dumb-Loon Manuscript), if someone doesn't just let the gaming community finally see it then my response is...



This is ridiculous. Even the Israelis didn't keep the Dead Sea Scrolls under this much secrecy and security.

[JasonZavoda]

Pretty much Occam's Razor. Somebody made their own copy rather than some lost holy of holies.

[thedungeondelver]

The whole rather unsubtle thrust of this was "Aha! D&D existed before Gygax, possibly in Dave Arneson's group! Gygax is a THIEF!"

And now we know that's Fake News.

It's an interesting set of house rules that were created after someone saw D&D. That's it. That's all. It's not the Shroud of Turin, it's a teeshirt with a coffee stain.

[increment]

It's the D&D version of Al Capone's Vault.

"Welp, there's nothing really here folks but we did find a beautiful example of a 1920s glass bottle."

Since we know that gamer-variants of D&D were common from the first day people got their hands on it and hacked the rules, what makes this one any more special than dozens of other mixes of published rules and house rules?

That it actually preserves pre-publication D&D rules; like, that it uses ICSHA abilities rather than SIWCDCh, among many other things.

Obviously there were some problems with early analysis of this document, but the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction if we're considering this document not to be a component of the playtesting activities that surrounded the development of D&D. The MMSA was a broad organization that encompassed lots of little regional groups like CONTAX. It is unclear who introduced the changes to the base GD&D system we see reflected in Dalluhn, and it would be premature to say that those differences were all isolated to the Duluth crowd.

What we can do is put to bed theories about this being Arneson's personal "lost" draft, or of it containing some sort of unfiltered pre-Gygax ideas. That does at least remove a lot of the more confusing speculation about it. But none of the new revelations in any way rule out that Dalluhn could very well could preserve some system mechanics specific to the Twin Cities that pre-date D&D.

[EOTB]

That it actually preserves pre-publication D&D rules; like, that it uses ICSHA abilities rather than SIWCDCh, among many other things.

Variant abilities are not uncommon to houserule systems.

Obviously there were some problems with early analysis of this document, but the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction if we're considering this document not to be a component of the playtesting activities that surrounded the development of D&D.

Playing is not playtesting. If they were playtesting the game then the authors would have been in the loop - there would be an organized feedback process. An author wouldn't have been both clueless and dismissive when presented it. There's nothing to suggest that this guy's houserule D&D campaign was intended to playtest. Playtesters were credited in D&D materials, generally.

The MMSA was a broad organization that encompassed lots of little regional groups like CONTAX. It is unclear who introduced the changes to the base GD&D system we see reflected in Dalluhn, and it would be premature to say that those differences were all isolated to the Duluth crowd.

Not unlike groups of D&D players who all went to school together, or had some other association, where the DMs all adopted a perception mechanic, or what have you.

What we can do is put to bed theories about this being Arneson's personal "lost" draft, or of it containing some sort of unfiltered pre-Gygax ideas. That does at least remove a lot of the more confusing speculation about it. But none of the new revelations in any way rule out that Dalluhn could very well could preserve some system mechanics specific to the Twin Cities that pre-date D&D.

Right, but whether or not the Twin Cities played D&D incrementally different than published is not all that important. We already know that OD&D was executed very differently in regional ecosystems (Perrin conventions, etc.)

If people find this fascinating then they should pursue it. But as far as I am concerned I find this to simply be another example of a very common phenomenon we already knew occurred. There's little reason to care about this set of house rules in a way that I wouldn't care about Tommy down the Street's OD&D house rules of 1975. At best it's an early example of the common phenomenon, with little historical impact beyond that minor curiosity factor.

[rogatny]

The argument I'm not getting, since the origins of this have been determined, is why I should care anything more about this manuscript than the first edition of Tunnels & Trolls, or EotPT, or Arduin, or Warlock, or the Perrin conventions, or... well, any other obviously D&D inspired groups of rules that came out before 1978.

The guy who typed this up knew a guy who knew a guy that knew Dave Arneson or something? Is that it? That describes pretty much the entire Midwestern wing of the at-that-time infinitesimally small rpging hobby. That describes Bob Bledsaw, Marc Miller and MAR Barker, too. But they published their games and people actually played them.

[Juju EyeBall]

Dull as dishwater.

[T. Foster]

The key pull-quote for me from that Monson interview is his claim that he doesn't think anyone ever actually played using this document, and that he hadn't even read it when he showed it to Barker. Maybe the additions and changes between it and the GD&D manuscript represent a written record of an oral tradition of how D&D was played pre-publication in Duluth, but it sounds more like it was just this one guy's pet project and as such is of no more historical interest than the hand-scrawled note in the margin of my 5th printing OD&D set "+1 dam for Str 13+"

[increment]

That it actually preserves pre-publication D&D rules; like, that it uses ICSHA abilities rather than SIWCDCh, among many other things.

Variant abilities are not uncommon to houserule systems.

... if you really think there's no difference between "variant" abilities like those that appeared in homebrews or T&T after D&D was published, and the abilities that appeared in GD&D in 1973 before D&D was published, I don't know what to tell you. One is not of historical importance to how D&D came together and the other is. This particular document contains the latter; these abilities were not something that Tommy down the street made up.

Does the fact that these abilities don't vary from what was in GD&D make them less important somehow? Where the Dalluhn rules do vary, I get your point, and I'm not saying everyone has to be fascinated by incrementally different rules used by the more remote edges of the MMSA. Again, I'm only arguing that the pendulum is swinging too far here on the spectrum from "historically unique" to "utterly insignificant." The right spot is somewhere in the middle.

[increment]

The key pull-quote for me from that Monson interview is his claim that he doesn't think anyone ever actually played using this document, and that he hadn't even read it when he showed it to Barker.

I don't tend to get a lot of reliable information out of interviews like this. I'm sure he's honestly stating what he remembers, but it's all stuff like "I have to think that Mark worked from my copy" and "I do not believe he ever ran a game with those rules" rather than, you know, certainty or evidence. He tells us "Contax: hearing that again caused me to remember vaguely using that group name for about one hour, then forgetting it," whereas we have data points showing it being used for years, with weekly club meetings, letterheads, a picture of Monson in the newspaper with "CONTAX members" under him, etc. So I wouldn't be too confident in the pull quotes.

Maybe the additions and changes between it and the GD&D manuscript represent a written record of an oral tradition of how D&D was played pre-publication in Duluth, but it sounds more like it was just this one guy's pet project and as such is of no more historical interest than the hand-scrawled note in the margin of my 5th printing OD&D set "+1 dam for Str 13+"

... 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. I think it will turn out that we can show at least some of them were based on Twin Cities edits, even Arneson edits. Others, we don't know. Which is why I said it's premature to characterize these as variations isolated to Duluth.

[Falconer]

Jon, I think it’s true that we still have all of Dan Boggs’ outrageous claims ringing in our ears. Now that all those claims have been debunked, it’s really unclear — to me, at least — what is left to be excited about. Perhaps the case needs to be made again from scratch. However, to be honest, I think this particular crowd simply will never really see the appeal. We have a relentless focus on actually gaming and on fostering our own creativity and the craft of DMing. On a practical level, house rules from before 1974 really are no more ingenious than any of the thousands of house rules we have seen and ourselves invented over the years.

[EOTB]

... if you really think there's no difference between "variant" abilities like those that appeared in homebrews or T&T after D&D was published, and the abilities that appeared in GD&D in 1973 before D&D was published, I don't know what to tell you. One is not of historical importance to how D&D came together and the other is. This particular document contains the latter; these abilities were not something that Tommy down the street made up.

Does the fact that these abilities don't vary from what was in GD&D make them less important somehow? Where the Dalluhn rules do vary, I get your point, and I'm not saying everyone has to be fascinated by incrementally different rules used by the more remote edges of the MMSA. Again, I'm only arguing that the pendulum is swinging too far here on the spectrum from "historically unique" to "utterly insignificant." The right spot is somewhere in the middle.

I already assumed that each iteration of draft D&D was used at tables by people to run games prior to the woodgrain box being published. So to me, while it might not qualify as "utterly insignificant" it isn't a large distance from it - it's not anywhere close to the middle between that and "historically unique".

I realize that there will be an audience for this sort of thing, that is fascinated by any pre-publication examples of D&D. What I'm saying is that for me personally, it's like going to a site where pioneers or early settlers lived, and seeing an exhibit that includes an actual butter churn used to make butter by the people who lived there. "Neat" I think to myself, and that's the extent of it.

Does that mean the butter churn is utterly insignificant? No, it's kind of cool. I enjoy seeing it. And then I really don't think about it again unless what I saw on my visit somehow becomes relevant to something or some conversation happening in the moment.