Dave Arneson (1947–2009)

The first two books of the set were strange, but this one was the strangest. I have never heard about this strange thing in D&D where when the party wanders around outside of a city, they might get close to a castle and if they did the inhabitants might come out and attack them. And those inhabitants might be humans, or monsters or anything really.

The dungeon stuff was strange too. He talked about dungeon levels getting boring because the party had cleared them out so the DM needed to restock them. He talked about trying to make sure that the players could NOT map the dungeon accurately.

Two strangest/funniest things:

1) This was at the end of a section describing sea monsters -
"Final Note: If sea monsters or monsters of the seas do not get a ship, perhaps it will sail off the edge of the world!"

I guess it was a kind of possible adventure hook.

2) At the very end of the book the last paragraph is entitled "Afterward" instead of "Afterword". Which is a pretty hilarious grammar mistake. But also in the "Afterward" he encourages players NOT to contact them with rules questions, but to figure things out for themselves "for everything herein is fantastic" and "why have us do any more of your imagining for you?"… (mere)

This one was a little easier to understand than the first book, but still lacking in a ton of details. The monsters were grouped by type rather than in alphabetical order which means if you're looking for a monster you have to know what group it's in and then find that group. Some of the magic items seem incredibly powerful. Also seemed like a lot more treasure than I'm used to for monsters.

Some pretty funny stuff like cursed scrolls that send you to another planet and wands that "detect meals".… (mere)

Considering that I've been playing Dungeons & Dragons since I was 8 (back in 1978), it's kind of crazy that I'm just reading this now. I guess part of it is that I didn't own a white boxed set until a couple weeks ago. But then I'm back to, how did I not own a white boxed set until just recently?

It was fun and nostalgic to read this, but also quite painful. It really has the feel of someones random notes about a game that he wants to create. Things like spells that give no description of what they actually do, an "alternate" combat system, but no "initial" combat system because they assume you already play Chainmail and will be using that system. Before you even know how to roll up a character there's a section on creating magic items.

Probably the biggest problem I have with this is that there's no "example of play". He never really talks about how the game is played, so someone who had never played an RPG (and I believe this was the first one), would be totally lost. Anyway, I've always said that you should always learn how to play RPGs from people who already know how to play. So maybe Mr. Gygax was writing from that perspective.

Anyway, it's super short and was a "blast from the past". It's really cool to see that many of the ideas still exist in the newest edition of D&D more than 40 years later.… (mere)

What started it all. The rules are more of a conglomeration of charts and tables, essential links are missing, a recommended book for play wasn't even sold by TSR (Outdoor Survival, from Avalon Hill; was Gygax anticipating LARPS?)... and none of that mattered. Still played by a few die-hards, who have added their own 'house rules' to the point where barely the name of the original game survives. A collector's item, but not worth the prices charged for someone looking for a set of rules to play a game with.… (mere)