Back in the seventies, I always thought of it as the basic boxed game was the intro for newbies and teens/pre-teens, and AD&D was for the college kids who were more serious, dressed up as their characters, played in steam tunnels, played 24-36 hour sessions, and wanted more rules and detail.
Yeah I first came across the game as advanced dungeons & dragons. I did eventually by the box sets but as I read through them I had the same thought. I thought this was just a more rules light teenage version of the game. Funny thing is I have never played what's now called BECMI etc to this day.
Enjoyable and informative. Do you think Gygax left the combat system out of the Players Handbook for artistic reasons or just to guarantee you would buy the DM's guide?
I love the “Just the facts,” no bells and whistles BS of your presentation. Too many channels prioritising style over substance. This is excellent, thank you Nicholas. Subscribed.
This is a gratifying and interesting summary on the origin. I didn't expect to find myself so engaged. Thanks for this. I was in junior high in '79 when introduced to AD&D. I can tell you that the _"Advanced"_ label on the book titles and supplements always made me feel like I was part of a special group. I was also incentivized to learn _everything._ To understand it all. As a result, this game turned a poor student into one that greatly improved in math and language (q.v., my vocabulary went through the roof). I was also fortunate enough to live in Albuquerque NM, the home of *Wargames West.* 🎲 What a time to be young! 📜🗡️ 📚 I was unaware the modules came _after_ the _Judges Guild_ supplements. I always thought it was the other way around. But they had some very useful suppliments (though not quite as pretty😉). I always liked the added message in the game which you touched on, _we can make it what we want._ Looking back on these books, I am blown away by the levels of detail. And that I even held a fraction of this in my head as a kid. 🤯 Once I was a parent, I introduced my daughter to rpgs in the mid-90's, when she was 7 or 8. She is now in her early 30's and co-founder of a successful tabletop role-playing company.¹ Finally, your _Players Handbook_ looks fantastic, given its age. I've considered picking up replacement copies of my old 1st edition AD&D books, but as I'm trying to live a minimalistic lifestyle, I may stick with pdfs until I've purged my life of more needless excess. Again, thank you for this video. 🙋🏼♂️ *Edit:* _Subscribed!_ ··•✺•·· ¹ ─ __ ☺️
Thank you so much for the feedback! You’ll probably also like the video on the rules of AD&D where I discuss some of the things that made AD&D unique even among the various edition of D&D.
Another interesting and informative video. I’m rewatching all your videos and I know more information has come out since you made this video regarding freezing out Dave Arnesson, but still I really enjoyed rewatching your take on it all. Great video. Thanks!
Yes, when I made this video it was not widely available, but I have now seen it. It's very much about the development of fantasy roleplaying by Arneson and his game group out of the the wargaming culture that he existed previously. The book Game Wizards by Jon Peterson goes into intense detail about Arneson's contentious relationship with Gygax and TSR. It also talks about the subsequent legal battles over credit and money that stretched on for a number of years. Arneson won most of the court battles with TSR and so their attempts to not pay him what he was owed ultimately failed.
I got the AD&D books in 1982 as well, after getting the Basic Set for Christmas in 1981 (randomly, I didn't ask for it) and then buying the Expert Set shortly afterward. I needed the AD&D books to join my first group and begin playing. Of course I started with the Player's Handbook, but then got the others when I was trying to run Keep on the Borderlands and Isle of Dread in the B and X boxes (and where I learned just about all I needed to know to make adventures)...I know a lot of people who are newer players look at this old DM Guide and sort of scoff at it for not being a concise rule system that they can immediately use, but I think that they miss all the context like the Gygax books l"Role-Playing Mastery" and the general feeling of you don't need a lot of rules (culturally, Generation X tended to shun pre-packaged entertainment in favor of DIY); they only see a few artifacts and make a judgment based upon their tastes, which are perhaps shaped by their experiences the later more rules-crunchy WoTC versions of the game starting with 3.0 and beyond, with more rules constraints like video games have and more standardized D&D lore (which seems tired to me), These things change the whole style of play with less emphasis game design based upon reading fantasy novels for inspiration....I think the most promising future for tabletop "D&D" is OSE's Dolmenwood, where we see the herb and mushroom tables you mentioned. Their system is fantastic and the hex crawl is the best I have ever seen. Dolmenwood even has its own "Appendix N" (though they don't call it that).
Good video - I agree that there's a mad genius to DMG. I often refer to myself as somewhat Gygaxian, and by that I mean as a kid seeing the possibilities of a made up existence spelled out in percentiles strongly informed my viewpoint of the real world, then and still today. The fact that Gygax essentially begins the book with an explanation of the bell curve kinda says it all.
Interesting, I didn’t start to play until 1987 with 1AD&D. I still enjoy playing this version at conventions, when we had those, hopefully they’ll come back.
Well, in a sense they have come back. Wizards of the Coast has made much of the AD&D 1e material published by TSR available as print on demand books at the DM’s Guild or Drivethrurpg. This includes the core rules as well as most of the modules. If you’re looking for something, you might check there.
Sorry! I misread. You meant conventions! Yeah, hopefully we’ll get to a safer place at some point. Though I know some conventions are happening again (Gen Con was in person last week).
Great simple video! I personally love Basic and I think I'm only going to play that from now on. The ideas in the Advanced Dungeon Masters guide are good but B/X is still my favorite because of the lack of hard rules
I dont think it was ever in question that the DM/GM could modify or customize rules regardless of the rules edition. As of AD&D / 1e it was clear where TSR had provided guidance and where it didn't. At conventions it was clear that 1e had to prevail , just as there are tournament rules for every team sport. At the University of Waterloo our club Watsfic was able to run very large tournaments with over 30 teams with 6 players each, all running the same custom module written by a club member. We had three shifts run by each DM on the first day/round, and I don't think there was ever a complaint about uneven or unfair treatment of teams. I doubt that would have been possible with the first ruleset or even the boxed set. All the coordination we typically got was to have played the module as players once with its author. The insult term "Gygaxian" was really only ever used to describe Gary's modules and Greyhawk, the monk druid bard barbarian assassin etc were all well known to have arisen from the community as a whole ie Dragon Magazine. Since only the DM ever needed the DMG, most players didn't read it, but it was clear enough that unlike other games players could not "lawyer" the DM in his own game. So owning the DMG didn't provide any advantage. Maybe it made you a target!
I appreciate the perspective, I pretty much missed the AD&D tournament scene as I never really went to a game convention, so my knowledge about this mostly came from lots of reading and my memories of this topic being discussed in the pages of Dragon magazine (which was pretty much my favorite thing to read). I actually read Dragon before I really started playing because it was cheaper to buy than the game rules, but it only fanned the fires even higher. Eventually I got the Tom Moldvay edited basic set, and we played Basic D&D for a while, but (oddly) my next purchase after Moldvay was the DMG which I found both fascinating and intimidating. I think I bought it because I was often the Dungeon Master in our games, and I assumed it was a book that I would need.
Why did TSR publish AD&D? Perhaps because Gygax wanted to push out other people including Arneson and not have to pay royalties? You state for most of the first half of the video it was because of the nebulous nature of the original set. However, the Holmes edition came out before Gygax published the Dungeon Masters Guide (which contained a lot of the procedures you yourself state were necessary to have a 'homogenised' system), there is very little justification to do another system rather than to create a 2nd edition of D&D. The falling out between Gygax and Arneson was very much due to Gygax making AD&D and going to court as a completely different system. Just my understanding, I am aware there are differing opinions.
If I’m being honest then I have to believe this money grab was real motivation for that Gygaxian push to AD&D. Let’s be real. I distinctly recall an early 80s Dragon magazine editorial where the shoe salesman-turned-emperor himself railed against those who refused to play ‘his’ way, comparing AD&D’s immutable rules to those of Hoyle’s card games. Ironic coming from a guy who, hardly five years prior, was encouraging people to do it their own way. I lost most of the respect I had for the man after that. Ultimately I came to reject almost everything published after Holmes Basic. I sought out a copy of Arneson’s First Fantasy Campaign and really got into fantasy miniatures gaming. This was in the 1980’s and my gaming buddies all thought I was nuts. I bought my late edition white box from a hobby shop in Princeton, NJ for less than $10 on sale because nobody wanted them. Gygax’s total hypocrisy around AD&D essentially pushed me back towards the wargaming roots of the genre where I remain to this day. I arrived decades before OSR and all those awesome Chainmail! analyses folks wrote up in the earlier 2000’s.
Remember phonebooks, where you could look up someone’s number and just call them, out of the blue. Seems so weird now, whereas calling them an ass on Twitter is perfectly acceptable.
I hadn’t read Game Wizards when this video was made, and, yes, that was definitely one of the main motivations. That story was more involved and elaborate than I imagined when I made this video. It is worth noting though that the reasons I discussed here were also factors in AD&D’s development-especially in regards to the ongoing rhetoric both in the rules and in publications like Dragon magazine.
@@nicholasbielik7156 the book "Slaying the dragon" touches on the subject as well, it's an excellent read if you haven't read it already. The matter was only properly solved when the old WOTC & Peter Adkinson bought TSR in 1997. As a matter of fact, Adkinson made it a priority to make things right with many of the contributors who were screwed over the years by TSR
When you talked about people how used the basic rules and adding some of the elements of AD&D, I had to laugh. I did that very thing but never really admitted it to anyone. So much of AD&D was really unnecessary for most DMs and players. I always think of the part where he talked about what sounds to make when casting a spell. Yeah Gary, maybe let's not.
I made this video before I read Jon Peterson’s excellent book, Game Wizards, which explicates the attempt to shut Arneson out in great detail. I do feel that had I made this video now I would have landed harder on that point.
The very concept of a D&D *tournament* is absurd. Like I get that people just loved playing the game and wanted a shared experience at cons, but it feels wrong to shoehorn a players-vs-scenario game into a bracketing system.
I’ve never played in a D&D tournament but many of the classic TSR modules were originally run as tournament scenarios. By all accounts the tournaments were quite successful. I’m not sure if that translates to fun at the table, but they were well attended, and TSR kept doing them because players liked them. It was this situation which led to the formation of the RPGA which was the precursor to the “living” campaigns run by WOTC in later years.
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Back in the seventies, I always thought of it as the basic boxed game was the intro for newbies and teens/pre-teens, and AD&D was for the college kids who were more serious, dressed up as their characters, played in steam tunnels, played 24-36 hour sessions, and wanted more rules and detail.
Funniest comment I’ve read in a minute
@@Dankerbug He’s not lying about the steam tunnels. Frodo Lives!
Yeah I first came across the game as advanced dungeons & dragons. I did eventually by the box sets but as I read through them I had the same thought. I thought this was just a more rules light teenage version of the game. Funny thing is I have never played what's now called BECMI etc to this day.
Enjoyable and informative. Do you think Gygax left the combat system out of the Players Handbook for artistic reasons or just to guarantee you would buy the DM's guide?
This is all explicitly detailed in Art & Arcana if anyone wants to read more about the history of dnd.
I love the “Just the facts,” no bells and whistles BS of your presentation. Too many channels prioritising style over substance.
This is excellent, thank you Nicholas. Subscribed.
Thanks!
This is a gratifying and interesting summary on the origin. I didn't expect to find myself so engaged. Thanks for this.
I was in junior high in '79 when introduced to AD&D. I can tell you that the _"Advanced"_ label on the book titles and supplements always made me feel like I was part of a special group. I was also incentivized to learn _everything._ To understand it all. As a result, this game turned a poor student into one that greatly improved in math and language (q.v., my vocabulary went through the roof).
I was also fortunate enough to live in Albuquerque NM, the home of *Wargames West.* 🎲 What a time to be young! 📜🗡️ 📚
I was unaware the modules came _after_ the _Judges Guild_ supplements. I always thought it was the other way around. But they had some very useful suppliments (though not quite as pretty😉).
I always liked the added message in the game which you touched on, _we can make it what we want._
Looking back on these books, I am blown away by the levels of detail. And that I even held a fraction of this in my head as a kid. 🤯
Once I was a parent, I introduced my daughter to rpgs in the mid-90's, when she was 7 or 8. She is now in her early 30's and co-founder of a successful tabletop role-playing company.¹
Finally, your _Players Handbook_ looks fantastic, given its age. I've considered picking up replacement copies of my old 1st edition AD&D books, but as I'm trying to live a minimalistic lifestyle, I may stick with pdfs until I've purged my life of more needless excess.
Again, thank you for this video. 🙋🏼♂️
*Edit:* _Subscribed!_
··•✺•··
¹ ─ __ ☺️
Thank you so much for the feedback! You’ll probably also like the video on the rules of AD&D where I discuss some of the things that made AD&D unique even among the various edition of D&D.
I got into the game at the same time too. Thanks for sharing your experience!
Another interesting and informative video. I’m rewatching all your videos and I know more information has come out since you made this video regarding freezing out Dave Arnesson, but still I really enjoyed rewatching your take on it all. Great video. Thanks!
I have watched documentaries on the "cutting Arneson out of the Advanced version of D&D" - I believe it was called "Secrets of Blackmoor"
Yes, when I made this video it was not widely available, but I have now seen it. It's very much about the development of fantasy roleplaying by Arneson and his game group out of the the wargaming culture that he existed previously. The book Game Wizards by Jon Peterson goes into intense detail about Arneson's contentious relationship with Gygax and TSR. It also talks about the subsequent legal battles over credit and money that stretched on for a number of years. Arneson won most of the court battles with TSR and so their attempts to not pay him what he was owed ultimately failed.
I got the AD&D books in 1982 as well, after getting the Basic Set for Christmas in 1981 (randomly, I didn't ask for it) and then buying the Expert Set shortly afterward. I needed the AD&D books to join my first group and begin playing. Of course I started with the Player's Handbook, but then got the others when I was trying to run Keep on the Borderlands and Isle of Dread in the B and X boxes (and where I learned just about all I needed to know to make adventures)...I know a lot of people who are newer players look at this old DM Guide and sort of scoff at it for not being a concise rule system that they can immediately use, but I think that they miss all the context like the Gygax books l"Role-Playing Mastery" and the general feeling of you don't need a lot of rules (culturally, Generation X tended to shun pre-packaged entertainment in favor of DIY); they only see a few artifacts and make a judgment based upon their tastes, which are perhaps shaped by their experiences the later more rules-crunchy WoTC versions of the game starting with 3.0 and beyond, with more rules constraints like video games have and more standardized D&D lore (which seems tired to me), These things change the whole style of play with less emphasis game design based upon reading fantasy novels for inspiration....I think the most promising future for tabletop "D&D" is OSE's Dolmenwood, where we see the herb and mushroom tables you mentioned. Their system is fantastic and the hex crawl is the best I have ever seen. Dolmenwood even has its own "Appendix N" (though they don't call it that).
Good video - I agree that there's a mad genius to DMG. I often refer to myself as somewhat Gygaxian, and by that I mean as a kid seeing the possibilities of a made up existence spelled out in percentiles strongly informed my viewpoint of the real world, then and still today. The fact that Gygax essentially begins the book with an explanation of the bell curve kinda says it all.
Interesting, I didn’t start to play until 1987 with 1AD&D. I still enjoy playing this version at conventions, when we had those, hopefully they’ll come back.
Well, in a sense they have come back. Wizards of the Coast has made much of the AD&D 1e material published by TSR available as print on demand books at the DM’s Guild or Drivethrurpg. This includes the core rules as well as most of the modules. If you’re looking for something, you might check there.
Sorry! I misread. You meant conventions! Yeah, hopefully we’ll get to a safer place at some point. Though I know some conventions are happening again (Gen Con was in person last week).
Great summary
You have earned a new subscriber :-)
Very interesting, thanks for posting this!
Great simple video! I personally love Basic and I think I'm only going to play that from now on. The ideas in the Advanced Dungeon Masters guide are good but B/X is still my favorite because of the lack of hard rules
Old School Essentials Advanced introduces some concepts that are coming from AD&D if you want to mix it up a bit with you B/X game
@@griselame I'm already way ahead of you. I own it in PDF and love it!
@@BX-advocate I own it in hardcopy, I have the screen as well. I have both the players and referees tome. The box looks great though :)
@@griselame OSE is the bomb I just wish O could actually get a good group, too many people are...modern gamers who can't handle it.
I dont think it was ever in question that the DM/GM could modify or customize rules regardless of the rules edition. As of AD&D / 1e it was clear where TSR had provided guidance and where it didn't. At conventions it was clear that 1e had to prevail , just as there are tournament rules for every team sport.
At the University of Waterloo our club Watsfic was able to run very large tournaments with over 30 teams with 6 players each, all running the same custom module written by a club member. We had three shifts run by each DM on the first day/round, and I don't think there was ever a complaint about uneven or unfair treatment of teams. I doubt that would have been possible with the first ruleset or even the boxed set. All the coordination we typically got was to have played the module as players once with its author.
The insult term "Gygaxian" was really only ever used to describe Gary's modules and Greyhawk, the monk druid bard barbarian assassin etc were all well known to have arisen from the community as a whole ie Dragon Magazine.
Since only the DM ever needed the DMG, most players didn't read it, but it was clear enough that unlike other games players could not "lawyer" the DM in his own game. So owning the DMG didn't provide any advantage. Maybe it made you a target!
I appreciate the perspective, I pretty much missed the AD&D tournament scene as I never really went to a game convention, so my knowledge about this mostly came from lots of reading and my memories of this topic being discussed in the pages of Dragon magazine (which was pretty much my favorite thing to read). I actually read Dragon before I really started playing because it was cheaper to buy than the game rules, but it only fanned the fires even higher. Eventually I got the Tom Moldvay edited basic set, and we played Basic D&D for a while, but (oddly) my next purchase after Moldvay was the DMG which I found both fascinating and intimidating. I think I bought it because I was often the Dungeon Master in our games, and I assumed it was a book that I would need.
@Cr Hu
This sounds absolutely brilliant. Much envy in this corner.
@Cr Hu
Not the part about the DM guide, just the sheer number of groups/participants.
Solid analysis
Bielik. Polish surname. Orzeł (Eagle) Bielik, which isn't actually an eagle but hawk.
PS. Rules are for GMs not players.
Why did TSR publish AD&D? Perhaps because Gygax wanted to push out other people including Arneson and not have to pay royalties? You state for most of the first half of the video it was because of the nebulous nature of the original set. However, the Holmes edition came out before Gygax published the Dungeon Masters Guide (which contained a lot of the procedures you yourself state were necessary to have a 'homogenised' system), there is very little justification to do another system rather than to create a 2nd edition of D&D. The falling out between Gygax and Arneson was very much due to Gygax making AD&D and going to court as a completely different system. Just my understanding, I am aware there are differing opinions.
If I’m being honest then I have to believe this money grab was real motivation for that Gygaxian push to AD&D. Let’s be real. I distinctly recall an early 80s Dragon magazine editorial where the shoe salesman-turned-emperor himself railed against those who refused to play ‘his’ way, comparing AD&D’s immutable rules to those of Hoyle’s card games. Ironic coming from a guy who, hardly five years prior, was encouraging people to do it their own way. I lost most of the respect I had for the man after that.
Ultimately I came to reject almost everything published after Holmes Basic. I sought out a copy of Arneson’s First Fantasy Campaign and really got into fantasy miniatures gaming. This was in the 1980’s and my gaming buddies all thought I was nuts. I bought my late edition white box from a hobby shop in Princeton, NJ for less than $10 on sale because nobody wanted them. Gygax’s total hypocrisy around AD&D essentially pushed me back towards the wargaming roots of the genre where I remain to this day. I arrived decades before OSR and all those awesome Chainmail! analyses folks wrote up in the earlier 2000’s.
I enjoy this video so much!!
Like chess like science even role playing games evolve
Remember phonebooks, where you could look up someone’s number and just call them, out of the blue. Seems so weird now, whereas calling them an ass on Twitter is perfectly acceptable.
Quick answer : to block Arneson from claiming for more royalties
I hadn’t read Game Wizards when this video was made, and, yes, that was definitely one of the main motivations. That story was more involved and elaborate than I imagined when I made this video. It is worth noting though that the reasons I discussed here were also factors in AD&D’s development-especially in regards to the ongoing rhetoric both in the rules and in publications like Dragon magazine.
@@nicholasbielik7156 the book "Slaying the dragon" touches on the subject as well, it's an excellent read if you haven't read it already. The matter was only properly solved when the old WOTC & Peter Adkinson bought TSR in 1997. As a matter of fact, Adkinson made it a priority to make things right with many of the contributors who were screwed over the years by TSR
When you talked about people how used the basic rules and adding some of the elements of AD&D, I had to laugh. I did that very thing but never really admitted it to anyone. So much of AD&D was really unnecessary for most DMs and players. I always think of the part where he talked about what sounds to make when casting a spell. Yeah Gary, maybe let's not.
Convention games, tournaments, and _to freeze out Dave Arneson_
I made this video before I read Jon Peterson’s excellent book, Game Wizards, which explicates the attempt to shut Arneson out in great detail. I do feel that had I made this video now I would have landed harder on that point.
@@nicholasbielik7156 I wasn't criticizing your analysis. You had so much right, by which I mean so much I agree with. ;-')
@@willinnewhaven3285 no worries. I do with hindsight see that as a slight flaw in the video. Glad you enjoyed it though!
@@nicholasbielik7156 LOL: I'm watching your Origins of D D when I saw your reply
easy they published AD&D was a more robust rule set. D&D was a simplified system.
The very concept of a D&D *tournament* is absurd. Like I get that people just loved playing the game and wanted a shared experience at cons, but it feels wrong to shoehorn a players-vs-scenario game into a bracketing system.
I’ve never played in a D&D tournament but many of the classic TSR modules were originally run as tournament scenarios. By all accounts the tournaments were quite successful. I’m not sure if that translates to fun at the table, but they were well attended, and TSR kept doing them because players liked them. It was this situation which led to the formation of the RPGA which was the precursor to the “living” campaigns run by WOTC in later years.
Cha'alt!