7 Things You NEVER Knew About Dungeons & Dragons!
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 10 ก.ย. 2024
- Professor DM played with some of the members of Dave Arneson's "Blackmoor Bunch" and this is what they revealed about the SECRET origins of D&D! Ep. #388
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I laugh every time Deathbringer says "what is a Beavis!?"
An improvised line. I never could have written that.
@@DUNGEONCRAFT1 well it lives rent free good sir
It is actually old French and mean "fair(lovely) son".
I think this video officially makes you Professor Dungeon Master.
Thank you.
I played in a War of the Roses campaign in England from 1971 to 1975 that was mostly role-playing as an English nobleman during the War of the Roses but also was a war game campaign where there were battles. The evolution of wargaming to role-playing is deeply rooted and goes back far further than most people suspect. I ended up being made sheriff of Lincolnshire because I failed to show up for a battle that my side lost. The wise winner recruited me to the Yorkist side by promoting me for not showing up and giving me the sheriff's office as a reward!
As with many things, there's going to be a fuzzy boundary to the start of things where there's going to be endless debate about what, exactly constitutes an RPG. Ahoy has a great hour long video about what the first video game is and it's a surprisingly difficult question to answer. At least half of the video is him carefully defining exactly what his criteria are for what a video game is. Spoilers: he (and others) have been able to trace it back to the 1952 but there's also video game-like devices that exist even before that and the exact date depends on the details of which definition you use.
I love how it only took 20 min for the first RPG to dissolve into a PvP conflict.
Human nature at its best 😂
Lol. True!
Well, actually, it was about halfway through the first game, so more like six hours than 20 minutes.
And DAVE ARNESON at that. Foreshadowing.
It's in our blood. 💯
Everyone has seen a "Top X Things You Didn't Know About ..." list. And invariably, everything on those lists everyone already knows. Not PDM's list. This list was D&D History Gold, Professor. Thanks for sharing!
Thank you. Pass it on!
My first D&D character died fighting a giant tick about 30 minutes into the game. Nice to know I'm part of a long tradition.
LOVE Giant Ticks!
my first character got crushed by an ogre club, also about 30 minutes in.
It never matters how many times I hear these stories of the culmination of D&D, it's always inspiring.
I know, right? It's a bunch of nerdy buddies who got together and created stuff that will live on, maybe forever!
definitely, it was a party all along!
Thanks for bringing attention to the Twin Cities gaming community. I started playing in the late 70's at a little gaming store on Lake Street in Minneapolis call Little Tin Soldiers. It was a fusion of wargamers branching into roll playing games. A lot of people bring their game ideas to try out on the big gaming tables. Played a lot of fun games, both established and experimental. I sat in on your Sunday workshop at Dave Con on the future of gaming. Glad to hear you had a great time.
I am wondering how many of these things I will turn out to have known. For the sake of sport I shall predict: three.
lol
I think I only knew one of these, the Braunstein bit.
As it turned out, I was half-right. I sort of half-knew three of them.
once again my youtube worlds collide, the first time was Matt Colville + Dr. Jackson Crawford, this time its that @Lindybeige watches Prof DM? what a nice pleasurable chuckle this gave!
I knew a few of them, and they are all things I had learned from this channel.
Truly a "it's about the community that made these games" type of video - loved that. Thank you for sharing, it was really insightful!
I'm glad that the history of D&D is being explored more fully.
I understand there are people who have a goal of assigning credit to people (usually Arneson vs Gygax), but as mentioned in this video--Credit is owed to FAR more people.
Orcs, Skeletons, Goblins, Giant Spiders, werewolves, vampires...none of these things are creations of Dave Arneson.
Carr comes up with Advancement.
Role Playing is certainly more to the credit of Dave Weseley and Braunstein.
AC, HP, Saves--all earlier concepts.
This is the 50th anniversary fun we all need. It should be fun facts and interviews all bloody year!
YES
It's great to hear those folks are still throwing dice
For me, DaveCon was absolutely fantastic! I started with a Holmes set in spring of '81; the foreword about Blackmoor and the Castle & Crusade Society entranced me as a dark, misty pre-history. I was fascinated... fast-forward over 40 years, and, little did I know I'd move to MN and sit and chat and play on the very table that started it all, and see the very pieces that played those games...! Pretty much a childhood dream come true.
Braunstein was 1968
Wesley keeps screwing up on the date and his memory keeps flipping it to 1969. We’ve already got documentation showing 1968. At one point I wondered if it was 1967 because it followed suit with a particular book that came out that year, but it didn’t show up at the military PX until 1968.
also, the manuscript was first generated in Minnesota for the game with the help of Pete Gaylord‘s wife, Gail Gaylord, and David Megarry as well as Steven Rockford. There was a lot of back-and-forth between Gary and Dave to get the manuscript right Gary kept adding a lot more rules and complexity, whereas they (MN Group) preferred lighter rules because Dave knew the inclusion of more complex rules would increase the chance of game lawyering slowing down the game.
Yes Braunstein was 1968. December 28, in fact. We have got that nailed down after a few years of finding all the survivors from the first game and interviewing them. "Cardinal Fang! Fetch The Comfey Chair! Bwa-ha-ha-ha!"
@@weseld1 See you Wednesday!
Professor - Don’t think I didn’t see you sneaking Axis and Allies naval units pieces in to this video.
Was going to comment the same but figured someone had already beat me to it!
@@RyanoftheNorth I saw it in there and geeked out hard. I appreciate the follow up
It was a think tank and still is. Every home brew, every 3rd party publish, every discord, Facebook page and dungeon tuber. There is no One D&D
Armor Class was a war game adaptation, but I think from Fred Jane's "Jane Naval Wargame" (1898), which we (David, Gary and the rest of us playtesters) were very familiar with (there weren't a lot of other wargames rules out there in the 50s and 60s). They were one thing we could at least hope to find in a big public library
"'Jane's Fighting Ships" provided the data for the game, and specified armor values in the same (awkward) inverse order that is seen in D&D: The heaviest armor in 1898 Jane's was "A" and less effective armor then worked its way doen through "B", C" etc. That became obsolete as each new class of battleships, then dreadnoughts, then super-dreadnoughts had stronger armor, and Jane's assign "AA" then "AAA" and "AAAA" and so on for the new ships. D&D should have started armor classes at "0: naked" and worked its way up, so there was always a possibility of expanding the table when, say, Godzilla ahowed up! An ascending numeric system would have made it possible to split hairs: "But because of the damage, your armor is now only class 7.9, instead of 8, and you have to re-roll on ties" But David and Gary were not about to tear up all the stuff so laboriously typed (no word processors or even spell checker software back then) so armor class 0 remained "the best there is".
Thanks for the education!
For modern warships, you're correct. For wooden ships, it comes from the ship ratings, with a First Class ship of the line being the hardest to damage as it had the thickest beams. After Third Class ships, it went down through cruisers and frigates, which would get successive numbers on a combat results table--higher numbers than the better protected craft. So Armor or Protection would be rated 1 through 5 (or 6, depending on whether the game included light craft.)
For ironclads it'd be rated in inches of iron equivalent.
And for Victorian and modern ships, we'd use Jane's ratings.
I was expecting the Nth "Gary robbed Dave" screed, and here you are talking about Dave W and Mike Carr and Dawn Patrol, of all things! Your closing was great, these elfgames truly are the work of an army of eager and skilled gamers, and if not for ALL of them we'd be.... playing cribbage? Anyway well done and a nice tribute to all of them.
Thank you.
Even the Red Baron fears Deathbringer in the wild blue yonder ☠️
I got to meet and hand out with Dave(we were in the same civil war reenactment unit in Minnesota). He was a lot of fun. Talked rpg a little and civil war alot.
I always love hearing more Dungeon & Dragons history! Thank you Professor
Gotta love Deathbringer!
He loves you.
Deathbringer is the power behind the throne on this channel 😂
@@DUNGEONCRAFT1 with an axe...
One awesome tidbit Mr. Hoyt mentioned (I hope I recall it correctly): when Dave Arneson was away, Duane Jenkins asked if he could take over Blackmoor castle. So, a scenario the bunch came into: a vampire had moved in to the basement, and needed to be dealt with. Mr. Hoyt was like "this was the first time we'd ever been UNDER the castle!!" I wonder if that was during Arneson's trip to Europe (summer of '71)?
Fall of 1970.
1970 Hoyt left for his new job and so Duane took over. And Dave got a new Castle as he left his at Hoyt's
Wow! While watching, I realized that the guys you met at Dave Con have had a huge influence on my education and lifetime interests. Level 57 me, looking back at level 13 me, can see the impact of their products at that time, and how they induced other interests which I have had during my entire campaign. Great vid !
Thank you!
When I got my Basic D&D Box (which came with the counter chits not dice, apparently the 1979 version I bought in 81/82) I also bought a set of dice (that I still have) and several of them have the edges 'flaking off' as you mention here. D10 is a durable almost HDPE "oily" feel and the D20 was something else but opaque and durable over the years. I had to constantly color in the second 1-0 numbers until I found a better paint.
I find it quite the pinnacle of comedy that you thumbnail the mystery warrior art with the "what?" tag taking advantage of the hype train and then NEVER mention it in the video. Glorious.
Once again the professor is bringing the knowledge about the games we have come to know & love.
Thanks!
Gygax really feels like the Stan Lee of D&D. I mean that to be a neutral comparison, but I feel like some will see it as a dig and others as a compliment and it isn't meant as either. I wish Arneson got more props for seeing the potential in the Braunstein games. There's an alternate reality out there where D&D never stopped being a 2d6 based game.
Wish I could live in this reality. Well, I kinda do, since we only use d6 at my table.
2d6, yeah that is called Traveller :)
Sword World, the biggest Japanese RPG, used the 2d6 method, largely because the various polyhedral dice were extremely rare in Japan in the 80s.
@@DoctorLazers Excellent game, relatively simple and hackable
It's an apt comparison
The old history of how things started back in the 70s is always fun to listen to
fascinating topics!
Hey, you're that famous guy from that one place with that thing people liked! I'll never forget it!
Super interesting stuff! I love hearing about these stories because it's amazing how organic the whole thing was in how it came together. It was never someone just sitting down going "I want to make a game about delving into dungeons" - instead it was this ongoing collaborative process with successive games building off themselves until Gygax published the rules. And that process continued well after he did so! We have so many people to thank for D&D's origins besides Gygax and Arneson, glad to hear you calling it out here!
Thanks for taking the time to share!
A historical gem of a video. Thanks, Professor!
My pleasure!
Amazing history lesson professor. Thank you for sharing these stories you've learned of. Seeing how there have been so many contributors to the creative process of making D&D really shows that the game doesn't belong to one person or corporation, and how important it is to have a flexible open mind at the gaming table to ensure everyone is having a good time.
Deathbringer Metal is back! 🤘
But seriously, you included some interesting factoids that I had not heard before. Very cool.
Oh, and when I played Dungeon against Dave Megarry at GenCon's 50th Anniversary... I won. 😀 He had made some custom treasure cards that he autographed and let me keep as a prize. Very cool of him!
As someone who enjoys both RPGs and wargames, it was very interesting to see how many core mechanics of old school D&D came from wargame mechanics.
I love Talespire. Free player created minis is a definite plus.
So glad you had a great time at the convention, Professor. I hope to someday make it out there.
Me too!
It was great to meet you in person and hope paths cross again to enjoy some games, game talk and other topics beyond!
That would have been so much fun to go to.
I still don't know about
-DnD's allergies
-Chris Cox's greatest fears
-How many can fit in a box
-Where does DnD vacation?
-How to cook for DnDs
-How to roll dice in space
-How to play Wet DnD
Well for the last I created an ultralite TTRPG called Poolside RPG…
@@GlenFinney😂👌🤌
- spiders
- spiders
- twenty spiders
- the spider hole.
- quick fry in oil with MSG to scorch off all the tiny hairs on the spiders legs
- spiderwebs, obviously
- ask your mother.
"Black Pudding" is the correct name of a northern-England food "delicacy" that you either love or hate (I am in the former category). I believe it is re-named in the U.S. as "blood pudding"?
You are, indeed, the Professor. I did not know some of these...despite my obsessive reading, emails to originals who were indulgent enough to answer my questions, and reams of old zines I've pored over for years. Amazing what in-person conversations can teach you. Wild. Thank you!
Sounds like deathbringer's got a little bit of a mercy streak in him. It seems there was a time that he might have just laughed and followed and pointed.
I would argue that an early game with RPG like mechanics was 1954's Diplomacy. The mechanics are simple and everything of importance relies on the player interactions.
I freakin' love DEATHBRINGER. Best quips ever. XD
Awesome job at making such a digestible "bullet point" style video that anyone can watch and quickly learn so many key aspects of original role-playing games, and it was a pleasure to meet you at DaveCon! I thought that Wesely said it was Dave Arneson who picked up the first d20 during a trip he made to England or am I misremembering that?
I do not know where that rumor started, but it keeps coming up. Arneson's trip to Europe was in '71, and we had been using D20 (and the other regular polyhedra - D4, D6, D8, D12) in our wargaming since I found them in '66 and decided to use them as dice. (They were being sold as models of the five regular polyhedra, not as dice, but as we know they work well as dice). The rumor may have started out when Bill Hoyt picked up a pair of D10s during his trip to England in about '70. His D10 were not the pentagonal bi-pyramids that most of think of as D10s that were introduced by Lou Zocchi. They were bi-truncated D8s, that is, D8s with two opposite corners flattened into square faces of the right size so when rolled the die is as likely to end balanced on one of the new square faces as it is to land on any of the eight old faces. I have seen those D10s again, and if you make the square faces the right size, they are fair D10s - but computing the right size is not easy,
@@weseld1 Thanks so much for clarifying that! 👍
I grew up in the Twin Cities and went to a gaming convention at the old Thunderbird motel back in the day. I also ran games in Wisconsin and can confirm the space was evolving even in the 1990s.
Mike Carr still shows up to GenCon and hangs out (and plays) Dawn Patrol. Met him last year and played in a Dawn Patrol game with him.
LEGEND.
I love these sorts of historical details! Thanks for this! And, it sounds like it was a great time at Dave Con! :)
My paper on Bards at the ICMS this last weekend was a big hit...and I mentioned you in it!
Glad you enjoyed it!
Excellent video as always! Half of the things listed I already knew before watching.
Also, here's a quote from Bob Meyer, one of Dave Arneson’s longtime players and traditional referee of the Annual Blackmoor Game:
Rhetorical question: “What set of rules do you use for Braunstein?”
His answer: “What set of rules do you use for life?”
Admit nothing, deny everything, demand proof, and make counter accusations.
It was always obvious to me that Armor Class was a war game adaptation, but I had no idea it was from a naval game. In fact, I didn’t know any of these. I’m old, but apparently not as well studied as I could be.
Edit: Wait, I knew the story on the polyhedral dice, but I didn’t have any names.
Damn, that sounds like an amazing convention. Verry jelly.
I started out as a wargamer in the 60s, and got to more or less watch this happen in real time. I had a second cousin who was one of the fringies of the Twin Cities group (he shuttled between there and Omaha) who was kind of my "cool uncle" who introduced me to wargaming. The talking games we used to call a "role play", and we didn't dress up at the time though sometimes someone would add a helmet or a hat. I remember the first time a friend showed up to a role play in his grandfather's WWI uniform--it blew us all away. He'd arranged with the referee to more or less play his grandfather in the game.
I'm glad you did this video, there are some things here that I try to tell modern players, and they usually just sort of blow me off. Now I'll just point them here. :)
Thank-you for chatting to these progenitors of roleplaying, recording their stories and creating this record so the truth can be stored for all time.
You are welcome! It was my pleasure!
For character level advancement, Arneson also drew on their Strategos N games, (again from
Wesely), which featured unit advancement in a campaign such that a green militia unit could become seasoned and eventually elite if they survived enough battles. So the idea of level advancement can be traced to both Strategos Napoleonics and Flight in the Skies.
This was a great video. David Wesley, Mike Carr, and even Dave Arneson do not get enough credit for all that they did to conceptualize what would become role playing games. Gary was the one to take the ideas, package them and market them, of course adding some of his own ideas as well.
The truth is, remove one or two of those chance meetings and the entire TTRPG hobby might not even be here today.
I'm proud to say I knew the one about Dawn Patrol. It was the first non-D&D RPG I veentured into, and I still have it on my shelf. I also once participated in a game at GenCon. 😅
Cool.
It was interesting, it makes sense that it's iteration on top of iteration.
Thanks for the insight Prof. These are some interesting facts about how our hobby came to be.
I love how the ad was interrupted by an ad.
Lol. That's TH-cam.
Is awesome to see the evolution of the game and how multiple people help shape the game.
...And you won't belive number 2. It will leave you speechless...
it's really something to see the evolving evolution of a game. it can be said the same for computers unknown to how it would advance to the future to come. a great little history lesson
That deathbringer music goes hard 🤘
Thanks!
The detail about where the term "Saving Throw" comes from supports my assessment that Magic-Users and Spell Slots are mechanically the descendants of wargame artillery pieces.
Yup.
Man, Fight in the Skies! I haven't heard that name since I was in junior high, hoping my Sopwith Dolphin's penalty to successfully getting out of the plane in a parachute didn't become relevant. And that whole video was just such a fascinating glimpse into history.
History of these things are so much fun to learn about. This topic is of great interest to me.
It was wonderful seeing you there! I really enjoyed your talks at the con as well!
Great seeing you!
Really a great piece Professor DM. All I can add is that Duane Jenkins deserves a mention for his old west "Brownstone" game (1971) that introduced the idea of player's running the same player character from session to session and the results of events in each session (the bank being blown up, and El Pauncho (played by Dave Arneson) being shot in the leg, for example) would carry over to the next session (no bank to be robbed and El Pauncho walks with a limp). In my Braunstein 1 I had expected that when it was played again, the players would take different characters (like a repertory theatre where the actors may play different roles in Hamlet from one week to another, with a different interpretation of each character though his lines remain the same ). Brownstone could be played forever, with new characters moving in and out of the town. Dave followed that for Blackmoor.
True. Great addition!
Good video on the history of D&D
Hey, thanks!
@@DUNGEONCRAFT1NEXT: History of Deathbringer. His deep lore revealed.
At the end, your description of who we have to thank and how D&D came about is the best way to put it. It was thanks to all of them and their individual contributions. Is it ironic that a good D&D game is a collaboration of all those involved, too? Thianks for a great video ProfDM.
'Secrets of Blackmoor' was awesome! Exactly like this video. Very exciting to hear, how rpgs evolved! Good job!
I love all Dungeon Craft videos and am glad to be part of this community
Super informative! I love learning about the history of my favorite hobby. Thank you for making this! I kinda want to try Blackmoor now.
The biggest secret is that DnD actually originally stood for
Dynamics
And
Designs
Really enjoyed this one. I've read up on the early days of D&D and still learned something new here!
the history is super interesting to me. I have read/listened to Empire of Imagination and Slaying the Dragon, my brother got me Game Wizards and I watched Secrets of Blackmoor too, all of it is great! I think some of the books take a side a bit, between Arneson and Gygax, so it's good to get various ways of covering the story.
Love stories like this. Pity there's only so much of these that exist
What a great little bit of history! great video!
Glad you enjoyed it
THAC0 was an 80s thing. Earlier there were to hit tables. The ones in the DMG1E had a long patch of 20s to represent targets that you could hit with a natural 20. Then the progression started again.
LOL! Yep, that sounds like Dawn Patrol we played back in the '80s. ;D
Thanks Again for coming to DaveCon Dan ! - We hope to see you at many more in the future!
I’m so bummed I wasn’t able to make it out that weekend! You were here, in my backyard!
Next time!
Thanks for the great video!! I enjoyed it immensely. I think personal days may need to be saved for next April, so I can attend DaveCon.
Thank you for sharing all this amazing info. Its nice to see some of the true origin story coming forward finally. I met both Gygax and Arneson in the mid 70's. For me as a teen, Arneson was very welcoming and inclusive. Gygax at the time couldn't be bothered with teens. So I had a very negative impression of him and an incredibly positive impression from Dave. Later, Gygax would write the forward for a friends rule book and did so as a favor. So over time my impressions changed. But I always still feel Arneson was the heart and soul of roleplaying while Gygax was more of the lawyer/rules/demon who codified and monetized the game. Both important, but both leaving a different taste in your mouth. :) Please share more about your time and experience with some of these important pioneers of our hobby. Chris
Philosophically I liked Arneson's "rules lite" and "frei Kriegspiel" approach to D&D, better than Gary's "we have to add another rule to cover that" or "rigid kriegspiel" approach. However, as a TSR stockholder, I had to accept that Gygax "the lawyer/rules/demon who codified and monetized the game" made a lot more money for us, as gamers had to keep buying each new edition or suppliment that came out., not just rely on their DM to invent new twists whle using OD&D.
That was excellent! Really helps put a lot of choices in context.
Love the video. Don't know if it's just me, but I'm subscribed and got notifications on, but this video isn't showing on my notifications list at all. It was pure chance I noticed it. So make sure to share this video, folks.
Thank you.
I love this video and all of the Professor’s videos.
Thanks!
I enjoy all of Dungeon Craft videos
I was aware of number 1 thanks to a video from Bob World Builder. And number 7 but I don't remember from where
At least I got 5!
Thanks for the reference to the Peterson book. I'll have to look it up.
DEATHBRINGER TaleSpire is metal AF! 🤘😈💀
Great video again! Dungeoncraft never disappoints. Thank you Professor
Great deep dive into the origins of D&D!
I'd heard some of this, but not all. Neat video!
I want a Source of the Nile t-shirt !!!
Would be cool to talk about the influence of MAR Barkers Tékumel on the D20 crit hit.
I always like learning new things about the origin and evolution of rpg. Thanks for this video, it was great. And I hope to watch other rpg history videos ^^.
Based Deathbringer. "No! I would've finished the job." 🤣☠️
Another great video and I'm glad the con went well.
Now to find that link.