Tuesday, November 23, 2021 The Deadly Illusion of GenCon 1978 As much attention as Game Wizards lavishes on conventions, there was more still before the manuscript was cut down to size. Convention tournaments in particular received more attention, and GenCon 1978 had a anecdote that began as follows: "Even the tournament was something of a shambles, with only one group surviving the second round: seven out of eight parties died to an illusion, mistaking for a teleporter something that was actually a deadly pit." This account follows Jon Pickens's description in A&E #39, which makes for something of a funny story, and lets us see with fresh eyes the encounter with Silussa the succubus and her vampire beau Belgos in D3 Vault of the Drow. Read more » Posted by Jon Peterson at 2:24 PM 1 comment: Email This BlogThis! Share to Twitter Share to Facebook Share to Pinterest Sunday, November 7, 2021 Arneson v. Gygax: The Freeman Deposition When Dave Arneson's lawsuit against TSR was nearing a trial date at the end of 1980, his legal team recruited an expert witness in the person of Jon Freeman. Freeman, who wrote for Games magazine and had recently produced The Complete Guide to Board Games, was a longstanding D&D fan who drove one of the earliest computer adaptations of dungeon-crawling to see a commercial release: The Temple of Apshai (1979), first of the "Dunjonquest" series. Today, we'll take a look (a layman's look, not a lawyer's) at Freeman's argument, beginning with his chart above, which shows how Gary Gygax's earlier Chainmail rules contrasted with both D&D and AD&D. Read more » Posted by Jon Peterson at 2:03 PM 1 comment: Email This BlogThis! Share to Twitter Share to Facebook Share to Pinterest Thursday, October 28, 2021 Game Wizards: The Evolution of TSR Contracts This single piece of paper constitutes the entirety of the understanding between TSR and the authors of the 1975 Greyhawk supplement: most significantly, it covers a copyright assignment to TSR and an agreement from TSR to pay royalties based on "the cover price of the game rules or game on each and every copy sold." It is quite short, having been drafted pro bono by Gary Gygax's uncle at a time when Tactical Studies Rules was still a partnership, and D&D had sold perhaps 1500 copies. This language is of especial interest because the same form was used for the 1975 D&D contract, and famously Dave Arneson would later sue TSR on the grounds that his rights to royalties extended to titles like the Holmes Basic Set and the AD&D hardcover books. This is a major focus of Game Wizards. Over the next five years, TSR refined the language of their new agreements to be clearer about what rights authors were assigning, and for which sales they would receive compensation. I am definitely not a lawyer, but I am going to offer below a few layman's thoughts about the evolution of TSR's contract language during this period. Read more » Posted by Jon Peterson at 1:14 PM 2 comments: Email This BlogThis! Share to Twitter Share to Facebook Share to Pinterest Thursday, October 21, 2021 Arneson's Hit Points for Characters Game Wizards is very decidedly not a book about who invented which system in D&D. But early drafts of the book did track one design choice in D&D that Dave Arneson perennially criticized: the system wherein characters gain more hit points as they go up in level. Arneson held that character hit points should instead be fixed at character creation, and that characters should become harder to hit as they rise in level. While that story thread failed its save against manuscript bloat, restoring it does add context for Gygax and Arneson's subsequent disputes. Probably the most well-known place Arneson mentioned his system was in the introduction to the First Fantasy Campaign (1977), as shown above. Read more » Posted by Jon Peterson at 12:16 PM 5 comments: Email This BlogThis! Share to Twitter Share to Facebook Share to Pinterest Friday, October 15, 2021 "Game Wizards" the Game Game Wizards has "turn results" at the end of the annual chapters to track the big picture, while casting the business of D&D as the sort of game that Gygax and others often made it out to be. Early drafts of the book actually had a 1970s-style Diplomacy variant serialized from the beginning, with installments throughout, which both served as a sort of ersatz dramatis personae and also would have made the chapter closer look more like what you would have seen for turn results in an actual Dippy zine back in the day. I was eventually persuaded it was too obscure and gimmicky, and scaled it back to its current form. But for the amusement of anyone digging into the book now, this is an (unpolished) excerpt of what that might have looked like. Posted by Jon Peterson at 1:53 PM 11 comments: Email This BlogThis! Share to Twitter Share to Facebook Share to Pinterest Tuesday, October 12, 2021 Units of Value and the Tactical Studies Rules Partnership From September 1973 to September 1975, Tactical Studies Rules was a partnership of hobbyists, not a corporation. Under Wisconsin law at the time, partnerships apparently couldn't sell stock shares -- but TSR devised a way to sneak key people some equity in the venture. The above shows the partnership granting five "units of value" to Dave Arneson, on May 1, 1975. So, what were these "units of value"? Read more » Posted by Jon Peterson at 1:19 PM 1 comment: Email This BlogThis! Share to Twitter Share to Facebook Share to Pinterest Wednesday, October 6, 2021 Game Wizards: D&D Development Timeline While Game Wizards has plenty to say about the big picture of TSR's corporate financials, it also pays a lot of attention to the early, scrappy days when D&D was more of a hobby than a business to the people who made it. This visual timeline of the 1972-4 process is intentionally pretty high-level, showing sequences of events rather than exact dates, but it is the working model I used for this era as I wrote the book. It is a little different from the timeline certain books (including mine) have given in the past. Read more » Posted by Jon Peterson at 10:18 AM 23 comments: Email This BlogThis! Share to Twitter Share to Facebook Share to Pinterest Older Posts Home Subscribe to: Posts (Atom) Facebook Game Wizards Paperback: $24.95 Kindle: $18.99 Elusive Shift Hardcover: $35.00 Kindle: $21.99 Heroes' Feast Hardcover: $35.00 $25.10 Art & Arcana Standard: $50.00 $27.49 Special Edition: $125.00 $71.22 B&N Edition: $50.00 Playing at the World Buy: don't pay more than $35 Reviews of Playing at the World "A must-read for gaming geeks." Ethan Gilsdorf, Wired.com "Highly recommended for role-playing game enthusiasts." Games Magazine (March 2013) "If you are a roleplayer, or a gaming historian, or a fan of D&D, you have to read this book. That simple." Jeff Grubb, former TSR designer, author of Manual of the Planes "The first serious history of the development of Dungeons & Dragons... there's much here to fascinate even readers with only a cursory interest in the game." Alan Scherstuhl, Village Voice "If... you want the most comprehensive look at the origins of the wargaming hobby and a painstakingly researched look at the formation and early years of TSR and the original Dungeons & Dragons game, then you will never need to read another book." Sean Stevenson, Armchair General "Playing the World is a must for gaming and popular culture history collections." Susan Bethany, Midwest Book Review "For game scholars... this book is a must-read. Even at its most dense and arcane, the book is fascinating, and Peterson's dry wit makes it all the more enjoyable." Jason Begy, American Journal of Play "Read Playing at the World. It's the deepest, most thorough, most revealing book about the evolution of D&D that you'll ever read, and probably that will ever be written." Steve Winter, editor at TSR/Wizards (1981-1999) "Here's how good this book is. Peterson's book is 720 pages, and while I was reading it, I was constantly wishing it was longer." Paul Hughes, Blog of Holding "A thoughtful, erudite, yet highly readable book that should be viewed as a seminal contribution to the history of an important gaming genre." Rex Brynen, PAXsims "The most carefully researched, loving and impeccably documented history of Dungeons & Dragons we are surely ever going to see... a simultaneously indulgent and authoritative book our world would be a dimmer place without." Matthew Kischenbaum, University of Maryland "Playing at the World (2012) chronicles to incredible, unprecedented detail the early days of how Dungeons & Dragons came to be." International Journal of Role-Playing "No-one else is likely to write a book about the development of roleplaying that will ever match the scope and depth of this book." John Curry, History of Wargaming Project "Playing at the World is a triumph." Troy Goodman, Three Moves Ahead Blog Archive ▼ 2021 (20) ▼ November (2) The Deadly Illusion of GenCon 1978 Arneson v. Gygax: The Freeman Deposition ► October (5) ► September (3) ► May (2) ► April (1) ► March (1) ► February (2) ► January (4) ► 2020 (9) ► 2019 (2) ► 2018 (18) ► 2017 (14) ► 2016 (5) ► 2015 (5) ► 2014 (13) ► 2013 (12) ► 2012 (18) About Me Jon Peterson An author investigating the history of wargames and role-playing games. Reach me at jon at unreason com. View my complete profile "Jon Peterson is the 'Real World' equivalent of a Sage as hired to aid spell research by Tenser in the Greyhawk campaign.... He never stops digging up wonderful material." - Ernie Gygax Anthologies I'm In Zones of Control (MIT Press) Role-Playing Game Studies (Routledge) Other Articles by Jon The Missing Teen Who Fueled Cult Panic over Dungeons & Dragons (2021) From the Unknown to the Borderlands (2021) Per Aspera Ad Astra: The Material Culture of Early Space Empire Games (2019) Petits Soldats, Grandes Victoires: Wargaming in Occupied Paris (2018) A Brief History of the Fireball in Fantasy Games (2015) Inside the Lost 1980s Dungeons & Dragons Movie (2015) Quagmire! The Making of a 1980's D&D Module (2014) The First Female Gamers (2014) The Ambush at Sheridan Springs: How Gary Gygax Lost Control of Dungeons & Dragons (2014) Links to Other Media Watch Jon discuss the early history of gaming on PBS Off Book. Listen to Jon on the Save or Die! Podcast Episode #78 discussing Eldritch Wizardry. Listen to the Sometime Seminar podcast Episode #15 for a detailed critical discussion of Playing at the World. 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