[What If] OD&D, Annotated

[True Black Raven]

@piper posted 

The next installment, the Introduction.

[True Black Raven]

@piper posted 

OD&D Volume I, Page 5, Annotated

[True Black Raven]

May 1, 2018 21:15:39 GMT -5 True Black Raven said:

@piper posted 

The next installment, the Introduction.

waysoftheearth posted 

Interesting choice of quotations for the opening premise Piper, noting that the 2nd and 3rd sentences of the Introduction are pretty much explicit


Anyways. For fun, one might look at everything that is "quoted" in the first few pages of M&M



- From the map of the "land" of the "Great Kingdom"

- the weird enclave of "Blackmoor"

- old "laws" altered

- save your game "life"

- maps of the levels of his "underworld"

- beneath the "huge ruined pile..."

- as they gain "experience"...



And ponder what all these "quotes" "are" "collectively" "saying" ...

Food for thought, will need to go back and do some re-reading myself.

[True Black Raven]

The Classes, pp. 6-7 (OD&D Vol 1), Annotated

[True Black Raven]

Non-Human & Other Classes, Vol. I, pp. 7-8; Annotated

[True Black Raven]

Alignment (Vol. I, p. 9), Annotated

[True Black Raven]

I will plan to post about these tomorrow, anyone else have comments?

[Admin Pete]

May 1, 2018 21:33:37 GMT -5 True Black Raven said:

I will plan to post about these tomorrow, anyone else have comments?

I wish I had the time to read these and comment, but if you all do some posting about these I will make time to read about it here.

[Jakob Grimm]

Apr 27, 2018 13:51:47 GMT -5 robertsconley said:

Apr 17, 2018 11:12:02 GMT -5 Admin Pete said:

@piper , while a complete annotated version would need WotC blessings and a nearly complete annotated version could be done under the OGL. If you just wrote a book of commentary, the bulk of it would be discussing public domain information anyway and you could fair use quote all of the "confusing," "vague," and "ambigous" parts. So I don't think you need the OGL to write the book if you want it to be commentary and you could still discuss the book pretty much line by line without quoting the whole thing. 

A lot of people enjoy the hell of Philotomy's Musings. A lot can be done without Wizards of the Coast's blessing. While the original text can't be used without their blessing, I think people would get the point if the annotation was paired up with a near-clone using OGL text. Certainly the community can help out with alternative to stuff like the Book III dungeon map.

I recommend the starting point for the rule side to be  an outline and posted here so we can help with suggestion on which bit of open content works in place of the original text. Or help with anything original that needs to be created like the aforementioned map.

I hadn't seen that before, that is rather nifty!

[Jakob Grimm]

Apr 29, 2018 18:07:57 GMT -5 True Black Raven said:

@piper posted this comment and link.

My first attempt at annotation on my 'blog. Click [here].

That link covers a brief intro my annotations, abbreviations, and the foreword to OD&D.

The post linked to above is titled 

OD&D Annotated
A closer look at a seminal work.

with today's date.

Off to a good start with the assist from waysoftheearth.  This is good to post it and take feedback, that way the final version has got the benefit of multiple authors to keep it on track.

[Jakob Grimm]

May 1, 2018 21:15:39 GMT -5 True Black Raven said:

@piper posted 

The next installment, the Introduction.

RE:

And referee it was, the term dungeon master or DM appears nowhere in this work. As a historical side note: dungeon master and its abbreviation DM did appear in the first edition of that "other" game Tunnels & Trolls (on page 3 of that work, for example). Dungeon master doesn't appear in a TSR rule book until Supplement II: Blackmoor and there it appears as a compound word "dungeonmaster" (Foreword).

Does anyone know if Tunnels & Trolls was published before or after Supplement II: Blackmoor?

[Jakob Grimm]

May 1, 2018 21:16:27 GMT -5 True Black Raven said:

@piper posted 

OD&D Volume I, Page 5, Annotated

RE:

The scope need not be restricted to the medieval ... This seemed a promise for various published settings for D&D that might stretch from the prehistoric to the imagined future.

@piper why do you think that seemed to promise published settings? My understanding is that initially there was no thought to doing any such thing as published settings.

[Jakob Grimm]

May 1, 2018 21:31:10 GMT -5 True Black Raven said:

The Classes, pp. 6-7 (OD&D Vol 1), Annotated

RE: 

This gave rise to a free-wheeling anything goes kind of campaign. Players had no guarantees about what they would see, their player-characters could do, or the exact nature of the setting until they sat down and played at a referee's table. There was no correct or incorrect way to play, and this aspect of gaming is one missed the most by players around during that time.

IMO this is a hallmark of an old school game.

[Jakob Grimm]

May 1, 2018 21:32:04 GMT -5 True Black Raven said:

Non-Human & Other Classes, Vol. I, pp. 7-8; Annotated

RE:

Men is used in the archaic grammatical sense, indicating humanity in general.

IMO it is not archaic, it is correct usage that is slowly being eroded for no good reason whatsoever.

RE: 

Halfling appears on this page. In early printings, these were referred to as Hobbits but the reference was changed after a cease-and-desist letter from the Tolkien estate.

More properly Hobbits where deleted and Halflings were added as they are two completely different and unrelated creatures.

[Jakob Grimm]

May 1, 2018 21:32:04 GMT -5 True Black Raven said:

Non-Human & Other Classes, Vol. I, pp. 7-8; Annotated

RE:

The Non-Human Player-Characters



No player-character race, nor any monster in service to player-characters, had the ability to see in the dark, later known as infravision. This lack, coupled with level caps, have caused many referees to heavily modify this section of the rules.

Yeah, it made no sense to us that monsters had infravision, unless they were part of the party and then they lost the ability and the same for the PC races. We always house-ruled this.

Why level caps? EGG stated often they were in place to keep the game humanocentric. He reasoned non-human players would quickly come to dominate play, given their various advantages. We will leave evaluation of this reasoning to you, gentle reader.

Except many of us, myself included have never seen non-human PC's dominate.
RE:

Other Character Types: though most printings refer to a Dragon as the example? The first printing used Balrog instead. Another casualty of the "cease and desist" letter from the Tolkien Estate. The description is otherwise the same in all printings.

I would like for you to have went into more detail on this one in your commentary.

[Jakob Grimm]

May 1, 2018 21:32:56 GMT -5 True Black Raven said:

Alignment (Vol. I, p. 9), Annotated

RE:

In private conversation with your esteemed editor EGG expressed regret over the implementation of alignment in OD&D. Gary stated alignment was never meant it as a straitjacket, more of a shirts versus skins (our summation and term, not Gary's) sort of division.

Yeah, we never ran alignment as a straight jacket, we just went with loose guidelines for any creatures that we deemed had free will.

[mormonyoyoman]

May 1, 2018 23:51:30 GMT -5 Jakob Grimm said:

IMO it is not archaic, it is correct usage that is slowly being eroded for no good reason whatsoever.

You have no idea how much it comforts me to know there is one person left who sees a major cause of modern misunderstandings and angers. Corruption of language, always a problem throughout history, has been accelerated by mass medias (yes, "mediaS") to the point that it is now possible and likely for everyone to be offended and angered by absolutely anything.

[Jakob Grimm]

May 2, 2018 4:06:23 GMT -5 mormonyoyoman said:

May 1, 2018 23:51:30 GMT -5 Jakob Grimm said:

IMO it is not archaic, it is correct usage that is slowly being eroded for no good reason whatsoever.

You have no idea how much it comforts me to know there is one person left who sees a major cause of modern misunderstandings and angers. Corruption of language, always a problem throughout history, has been accelerated by mass medias (yes, "mediaS") to the point that it is now possible and likely for everyone to be offended and angered by absolutely anything.

Whatever happened to being able to argue amicably about things? Now if you disagree with someone they go scorched earth on you, as though only they have a right to an opinion. I am tired, so tired of it. So my games with my friends are over the top old, old school as we blow of steam in game so we can let it go at work.

[Deleted]

I've answered questions from here and another site on my 'blog. Thank you for your input!

dubbeers.blogspot.com/2018/05/feedback-regarding-my-first-draft.html

[mormonyoyoman]

May 2, 2018 11:13:25 GMT -5 @piper said:

I've answered questions from here and another site on my 'blog. Thank you for your input!

dubbeers.blogspot.com/2018/05/feedback-regarding-my-first-draft.html

You still haven't answered the question of "Who put the bomp in the bomp bah bomp bah bomp?"

[True Black Raven]

May 2, 2018 11:13:25 GMT -5 @piper said:

I've answered questions from here and another site on my 'blog. Thank you for your input!

dubbeers.blogspot.com/2018/05/feedback-regarding-my-first-draft.html

Why did The scope need not be restricted to the medieval lead to This seemed a promise for various published settings for D&D that might stretch from the prehistoric to the imagined future?



Because that's what went through my head when I read it in 1975! Boot Hill came out in 1975, and Supplement II contained underwater encounters. So it seemed to me other campaign settings would be "in the works" so to speak.

I don't get the leap in logic here, an underwater encounter is a long way from a published setting. What was the date for the first published D&D setting? Wasn't that in the early 1980's?

[Deleted]

May 2, 2018 20:47:53 GMT -5 True Black Raven said:

I don't get the leap in logic here, an underwater encounter is a long way from a published setting. What was the date for the first published D&D setting? Wasn't that in the early 1980's?

I’m not sure I would invoke logic in this case! It was more intuition when I read this particular line. In other words, it sounded to me as if TSR was laying the groundwork for future expansions to the game. It’s nothing more complicated than this, though it should be noted my intuition was incorrect! 

[True Black Raven]

May 3, 2018 10:35:36 GMT -5 @piper said:

May 2, 2018 20:47:53 GMT -5 True Black Raven said:

I don't get the leap in logic here, an underwater encounter is a long way from a published setting. What was the date for the first published D&D setting? Wasn't that in the early 1980's?

I’m not sure I would invoke logic in this case! It was more intuition when I read this particular line. In other words, it sounded to me as if TSR was laying the groundwork for future expansions to the game. It’s nothing more complicated than this, though it should be noted my intuition was incorrect! 

OK, that does make sense and yeah they did not do settings for quite a while until they good into the AD&D line. I'm glad there were none for OD&D.

[Hexenritter Verlag]

[/quote]I'm glad there were none for OD&D.[/quote]

I am also thankful of this, it gave everyone from the average Referee to Judge's Guild & Hardgrove the openness to do their own thing. Like with me brainstorming these non-"fantasy" based settings using OD&D as the foundation. With some tweaking & home-brewing needed mechanics or subsystems you can run any kind of game using OD&D as a base.

[xizallian]

Here is the latest status of the project Annotated OD&D.

[Admin Pete]

Changing Character Class, Ability Determination & Explanations; Annotated

[Admin Pete]

Languages, NPCs; Annotated

[Admin Pete]

Morale, Equipment Costs, Vol I, p. 13

[Admin Pete]

Encumbrance, I-15; Annotated

[Admin Pete]

Annotation Notations