This was an informative early post just to let people know what was in the pdf.

[The Perilous Dreamer]

Title and thread edited by Admin Pete.


If you go to the thread The court case Between Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax and TSR the links in the first post have changed.

The link right above where it says

The link will expire within 30 days of this posting (approximately 2-15-2024 to 3-15-2024) after which time, anyone desiring access to these files should contact the National Archives: (address given in the referenced thread)

is the link you want so you can download a 900+ page pdf

So why do you want to do that?

Here is why, pages 11-123 are what appears to be a marked up copy of parts of OD&D, it contains stuff that is not in OD&D, plus here and there hand written notes.

What does that mean?

It is a glimpse into things that is mostly only seen by a hand full of collectors and a few authors who share partial information here and there in dribs and drabs.

Plus a few of those pages are faint and some of the handwriting is hard to read.

I am hoping quite a few of you download this so in a month of so we can start discussing the contents AND we will all be able to look at our own copy, because trying to screen shot and post that much material would be really difficult.

[The Perilous Dreamer]

Now some of you may also want to read the court documents, but the way I read Arneson's testimony is that he was fired from TSR for refusing to sign a contract that would have made everything he did from that point on the property of TSR and work for hire. Yeah, it was that bad.

[The Perilous Dreamer]

I am probably not going to try to read all of the legal documents anytime soon. I am just scanning through it to see if there is any more actual rules info.

At the end of the document is a copy of a version of OD&D each of the three booklets. Just a copy opened up and laid on a copier.

But the pages I noted in the first post above is the ones I hope to be able to discuss with all of you.

[The Perilous Dreamer]

Feb 16, 2024 22:27:14 GMT -5 @jamesdixon said:

I can host the file on my OneDrive for now and make it available for everyone.

As for work for hire, that's pretty standard for even back then when you worked for a company in that capacity. I'll have to read the case to see how TSR was structured to see if it was fair to Dave or not.

Standard or not, not a good idea when the company was founded on the back of your ideas.

You don't have to host it yet, there is an updated link in the referenced thread which is good for a month. Also waiting a reply to see if Google took it down, maybe due to the file size and the sudden jump in bandwidth usage. After a month the demand will be less.

[The Perilous Dreamer]

Yeah, there is another interview too. But I haven't read it yet.

[Death Even XIII]

Awesome that this came to light, I have been reading it and very happy this has been made available.