# A (Typewritten) D&D Review from 1974 by Arnold Hendrick



## Loonook

Why did you have to post this? Now all the Kornkobs will start an edition war over what version of Modern Warfare in Miniature is best!


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## GX.Sigma

An independent game being unfavorably compared to Modern Warfare. How times have changed...


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## BOZ

Ooh, where was this printed?  I think we could use it on Wikipedia.


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## Fiddleback

$3.50 a book!!??  Outrageous!!

(even in '74 that's a pretty damned good price)


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## Loonook

Fiddleback said:


> $3.50 a book!!??  Outrageous!!
> 
> (even in '74 that's a pretty damned good price)




Adjusted for inflation it comes out to around 18.50.  So a slight discount from today's pricing.

Slainte,

-Loonook.


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## GreyLord

If I'm looking at it right you have to realize that much of the original was catered to Wargamers.  D&D matched everything he stated in that context.  Do you really think it's a particularly great wargame?

I think it started up a revolution with a new idea and created a rather new upstart genre called RPGs


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## pemerton

Personally I think this is a pretty fair review (though I've got no view on whether the price was reasonable or not). The conccept and imagination involved _is_ stunning, but the game is very hard to work out from those 3 booklets, as is the interaction with Chainmail. And the refinement, regulation and simplification was achieved - via Holmes and then Moldvay Basic!

For me, the most curious part of the review is "play by phone". Why not just play in the same room but keep the maps hidden behind - I dunno, let's say - a _screen_!?


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## Morrus

Blast from the past.


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## Hussar

To be fair, back then, the notion of a screen might have been kinda new.  Possibly no one had thought of it.  I mean, you don't generally do that in most wargames - you don't have one player hiding die rolls and information from other players.  At least, not typically.  I wonder if anyone has any idea when the first DM's Screen got used. 

Fascinating read though.  Would love to see more.


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## pemerton

Necro XP!


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## Arilyn

Hussar said:


> To be fair, back then, the notion of a screen might have been kinda new.  Possibly no one had thought of it.  I mean, you don't generally do that in most wargames - you don't have one player hiding die rolls and information from other players.  At least, not typically.  I wonder if anyone has any idea when the first DM's Screen got used.
> 
> Fascinating read though.  Would love to see more.



In original D&D, Gygax sat at a separate table blocked from view by books. This idea was copied in the very early games that followed D&D, like Bunnies and Burrows. You really needed a caller then.

Sloghtly off topic, Bunnies and Burrows had some neat ideas, but it was expected that the rabbits would be adventuring mostly underground, exploring twisty passages.


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## Sacrosanct

Some things were spot on (the rules were a mess and no way someone new could learn how to play in their own without someone to teach them). And some things were way off (even if the day, the illustrations were not decent. They were horrible).  Yes, I know why, and the history, but that doesn’t excuse them. If you’re gonna sell a product, you must compare to other like products of the time to be fair. And the art in OD&D was awful in that context.

Not gonna quote the above posters since they posted 6 years ago, but the price was also extremely high. Not just in general, but compared with other products that were way more professional looking and presented.  It would be $53 in today’s money for 112 pages of very amateurish pamphlets. 

I love OD&D for a lot of reasons, but we have to be fair, and in the above, those were the big glaring issues it faced.


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## Doug McCrae

Morrus said:


> The Acolyte Dorn from the village of Thane ventured into the ruins of Takator, opting for an underground Dungeon adventure instead of an above-ground wilderness expedition. After finding numerous doors beyond his strength to move, he finally opened one that woke four ghouls, who charged him directly. The well-equipped Dorn (with mail, shield, spear and crossbow) was allowed to fire by the kindly referee, and then strike first with the spear. Being rather handy with weapons and things, Dorn neatly felled two of the ghouls, but was then touched by the third, a circumstance which petrified him, while the ghouls proceeded to kill him, thus turning Dorn into a ghoul. So much for the Acolyte Dorn. Better luck in the next life!



Sounds like a really fun game. I can see why it became so popular.


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## Celebrim

Interesting perspective.  On the one hand, I think that the statements, "Vastly too much has been attempted in these booklets...The scope is just too grand, while the referee is expected to do too much in relation to the players.", still have a certain ring of truth to them.   

And yet, at the same time, despite the totally unfair demands made on DMs by attempting to simulate an entire world, and the completely ungameable scope that games sometimes reach, we've been muddling along for 40 years now.


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## TarionzCousin

Morrus said:


> The optimim solution seems to be play by phone, or when distances are too great, play by mail.



We have been doing it all wrong for years! 

Think of how little prep a DM would need! Or, when a PC suddenly went in an unexpected direction, you could simply hang up and later say "We were cut off."

I really need to step my DM'ing skills up.


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