I can never limit myself to 10! =D ADDITIONS/ERRATA: -Since Pathfinder came from D&D, this is ALSO the history of Pathfinder! (Thanks to the commenter who brought that up!) -While Original D&D was written to supplement Chainmail, MOST people who got it didn't have Chainmail: D&D far outsold its predecessor! I should've kept this in mind as well. -People keep mentioning that the Dungeon! board game came out after D&D. It was published after, but designed at least a year before and shown to Gary Gygax the same night Dave Arneson demo'd Blackmoor, which inspired Gygax to write D&D. I'm looking at the EVOLUTION of the games. -Magic-Users and Clerics were only restricted from using "magic armor," and clerics from "non-edged magic weapons," suggesting that they could use non-magical versions of these! -"Man +1" meaning you add 1 to your d6 roll, doesn't tell us what "2 Men -1" means. You can't roll 7 on a d6. -I've seen many comments saying Gygax based alignment language off of religious languages like Latin. I see the real-world usefulness of Latin among an exclusive clergy, but D&D assumes a language known by EVERYONE of the appropriate alignment. Also, commenters mention that the fiction Gygax drew from had an actual war between people on different sides of the metaphysical compass. That's VERY interesting, but it is never explained here, and not in any later D&D rules publication that I know of, either! Besides, for everyone to develop the same language, using realism, there has to be a LONG period of time where different peoples find it practical to communicate with each other, either through prolonged war against a common enemy. Theoretically possible, yes, but NEUTRAL having its own language in a "cosmic war"?? (Which I'm going to guess was not in the literature Gygax drew from.) -I really should have added #21: Most of your XP came from treasure. I avoided some things that I think even many modern players know about old-school D&D, but this has such a huge impact on gameplay that I should have covered it! -My favorite TTRPG blogger, Alexandrian, has an excellent readthrough of OD&D! He also takes the approach of asking "What did this mean in 1974?" kzfaq.info/love/cVcBqGoJLYRIN8ckBY8HhQ

Fun fact about Fire destroying magic items. Legend has it that Gary Gygax would take great pleasure describing all the loot that was lost to an errant fire ball spell after a combat. It got so bad that his son, Ernie, created a new spell for later additions that did as much damage as a fireball but wouldn't destroy the items: Cone of Cold.

A bit surprised you didn't mention the fact that each second out-of-game was supposed to represent one second in-game while the group wasn't playing, to keep the chronology consistent between parties. So if you unfortunately had to stop playing in the middle of a dungeon and your next session was scheduled the same day next week you better make sure your party has enough food and water to survive staying in that same room for a whole week. That's just so wild to me.

Matt Colville made a long video about point 20. The classes were purposefully inherently weak and were rewarded disproportionately from the magic items they found because that pushed the idea that you went in to dungeons to get powerful, not for any story reason. The dungeon was the whole point. A disengaged player doesn't notice the cool secrets so you have to pay attention if you want to "level up."

I played '76-'84 and coming back to discover 5e was a huge culture shock.

I am at an age now where I can appreciate those younger than myself reviewing the history of things, such as Dungeons & Dragons, that I lived through. To you it's interesting history, to me it's fond nostalgia. Keep on keeping on. The memories you make really do keep you company in the end. Cheers to those who introduced me to D&D, among other things. Both still alive, and those who have left the campaign.

Gygax played an even harder core rule for fall damage. 1d6 per 10 feet but it was cumulative. So 40 feet falls were 10d6 damage.

I was a DM for years using the white box game system. I still have the game, forty five years later. i can confirm that the game was highly lethal and a character's stats were a minor matter. Magic items were extraordinarily important. There were multiple parties of adventurers playing in the same environment, sometimes cooperatively and sometimes competitively. There were no Adventure Paths at all. The model I used was a plate of spaghetti. The strands of pasta were the plot lines and the sauce was the random monsters (which were prevalent). A beginning player was not at the beginning of an adventure; he had to locate it. A major consequence of this is that players succeeding in an adventure commonly felt it was "their" adventure more than mine. You should have mentioned "Hold Portal" in your discussion about doors. Players naturally wanted superiority in movement, which usually favored the monsters. "Charm Person" is very powerful, but everyone knows about it. It was at the top of the "Don't get caught doing this" list. The moat important element of D&D appears in the afterword. The writers discourage players from making rules inquiries unless they are completely at a loss. "Why have us doing any more of your imagining for you?" It was expected that rules and procedures were not going to be uniform from game to games. There were two combat systems, remember.

A lot of the idea for Alignments came out of Moorcock's fantasy books, which posited the cosmic forces of Law and Chaos that are in eternal conflict. Some also from Poul Anderson, but Moorcock names the concepts and deals with them explicitly. Most creatures would support one or the other, either consciously or unconsciously, and there was the idea of a final conflict that at some point would sweep away everything. The idea of Alignment languages makes some sense in that context, where it's essentially like a cosmic alliance whose banner you have taken up - and where someone of the opposing alignment really would have been a mortal foe.

About the alignment languages, I believe the idea was that they were languages spoken at a place of worship. This would be like a person from Brazil who speaks Portuguese and a person from America who speaks English both also knowing Hebrew as they both attended Synagogue rather than people magically understanding a language based on their alignment like a primal ability. I wasn't a designer for the original D&D (believe it or not) so I can't say for sure, but this was my interpretation.

The door being almost monsters by default is pretty fun, and they remain formidable enemies after all this time!

You're definitely correct with regard to the massive importance of Greyhawk. Ex-TSR employee Tim Kask estimates that they sold nine copies of Greyhawk for every ten copies of the '74 boxed set. Playing just the boxed set in its own seems to have been pretty rare. It might even be more popular as an experiment undertaken by curious 21st century gamers than it was between 1974 and 1978.

I remember Advanced DnD introducing the "Identify" spell, which was not only incredibly difficult to cast but also would incapacitate if not outright KILL most magic users. Whoever made that spell *really* wanted you to trial and error stuff.

Gygax credited both Poul Anderson and Michael Moorcock for the 3-sector alignment system (Law, Neutral, Chaos). It was in one of the first modern fantasy stories, "Three Hearts and Three Lions" by Poul Anderson. Although the metaphysical underpinnings were much older Anderson first introduced it in a short story in 1953 and then a novelisation in 1961. In 1972 Moorcock wrote the Elric stories, which also featured this concept. Addendum: Anderson introduced "Law" and "Chaos" as stand-ins for good and evil. Moorcock took this concept and introduced a kind of "balance" or neutral ground between them.

I remember playing those booklets, just a year or two after they came out. Looking back, they were - to coin a phrase - 'more like guidelines, y'see'... And yeah, I bought Chainmail, played a few little battles with it. For a while, we allowed players to choose whether to use the D&D armor-class system or the CHainmail 'heroic combat' system for any given fight.

Man +1 means you hit on 5-6 instead of six. If you want to learn more about chainmail I recommend the channel: Bandit’s keep.

I started in 1974 with the white box, 3 book set and had been playing chain mail first. Your points are pretty much spot on but we progressed to Greyhawk, Blackmoor, Eldritch Wizardry and Gods, Demigods and Heroes pretty quickly when they became available. The thing about time pressure and magic items became very important, as the game was one of resource cost vs dungeon delve reward. Also only magical weapons could harm undead outside cleric turn undead abilities. There was quite a few save or die things to deal with as well and the most dangerous thing to encounter in the dungeon was another group of heroes. Something you didn't mention was the massive prevalence of traps and puzzles. I would be interested in your other video ideas for sure.

Given that Pathfinder itself split off from D&D and drew heavily from it, in a sense the history of D&D is also the history of Pathfinder.

Fun video! What I think is particularly interesting is that a lot of folks look at OD&D (and AD&D) as these kind of super hard-core simulationist games... BUT... if you look at the Saving Throw tables you see that for all classes as they gained more levels their chance of saving against a spell, poison, dragon breath, or other attack increased significantly. But of course there was no "DC" concept a 13th level Cleric needed only a 3+ on a d20 to make a successful save vs. Death or Poison regardless of what that poison was or what monster it was from. This is -in effect- plot armor! A narrative concept! Your reward for getting higher level (which took quite a bit of work) was that you had a significant amount of protection and something simple like a little poison or petrification wasn't likely to take you out.

A cool topic for this would be the evolution of classes, such as how does the original Barbarian differ from modern.

Great topic! Though I do have a couple of thoughts. As far as monsters being playable races, that dropped away after some play I assume. Later, Gygax recommends against it because it makes the fantastic and wondrous mundane. A point I actually agree with. If you can play a dragon, the terror and majesty of dragons is drained out of the game. It's similar to having too much magic in the game. When 10 out of 13 classes have magical spells, does magic feel mysterious and filled with wonder, or does it feel more like the character has access to the latest, greatest smart phone? Just a few things to think about. What's amazing about this period of D&D history is how well they managed to capture lightning in a bottle, and yet they were still making this up by playing the game more and more. The were starting with a war game and Braunstein as the overall basis for the game and nothing else. Alignment languages were always pretty weird. First, alignment truly meant who you would be aligned with on a battlefield game, much like War Hammer skirmish games. You play an army from a certain faction, and this carried over into the dungeon delving portion of the game. Only later do we get the nine alignments with good and evil thrown into the mix. But I have an educated guess as to what they were basing alignment language on: holy languages like Latin for Catholicism, Arabic for Muslims, and Hebrew for Jews. In the middle ages Christian Catholics, Muslims, and Jews spoke all different kinds of local languages, be it English, German, French, Russian, Spanish, Flemish, or Farsi, Turkish, Moroccan Berber, etc. I think this is what they were sort of going for, and that intelligent creatures of the same alignment would speak or at least understand the same holy language. This gets harder to work into a game with nine alignments and multiple pantheons instead of three basic alignments. But this does seem to fit with some of the thinking in those early days. This is only a guess however. Wonderful topic, again. Best and cheers!

The first Basic set by Holmes did much to compile, streamline, and clarify the rules from the core OD&D rule books and the supplements. It was around for about 5 years, and its importance can't be downplayed as it introduced most new players at the time to much more understandable and playable rules, especially since the AD&D Players Handbook would not come out until a year later and the DM Guide two years later. Monster stats barely existed in OD&D, but in Holmes, likely due to the influence of the Monster Manual that also came out in 77, we see most of the basic stats. In my opinion, the Moldvay, Cook, and Marsh basic and expert sets from '81 made the original rules even more playable and clean, and really became a standard for easy, fast play without getting bogged down by searching through multiple massive rule books. This is likely why so many OSR games are based on B/X such as Old-School Essentials, Labyrinth Lord, B/X Companion, Lamentations of the Flame Princes, Saga of the Splintered Realm and several others. The BECMI series and Rules Cyclopedia made some minor changes and expansions, but they were largely just reworkings of B/X.

I've been playing D&D since the mid-70s. In answer to your question about magic items being core to power-progression, the answer was definitely yes. Magic weapons and armor, wands, staves, were a huge bump in power. Much more so than just leveling up.

I just want to say that it feels like the community is in a really reflective., considering both of the major fantasy TTRPGs are currently undergoing pretty confusing incremental edition changes. I'm not surprised that there is an increased interest in learning about the history of both of these games, especially considering both games now have numbered additions but also incremental additions

I got the white box set about a year before the red box basic was released. I didn't have chainmail and the original box set was fairly difficult to translate into a game unless you had the luxury of having seen it played. For me, D&D really didn't start until red box basic arrived.

I'm so delighted to see you covering some gaming history! Part of my ttrpg hobby is being an avid gaming historian, and it's so wonderful to see more channels beginning to cover this fascinating and rich topic!

the difference between 74 dnd and even 1979 dnd is MASSIVE.

The observation that progression was via items is interesting to me... In the boardgame Kingdom Death: Monster, most of your progress is also via the items, the characters tend to die or go insane relatively easily

I'd definitely be interested in more videos on the history of the game and the hobby overall from your perspective.

Fantastic video! Thank you for your enjoyable perspectives. It was like Ken Burns does D&D. One thing struck home for me (I'm an original Chainmail/D&D player): The notion that "dice" was considered d6 unless otherwise noted is accurate. During those days, people were freaked out by the polyhedrons. One friend's parents wouldn't let him keep the non-d6 dice because they were clearly instruments of satan. We also didn't know how to properly read a d4 for years. We would toss the die and pick it up to see which number was missing from the bottom face. (Yes, we deserve all the things you just thought about us) lol.

The thing that shocked me as someone who started at the very tail end of ADnD and start of 3.0, AC was positive! The fact that the d20 variant rules for armor are not that different from what 5e uses (each armor having a set AC, granted with no Dex bonus) and the fact that they then ended up taking a detour to the THACO/inverse AC system is just really funny. It was so counter intuitive that I had assumed it must have been some weird holdover from first edition or even chainmail, but clearly not.

I never played the original. I started with Basic DnD boxed set in 1977, then in 1978 for Christmas I got AD&D and we switched to that. I was for the longest time a forever DM. I find this video interesting because it is the only edition of DnD I have never actually played or read myself.

The first editions of the core D&D books still referred to "hobbits" and "ents," IIRC, and were only changed to Halflings and Treants after cease-and-desist letters from the Tolkien estate lawyers arrived.

Dungeon! was created by Dave Megarry, who was a player in Dave Arneson's group. The idea was to have means for Arneson, who had been running the campaigns, a chance to be a player.

I got the wood-grain box in the spring of '75 and was utterly confused. Having no background in (table-top) wargaming, there wasn't much I understood and I had no access to Chainmail. Eventually I purchased Greyhawk and two twentysided dice and we got to play in earnest in the autumn of '75. There was still a whole lot of things to misunderstand. Like magic-users being able to spam the same spell over and over. We had no idea that the spell was supposed to erase itself from the M-U:s mind after being cast. There was also the bit about "% Liar" (an actual misprint) that caused some strange interactions. After playing for a year we started house-ruling the crap out of the game. It wasn't until ten years later I decided to leave the (massive) house-rules and play D&D as written.

Yes! I spent countless hours on The Bard's Tale 1,2,3, Ultima, Zork and the D&D Goldbox games, Pool of Radiance, Curse of the Azure Bonds, Champions of Krynn, Death Knights of Krynn, Dark Queen of Krynn, Secret of the Silver Blades, Hillsfar, Pools of Darkness.

Had fun back in the day with the observation that the original rules regularly misspelled 'lightning' as 'lightening'. Our group briefly considered taking it literally, and using the spell to bleach color out of things.

Having cut my teeth playing 1st Ed and Basic, I can say the number one thing that shocks players of later editions is the lethality, which you touched on. Alot of poisons killed you outright on a failed save, there was no ability danage. HPs were LOW at at starting levels. Ressurection was posssible but VERY expensive and would weaken your character each time.

I would like to see more videos like this, not just of this, but also basic and later AD&D and how it changed and advanced thru the years. Been a LONG time since I played the old editions of DnD.

Mate I was born Jan 1977 and grew up with B/X and First Edition as well. It's where I learned my royal styles and all about exotic polearms.

There is something fantastic, pun intended, about playing D&D with Chainmail, and having mass battles to simply secure the entrance to the dungeon to then take your PCs and Henchmen on the delve shifting between the combat resolution methods depending on the situation.

This was fantastic! Thank you for taking the time to point out all the fascinating details encapsulated in the old edition.

Also worth noting that the raise dead spell didn't work on halflings. Only on men, dwarves and elves.

Thanks for the video! I appreciate all of your upfront qualifiers. I was a wargamer in the early 1970s who adopted D&D when the original game was introduced then migrating to 1EAD&D when it was published. I have since played all edition and incarnations (including PF and many other RPGs) and DMed all but 4E D&D. It's weird for me to look back on (O)D&D even though I still run a 1E AD&D campaign to this day.

Happy to see some non-remaster content!❤🎉

One thing about OD&D magic items was that most of them were unique. There was only one Staff of Striking, for instance, or only one Wand of Fireballs, unlike current editions where there could be 47 of them in a campaign. This made possessing magic items even more crucial to "winning" the campaign. Magic weapons were no exception, except that there may be many +1 swords, but only one +1 longsword, Flame Tongue, for example. I played in a homebrewed OD&D game in 1980 as my second foray into RPGs, and that format is still my favourite.

Please do more of these history videos. :-) Personally, I love this topic and will happily watch more.

I rolled my 1st D&D PC on 18 October 1975 and still have my original Little Brown Books and the follow on supplements. I also have that silver cover 3rd edition of Chainmail. When I play these days, still use my mashup of OD&D, AD&D1E and the Arduin Grimoire books. I have all editions, plus Pathfinder, Castles and Crusades and a few other D&D based variants. I've also played (more Old School) The Fantasy Trip, Tunnels & Trolls, Monsters Monsters, Chivalry & Sorcery, the Palladium RPG and Rolemaster from Iron Crown. I appreciate your insights, had forgotten some of those difficulties. Can also add in Traveller and Space Opera.

The biggest reveal for me is the suggested setting. A mix of King Arthur and Post Apocalypse. Civilization is sparse and it is a wild land. Your fighter better be able to joust. Because the party will be challenged to break lances.

This was really cool! I love your Pathfinder content but a deeper dive into D&D's history is a rare sight for me and I'd love to see more of these kinds of videos from you. :3

Something important about those huge early groups... Not everyone was expected to be playing at the same time. It was more of a "If you can make it you can play" thing.

It’s been forty years since I played D&D. Listening to your video brought back a lot of memories. “I remember doing that.”

Great video, enjoyed it a lot! Your rundown of Advanced D&D rules, and stepping thru each edition (possibly with some comparisons aling the way) would be really interesting.

Rolling for an encounter seems rough, but if I remember correctly, you only got an encounter 1 in 6 chances when you checked, and you made a reaction roll to see if the monster was hostile. You got an orc looking for a nice place to bed down more often a hungry mimic. Alignment languages were like Latin; English peasants knew a little Latin because church services were done in Latin, so it was a langua fanca in Gary's head, as I understand it. Ie, a French peasant could speak to an Italian peasant via basic understanding of Latin. Not how it historically worked, but it was based on this.

It should be noted on the topic of reigning in wizards, Gary Gygax apparently didn't like and didn't understand why anyone would want to play a wizard. Gary thought everyone wanted to be Conan instead of Merlin. He also knew that if you don't keep wizards in check they get too powerful and then what's the point of playing other classes. Also just in general low magic I find more interesting than the insane high magic of modern systems (5E cough cough).

The re-roll your hp every level debate was an interesting one. I played with groups that did and didn't re-roll. A popular compromise was to re-roll every level but only take the result if it was higher, allowing characters new chances if they rolled poorly on a given level.

I was introduced to D&D in 1974 by a coworker who ran a game at college and was trying to start a new game. After a couple of sessions of just the 2 of us he discovered someone running a game nearby and we drove out in the middle of nowhere to join this game. I created a magic user for the first time, previously I had only played fighting-men. We entered a dungeon and a door popped open and out poured kobalds. I immediately threw my sleep spell, which I didn't fully understand at the time and put our party asleep, except myself They were all slaughtered as I ran and escaped. Your video reminded me how simple the game was back then. The rules were bareboned and the referee had to be the rules-maker. Thank you!

I'm watching a bunch of Matt Colvilles stuff, who also loves getting into the history of the DnD and other ttrpgs. Would be super cool to see a convo between you two on how the state of these games have evolved over time.

I started on Basic D&D (2nd version), way back in the early 80s. My Dad was my first DM. Those are good memories. I thought about Darkest Dungeon and then you mentioned it. I love that game!

I've still got all of those books. We started with Greyhawk. Loved it. And yes, you couldn't cast sleep against a few enemies or you could go down, too. I had forgotten many of the things, but the shear deadliness is exactly right. And thanks for the little bits; the doors, destroyable magic items, etc. I remember a trap in a published adventure was: 1) Thief fails roll 2) Water fills room 3) Party dies. Thanks for the trip down memory lane. THACO forever!

So one of the more interesting takes on how the game used to be played, is that timekeeping was done by advancing time at the speed of regular time. So if you haven't played in a week, the time had elapsed one week in game. So one DM would be running for multiple groups who would go out and try and achieve their goals. If another party got to the dungeon before you did, you would miss out on loot. Questing Beast on youtube has a really great video on this!, called "Early DND was a open world table top MMORPG!"

I did recall reading somewhere that gygax's inspiration for alignment languages was the roman Catholic church. Catholics preformed most of there services in latin for a very long time even long after latin stopped being used as a language anywhere else. Now latin is distinctive so if you heard someone else talking in latin you could probably understand it but if you were not one of the initiated you were unlikely to ever learn it. With that context alignment languages are at least to me an interesting idea, modern class features that occupy a similar role are things like druidic or thieves cant. The main difference between alignment languages and those ones were that alignment languages were more widely spoken and only 1/5 people spoke common in nonhuman settlements. This functionally ment that alignment languages were more universal with some risk while common was safer but with less risk and i can see a game where that is an interesting choice

I owned the white box set. Years later Monty Cook's wife bought it from me (plus the add-on books) for her husband as a gift. I should have kept them

DM It All is one of my favorite D&D channels. Well made, informative videos.

My first introduction to D&D was the oversize Blue book. (Aka: Basic D&D). Experience was based on gold point or gold point value 1 gp/gpv =1 exp. Side note my first DM was the printed author/ creator of the D&D vampire. As players we generally created 2 or 3 characters as at least one or more would die including my 1st PC.

It would be really fun to see exploration of other old editions of D&D!

I came into D and D originally with AD&D rules (circa 1979), but all those other books were still in the Hobby Shops and my gang was aware of many of these rules. Ahh, the days of iron spikes and 10' poles.

Being and old school DnD enthusiast, I already knew about these stuff, but came here anyway to check out your impressions. I was curious to see which ones grabbed your attention the most. It's always nice to see different kinds of gamers looking further from their zone of comfort! I wish you good games and good rolls!!

Alignment languages survived into 1st edition AD&D, with its nine alignments. In fact, one advantage of the assassin class was that they were able to learn other alignment languages for disguise and infiltration. Alignment languages didn't seem unrealistic to me. We have Latin, which is mostly just the language of Catholic clergy these days. Languages like Sumerian and Chaldean survived as priestly languages long after people stopped speaking them at home. And in fiction you have the black speech of Mordor, which was a (mostly unsuccessful) attempt by Sauron to create a standardized language for all his minions. You could say the Druidic language or even's thieves cant are similar to alignment languages.

You were born in '77 ?!?! Wow. Man you look much younger than that! Great job. I will take it as proof that RPGs keep you young xD

Absolutely awesome. I started RPing in '92 with AD&D 2nd Ed. but have played a number of the older variations (AD&D, D&D Basic) as well as many other systems. This was interesting and very good fun to watch.

And yes, as a lawyer myself I fully understand your approach and "our" ways of looking at things, valuating them and draw conclusions from different vantage points.

I love how simple the combat system is here; it reminds me of warhammer 40k. And seeing the evolution to d20 based gameplay is pretty reasonable, once dnd became a bit more individual character focused.

What's shocking is you were born in 77! Thought you were younger than me (born in 84). Cheers!

I've been playing since 1985 and knew the history but never knew the rules for chainmail or the 1974 version of D&D. My parents bought the D&D Red box basic in 1980 but I wasn't interested yet (too busy with school and extracurricular activities) but I did start playing with friends by 1985, I switched the group from D&D to AD&D 1st ed, it was far superior to basic D&D, then got 2nd ed and tons of supplements, several hundred dollars worth. I haven't played since WotC bought out TSR though, I still play D&D branded video games though. Shout out to the SSI Gold Box games, I would love to see a modern remake or reboot of the Pool of Radiance trilogy.

MAJOR props on the The Bard's Tale callout. Tragically few people remember it. BT1 and 2 (as well as most Sierra adventure games) were among my PC favorite games during the late 80's and early 90's.

I agree - don't stay in your lane - you do you. I always enjoy your videos when I can get to them (as a professional yourself I am sure you understand the demands on time of having a job) - cheers :)

DnD 2e's Paladin class is human race restricted as well. Dont need any pesky elven or dwarven paladins. 🤣

Love the retrospective, I started playing Basic D&D in the early 80's, and yes I remember rerolling all our hit points every level, until we learned better.

Looking back, you could make the argument that the intermediate transition from wargame to modern RPG is very similar to dungeon crawl tabletop board games. In fact, there were a few tabletop board games from the mid 70s that attempted to capture some of that magic, as well. Later, HeroQuest and some other board games (Battletech, even?) captured a lot of the spirit of the original D&D/chainmail mechanics. Today, I feel that board games like Gloomhaven, Descent, and others (HeroQuest :D) harken back to that same idea of a boardgame sharing elements of wargames and RPGs.

Well, I definitely didn't realize how closely the "Dungeon!" board game was related to "Chainmail", it never occurred to me to look at the "Chainmail" rules when I started (and didn't finish) a project a few years ago to home-brew a light-duty open-ended kid-friendly RPG out of the board game. I spent a couple months trying to reverse-engineer the "Dungeon!" monster stats to figure out how those numbers would have been derived from the various flavors of Basic and Advanced D&D I was looking at then! I had no real experience with Chainmail at al, and hearing the details here, just about everything that confused me about the relationship of D&D to "Dungeon!" seems to just about all "click" into its proper place now - there's so many of those details from "Chainmail" that are familiar to me from "Dungeon!", it's kind of a big game-changing revelation! It's almost like a stripped-down version of "Chainmail" would have been the light-duty RPG I was originally looking for at the time. I wonder if a closer look at "Chainmail" will leave me just as mystified at how the later D&D stats evolved from the same source that "Dungeon!" drew on?

Hmm, ability scores had one and the most important role in the original "White Box" -- it was that sweet XP bonus! Especially for wizards, pardon, magic-users who had the slowest level progress in the party. Also, yes, that's what was in the White Box. First supplement, called "Greyhawk" (despite there were almost nothing about Greyhawk itself, mabye besides a few original monsters including displacers and the beloved beholders) gave us all-familiar to-hit bonuses, system shock rolls, and even "18/00" STR known from AD&D. Yes, it was there! Not to mention magic missile which never misses.

Great topic. I’m amazed how quickly D&D evolved before I even started with my Holmes Basic rule book.

Another great video. I love folks talking about 1974 DnD. It's a fun topic to dive into.

alignment wasn't just a label you prescribed to different beliefs that occasionally had magic powers in previous editions, it was an actual metaphysical force in the world of DnD like gravity or temperature. It's not relative or a matter of perception, but an objective moral reality governing the universe, even if it seems subjective to the creatures in it. It only really makes sense if that's built into the world of the game itself with things like the Outer Planes. And this was indeed aped from a bunch of Sword and Sorcery novels Gygax liked reading. Three Hearts and Three Lions, Dreaming City, and I think some other novels by Michael Moorcock.

The original white box D&D and Advanced D&D 1st Edition are the best! Gary expected people to use their brains, not roll a die to figure everything out. He also expected DM’s and referees to create their own worlds and settings.

I started playing in 1975 and the way we played was quite separate from what was intended - we used the original 3 books plus Greyhawk but while we did have chainmail, we didn't tend to use it because, at least in Calgary where I lived, we had few people interested in large combat, etc, and instead we played small parties of individuals - within a few months we had a number of combat systems that various people created and the ref [DM or whatever you prefer to call them] would state which combat system they used. We also had two distinct sorts of gamers - the role players and the rule players - I used to play with both sorts, though my preference was role playing. The difference was that role players would deal with things with logic that fit storytelling - so when confronting a problem, you'd look at the skills and equipment you had and figure out a logical way to solve the problem, then the ref would decide the odds of your solution based on applicable characteristics and how good your idea sounded from a storytelling view point. The rule players on the other hand would define which books were being used ion the game and where there was a disagreement between books, which book took precedence. Then everything was argued on the bases of what the rule books literally said whether it made sense or not.

My father constantly berated me for "wasting time" creating D&D campaigns in the early 80s. Little did he know, being a DM was the best possible training for my future as a lawyer! The most important lesson from being a DM was: balancing rules (law) with outcomes (equity). Also learning how to research tomes and how complex rules-based systems work. Extemporaneous speech, being prepared for contingencies, etc. etc.

Older iterations of DnD have VERY VALUABLE attributes we would do well to include today. I DESPISE the ridiculous ability score boosts implemented in 3rd edition and forward.

I can't wait to watch this whole thing but I also can't wait to comment on how delighted I am to find this vid. I started playing D&D back in 1976 (I am 73) and, while I haven't played for some time I did play for many years. I have played many of the fantasy RPGs and consider the time I spent doing so to be some of the most fun I have had and I have made friends that have lasted a lifetime. Now on to the vid.

We used to equip our characters expecting to be able to collect gear from the 3 or 4 parties of dead characters we lost a couple hundred feet into the dungeon before.

I spotted this video by chance on Facebook. After watching it I had to subscribe. I first started playing Dungeons and Dragons in 1978 about a year before AD&D was released in the UK, so I guess the version I was playing was a basic one but most of the strange rules/guidelines on this video had changed. It was fascinating to watch because I was unaware of the whole "D6 was used for everything" part. Of course back I started playing I thought we had it tough just because we rolled our attributes using 3D6 in order and had to make do with what we rolled. Great video! I'll be watching more later.

The whole doors thing is basically "dungeon is an enemy of it's own"

I don't remember having any knowledge of dice other than 6 sided, until this game came out. BTW: Born in the 1950's. Brings back lots of good memories, got the game in 1979. Still have the original books as well as the hardcover 1st editions.

This is a great analysis! Brought back so many memories (I started playing in 1974)...

Fascinating article. Like you I started with D&D Basic Set (the red box) and AD&D 1e, so it is interesting to learn about the history of D&D's formative years before then.

"Playing at the World" is fascinating book for anyone interested in the history of games in general and RPGs in particular.

DM It All is such an underrated channel, really happy you gave them a shoutout

In my group man+1 meant you hit as a man with a +1on your dice roll. Depending upon who refereed in mass formations, you rolled your D6 and added +1 per hero in the formation to every non-6 you rolled, OR you rolled separately for every hero who got a +1 on that roll.

Very educational video! Thanks for making this video, Ronald. I would definitely like to see more videos like this.