ADDITIONS/ERRATA: - I should thank Chance & Circumstance for tracking down this record, which prompted it being placed into the The National Archives! They then shared it on the ODD74 forums, where it was then reposted at The Ruins of Murkhill. Here is C&C's blog: chanceand.com/2024/02/27/a-journey-through-the-july-1973-draft-and-dds-foundational-saga/ - 3:04 In discovery, “each side PRESENTS evidence to the other” (not prevents) - 6:42 #10 (Inviting Meta-Gaming) actually survived mostly intact in the final version: "A quick check of some rule or table may bring hidden treasure or save your game 'life.'" Though I still say that specifically spelling out that you can look up the Hit Dice of a hydra is more provocative! - 18:59 The bottom of the text suggests that at one point they were considering ASCENDING ARMOR CLASS! I glossed over this, because in the rest of the book they use descending AC. Veeeery interesting.

WotC: "We've uncovered the secret, unpublished, never-before-seen 1st draft of D&D for our upcoming history book!" Ron: "Um, it's right over here. Anyone can look it up." But seriously, it's absolutely fascinating seeing some of the early concepts and assumptions about the game...and how quickly they had to pivot as the game evolved through the course of playing.

Im very excited to hear your comments as a lawyer about the case. Ive been wondering since the 80s myself how much of D&D really is gary and how much isnt.

To your number 2 point--very much so, parrying and using weapons to avoid blows is a very important part of fencing. When you watch HEMA videos (Historic European Martial Arts) instructors will comment on how beginners often only think of attack, which is why there are so many double kills with people new to the sport. to point 1--Clerics had an interesting origin--they began in Blackmoor when players were fighting undead monsters in the castle--the first clerics were more Van Helsing types from the Hammer horror films in Dave Arenson's game. Gary had more of a Bishop Turpin from the Song of Roland vision for them--so in this version, cunning fits when clerics are in the Van Helsing mold. In the final version of them we got an off blending of both---and who is to say that wisdom doesn't encompass cunning? And to your point about henchmen--that's something I'm really toying with. Everyone thought Charisma was such a dump stat, but when you stop and think about having 10-15 classed characters who are deeply loyal to your PC---the influence that can have on a game is extraordinary. That said, it also came with costs. Henchmen don't come cheap, and it was a way to get in PC's gold coffers. To have 10 3rd level henchmen--(at 200 gp per level) that would be 6000 GP per month, or 72,000 gp per year just for 10 guys. That's a lot of dungeon plundering. But it also had to do with the way Gary ran games, too. At least for a while, from the way I understand it, (and I could be wrong) it was like an in-person MMO in many ways. It was a race to get to the next dungeon, where different parties were pitted against one another. That's why time records were so emphasized--where one day of down time equaled on real day when not in play. Henchmen and hirelings could be sent out to frustrate and possibly assassinate members of other parties--so charisma wasn't a dump stat at all in this context.

The fact that Armor Class didn't improve with level in the published version was one of the things that Arneson felt had gone wrong. He advocated for characters to become harder to hit as they leveled up. Oh, and the Anti-(level title) just meant the chaotic version.

Neat video! In many ways it confirms one of my long time convictions, the idea that D&D wasn't really supposed to be a free-standing game but a prelude to Chainmail. In Chainmail players command great armies of fantasy creatures but we never know much about the leaders of those armies. D&D gives them a backstory. It's an elaborate character creation engine that was always meant to lead back to Chainmail.

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I really enjoy this relaxed tone of your videos. Please continue doing your style.

I love ALL The Rules Lawyer videos! 🙂👍 (Following advice from Dungeon Craft).

I find these videos about original Dungeons & Dragons fascinating. I was a young man when they were published, and we had some good times trying to figure out how the rules work

#10 survived into the published version almost verbatim. If you are a player purchasing the DUNGEONS & DRAGONS rules in order to improve your situation in an existing campaign, you will find that there is a great advantage in knowing what is herein. If your referee has made changes in the rules and/or tables, simply note them in pencil (for who knows when some flux of the cosmos will make things shift once again!), and keep the rules nearby as you play. A quick check of some rule or table may bring hidden treasure or save your game “life.”

Why did it take me so long to discover this channel? Most big D&D/TTRPG channels are so shallow and low quality while this guy coasts around with "just" 40k subs and has these bangers all over the channel.

Just a reminder that The Rules Lawyer is an actual Lawyer

Great video!! And thanks for publishing the link to the OD&D draft!! Yeah, I find it interesting that WotC is making a big deal that this will be included in their $99 history book (coming out in May or June 2024) -- and you showed everyone that it is publicly available! Thanks for sharing!😂 Probably will still pick up that book even though it is expensive -- only because they hired Jon Peterson (author of Playing at the World) to write it.

Bizarre to hear that the book endorsed looking up monster stats. 😆 Glad they walked that back. I'm not surprised at all to hear of the PvP elements, since that was part of what allowed early DMs to prep content for their _absurdly massive_ tables - they could count that at least some of the 10+ players would be at each other's throats, and they'd just adjudicate the conflict as if the players were playing Risk or something. They just needed to prep a dungeon full of dangers and riches, and intra-party competition would naturally emerge as players fought over the spoils.

Another great video with analysis of early D&D!

This video deserves ten times the views it has or more, super super fascinating!

Ronald, thank you so much for this video! I have honestly never heard of this first draft of D&D before, and this content is absolutely fascinating!

Yes please- regarding the future video about the actual court case between Gygax and Arneson!

Thank you, great video! 15:00 re: the use of the word "class": I guess this goes back once more to the wargaming roots. Warships have "classes", based on their size and capabilities. So a fourth level Magic-User is of the "Theurgist" class. 🚢

Early D&D history is always so fascinating!

The most shocking thing to me was in the text in the bottom paragraph at 18:59 - Ascending Armor Class!? "The base for a Hero in Plate Mail and Shield goes up from 18 to 19." Now, I have not read the OD&D books, but I have always thought that the use of descending Armor Class was the norm from the beginning. Great video, thank you for sharing the info!

Very interesting, I'm into the old-school and OSR and never heard about that before. Thanks!

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So, the Dalluhn Manuscript/Beyond This Point be Dragons (BTPBD) is another 1973 draft document for which 2 copies have been found. The Bufkin copy of this manuscript has been available via D.H. Bogg's patreon since 2018. In December 2024, I released a 0e "retroclone" using BTPBD and OD&D as the main starting point. It is available on DriveThruRPG as "Dragons Beyond." On my own KZfaq channel I'm slowly walking through the design decisions I made to launch a retroclone based on just 58 pages of material. . There are differences between BTPBD and this 1973 document from the court case. I am debating about whether to include them in Dragons Beyond or release just a separate version that has these differences as optional rules.

The things that I would like to see in a law video about this case are mainly : - what were the legal basis of the suit (what arguments have they predented and were they relevant) - what was the defense (counter-)arguments (and were they relevant) - eventually, a thought about whether settling was a good thing for each side (Btw my level of Law understanding IS a few seasons of Suits and their credo "never go to trial", but that's basically it)

Yes please, more fascinating videos like that! ❤

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Cunning as a cleric stat was probably a reference to folk healers being referred to as "cunning folk".

Good info n presentation

Fascinating video. Love to see you covering all sorts of cool tabletop gaming stuff.

History video is interesting. Amusing to see the wording for Charisma talking about Witch and then Health talking about being turned into a toad!

This is an awesome video! Your perspective on the history of dnd is an amazing source of information! Thanks for making these cool videos!

Great job once again! Yeah, please do one video about the case itself, it will be very interesting!!

I love all the rules lawyers videos! Thanks for your insights!!!

Excited for your read of this! Ven has been on about it for a bit

10 doesn't surprise me much, I'll generally give my players an idea of the number of HD a monster has. I think their characters should have a sense of how powerful a monster is, and more importantly I want them to know if they're in over their heads!

Cunning was a combination of dexterity and wisdom. There was no thief/rogue at the time, so cleric was kind of the utility character. Since they were hybrid, being less strong at fighting and magic, but able to do both, there was this idea that they survived by their wits, or cunning. It goes back to the meta-gaming, and also to Arneson, who invented the cleric. He preferred thinking outside the box to straight-up rules - you could say he was the arch meta gamer - so he wanted a character that could do a bit of everything. Clerics are more like bards/monks/rogues in the early concept. I think Arneson was probably thinking of characters like Friar Tuck in the Robin Hood tale.

This is perhaps more fascinating than the actual thing that was originally released. So many concepts that hadn’t been established - and we take for granted now. I was wondering when the idea of “level” came about. Was that perhaps from the war game roots?

#10 I read that is "our game is so deadly, you need to metagame just to survive." And yes, given the instant-kill stuff Gary wrote? Absolutely! #9 I guess Adventuring was viewed as "friendship before the warfare"? Often Rulers grew up with each other and fought on the same side - but still could end up at war later in life. Adventuring was probably viewed as a way to "speedrun" that "forming of bonds." Angry Villagers is "Rocks fall, everyone dies" but with Pitchforks. #6 Interesting there was a time before NPC. In Age of Wonders Planetfall, they did a backronym and named some factions "Non-Primary Combatants". To denote them from all the proper empires. #5 Well, a 50% chance is not exactly good odds. You would never prefer a Magic-User, if you had a cleric. #4 Reminds me of Hero Quest. Where the die had: 3 faces for defense, 2 faces for player attack, 1 face for monster attack And monsters generally had less dice. I guess DnD tried to play with THAC0 instead? #2 I would guess that DEX replaced that bonus? Would make sense that it is gone, but DEX was added the same time. That being said, Monks actually had this in 3E. They had a AC bonus that increased with level, on top of DEX and WIS Bonuses. #1 Maybe Cunning is CHA. And Clerics are more like PF2 Thaumaturges, _tricking_ the enemies into believing that Cross has power?

I think you could easily do three videos on the court case. A summary one. Then a mock trial video where you present the evidence as though you were litigating each side of the argument to a jury.

13:46 Elves can switch no matter what their prime requisite scores (when they achieve the max level in whatever class they initially chose). The hard to read line is, "In order for men to progress in more than one class, they must have a score of 16 or better in the prime requisite of the class they wish to change to, and this score must be unmodified. A "cleric" with a "strength" of 15 could not become a fighting-man. Magic-users may not become clerics. Clerics may not become magic-users. In any event, Clerics may not use edged weapons (at the referee's option). "Only elves may freely change class," is meant to say, "Only elves do not need a 16 or better in the prime requisite of the class they wish to change to."

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The "apperance" ability was later put into Unearthed Arcana. It was called the "comeliness" ability.

Dave Arnstein did 6 pages of handwritten note - mostly diagrammatic - which Gygax worked up into this draft

Love everything by The Rules Lawyer. Great content.

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I love the rule lawyer!

Class Defense Bonus instead of Armor Bonus/AC was a popular variant in 3e/3.5/PF1e & D20 RPGs. The Defense Bonus increased by level & martial classes had greater bonuses than non-martial classes... So that's where the inspiration for Anti-Paladins came from, must've been the lone survivor of the Anti-Classes. Interesting.

Rules lawyers rule! 🤗

Interesting stuff. I wonder how much playtesting happened between this draft and the first release. Ascending AC maybe changed to conform to wargaming rules traditions. There's a direct Barsoom reference (thoat), and some of the spells seem different beyond the resurrection rule. Orcs seem fairly varied given the rules for them. It's surprising how much was retained, given how much might change in a year or so

At 3:04 Ronald talks about discovery, it sounds like he might be saying “each side prevents evidence to the other”. He obviously misspoke, it was “presents” not “prevents” he was trying to say

Cat sighting @ approximately 2:35!

I oddly like Lawyer Jargon. Legal Eagle and Lockpicking Lawyer are tow of my favorite channels because they add legal stuff in their works. Can't wait to see the video

For the followup video I'm really interested in how the arguments for similarity were working given the uncopyrightability of game mechanics. What were the arguments in that regard? Also I'm curious if there were any important cases relating to that matter that had not happened yet.

Good Job.

I love these videos on OD&D

oh boy... I see you have descent on your shelf.... that's a tough one >.

The angry villagers rule (10:52) is a hilarious example of terrible DMing. It immediately made me think of what happens when you keep attacking chickens (cuccos) in The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. Also, it's crazy to see the assumptions that are not true anymore, like appearance (charisma) being seldom used (22:19), and the player vs. player conflict (8:16).

Well #10 (the first one) was Gygax assuming most DMs would be the only one with the rule book. So if you were and player and decided to splurge for your own copy there was an advantage. (This was a one book draft so monsters, magic items and all are in the one book I assume).

I'm so thankful that NRPs didn't catch on.

It's interesting seeing the creative process they were going through. I wonder if some of the changes were from their play testing.

I think the idea of "classes" were mixed with what became "levels". So a magic-user of the conjurer class is weaker than a enchanter class. It all boils down to the class definition they used of being of a better class, what led to the Armor Class and it being descending, since having a 1st class of armor is better than have a 5th class of armor (AC 1 vs AC 5). Later they came with "levels" to differentiate, but it got used not only in character level but spell level, leading to a whole other confusion for new players...

The position on rules should be split between 'player action rules' and 'world result rules'. Does the player have a right to know that trolls are vulnerable to fire or exactly how flammable wood is? No. Should they understand the rules around their trip action or throwing their ball bearings or casting fireball? Yes, absolutely, and ESPECIALLY if the DM has decided to change things. I still remember one game I played where a suspicious character we had cornered reached into his coat after our first question. I decided I wanted to tap my quarterstaff to his wrist, a clear warning but not an attack. The DM had me roll an attack roll, I figured it was just to 'see how fast and accurate' my action was. When I rolled a crit, he decided I broke the guy's wrist. That is NOT what I said I did, that is NOT what that action should have resulted in.

If the necromancer casts Animate Dead on the fighter's corpse, I'm definitely allowing the fighter player to control the zombie. That's way too much fun to pass up.

Gary and Dave obviously deserve respect for pursuing the idea even in the face of scepticism (i.e. Guidion (sp?)) but we have had 50 years of game design since then. I don't know that their early work can inform what current players are trying to do at their 21st century tables.

Even in the 80's the term metagaming wasn't used, and the 1981 basic set tell players to read and know the DM material, complete with written play example in which player engage in what would now be called "metagaming." AD&D and the 1983 basic set move toward keeping DM material secret. If you're characters live in that world, they probably know enough of the lore of that world to justify players using such knowledge; if you want something they don't know, make up a special monster or item or use something obscure from a supplement. You probably knew how to kill vampires without reading the rules, after all.

RE: Court Case -- I'm curious if the court case would have ended up the same "today" vs. when it occured -- like have there been enough changes in the laws over the past few decades that either side might have had a stronger/weaker case for their claims today vs then

Thanks for this video. As an aside, does anyone know the title of the book above The Rules Lawyer's left shoulder - the book with the topless couple with the heart logo? Asking for a friend.

7:35 I took a pen to my new Player Core and GM Core to match day 1 Errata

I like the dual-class approach to elves better than the later multiclass approach

PvP but only when the player characters have got to high level and retired from adventuring and are instead a lord of a castle and lands, with retainers, mercenaries, and an army of their own .. they are no longer playing what we would recognise as D&D at that point ...and are unlikely to fight anyone themselves, but direct their army to fight another

It might be interesting if you ran a game or two of this version of DnD with some folks and then made a video about the differences in play. I think it might be enlightening regarding why certain things were different to folks who haven't played it before. Just reading the rules of a game doesn't really show you how it plays, it just outlines the borders. In much the same way I can read all the rules and instructions for how to drive a car but until I actually drive it personally i'll never quite appreciate what it means to drive.

can we see more Pathfinder 2e stuff?

I am finding it rather interesting how proto-D&D had the expectation of inter-player combat being the "most exciting" part, given that that idea is now so completely gone from tabletop roleplaying -- particularly as a contrast with the game I just started playing ("Monsterhearts"), which also has inter-player conflict. I think Monsterhearts sort of came to the inter-player conflict by taking the direction that D&D went that removed the inter-player conflict, and going so far that they came around the other side. It's very much about cooperative storytelling and character development, and the characters are approximately "impulsive teenagers who may also be monsters", so character conflict is a natural part of cooperatively telling the story. And, since the meta-game goal is character growth, not winning conflicts, you might actually get more XP from losing the conflict than winning it.

I don't think level contributing to AC was removed from the final version. I recall your attack power being added to armor. Edit: apparently I'm mistaken and my mentor was... 2 decades ahead of his time, and solved a problem people didn't realize was happening until pathfinder 2e.

Clearly, the lesson here is that not enough D&D commenters spend time on PACER

What's the music playing in the outro?

I started with AD&D, and I'm glad the classes were more defined by then. Basic seems like it could be fun, but it had too many wonky things for my taste (like demihumans as a class).

More like Ronald the Rizz lawyer... Nice shirt son

"Cunning" - they didn't consult the thesaurus, perhaps, until later, to come up with "wisdom"?

I don't remember if it was in that video, but heard you say in one that you were curious about how thief skills were adjucated. This video is kinda long (1h) but very comprehensive, not only about thief skill, but adjucating old-school "skills" in general. I highly recommand you try playing old-school, of course (and maybe not only the low level "mudcrawl", but also at mid or high level to see the difference). But in the meantime, it might give you some answers and more video ideas kzfaq.info/get/bejne/qpmnlsmcvdjDhoU.htmlsi=IZZ-diO7cVwxwZ_d

Assuming the WoTC owns the copyright; What options are there for someone to take the ideas and concepts in this exhibit and publish it as a game system?

D&D players are a strange bunch. When it comes to ‘play test’ material they will jump all over it for their games but as soon as the ‘official’ rules are published all that earlier stuff is out the window. So I guess the first draft of the LBBs is relegated to the trash bin of history, despite being of great historical importance.

Good nose.

I've heard from old school gamers and from the various documentaries that Arneson took a lot of the disorganized ideas that Gary had and made them actually understandable/playable. I also like to think Arneson was more present in the foundation of the game since.. Well let's be honest Gary was kinda a piece of shit.

8:10 You are misconstruing facts. ADND was written as an upgrade for tournament play. Players using the DMG to cheat at tournaments... think about it. Do you want cheaters to win at conventions? Again, your ignorance of DND is showing. 🙄

Wow... Different times. EW at the end there.

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