A 1974 Review of D&D

CleverNickName writes "Boing Boing pointed me to this 1974 review of the 'new' Dungeons and Dragons game. Some highlights: D&D was subtitled 'Rules for Fantastic Medieval Wargams Campaigns Playable with Paper and Pencil and Miniature Figures.' The reviewer concludes, 'In general, the concept and imagination involved is stunning. However, much more work, refinement, and especially regulation and simplification is necessary before the game is managable.'"

Comments

Printing D&D

[duplicate-nickname]

Here's an interesting story....

My father's family ran a small printing business in Twin Lakes, WI (not too far from Lake Geneva). Back in the early 70's, these two guys from a small company came to my dad needing booklets to be printed for a new game. He and his brother decided against taking the risk of doing this large job and turned them down. It turns out that they were from TSR, trying to get D&D printed. Doh!

Re:Ah the good old days

[Ex-MislTech]

Well....

You cannot use about 75% of the spells,
and god forbid the combinations .

They are too abstract to emulate in a PC game .

Best example is a "Wish" spell, mostly the
PC games are all heal, damage, or enhance .

There were alot of creationist spells in the
pencil and paper game .

Then there is all the subtlety of playing a
thief, or even subdual combat .

The intrigue, and deception, and mystery, and
owning of property, building your castle,
town , fortress, etc etc .

Building a fleet of ships on the grander scale,
or the low level beginenrs using small sacks
of flour to see the invisible monsters .

So many subtle nuances not available in the
world of the PC . Some I have not even listed
out of the cob webs of my mind and they are
long forgotten .

I have been with Ad&d since 1978, not much
of lately but I miss it dearly and have
seriously considered getting back with some
old school gamers and doing some good
old quality gaming on a epic scale similar
to Tolkien, Robert Jordan, or Stephen Donaldson.

The good ol' days, hehehe .

Peace,
Ex-MislTech

My poor memory

[Daengbo]

I wasn't playing in 1974, but, in 1979 (I think) I won a gift certificate from my toy store down the street and spent about half of it on a box with a dragon on it. Everyone in the thread is talking about a white box, but I specifically remember it being blue, with a blue book (same dragon) maybe 60 pages long. I had no idea what an RPG or even miniatures were, and this book was still big on miniatures. At 11 years old, and never having played anything but cards and board games, I read it maybe seven times before something clicked and I got this rush of excitement as I realized that is was so much more of a game than I had ever dreamed of.
I made my mother sit down and play it with me (she hated it). I found some friends at school and convinced them to play, but no one could really get the hang of it. I wasn't any kind of DM, either.
It took about another two years of me trying to find people to play begore I hit the jackpot, and by the time I gave it up at 17 years old, I had amassed 30 different boxed set games, all of whigh I donated to the gaming club of my university when I went.
I recently found some interest in playing again, and happened across a Open Documentation license game, here
If anyone can tell me what kind of edition that blue box was (D&D, not AD&D), I would appreciate it.

Re:Ah the good old days

[Lord Apathy]

Ahh yes the good old days. I started with the silver chain mail rules oh so many years ago. Back then you could pick up the phone, call up and talk to Gary Gygax in person. I had a 30 min. long distance conversation with him over some rules. Hell, dad busted my ass for that one.

Anyway, computer games have a long way to go before they can catch up with pen and paper. Neverwinter Nights seems to be the cloest they have came. But still have a long way to go.

TSR did do one thing I liked, they released just about everything 2nd edition to pdf format. I don't play 3rd editon and have 6 gigabytes of 2nd editon in soft format. When I do have a game I just toss everything on to my laptop and off I go.

Every thing is cross referenced and indexed in acrobat. That to me is the best use for computers in AD&D. I also have the Core Rules software and that can be useful.