How to Make a Lightbulb Again

Mark A. Swanson was a science fiction and fantasy fan who was very active in the 1970s. He was a member of the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society (LASFS) and contributed to its weekly amateur press association known as APA-L. Swanson also contributed to The Lords of Chaos, Alarums & Excursions, and Different Worlds, as well as editing The Wild Hunt, a very early and important APA 'zine. 

In APA-L #493 (October 24, 1974), Swanson included a report, entitled "And Swanson Offers to Show Edison How to Make a Lightbulb Again." The report details his experience playing "a new game" called Dungeons & Dragons. He begins:

I have been hooked again, this time by a new game. The game is played basicly [sic] with paper, pencils, and a reeling mind (together with buckets of dice). It is DUNGEONS & DRAGONS (which someone probably introduced the LASFS to last meeting, but I'll risk it. Omelots [sic] anyone?)

I'm always fascinated about early descriptions of D&D. Swanson mentions paper and pencils – both of which are included in OD&D's subtitle –  but he also mentions "buckets of dice" (note: he doesn't comment on their being oddly-shaped) and "a reeling mind." There's no mention of miniature figures, which I think is significant. Swanson continues:

In the advanced version of the game, the players took the roles of various exploring/looting parties trying to return from a gamemaster desighned [sic] castle's dungeon with treasure. The gamemaster has a map, the player's [sic] don't. The treasures are guarded by appropriate monsters (gnomes, green slime, orcs, dragons, evil wizards, zombies, giants, etc.) The deeper you go, the nastier the monsters and the bigger the treasures. As you win encounters, you gain experience, which makes you a better fighter, able to go lower. It is played as a campaign game (there are some which are over a year old) with each person performing many quests. If you are killed, you get reincarnated, with a smaller initial stake. 

If you're curious what Swanson means by "the advanced version of the game," he elaborates a bit on this in the coming paragraph. Of note is his statement that D&D "is played as a campaign game" and his allusion to what I can only assume are the Blackmoor and Greyhawk campaigns. I've been beating the drum about the importance of campaigns to understanding how Gygax and Arneson imagined D&D being played for a long time, so it's good to see that perspective vindicated in such an early report of playing the game. Also of note is Swanson's use of the term "gamemaster, which is nowhere to found in the little brown books of OD&D.

The basic (early) game involves wandering through a wilderness on quest, looking for experience and treasure. It mostly involves luck and its proper use. In the basic version, the gamemaster rolls dice to determine what you meet. The basic game also has a shockingly high mortality rate, as might be expected in place where you and your trusty henchmen (40 first life, 35 2nd incarnation, etc) keep encountering such things as evil high priests, 300 bandits, or four balrogs, mere veterans, which is what you start as, have small chance.

From this section, it becomes clear that Swanson uses the terms "basic" and "advanced" as synonyms for "early" and "late," with the former referring to the initial trek through the wilderness to reach the dungeon's location and the latter being the exploration of the dungeon itself. It's certainly an idiosyncratic usage, but, at this early date, most usages will necessarily be unique. His comments about the game's mortality rate tracks with most other early reports of the game I've read, though the references to "first life" and "2nd incarnation," particularly when paired with the comments about getting reincarnated above, implies that such magic was commonplace in this campaign.

On the other hand, in the campaign I'll be continuing Saturaday [sic], I'm about to adventure in company with a friend who, deserted by all but 4 men and the persona of an abscent [sic] second friend, subdued two dragons, got them to market, and is now filthy rich and a second level cleric. The persona was killed by the dragons. Since he has only four men, he's financing a bunch of others while recruits.

Once again, Swanson mentions henchmen, which were a vital feature of D&D even as late as my own introduction to the hobby five years later. I'm amused by the fact the "persona of an abscent [sic] friend" was apparently killed by the dragons. I recall many a game in my youth where similar things happened: "Sorry I couldn't make last session; I had baseball practice. What happened?" "We defeated a dragon and got lots of treasure. And, uh, your character died. Sorry."

Your characteristics (Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom, Endurance, Dexterity and Charisma) are determined by rolling dice on first entrance into the game, after which you can choose the profession fighter, magician or cleric and begin. However, there are three booklets of rules, and I will not try to repeat them here. Very good game, at least as much for the gamemaster as for the players. 

I'm struck by the observation that D&D is a "very good game, at least as much for the gamemaster as for the players." That's certainly been my experience of the years, but I think it's noteworthy that this seems to have been recognized so early.

Thanks to Victor Raymond for providing me with this early account of playing Dungeons & Dragons.

Variance in Interpretation

Last week, I shared a section from Gary Gygax's letter to Alarums & Excursions from July 1975, in which he shared his thoughts about the development of the Dungeons & Dragons rules, both before and after publication. In it, Gygax expressed his "refusal to play god" for other referees when it came to rules interpretations, a theme to which he returns later in the same letter:

I desire variance in interpretation and, as long as I am editor of the TSR line and its magazine, I will do my utmost to see that there is as little trend towards standardization as possible. Each campaign should be a "variant", and there is no "official interpretation" from me or anyone else. If a game of "Dungeons and Beavers" suits a group, all I say is more power to them, for every fine referee runs his own variant of D&D anyway.

For those who care, "Dungeons and Beavers" is a reference to the Warlock variant of D&D played at CalTech and with which J. Eric Holmes was familiar. As to why the variant was referred to as such, I have no idea, but I'll wager that one or more of my readers does.

Gygax goes on, in response to the writer of a previous letter (Ted Johnstone), who asserted that "D&D is too important to leave to Gary Gygax." 

Please inform Ted that I too subscribe to the slogan "D&D is too important to leave to Gary Gygax." Gosh and golly! Whoever said anything else. However, pal, best remember that it is far too good to leave to you or any other individual or little group either! It now belongs to the thousands of players enjoying it worldwide, most of whom will probably never hear of you or your opinions unless you get them into THE STRATEGIC REVIEW. As soon as we can manage it, we intend to have expand SR, publish bimonthly and include a letter column.

Once more, I find it difficult to dispute Gygax's perspective here, one with which, I imagine, most referees agree in practice if not necessarily in principle. In the past, I regularly encountered a wide variety of house rules and rules interpretations, even within the relatively small geographical area in which I traveled. I wonder if the rise of the Internet has made such variability more or less common, as it's become easier for people far removed from one another to share their ideas despite the distance between them. 

All that said, some degree of standardization is probably necessary, if only to ensure a "common language" for communication between players. If everything is open to individual interpretation, "Dungeons & Dragons" will quickly cease to be meaningful. From my own observations of variants, then and now, there are a few "bedrock" elements of D&D that rarely get eliminated entirely, such as character classes, hit points, and saving throws, for example. Pile enough these together and the resulting heap is generally recognizable as "D&D," even if some of the specifics vary. It's an interesting question: how much can you change D&D's rules before it becomes another game entirely. I'm not certain there's an easy answer and it's a topic over which players have been puzzling since the earliest days of the hobby. 

Individualistic and Imaginative

Issue #2 of Lee Gold's famed Alarums & Excursions (July 1975) is well known for having published a letter by Gary Gygax, in which he offers his opinion on a number of topics, the most interesting part of which (to me anyway) is the following:

Dave and I disagree on how to handle any number of things, and both of our campaigns differ from the "rules" found in D&D. If the time ever comes when all aspects of fantasy are covered and the vast majority of its players agree on how the game should be played, D&D will have become staid and boring indeed. Sorry, but I don't believe that there is anything desirable in having various campaigns playing similarly to one another. D&D is supposed to offer a challenge to the imagination and to do so in many ways. Perhaps the most important is in regard to what the probabilities of a given situation are. If players know what all of the monster parameters are, what can be expected in a given situation, exactly what will happen to them if they perform thus and so, most of the charm of the game is gone. Frankly, the reason I enjoy playing in Dave Arneson's campaign is that I do not know his treatments of monsters and suchlike, so I must keep thinking and reasoning in order to "survive". Now, for example, if I made a proclamation from on high which suited Mr. Johnstone, it would certainly be quite unacceptable to hundreds or even thousands of other players. My answer is, and has always been, if you don't like the way I do it, change the bloody rules to suit yourself and your players. D&D enthusiasts are far too individualistic and imaginative a bunch to be in agreement, and I certainly refuse to play god for them -- except as a referee in my own campaign where they jolly well better toe the mark. Let us consider the magic-user question.

Needless to say, I approve very strongly of what Gygax says here, but it's worth noting that it would seem to be in contradiction to his later statements that OD&D was a "non-game" because of its high degree of variability. This is an area of great interest to me: how individual referees took OD&D's basic framework and ran with it in different ways to suit their own campaigns. Even now, I love hearing about house rules and unique interpretations and implementations of the sparse text of OD&D and other RPGs. 

Likewise, this passage is yet more evidence in support of the notion of two Gary Gygaxes – the gamer and the corporate spokesman. The former clearly speaks in this letter, defending individualism and imagination and utterly rejecting any suggestion that he should "play god" for other referees (or, to quote OD&D's closing words, "do any more of your imagining for you.") The latter is the author of perfervid denunciations of deviations from the published rules in the pages of Dragon and elsewhere. I doubt I'm alone in preferring Gamer Gary over Corporate Gary nor, I hope, in recognizing that these two Garys could exist side by side. Nevertheless, I often ponder how the early history of the hobby might have been different, for good and for bad, if the Gary Gygax of this 1975 letter had been the only one.

An Interview with Lee Gold

As someone who entered the hobby as part of its second generation, I find myself deeply fascinated by that first generation of gamers, my elders in the hobby. I knew and interacted with some of these people as a kid, meeting them in hobby stores or through one of my friends' fathers, who were wargamers. It was from them that I first learned of the legendary APA, Alarums and Excursions, in whose pages appeared many of the writers and ideas that would eventually infuence the hobby profoundly.

A&E is one of the few unbroken connections between the present day and the dawn of the hobby, in part due to its indefatigable publisher, Lee Gold, whose labors have ensured its regular monthly release, with only two exceptions in the entirety of its 34-year existence. Lee graciously consented to answer a few questions about her involvement in the hobby and in A&E, which I reproduce here with my thanks.

1. How did you first become involved in the roleplaying games hobby?

Our friends, Owen & Hilda Hannifen, came down from San Francisco to visit us, with a copy of the Original D&D rules. My husband and I were fascinated, and they lent us a photocopy of the rules, on seeing us write a check to TSR to order our own copy, so we wouldn't have to wait till the rules arrived (in a brown box) from TSR.

2. Alarums and Excursions began in 1975 and now has published over 400 issues. Can you provide some background on A&E's origins?

Alarums and Excursions #403 was the April, 2009 issue. #404 will be the May, 2009 issue. Deadline is typically the 21st of the month, at 5 PM Los Angeles time (so in the summer it's Daylight Savings Time). See here for further details.

Back in 1974 or 1975, a number of us were discussing D&D and other RPGs in APA-L, the weekly APA collated each Thursday night at the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society, a science fiction fan club. Bruce Pelz, a LASFSian and APA-Ler, who wasn't a roleplayer, was bored by all this and asked us to start our own APA.

It seemed like a good idea so I did, offering to print contributors' zines for them.

We started with gamers I knew: some in Los Angeles, some like the Hannifens in the San Francisco area, some like former-LA dweller Mark Swanson in the Boston area. And we spread by word of mouth.

In August of 1975, my husband and I went off to Japan for four months when his employer transferred him there, and we returned in mid-December to find that Jack Harness (who I'd asked to edit A&E while I was gone) had only brought out three issues in those four months. On the other hand, he'd gotten more subscribers, a good thing.

I set a firm deadline for January 1976, and got A&E reliably running again. Since then the only time we've missed a month was in 2006 when I knew I had major surgery scheduled, and announced well in advance that we'd be skipping the July 21st deadline.

3. Are there any articles from A&E that have stuck with you after all these years as being ground-breaking or significant? That is, are there any articles you consider classics?

A&E is a collection of zines (each zine being a short amateur magazine, aka "fanzines" or "zine"), not "articles." A zine may include essays, comments on previous issues, poems or songs, a writeup of a gameplaying session, artwork, and just about anything imaginable. I remember zines from Dave Hargrave giving tidbits of the Arduin Grimoires, Steve Perrin's "Perrin Conventions" (which were the start of the system that later grew into Runequest), Ed Simbalist's and Wilf Backhaus's discussion of C&S, John T. Sapienza, Jr.'s discussion of various game systems, and other professional and semi-professional writers. I remember Mark Swanson's "character traits," a way of individuating characters with minor bonuses and minuses. I remember Wes Ives' essay on how to integrate player characters into a major wargamed battle (which later got republished in the C&S Sourcebooks). I remember a number of people (including myself) getting tapped to write games professionally because RPG publishers read their A&Ezines. I remember writing "You Bash the Balrog" (to the tune of "Waltzing Matilda." There have been a lot of wonderful contributions in A&E over the years.

4. In the early days of the hobby, APAs like A&E played a role very similar to that played by the Internet today. Has the rise of online sites, forums, and blogs had any effect, positive or negative, on A&E in recent years?

Probably these sites (and also mailing lists and newsgroups) have affected A&E, but I'm not sure what all the effects are. Probably some effects are positive and some are negative.

I think because A&E only comes out once a month, people take a bit more care writing their zines than they do for an online site, which will let them easily write in to correct or amplify their original statements only a few hours or a day or a week later, instead of having to wait another month.

I think the greatest negative effects on A&E in modern times are the soaring cost of paper and of postage. I introduced the emailed electronic subscription some years back, when the postal service discontinued the Printed Matter rate to the non-US, and have since made it also available to those living in the US. About a third of the subscribers now take A&E electronically, rather than on printed paper. The emailed issue is only $2 total -- or free to anyone who contributed to that issue or the previous issue, but contributors pay $1.75/page contributed.

5. It's sometimes been said that the roleplaying scene on the West Coast was much different than that in the Midwest, where the hobby began. Do you think this is true and, if so, what would you say were the key differences between the scenes?

I've played in LA, San Francisco and Boston, but never in the Midwest, so I can't compare Midwest Style to the styles I know. I do know that A&Eers weren't content with the D&D rules as written. Most of them dropped Vancian magic (use a spell once and lose it) for a spell point system which would let you throw the same spell again and again.

Players typically had one or two PCs each, but never drone followers, so though there might be a formal "party leader" (sometimes a lieutenant in charge of strategy, plus a sergeant in charge of tactics), there wasn't one "party caller" as shown in Original D&D's sample adventure.

We delighted in the flexibility of Original D&D: making up not just our own worlds but our own creatures and character classes, our own weapons and armor and spells. Bards showed up in an early issue of A&E, for instance. So did hoop snakes and larls and many other creatures from myth, legend, science fiction and fantasy.

A&E still is a community with a lot of new ideas -- and discussion of previous months' new ideas. There are currently contributors from across the US, plus England and Ireland. In the past, we've also had contributors from Canada (one of whom still contributes but moved to Maryland), Australia, Scandinavia, Italy and France.

6. Do you still roleplay? If so, what games do you currently enjoy?

I run a roleplaying game once a month, juggling a number of different campaigns. My gaming style is fairly freeform, but sometimes I resort to using my Lands of Adventure rules. I write up the month's adventures in A&E. My husband Barry is one of the players. The players include old friends, plus one old friend's teenaged daughter is also a member of the player group.

Words from the Past

If the time ever comes when all aspects of fantasy are covered and the vast majority of its players agree on how the game should be played, D&D will have become staid and boring indeed. Sorry, but I don't believe that there is anything desirable in having various campaigns playing similarly to one another....I desire variance in interpretation and, as long as I am editor of the TSR line and its magazine, I will do my utmost to see that there is as little trend towards standardization as possible. Each campaign should be a 'variant', and there is no 'official interpretation' from me or anyone else.

--E. Gary Gygax, Alarums & Excursions #2 (July 1975)

Thanks to Victor Raymond for providing me with this quote.