So in the early-mid 80’s I did a lot of gaming. Mainly AD&D. For a couple of those years, it was just about all that I did. In the last seven years, I’ve dabbled in it again with some folks in town. Not AD&D 1ed, but other D&D and other non-D&D games.
But, for some reason I don’t recall, last year I decide to try and get the family into it. As AD&D 1ed was my game back in the day, it’s still my favorite and still what I want to play, so I started building a 1ed campaign.
Obviously, I’ve covered this all elsewhere here on the blog.
My point today is that I’ve been thinking about how I will play other games, but none of them do I feel the connection with, love for, or interest in, that I do for 1ed AD&D (which was officially kicked to the curb in 1989). I assume that it was just because it was what I was used to, but maybe there is another reason? Be sure to read pulling out my teeth… for a bit of my fixation on the glory of Gary Gygax’s game.
This morning I finished reading Hawk & Moor, Book 2: The Dungeons Deep. For those who don’t know, Hawk & Moor is Kent David Kelly’s extremely thorough and detailed multi-volume history of the early years of dungeons and dragons. From before Gygax ever mad a campaign, through the meetings with Dave Arneson, the development of Arneson’s Blackmoor campaign, Gygax’s Grayhawk campaign, up to the founding of TSR (that’s what the first two volumes cover, pretty much from 1970-1974).
It’s a great series… Literally almost play-by-plays of some of the first adventures, even the ones that Gary did with his kids.
Anyway, I love every bit of it. but at the end of volume two, there was this bit that really spoke to me and maybe is part of why i lie AD&D and not the other 2nd, 3rd, 4th, or 5th editions…
Beyond 1985 a great many things happened, but the game of Dungeons & Dragons lost its essential identity in many ways when Gary – as its last remaining co-creator – was forced out of the business. From 1986 forward, D&D was no longer a personal vision of fantasy adventure in the worlds of the imagination. It was a business product , cultivated by committees and authored by hundreds of different people. Some of these people shared Dave’s and Gary’s passions, but many of them had never watched the same movies as Dave, nor read the same books as Gary. None of them had devised the same diabolical dungeons as had one Robert J Kuntz; nor had they made the same bold and heartfelt sacrifices as Gary’s friend from childhood, Don Kaye.
To this day, there are still many things that are wonderful about D&D, in all its published iterations. However, to my mind the primal magic that time the game’s inspirations to its creators is forever lost.
…
without the unity entailed by a single guiding vision, D&D irrevocably became an endless scattering of treasures
Anyway… Now onto Book 3, Lands and Worlds Afar!
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