A Geek History of Time - Episode 95 - Edition Wars Part I

Episode Date: February 28, 2021

So thank you all for coming to Cocktalk. He has trouble counting change, which is what the hands think. Wait, wait, stop. Yes, but I don't think that Dana Carvey's movie, coming out at that same time, was really that big a problem for our country. I still don't know why you're making such a big deal about September 11th, 2001. Fucking hate you. Well, you know, they don't necessarily need to be an anthem, but they are indefinitely on different ends of the spectrum. Oh boy, fucking hate you. Well, you know, you necessarily need to be anathema, but they are definitely on different

aspects. Oh boy, I have a genetic predisposition against redheads, so. Because? Yeah, because you are one. Right. Yeah, combustion, yeah, we've heard it before. The only time I change a setting is when I take the hair trimmer down to the nether reaches, like that's the only time.

Other than that, it's all just a two. I'm joking, I use feet. After the four Gospels, what's the next book of the Bible? Acts. Okay, and after that, it's Romans. It's a drum. Yeah, okay, and if you look at the 15th chapter of Romans, okay, you will find that it actually mentions the ability to arm yourself That's why it's AR-15. Thank you. Checkmate-8. And anytime there's action and boring scottles taking all the bumps because Kevin Nash kind of sucks his work.

This is a geek history of time. Where we connect to Mercury to the real world. My name is Ed Blomock. I am a world history teacher and part time remedial reading teacher here in Northern California. Currently doing my job over the internet. And I am actually capable of doing my job over the internet, contrary to what some people recently may have tried to tell Damian and myself. Sorry, that's very inside baseball, as a bright spot in the midst of a whole bunch of other things, I figured out what I'm going to be getting myself as my gift to myself for my birthday

this year. I'm going to be picking up another lightsaber. Very nice. Because I found RebelsAvers.com, who have not paid us anything for the plug, I'm giving them right now, but they have a model of halibut that is, in my opinion, dead sexy and well with an price point that I can pick up at this point.

So I am very much looking forward to that. And who are you, sir? I'm Damien Harmony. I am really curious now of what Rebelsabers.com has that you find so sexy. I am a Latin teacher up here in Northern California. Probably next year I'll be a Latin and history teacher for reasons that are infuriating and needless. But I am currently a Latin teacher. I'm doing so at a distance, I'm doing a damn good job. I'm probably the best Latin teacher in my district by far. Wait.

Yes. Wait. Yes. Have any mentioned before that you're the only Latin teacher in your district? Yeah, but that was more of an Easter egg for people who listen to all the shows. So, apparently not now, but yeah, spoiler alert. Hey, but yeah, I'm a Latin teacher up here in Northern California.

I am not buying myself a lightsaber no matter how bad as they look. And oh my God, they look badass. But, oh man, I'm curious which one you like best adjust the what? Just a car. Just a car. I will look but so yeah I'm not going to do that. I was however thinking about spoiling myself and paying off all of my divorce.

Okay. So you know we each have you you know. self and paying off all of my divorce. Okay. So, you know, we each have you, you know, you know, so there, there you go. Yeah. So, you know, that's, that's me. All right. Yeah. All right. Very cool. Actually, I was considering getting another, another Woodrow. The Christic fellow has been calling me and she is a beautiful sounding muse. So yeah, maybe I'll be doing that and since I'm learning how to play chords I can play back up for you, sir with four strings while you play a melody on the tune on the two or three. Yeah, so anyway

So I'm off duty tonight. I get to just drink and listen and with me drinking it just means I have to pee more I don't get the benefit of getting drunk But luckily I'm wearing a dark pants so I can stick around And there folks you you have gotten a sample of the level of our general maturity here What you got for me tonight? Well, so I'm going to open with a question for you. So, we are both role-playing gamers as a hobby, you know, a branch of geek that we have in common.

Yes. And of course, we met through a Sion game, which is a pretty niche thing. Yeah. But for real quick, what is the longest role playing campaign you've been involved in? And I think you've shared the story here before, but it's worth repeating because it's awesome

Yeah, I was in a Star Wars West End games That is the D6 Star Wars. I think it's the best the most Star Wars that Star Wars role-playing games are but it's entirely possible That's because that's what I cut my teeth on but I was in a West End, Star Wars game that was set between episodes three and four at a time where episodes one through six were the only things that had come out. And there was a little bit of the clone like we started it well put it this way. It was a 15 year game that ended in 2015, which means we started before episode three came out. Wow.

Yeah. So it was, and it was, here's the thing. Same characters, same storyline, same group, for 15 years. They saw me through two marriages. Wow. Yeah, they saw me through, as many marriages as I have degrees come to think of it. Like, yeah.

I started playing that game before I was a teacher. Damn. And it was every week for roughly 12 of those 15 years. It was every week. Wow. Yeah. There were a few hiatus, but by and long, it was that. Yeah.

All right. Very cool. Okay. So in my own case, and we're going to kind of come back to this a little bit, but the longest running single storyline campaign I've ever been in was I want to say about three years. And it was a D&D game.

Okay. And in my own case it was really instrumental in kind of helping me cope with the aftermath of my divorce. Okay. It was it was kind of the very first thing I did that was really genuinely getting together with a group of people and being out and social. And I had been spending a certain amount of time cocooning. Okay, right. Yeah.

Rapping yourself in a blanket and being a total mess. Yeah, and that game gave me something to look forward to is a once a month game. Mm-hmm. Because most most of the group was either in Livermore or other parts of the Bay area. And me and one of my college buddies and his wife were here in Sacramento. Okay. And so it's a fair amount of coordination needed. Yeah, travel.

Yeah, travel distances meant we got together once a month and we did it and So it was it was a 3.5 game Okay, okay, so the addition 3.5 Now what's interesting is that's the longest running single storyline campaign I've ever been in. But I would say the longest running gaming group I've ever been part of is still ongoing. And like any kind of long running, you know, Jam Band members have joined and left and come back. I'm one of the ones who's left and come back. members have joined and left and come back. I'm one of the ones who's left and come back.

But I can pretty much say that I've been playing with the same dungeon master and several people in the group since I was in college. Wow. And that has changed editions over time, obviously, as the game has changed editions, but we're back right now playing in a second edition game. Wait, you went backward, 1.5 editions. Yeah, yeah, and we'll actually went back farther than that because of course now if we were up to date, we'd be in fifth. No, but from your starting point though, or was that a different?

Oh, this is a different group. The college game actually started when second edition was, you know, still the standard. And so that experience, the experience I've had as a D&D guy, like I enjoy a lot of other games. I enjoy a lot of other games, but I always wanted to come back to D&D. It's the first one I ever played, started playing when I was nine, and and you know it's home. It's it's fine. You know I totally get that because I think that Star Wars is that for me. I do because like while I did play D&D and and stuff like that, this was like there was a group that existed prior to this group that I played with for I think two years until one of the members died and then I got married and on and on and on and then I ended up moving and that kind of killed it. But this Star Wars was kind of my first real entry into taking seriously role-playing games, like enjoying them fully instead of just like, oh, I'll join your one-off. I'll be the, you know, I'll be the, the, the, the,

the Genasi Dwarf hybrid who has sex with sheep everywhere we go. Like, I'll be that guy, you know, and then, you know, but with Star Wars, I actually, I think, I, same thing, it was my first love as it were. And so, yeah, you know, come back to it a couple times. In fact, sorry to interrupt you But my children and I play the Marvel role playing game now Which they're crazy why why why you would inflict it works it actually works if you have a good DM

You can make a system work and this one totally works. I'm generous with the karma, too, you know, okay Well, yeah, that helps. It's really important, yeah. It's so restrictive otherwise. It's like you will get no character advancement at all. I mean, it still sucks as a system, but they really, really have liked it. My son pulled a barge using his magnetic abilities

in his armor, pulled a barge into Modok, driving Modok's face into the into the grass all along the park because he got hit that hard and then they arrested Modok. Like, it's cool, that works. All right. So no, then we also play taking down Modok. Yeah, yeah, they got 50 points for that. Nice.

Then we also play Star Wars, but they're first game, the West End games too. But they're very first game was D&D 5E, and I wonder if my kids will come back to, which one of these three things they will come back to in their adult life when they do like we do. Yeah. So, yeah, I think there's question. Yeah. So, so yeah, I think I think there's probably something to the argument that like, you know, we all, we all ask gamers are going to have our comfort food. And so, this gamers we all do have comfort food. This is true. I would eat one of your cinnamon twists every time. Yeah, if we were, yeah. Remind myself that I didn't like them. Yeah, just, no, I got to make sure.

Do I like them now? Yeah. Yeah, no. And that was fine. I was okay with that because that, you know, that's why you do for me to, you know, get fat eating. So, totally, and now, of course course this is a complete tangent, but of course now Mrs. Blaylock and I are on a diet right now, and I would commit a major felony for a cinnamon roll.

I have a list of school boards. I'm not going to say. I will gladly give you cinnamon rolls in exchange for a good fonging of certain school board members. You can do a parietum or a salt. I don't care. So yeah, you don't held it at this point. Yeah, depending on the target, you don't even need to give me a cinnamon roll for that.

For the purposes of this podcast, that was a joke. Yes, of course, yes, yes, totally kidding, totally kidding. But, you know, and part of what winds up being our gaming comfort is we develop an attachment to a rules set. And that's fine and that's great. And you do you and all that, but the problem is, it becomes a problem when you wind up getting into becomes a problem when you wind up getting into a virulent, ugly, flame war disagreements in social media or have a gaming group get disrupted because one group of people really

likes one rule set. And somebody else thinks that rule set is is heretical and anybody who wants to play it should be in fact burned at the stake. Oh, the Catholic doing the the the edition wars. It makes so much more sense now. And the Catholic doing the one of what the Jedi should have been also makes more sense. Because what that Reformation Jedi shit. Yeah.

Yeah. Like the Presbyterian Jedi's. Screw them. Yeah, no, no, the funny thing is I'm the Catholic, but I fully believe in no, no, we're form the shit out of the Jedi order. Yeah. Well, there was a counter Reformation. Yeah, there was there.

Yes. There was also Vatican too. So yes, yeah, yeah, so in any Real quick, I'm sorry. I have to interrupt you with this and maybe it's because like I actually got a little rest but there was At a board meeting that friend of the show Tessa and I were at last night There was It was so good. A person was reading announcements and stuff like that and they announced that there

would be, I forget exactly what, but at the Trinity Pescaterian Church. And I was like, oh, it must be the one based on the miracle of the loaves and the fishes. I hope they show sushi. It's a criterion like, it totally fits though. It's the Christian fish. I mean, on the one hand, that is on the other hand, like, can you, can you get somebody to do the reading who actually knows like Presbyterian, yeah, that would be you know, like like really and Look at the word Presbyterian like if you if you had to stop and sound it out

How the fuck do you get pescatarian? You know you know, like you're teaching a remedial reading glass. You know how kids do struggle with decoding and how that works. It's way in. And it's goddamn funny. Like as long as you have a sense of humor about saying pescatarian, you know, like, or like my little brother used to say, a Soderick, you know, so. Yeah, my daughter loves that story about her uncle, by the way, because she says things all the time that are wrong because she read them before she said them kind of thing. Yeah. Well, yeah. So okay. I think I prefer that pronunciation actually. It's fun. I got to say this gives me a really good idea because JK Rowling has has outed herself as complete and total trash. Yes. And so I'm kind of uncomfortable sorting things

into Hogwarts houses anymore. A little bit, but I'm still, I can still say, like maybe the teenage men ninja turtles, which one is this person more alike, but that's still problematic for me. But why not sort Jedi into various Protestant sects? Oh shit. Right? Who would be the Baptist? Yoda? Oh, I was thinking Mace Windu.

Could be, you know, because you get quoted as you will know that my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon you. Well done. Well done. By the way, that used to be what William thought, Mays Windu said, because he would with his toys. Yeah, with with my son's toys, he would be playing. He's like, well, what does he say? And I was like, oh, that's Obi-Wan Kenobi.

He says, hello there, which means that he'd be like a seventh-day Adventist going up to everybody on his bicycle. Oh, man. And then, and so you know what, I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to argue. I think I think Obi-Wan Kenobi is is a frustrated Methodist. I think you're right. I think you're right. Yeah.

Yeah. So yeah, yeah. Yeah. But, but then he held up his Mace Windu doll, you figure doll whatever and he held him up and he's what does he say? I said, oh, that's mace window He says and you will know that my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon you Yeah, and my son has a tremendous memory. So I heard him say that when we were lightsabering one day And he's attacking me safe.

It was awesome. Yeah, yeah, I can, I can see that being a moment where he'd be like, I am really, really proud. Yeah, so what have I done? Oh, no, there was no, what have I done? Yeah, totally appropriate. I'm fine. Yeah, yeah, if any normal human had done this.

What have I done? But yeah. Okay, if any normal human had done this Okay, so key Eddie Moondy would be a Presbyterian doesn't really do much sits there and listens all the time. Yeah, happy to wait Yeah, yeah, okay. I've totally derailed your Like you know write that down there for a future You know what what? I'm going to email that to us right now. Yeah, that can be a hell of a lot of fun. So, but what I want to talk about today tonight is you already used the phrase, I want to talk about the edition wars because over the course of D&D's life in particular, I mean, there are other games

that have been through multiple editions without anything like this happening. The Cyberpunk World playing game started out set in the year 2013. And then several years after the original game, the Artel story and came out with Cyberpunk 2020, which streamlined a combat system, I think to its detriment, but whatever. And you know, simplified a lot

of stuff that was kind of overly complicated in the first go-round. And so, and that happened and everybody playing Cyberpunk went, okay, this is awesome. And my my friends and I collaged together how we could use the original Friday night firefight rules with it. And we were fine. The world of darkness games are now in a, they're kind of being reborn, but they're in, you know, a third or a fourth edition now. And again, there's no, there's no ranker within the community between people who want to play,

no, no, we're playing the original first edition of Mage and your plan, the fourth edition of Mage, and like, fuck you. Right. That doesn't happen with other games, but with D&D, it really did happen. And within online communities for the game, it turned into a really divisive kind of thing. And I think I feel like the introduction of Fifth Edition has at least kind of papered over some of that, but you can still see some people who are still, you know, kind of, kind of but heard about it.

And I think it's an interesting phenomenon. I kind of want to get into it. And I want to get into at the same time how the game evolved with the overall culture. Okay. I'm here for that. What the forces were that were pushing on it. And so, you know, that leads to another question, which is if you were to look at a game and say, oh, okay, this is D&D. What would be the mechanical things? Not so much the setting. Okay. You know, high fantasy, like everybody does high fantasy, Euro focus. Yeah. Yeah. There's, you know, there's

all kinds of high fantasy, low fantasy, dark fantasy, like everybody does fantasy setting stuff, but mechanically, what do you make D&D, D&D? What parts of the system? There's got to be a D20 for your attack. Okay. That has to happen. And then you use a separate polyhedral die for your damage. Okay. That has to happen. So, and then you use a separate polyhedral die for your damage. Okay. That has to happen. You said don't mess with setting, but I this might fudge that line a little bit. There needs to be

magic in there, or at least rules for magic. Okay. There does not, you know, in my mind, I grew up with D&D as being theater of the mind. Okay. Miniatures didn't come into it until 3.0. Okay. And so I would say miniatures are optional in my, in my, nowadays, of course, they're like pretty crucial. Like the rules are written around that, which is interesting because it's kind of come full circle round like its beginnings, like the guys began it. But I would say that it was more theater of the mind. I would say, let's see, you need rules surrounding magic. You have rounds. You need initiative. Initiative exists. Which and initiative is is modified randoms. So random number generator, but modified by various aspects of your character, there's different ways to

modify it. Like the alertness feed. Yeah. If you play fifth like, why not? Come on. Yeah. So, which is funny, because when I played D&D35 and 3.0, improved initiative gave you a plus five, and I never took that as a feat, and feats were far more prevalent in that game. Oh, I'm going to get into that. Good. Good. That's a big thing. Good.

All right, so you need a D20 to hit a separate die for damage. You need rules governing magic. You have turn based initiative determined by modifying a random number. The final thing, because I would say there's five things that truly define it. The final thing would be that you have, when it comes to combat largely. And I think you can, I think you can build outward from combat into the other parts of any role playing system because combat is where you need to get granular. The combat is six second rounds.

There's something really important about that to me. Indy and D. I don't quite know why, but I do find it fascinating that D&D has always pushed the six second round. As far as I can remember. So there you go. You would be burned as a heretic by some of the people in truly ODD for a because in

first edition AD&D the combat round was actually a full minute. Each segment was six seconds and the round was divided up into 10 segments. Wow. Was that the one we're like based on your weapon? Because you had to roll and you were on a speed chart and stuff like that. Yeah. That was actually kind of a cool thing about that.

Because your guy gags. Yeah, yeah. Is the short form answer there. But I like that because then you could be the guy with two daggers and you could stand up to the guy with a sword, because you're poking him 30 times by the time he takes your leg, you've already ventilated him.

Yes and no. I mean, within, within, yeah. There's limits, but it does allow for like, hey, I want to be the guy who's very lightly armed, but I'm going to attack four times to your two. Yeah, that matters, you know? But anyway, okay, okay. So, so yeah, all right, the one other thing I would throw in there,

is it has to use a hit point system. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely, hit points. And, yeah, well, you're rolling to hit, so there's the implication that there's a difficulty number to hit. Yeah, and armor class, the way armor operates is definitely an artifact of that system. Okay, cool. All right, so that's a pretty good, pretty good set of set of, set of descriptors.

And what's interesting about that is at the very, very outset of the game, not all of those were part of it. As we already said with the six second rounds, the game actually evolved into that over time. Now, the very first rule set for Dungeons and Dragons is nowadays referred to as OD&D. And there's like a whole, because there's an internet community for everything. There's a whole internet community

Uh for guys our age and you know Somewhere between five and ten years older than us. Uh who who were there at the beginning who were playing The original edition of the game Who who have developed their own throwback games to try to get the feeling of what OD&D felt like. Why would they want to get the feeling of that? Because it's their comfort food, because when they were 14, 15, that was what they did. And I mean, that's my explanation for it.

They would probably argue that there's some kind of virtue to the system that you and I don't see because it's not our thing. Anyway, the very first rules that was published in 1974, It's often referred to as the brown box or OD&D, or original D&D. And it was based on a war gaming set of rules that Gary Geigax was involved, either had, developer was involved in developing called Chainmail. And the idea had been, okay, well, we're playing these games that are largely historical. And so Guy Gax then said, well, let's see what we can do if we want to have the Romans fight a dragon. And he came up with some fantasy rules for that.

And okay, well, what if the Goths had a wizard and came up with some rules for that. And okay, well, what if what if the Goths had a wizard and came out with some rules for that and you know, very early early spells like Fireball and Lightning Bolt were some of the first ones because again, we were looking at, you know, what if you had a wizard on the battlefield and that developed into, well, you know, what if what if I want to play as that wizard? What if I want to play one of the soldiers? And it turned into the very first beginnings of what we now would call a role-playing game. Now, the interesting thing about it is,

it was published on a shoe-string budget. They printed a thousand copies with a printing budget of $2,000. Okay, how many pages were these rules? I'm trying to remember somewhere in storage. Ballpark, it's back at home. Ah, I wanna say, well, it wasn't a full size book. So it came in a little, came in a little

booklet. So, but zero to 50 pages. Yeah, it was, yeah, less than 50, for sure. And the thing is, the very first set of rules for OD&D actually assumed that players number one were familiar with the measuring systems from chainmail because it used chainmail systems of measurement and movement and that stuff. And it also actually required that that players have a separate game from another publisher. If you were going to do anything, if you're going to do anything outdoors in the wilderness, you had to have a copy of Avalon Hills outdoor survival game. Oh, wow. Okay.

And there were only four classes, or I'm sorry, originally there were only three classes. I'm misreading. You could be a fighting man, a magic user, or a cleric. A fighting man. a magic user, or a cleric. A fighting man. Fighting man. Nice. Yeah. Tells you something about a whole series of assumptions, right?

Well, just the idea that like, you're not a fighter, you're a fighting man. You know, it's like... I don't know. It just sounds so quaint. Or like someone who doesn't quite understand English Yeah, using 90% of the language correctly You know, like I like I like that analogy. Let us go drink some beers, you know It would be you know that kind of thing Yeah, yeah, let us consume math quantities

uh What should it be 74 so who knows? So math quantity is maps, which was 74. So who knows? And so there were only four playable races, humans, elves, dwarves, and hobbits. So they're totally ripping off? Which they completely backed off from, as soon as the Paul Zane's company contacted them about, yeah, no, that's not a word you can use. Very quickly turned into halflings.

And that's when you had stout fellow and I remember that. Yeah, our foot, our foot stouts. Yeah. And there were there were only a few monsters described in the original rule set. And again, because the total budget for publication had been $2,000 to try to print 1,000 copies of it. The total art budget was $200.

And they went to members of the writing staff and their family members and said, we will pay you $2 to $3 a piece for drawings to put in this thing. And when we go into another print run, we will pay you that commission again. Now in fairness, two to three dollars in 1974 would buy a family of seven at Burger King, like dinner. Yeah, you know, so you had like, you know, a little bit of exaggeration there maybe, but you know, a family of five dinner at Burger King for three bucks, absolutely, you know, yeah, yeah. So, so over the next so so it got printed in 74 and it it took off. It it it filled. It was one of those

things that like when nerds saw it, they hadn't realized they needed it until they saw it. Like it filled a hole nobody had and realized existed. And over the course of the next two years, it evolved into what we would now recognize as really being Dungeons and Dragons. It because there were supplements that then came out. They released a Greyhawk supplement, Blackmore, Eldridge Wizardry, and God's Demi Gods and Heroes. I remember that book. Well, I remember.

I remember. He's in Demi Gods. Yeah, deities in Demi Gods, as I was about to say. Which is later. I remember. He's in demigods. Yeah, deities in demigods has about to say. Which is later, which is a few years later. Okay. So, that's 74 to 76. We have OD&D. Uh-huh.

And there were only three alignments, lawful, neutral, and chaotic. Oh, wow. Which, you know, some, some, you know, other literary fantasy nerds in our audience are going to twig to that being very much taken from Michael Morcox Eternal Champion series

where everything in the multiverse is a conflict between the gods of the law and the gods of chaos. And so if you were good aligned, you were effectively lawful good because you were lawful and chaotic, you were effectively chaotic evil because the two were kind of synonymous, although not entirely. There was, it was the 70s, there was a lot of moral ambiguity kind of built into it. And the whole thing was very primitive, very kluzy, and in retrospect we can kind of see that it was clearly kind of embryonic.

It was, we have this idea. We have this really, really big idea, and the edges haven't quite been knocked off of it, and other parts of it are still only half baked, but it was also revolutionary. There had not been anything like it before. And so very, very quickly competing systems, some of them in some ways superior because they're able to look at OD&D and go, okay, the concept is awesome, but we can do this thing better.

Right, right. Well, to proliferating, you know, almost immediately, you see Arduin Grimwar, tunnels and trolls, and then I didn't look at the timeline on this, but if you look at the palladium role-playing system, the palladium fantasy is Dungeons and Dragons, D20-based role, a separate die for damage with a bunch of other rules tacked on, to fill in the gaps that just weren't there

in the original OD&D system. And the same kind of goes for Arduin Grimore, kind of goes for tunnels and trolls too. And so, and those are just the most obvious cases that come to my mind, or came to my mind as I was writing my notes. And so the original game gave birth to an entire genre of game. And created an entirely new niche within gaming. Because before that, you were a board game player where you were a tabletop war gamer or both.

Right. But role playing games are intrinsically more, I wanna say social, or they intrinsically involve a different level of social interaction. It's a different kind of thing. Like, I mean, you can sit and spend, you know, an entire evening playing risk with your friends and have a great time.

And I'm not saying that's not social, but it becomes very different when you are putting on a persona in a role-playing game. Yeah, I mean, risk is you are in most board games and frankly most war games. You're interacting with the rules and that is the lens through which you interact with the person across the table from you. Any socialization that happens is not part of the game. It is supplemental to the game in terms of, oh, that's what happens when we get together. But you are playing the game, whereas in a role-playing game,

you are contriving social interactions. And so it's both more social and at the same time, it cuts down on social interactions. The organic kind in terms of, in theory it does because the game asks me like, all right, guys, enough, like make your own podcast then. Jesus. Oh God, say, will the two of you quit nerding out on that shit? Can we roll some dice here? Come on. Can we, can we kill some shit? Come on. Yeah. And not that we've ever heard that, that directed it to two of us.

And the podcast as a result, you know, whatever. Yeah, no, yeah. So, so yeah, I like the way you phrase that. Yeah. And so, and so this, this was, this was the genesis of a whole new kind of thing. And so this was this was the genesis of a whole new kind of thing and I have in my notes here Just just as a pet peeve. I have to say this Dave Arnison is the Bill finger of D&D history In our in our Batman series. I spent a certain amount of time over the course of most of the series Talking about how Bill finger got cuts crude 28.5% yeah, okay, I didn't realize you'd actually tabulate it But that sounds about right pretty easy. I'm surprised. I'm a little surprised. It wasn't higher

I kept interrupting In to me in in an allegous kind of way, Gary Geigax is the guy that really hardcore D&D fanboys nerds, whatever you want to say, tend to hold up on a pedestal. He's the Stanley of D&D. Yeah, very good. Yeah, he kind of is. And he winds up getting very frequently. He winds up getting the lion's share of the credit for the development of the game. Dave Arnison was a teenager when he he and Gary Geigak's met up. And Arnison came up with a set of really black more rules, which were a, he saw what, he saw a chainmail and he saw what GuyGax was doing with chainmail. And he said, I like all of that. I'm going to add some things to that. And so several statistics were Arniston's idea. And without, I could probably

write an episode, a short episode, but an episode about exactly what the interaction was there. But Arniston, Arniston was responsible for a significant number of the pieces of the game for a significant number of the pieces of the game that make it recognizable D&D to us today. And GuyGax wound up making most of the money off of it rather than Arnison. And so I just need to get that off my chest. Arnison deserves a lot more credit. And again, he's the Bill Finger of D&D history.

So they developed this game and they had put it out there. And then in 75, they started up, first off, they started the company, tactical simulations, rules, DSR. And they started a magazine, the strategic review, also TSR, as a newsletter and magazine to support originally was to support like tabletop war games in general and D&D specifically, but very quickly it got separated into two separate magazines, one specifically to focus on D&D and the other one for all of the tabletop wargaming stuff, and then eventually the wargaming centered one got absorbed into the D&D one completely

after seven issues. And so that was the dragon, which later became dragon magazine. I remember that one. Oh yeah. I spent so much money in my, in my analyst, on getting Dragon every month. And so Dragon was, was role-playing focused with the lion's share of attention paid to D&D,

but also two other role-playing games. T.S.R. developed Booth Hill, a Western game. I remember that one. Gamma World, a post-apocalypse science fiction game. Top secret was their espionage RPG. And all of those had articles in D&D, but the Lions share in Dragon rather, sorry,

but the Lions share of the magazine focused on stuff for Dungeons and Dragons. And so that meant both the staff at TSR and players and dungeon masters in the community were developing new rules, new classes, new systems, setting ideas, all that kind of stuff. And between 76 and 77, a whole lot of this stuff got introduced in Dragon magazine, Guy Gax took all of it together, edited it, compiled it, and turned that into first edition

advanced dungeons and dragons. Okay. So we're seeing actually not to spoil the ending, but like they still do the same model with unearthed arcana, game test, game test, game test, release a book. That can pile all of that. That's interesting.

So it's kind of open sourcey, but not quite. Like that's a level model. And in that, they put it out there to the public and people would likely give feedback and stuff like that. So it's not like they're begging for content, but in some ways they have outsourced or open-sourced editing and review. Yeah.

Maybe not even officially, but they've done so. Yeah, they're getting their their getting ideas from outside their own editing staff. Now some of the classes that showed up in drag and never, never became official because, you know, somebody's, you know, gaming group came up with it and it was just fucking broken, right? You know, there were multiple different attempts to come up with a berserker class long before AD&D came up with the barbarian. And a lot of them were just way, way, way broken.

So that's just one example. But so first edition advanced Dungeons and Dragons took all of the whole bunch, not all, but a whole bunch of these ideas that the TSR staff and to a lesser extent, but it was there, the community had submitted, and then other stuff that had been printed in adventures and supplements, all of those rules,

got rolled together into this new rule set. And so this is, again, just reminder, this is first-ed AD&D. Correct. And so that's again just reminder this is first dead AD&D. Correct. And so that's the one. Yeah. A lot of a lot of a lot of folks will remember the original cover of the player, the first printing cover of the player's handbook was the adventuring party in the underground temple with the big leering kind of devil looking statue with jeweled eyes that they left. You know, the party, the party thief was trying to carve

the picture. One of the eyes, yeah. Now, of course, the version of the book that I remember is often referred to as the blue cover or the wizard cover, which was the second printing several years later, which had a wizard fighting, look like some kind of kind of imp kind of thing, winged critter. It was easily, it was an easily cover. And so anyway, that's, that was, this was my introduction to the game. When I was nine years old at a gifted and talented program in Hawaii, there was a, they

were actually having a learn how to play Dungeons & Dragons. It was a thing, for this enrichment program on Saturdays. And I was hooked. Right. that was it. I was done like forever after that like wait, wait, wait, wait. You mean to tell me I get to do what now? Okay. I play a paladin those don't exist yet, but I play a paladin. Oh no. By the time A.D. and D came out, they did. Oh, okay, there you go. A.D. the players handbook included rules for paladins. Now paladins had been introduced in O.D. and D somewhere between 76 and 77 as a if you are a lawful fighter of this level, you can become a

paladin. And then A.D. and D was like, no, no, you just start out with this one at first level, you can become a paladin. And then AD&D was like, no, no, you just start out with this one at first level, but you really have to roll hot for stats. That's right, because it was very stat based. Yes, yeah. And so AD&D was very, very much Gary's baby. AD&D was very, very much Gary's baby. Like he edited, he came up with a lot of the systems.

It was released over the course of between 78 and 79. The Monster Manual is actually the first book released, then the players handbook, and then the Dungeon Master's Guide. What did people fight prior to the Monster Manual coming out? Well in OD&D, like if you bought an adventure, there would be stats for whatever monsters were there. Okay. And in the supplements to the brown book, or brown box, there had been stats for monsters there. But this was, hey, we're updating the rules set. Here's what those monsters look like now. Right.

By the way, if people want to find out more about first-ed fighters and stuff like that, I strongly recommend they'd listen to episodes 22 and 23 of this very podcast. Yes, and you can learn a little bit about Gary Geigax's cultural assumptions there. Yeah. Speaking of cultural assumptions, also we did another episode on the history of Orcs, where you did, and that's episode 36. So, there you go. Yes, thank you. True. For that.

I had fun during those pistols. Yeah, so bad. Oh my God. So, but the new rules set was way more detailed and way more granular than ODD had been. And it is clearly recognizable to modern players as being, okay, no, this is very clearly the template on which modern D&D was built. It introduced, as we've already talked about, it introduced new classes and the alignment system that has now become like an internet meme, even if you don't play D&D, you know that you know, Superman is lawful good, Batman might be neutral good or he might be lawful evil,

depending on which of the meme charts you look at. You know how, how Jordan is clearly neutral good, you know, you know, you see that it's all over. You could make the argument that Batman is neutral, lawful neutral. Oh, yeah. He cares more about law than anything else. Yeah, there's, there's one of those lemon charts that's all Batman. Well, 80 years will get you that. It's one of my favorites, frankly, but, um, Frank Millerly, um, yeah.

Uh, if you want to hear about our takes on Batman, there were 10 goddamn episodes on it, and I'm never going back. You can't make me. That's right. We did our time. Yeah. We did our time, David. Yeah.

So I was there for shoe mokker, man. You don't know, you don't know. You don't even know. You have no idea. You can't handle the nipples. So, and if you take a minute to look at the eight, like all of the systems that are involved in the 80-Indy rules. You get a really clear idea of the kind of dungeon master Gary Gagaxe was. Everything has a system. There is a die roll somewhere for everything. And the sad part of it is, or well, maybe not sad, sad is the wrong word, the difficult kind of clunky part of it is, the systems don't really seamlessly interact with each other. Like if you, if you decided, you know what, I'm gonna drop my sword and I'm gonna try to punch this son of a bitch.

There was a whole system for fist fighting and overbearing. Oh wow. Which was like it got introduced and explained in the original Unearthodoxy can a book, which itself has an interesting history, which I'll get into a little bit here in a minute, and it's incomprehensible. Like it, it, it, it, it,

Is it like the grappling rules of three five? The grappling rules of three five? The grappling rules of three five are, or three or three or three or are largely consistent with the way the rest of combat works. Okay, I get you. But this is another grappling, yeah, trying to, trying to overbear an opponent in first edition AD&D was like, okay, we're gonna need to get out a separate battle mat kind of situation. Like, we're gonna, okay, like everybody else sit tight.

Like, one of the complaints about cyberpunk and shadow run was, okay, the net runner is now gonna do his thing. Everybody else, you know, go get a drink, go do whatever you're gonna do because we gotta do the separate. Game within a game. Yeah, it's a game within a game. And it's like it's it's it's it's percentile based. And it's really complicated. And like just you know, look man, just just roll the die and figure it out. But yet generously, it was thorough.

just roll the die and figure it out. But, generously, it was thorough. Yes. Yeah. Yes. And I will say what I loved about the original stuff, all the charts, all the this, all the that. I didn't like to be hemmed in by it, but at the same time, there were so many lists of stuff

that I'd never thought of. And so that was kind of cool, you know. But yeah, generously, it was very thorough. Yeah, and, you know, so yeah, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna develop that more a little bit here in a minute. And then all of this then got further fleshed out over the next several years

via multiple supplements. There was the Monster Manual 2, Deities and Demi Gods. They released the Dungeon Years and Wilderness Survival Guides as separate volumes, Oriental Adventures, and very notably the settings for dragon lance and the forgotten realms. The dragon lance setting in AD&D introduced, for the very first time, introduced the concept of spheres of influence for deities and clerics. And it's the first place that we start seeing, well, you know, okay, you're a priest of Mishikal,

so you get a bonus healing spell. You're a priest of Curie Jolith, so you get prayer as a free base. That's the first place that show up. Okay. Which then got, which then got carried forward in later editions of the game. When we're talking about settings, we also need to talk about the forgottenms setting, which is a very, very big deal to anybody who knows or plays D&D originally developed by Ed Greenwood and was originally published in a series of articles. And in one thing after another, Greenwood as a player and DM submitted to Dragon magazine, and eventually TSR went to him and went, you've put a lot of time and effort into this.

How about you come work for us and keep working on it full time? Nice. You know, so he's an ascended fanboy in that way. Yeah. Oh, that should be a character class. Well, it's a trope. Yeah. So that was AD&D first edition.

Now, at the same time that was being developed, there was basic set Dungeons and Dragons, which was originally published in July of 1977, again concurrent with the development of AD&D, and it was a simplified rule set, and it was sold as an introductory game, and specifically packaged in a box so it could be put on the shelf of toy stores. Nice. And the original idea was exactly that.

This is the basic set. This will get you started. You can play this game until your characters get up to about the third level. And then you're gonna wanna go to the actual players handbark and the DMG and Monster Manual and actually start playing AD and D. So it's a feeder program.

It's a way of now we've got them hooked and here we go. Yeah. But interestingly, in 1981, there had been enough response from the community with players saying, you know, I actually really like the basics that rules better. Oh, really?

Because all of that granular stuff is kind of overbearing in a pain in the ass. Got you. That makes sense. And so in 81, they introduced the expert rules in a box set. Was this the red box set? The red box was the basic set. Was this the red box set? The red box was the basic set expert was the blue box. Now, did either of them, I'm sorry to keep interrupting, but now we're getting into the shit that I learned and grew up on. So did either of them have polyhedrial dice that were really

awful colors that you would have to color in the numbers with a crayon. Like a puke green and a kind of shitty, shitty tomato overripe tomato red. Yeah, depending on, depending on which print run you got, yeah, I'd say, yes. And, and yeah, they, they frequently would come. The basics that I think came, came often with a set of dice. And yeah, they would, they would be the kind that didn't have painted numbers, you'd have to fill them in yourself. Oh yeah, yeah. And again, it's worth noting that companies like Chesex who now are basically a dice company, that's what they do. Previously they'd been a subsidiary of Nibisco and they sold

little crackers, it tastes like cheese. A little cheese. Yeah. Nice. Good job. Good job. Well done. Well done. You're slipping them away into the way into the episode. I was really interested in all this other stuff. And I did bring up pescatarian. That's true. Yeah. In fairness, I was quoting that. But yeah. Yeah.

So, but, but, uh, you know, dice companies, uh, printers of other supplemental materials, publishers, and supplement materials, they're all part of this new game ecosystem. Mm-hmm. You know, and I mean, I could be wrong. It could be that other kinds of polyhedral dice were, well, they were already extant, but all of a sudden they had a whole new market. And so, created a great deal of growth within that whole business ecosystem. a great deal of growth within that whole, again, business ecosystem. So the basic set, again, led into the expert set after 81, and then expanded through the companion set, the master set, and between companion and master, that would take your characters all the way up to level 36, which like became this kind of magic

number. And then after level 36, you would go into the immortals, set of rules, which was when your characters ascended from mortality to essentially deityhood. And yeah. Which again, we get into the Damien doesn't give a shit because you're becoming a god in a fictional game. Like, yeah, yeah, I wanna go live a world. I, you know, right here is a good point to point out that producer George, when I first met him, he and I worked together at A-Gad computers. It was not even A-Gad software by that point.

It was A-Gad computers by the time I got there. Now, I always get to things when they're on the down slope. So, but I shut down businesses after business, after business in Walnut Creek. It was great. But when we worked together, we talked about gaming. We also lived together shortly after working together. It was how he became my best friend. And he talked about gaming and everybody has the story of that one gamer

who wanted to win. Yeah, and he told me the story of his one gamer who wanted to win, win. Yeah. And he told me the story of his one gamer who wanted to win, who had a level 40 wizard or some shit like that or wizard rogue or whatever. Yeah. And how the guy like arrogantly blundered into a thing and they're like, well, wait, we're going to throw some marbles out to see if like it's pressure plate, you know, because dungeon traps was save or die, you know, and he got crushed by a stone falling on him. Rocks fall, everybody dies. Yeah, you know, and he get his 40th level character or whatever it was at that time, got crushed

and died, and he started crying. And I'm sitting there going like, like you got a guy who came into your game with a high level character, couldn't he just pretend that that game didn't happen? And you know, and it's a weird level of integrity that happens there, you know, in this investment and you know, you're building the, but yeah, and he can tell us all about

this in a recording if he wants and I'll happily tack it on but he also talked about a level 36 or 46 level wizard that had a castle in the clouds that you know that he enjoyed and stuff like that so it's just it's interesting you bring up the, the super high level because by the time I really got into D&D, you topped out at 20th because it was level, you know, it was 3.0. But okay, so you, you get up to level 36 and then after that, you ascend to Godhood. Kind of funny, they didn't go to level 49, just given the biblical implications of that. But cool. Yeah.

Well, it's, I don't know where 36 became the number, but that was how they did it. And so within the basic set, kind of stuff, within the basic Dungeons and Dragons rules. TSR eventually wound up abandoning the basic set rules in 95 because there was not the same level of business to be done. Okay. It didn't have the same level of following. And some magic year. And I kind of think, I frankly,

I kind of think they, there was a whole bunch of stuff that they developed for it. One really important thing is the world of Mistara got developed originally as the setting for the basic game as opposed to Greyhawk, which was the default setting for the basic game, as opposed to Greyhawk, which was the default setting for AD&D. And they wound up putting out a whole series of stuff

about Mistara, and it was a really great gazoteer series of supplements, and a whole lot of AD&D players wound up taking those supplements and like running with them in AD&D games. Like, okay, you know, this is a simplified rule set. We can just, you know, adapt this to the other game. And then I think they just kind of ran out of steam with it. And so the basic set went the way the Dodo in 95.

And kind of part of my thesis is that this is really where the roots of the edition wars are found. Within the community, there's kind of, there's this lore that GuyGax was a champion rules lawyer. I'm not surprised. Like I said, systems for everything and and like down to there are different rules in AD&D for a glaive at a foushard fork. And for those of us that aren't Ed and our listener in Italy, what is what is the difference between a glaive and a foushard fork? A, both of them, what I'm gonna say, what I'm first thing I'm gonna say is what they have in common.

Okay. Both of them are medieval pole arms. They are weapons on the end of a stick. Okay, I could have told you that. Okay, a glaive is essentially a slicey weapon on the end of a stick. It's like take a really big knife to doubt right a stick yeah yes actually yes uh and here I am criticizing and I'm like okay it's like a doubt right like you know yeah because

everybody's gonna know what fuck that is I do yeah everybody knows I'm a I'm a weapons nerd yeah so everybody knows I'm a weapons nerd. Yeah. But then a foward fork is a combination weapon that has a hooked blade on one end and then like a fork like prong sticking off the backside of it so that you can stick somebody and you can hook them and pull them off of a horse. Wow. Okay. Basically. Okay. Basically, okay.

And so, and so here's the deal. I mean, yes, I understand why if you want to really get granular, you would, you would want to have a different set of, set of rules for that. Sure. But when those rules don't actually include a meaningful system for, okay, how mechanically do I grab somebody and pull him off of his horse? The difference between him is a difference in speed factor. Their performance against armor,

which was a big chart in first edition AD&D. And the damage done. Like Glaive did like 1D, 6, and a foul-shard fork, did like 1d6 in the fellshard fork did like 1d4 plus 1. Like, I mean, I mean, I get it. It gets tiresome. Like at the back of, there's actually very informative, fairly well-written article

at the back of the original Unearthed Arcana, which is a, which is Gygax writing, like a dissertation on the different, the development of different poll arms over the course of, of European history. Okay. Fascinating. Okay. Fascinating. On the one hand, if you're, if you're the kind of nerd I am, that's really interesting, but for an awful lot of gamers, it's like, why the fuck is this here? Right. I want to hit monsters of the head and take their shit.

Why do I care? You know, and so, and and additionally, and this is really important, Guy Gaxx, in a lot of his writing, Indrag in magazine, you can really tell that he is the father of the DM needs to be the player's antagonist school of thought, like make the traps lethal, say, to die. Right. Right. You know, if they're not, if they're not 110% on their game all the time, fuck them. Like, you know, on the other hand, Arnison. This is advanced, Dungeons and Dragons. This is advanced.

Fans, you need to be thinking, right? Arnison, on the other hand, was much, much more of a, this is a collaborative game where I'll hear it have fun. He was more involved with the basic rules set. Any advocated for more free form collaborative, we're not here to win, kind of gaming. And I'm speaking in, as you like to to say I'm painting with a broad brush because it saves time. That's kind of that's kind of the roots of I would argue the ideological differences between people who are attached to different editions of the game. Some lend more toward that and others less so.

Yes. Okay, that's fair. Yeah, I could definitely see that. And I could definitely see if you were one of the OGs who came up on OD&D, then you would absolutely just be, again, we talk all the time about the fish not noticing that it's swimming in water That would just be the water you swam in because you came from You know a battle of waterloo miniatures games you came from

Rules govern everything so that it's fair and literally measured out So you came from that so how far can you come from that into a theater of the mind kind of game? The answer is about that far because otherwise it would have come farther. So I could absolutely see people like, okay, and this is where I'm comfortable and I have mastered this because that's the other thing. It's like you want to table someone phrase that you used before You know, you want to best them. It is it is inherently adversarial And so yeah, I could absolutely see those folks getting that on whereas somebody who picked up the red box edition at Toys of us

Playing with their friends and wanting to have fun, possibly it depends. And even kids back then would cut one way or the other because of again, those are the rules and stuff like that. But I could absolutely see people going the other way. Oh yeah. Did I ever tell you that my dad used to play miniatures, measure your mouth games.

It was actually one of the first memories I have of meeting my dad. I'm adopted by him. Um, and he made, he, my, my mom and myself when I was four going on five, I want to say. And he had all of those. So one of my first memories was helping him. I said the battle of Waterloo on purpose, helping him set out his Prussian soldiers that he had painstakingly painted, you know, in there in like four by five squares each guy, you know. Right up.

Yeah. And so what's one of my first memories, he has reached out to me recently, it's not like we're out of touch or anything, but he listens to this podcast, hi dad, and he's probably sick of our stouting people out, D& listens to this podcast, hi dad, and he's probably sick of our stouting people out D&D stuff because, you know, it's indulgent. But he told me that he used to play miniatures games with Gary Gaggaks on the regular. Really? Yeah.

Okay, then I want to, I want to hear what he has to say. I will, dad go ahead and text me as much of a narrative or just put it in a Facebook messenger as much as you want, dad. And I will copy that and send that to Ed so he can read it. All right. So anyway, back to what you were saying. Yeah, so now I wanna step away

because we've now gotten up to 79 And I want to step away for just a second To to get into the end of this is where we bring it into the real world a part of the podcast so in in both forms Dungeons and Dragons became a sensation By 1981 the reward of the three million players worldwide both forms Dungeons and Dragons became a sensation. By 1981, there were more than three million players worldwide.

TSR grew rapidly into a 500 pound gorilla in the game industry, because they were the first ones to come up with this idea. And, you know, they had the advantage there because of it. Like I just mentioned, there was a whole industry that wound up growing up around it, dice miniatures, all that kind of stuff,

which had existed before, but now there was this whole new branch and this whole new niche and this whole new microclimate, if you will, within that ecosystem. Sure. That was dominated by TSR. I would argue that war gaming in general wound up growing out of the soil that D&D kind of dug up.

D&D broke up the ground, introduced more people into the milieu of tabletop gaming. So the dragon's teeth, if you will. So tough. Ooh, very nice analogy. Thank you. And then other games grew around, Dungeons and Dragons, some of them were fantasy,

many of them were other genres. There were, traveler comes, a couple of years later as, you know, one of the really first, you know, semi-hard science fiction games. But they're all responding to the core ideas of Dungeons and Dragons in one way or another. And then that led to a huge mainstream backlash in the late 70s, as AD&D was coming out in the late 70s and into the 1980s. And I want to talk about what was going on in that era. So of course, we're talking about a huge rightward shift in the dominant politics we're talking about a huge rightward shift in the dominant politics of both the United States and the UK. As we've spoken in our episodes dealing with Conan as well as a war hammer. Yes. Yeah. So Reaganism and televangelism are on the rise

in the United States. And there was, of course, all the massive insecurity involved in the Cold War, combined with the insecurity of the multiple fuel crises and everything else that had happened, everybody was shaking up, everybody was angry, everybody was worn out. And at the same time, there was this bizarre rise time. There was this bizarre rise of a mass hysteria around satanists. As I had talked about when I was dealing with some of my Batman issues. Yes. Yes. And, and, and, and there And there were these, like the biggest one, of course, was a huge conspiracy theory

that we can kind of see the roots of QAnon in now, where suddenly people started telling stories about kids in daycare centers. Specifically in Florida, Montessori schools, yeah. Yeah. Being subjected to satanic rituals. And it's just fucking nuts. Oh yeah.

And into that environment, of course, now you see AD&D showing up where there's magic and there's all of these fantasy elements. And in the monster manual, of course, there is an entire section devoted to, if your party wants to go up against the forces of hell, here are all of the types of devils they might run into, and by the way, we've stated out as modius. At the same time, and BL's above, and several others, Montspanule II,

went in more detail with them at the same time. If you want to go into the abyss and face the forces of chaotic evil, here are demons. And these are all the different types of demons, and here are a few named demon lords. And of course, so you have this environment where there's this mass panic about st. Nism. Right. Now, real quick, they statted out demons and devils. I noticed that you left out imps. And it's because they're notoriously hard to stad out because as we all know, impanene easy. Hmm. I'm just gonna let you have a little bit of a conversation.

It's also why you don't have rules about getting injured. It's just you live and live and live until you die because staring out how it affects someone's gate is also difficult because limpanene easy. Nice. You know what, I ain't even mad this time. Like, I'm just gonna let you have those. Sure. That's actually those for whatever reason.

I'm in a mood. It hasn't been a good day, sir. So what was the name of the guy who did all the fantasy drawings? Boris something or other forget. Vallejo. Vallejo, yeah, Boris V, Boris something or other forget. Vallejo. Yeah, Boris Vallejo. You're thinking of Vallejo. Yes, yes.

And I noticed that all the women always had really, really like flowing locks of hair. And it's because the difficulty, because in the 80s, everybody had like curly semi-permed hair. And the reason is because drawing hair flowingly is a lot simpler than drawing it with like little kinks in it because crimp and an easy. That one, that one. Good day, sir. You and you, that one totally makes me mad.

If we were in person, you would be like bearing your teeth and throwing your poo at me. But since we're on Skype, you can't because chimp and a and easy, chimp and easy. And I'm back to like not even being mad. So. So so so D and D, publish these materials that included, you know, named like Lords of Hell. Right. And of course this is at the same time that, you know, heavy metal music and rock and roll bands. You play in backwards. Yeah, the whole record bullshit. Like, you know, you're really gonna fuck up your needle. You know, is the, I don't

remember who the comic was, but, but I remember the same one. Yeah. I remember the big, the wrong way. It's going the wrong way. Yeah. Um, you know, and, and I mean, there was just this paranoid hack. Crazy. which is funny because they were also really upset about black people having their own music with like the turntables. And that's why they started turning them backwards because it was harder to get the that because skipping an easy. Nice. Thank you. nice. So, and also, it should be in these same printed materials, there were, there was nudity. And in the original artwork for the monster manual, there were several monsters that involved naked ladies. I was confused with harpies because there were boobs, but they were harpies. But like, yeah. But they were harpies. So it was gross, but there were boobs and like I wanted to fall in love with them,

but I couldn't because symphony and easy. Nice. Nice. Yeah, nobody was confused by the succumbus image, though, in the original monster manual. Pretty sure. Yeah. So anyway. And, and like, like this level of this, this level of crazy about Dungeons and Dragons specifically, actually came,

I don't want to say to fruition, but one of the things that resulted from it was a very young Tom Hanks starring in a TV movie entitled Maze's and Monsters, which was based on the rather tragic story of a schizophrenic student at the University of Michigan, who wound up having an episode and, you know, as I recall, he died. In steam tunnels or something under the university, I don't remember the details, but the press made a really big deal about how he'd been a very, very avid, like unhealthy avid player of Dungeons and Dragons, not that people, the mainstream opinion was that, you know,, clearly, this had damaged him. Right. And, you know, to psychoanalyze a little bit here, the worries about daycare centers, I think can pretty convincingly be traced to the idea that all of a sudden a very significant maybe not a majority, but a very significant number of mothers were having to hand their kids over to other people to look after during the day because they were working.

Because no fault divorce had recently been introduced and women were actually able to get out of horrible abusive relationships and people could actually divorce when they were unhappy. And that meant you had a whole bunch more single folk and of course that burden falls much more on the moms because typically you had the homemaker or not but there's always the

depression of women's wages. There's the very stark reality of, you know, making 70 cents to the dollar, you know, and at that time, by the way, apartment complexes could straight up deny you rental if you had a child. Yes. So, yeah, the whole thing, like all that anxiety is baked into that and it's, it is epidemic because you are starting to see larger and larger numbers of single parents, especially in these. Yes. Yeah. Oh, yeah. And so, we don't know what they're really up to with our kids during the day.

Right. And then the corollary to that is my teenager and his friends are sitting in the garage or the basement for hours at a time playing this game. And I hear voices, I hear them talking about magic spells and BLs above. And I flip through their books to see what they're up to and I see naked women.

And what are they doing with my kid with the daycare centers? And what is my kid up to with D&D? And so we see this huge level of crazy, like for lack of a better word, it's this paranoiac, like nuts kind of reaction to it. And I think I'm going to pause there because speaking of kind of schizophrenic kind of issues, I also wanna get into what the popular entertainment landscape looked like at the same time, and I think we can kind of start with that. I like it.

Next time around. So, based on this, we've only just gotten into the beginning of what we're talking about here, but what do you take away right now? Well, I mean, we grew up at this time. And so, like, I, and I don't mean this actually is a way to make fun of your advanced stage compared to mine, but I mean, I do with that comment, but the rest of this actually isn't. But it's that I was below the age of real consciousness

at that during a lot of this, you know, I was just kinda floating like a leaf on the wind as it were. Thanks. Yeah, thank you. Figure the jokes will come out in the wash. Nice. Yeah, so. But, Yeah, too soon. Did you see that thing where it was Nice. Yeah. So, but...

Too soon. Yeah, too soon. Did you see that thing where it was make a nerd cry in five words? And it was like a leaf on the wind. Nice. Yeah, it was good. Yeah, that was good.

So anyway. So yeah, I was coming of age, or I wasn't coming of age. I was coming into the age of consciousness. You were coming of age. Producer George was coming of age or I wasn't coming of age. I was I was coming into the age of consciousness. You were coming of age Producer George was coming of age like you guys were Getting into it as prodigious kids who like that kind of stuff would do at that age, right? So a lot of it missed me. I didn't I wasn't really like I was baked into it already But a lot of it missed me so I came to really like I was baked into it already, but a lot of it missed me.

So I came to it a little bit later after it already, you know, risen up, settled, risen up, settled, like the souffle had gone flat a couple times by that point. And so I, you know, my experience was not a loyalty to that system necessarily, but the world was always kind of interesting. Now what I find interesting though is what the confluence of D&D, Satanic Panic, Evangelicalism, Ultra Conservatism, taking a foothold, mass media starting to market toward all that by the way. Youth groups becoming very popular in churches as a way to keep kids out of trouble. All those kinds of things dare.

All those kinds of things. That's where I'm coming in. And so I didn't really see like those kinds of connections as they were happening. I look back as an historian and go, yep, they're all there. But I didn't, as Adam Savage might say, well, there's your problem. Yeah, but I didn't, I didn't get any of the benefits

of the cool shit that was freaking out the parents. Really, I mean, you know, my first introduction to D&D ultimately was through my dad. Yeah. You know, and I mean, there was a game that we played on the computer and dad shot out when you find this, like, there was a, it was a text-based game only on the computer and you would just read the thing and you would, you know, choose, you know, you'd hit this button or this button and it would take you to the next part, you know.

Zork. I don't think it was Zork though the next part, you know. Zork. I don't think it was Zork though, because we always did an off-brand shit. Like when kids had a Nintendo, I had the sad ass Sega. But, you know, the one that like opened up to press is, say, go. You know, that one.

So. I didn't even have that. Yeah, you know. But like, I, and by the way, that's another thing that was coming up at that same time was gaming systems and things like that so I just I find it so interesting that behind All of these things that I just took for granted There was an entire ecosystem as you had said

And I you know again. I only was touching the artifacts as kind of like cool things that were around I wasn't And I, you know, again, I only was touching the artifacts as kind of like cool things that were around. I wasn't diving into them, nor was I aware of all these things of the development and stuff like that. So it's been really interesting to hear about a time that I lived with my historian ears. Only adopted, Sikho. Exactly.

I was raised in it. Yes. Um, you know, I didn't really learn. I did not see a positive armor class till I was a man. Ha ha ha ha. Yeah. You know, but like, I, I mean, I played,

I played AD&D second-ed if such a thing exists and I might be calling them more things. Okay, I played that. That was as an adult. Like, I played that. That was as an adult. Like I played that when I was 18, you know, like that's what I started on. And that's basically when I started. Doesn't mean I hadn't been exposed,

but and I'm a big old nerd and stuff like that. But so it's just really interesting to like learn about the ecosystem that is behind it all. It's, yeah. So thank you for that. All right. Very cool. Yeah.

So, hey, so what's your reading lately? What do you want to recommend to folks? What do I want to recommend to folks? I am right now reading a lot of student work and I do not recommend that to anyone. No, more I. But I am going to recommend, very strong, even though I'm not reading it right now, the original Dragon Lance trilogy is a beloved, beloved, beloved series to a great many people and I am one of them. How old would a person have to be to appropriately enjoy it?

I picked them up for the first time in middle school or what we now call middle school. I was in, we now call middle school. I was in, was it eighth grade or ninth? I wanna say I was in the eighth grade. Would my, you know, you know my daughter. Would my, precocious. Precocious prodigious daughter who has read so many things. There is not anything in it that would be inappropriate for her. Awesome.

Birthday gift coming up. Yeah. Yeah. her. Awesome. Birthday gift coming up. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Cool. Definitely very highly recommended. Awesome.

So how about you? I've got two recommendations tonight. The first one I'm going to recommend is art and arcana. Well, Dungeons and Dragons, art and arcana. I bought this for my daughter for Christmas and it's a visual history and it's all the art that ever got put into D&D. Okay wait. It's amazing. Okay, I mean like right off the bat I want this book. One of the points I just made was that of course much of the original artwork involves, you know, neckiness. Yeah, so okay. It's just part of the, you know, part of the landscape.

Like, you know, in my house, there are books that talk about the Greek gods and there's pictures of statues and they're naked and stuff like that. So she understands that it's a art thing. So yeah, art and and arcana, does Dragon's Art and Arcana. It's really good. It is a wonderful trip down memory lane. It explains the shit out of things. There's an Amazon documentary called in the Eye of the Beholder that does a very similar job.

I think you should. I have not seen it yet. You should enjoy that. Yes. And the other thing I'm going to recommend because I think it'll be very, very helpful for people in the next episode is the Order of the Stick, which my daughter has read all of several times.

And in fact, she sent me, yeah. All of them, yeah. Like all the way through book six. Wow, yeah. Like, you know, I tell her to go to bed at eight o'clock and don't stay up reading past eight thirty. So then she stays up to ten. Reading, reading those and she, I mean, she knows the backward and forward, she knows the backward and forward she knows

the jokes she reads me the jokes again and again she sent me a picture today had her mom text me the picture of she made Elan the the bard out of Play-Doh nice you know I just she's she's crazy. So yeah, so I recommend order the stick. It is a very tongue in cheek wonderful job by Rich Burlou of kind of a send up of Dungeons and Dragons. So a loving parody. It really is. So and it's good story too. It ends up being a story.

So yeah. Yeah, so hey, where can people find you on the social media? If they want to send you their favorite character story on The social media and I would love to hear them by the way if you're listening to this You know, I for a certain percentage or audience. I've already heard them because you know I was there when they happened but for anybody who's who's you know not one of those folks For anybody who's not one of those folks, or even if you are, you can send those stories to me at EH Blaylock on Twitter or EH Blaylock on Instagram.

And if, of course, you want to tell us collectively that we have completely butchered some aspect of this history, you can let us know at Geek History time on Twitter and how about you? Where can they find you? You can find me at duh harmony on the Twitter and the Instagram. There's two H's in the middle of that. You can find me right here on this here podcast. In fact, do us a favor. If you're on Stitcher, if you're on Spotify,

or if you're on the iTunes store, subscribe. Hit that subscribe button. Doesn't cost you anything. Rate, review, give us the five stars. You know we deserve. If you think we deserve less, give us the five stars. It's pandemic. What do you want?

But yeah, we're trying. We really are. Quite. I mean for a year now we've been patients frequently But you know for a year now we've been away from each other so we don't even have that in the same room dynamic Live yeah, but it still kicks ass so subscribe Tell your friends. Oh my god. Tell your friends if you don't like it shut the hell up But tell your friends to subscribe because there's something for everybody on this podcast. You can also find me every Tuesday night on twitch.tv forward slash capital puns. That's where you can find me slinging puns professionally. So yeah, that's about it.

For a geek history of time, I'm Damien Harmony. And I'm Ed Blalock. And until next time, keep rolling 20s.