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1973 Pre-publication Edition of D&D
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deimos3428
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Posted: Mon Oct 01, 2012 4:31 pm

increment wrote:These show that the author of Dalluhn didn't just crib from OD&D, but must have had access to earlier material. You can of course argue that all of these qualities were exemplified by some earlier playtesting draft that both Dalluhn and OD&D drew upon. But then we have to ask, as my last blog post on the subject did, the question "Does it vary?"

True, but clearly it *does* vary. In the many cases where we have a difference between OD&D and Dalluhn, we find decidedly un-Gygaxian phrasing. It's not that there are differences or that they don't seem like his writing. It's the consistency with which the differences don't seem like his writing. There's no good explanation for that, except to conclude that he probably didn't write those bits. He didn't suddenly change the way he writes, then change back.

increment wrote:If it's just to correct and embellish in extremely minor ways, then I don't find it very plausible that they would type it all up, illustrate it and produce this document. If the "customizations" are substantial, though, which are they? Again, these are somewhat unfair questions to ask if you don't have the entire manuscript at your disposal, but they're the questions that would need answering.

Indeed without the whole document I cannot answer that one, but someone certainly should. I'm convinced based on what little I have access to at present, and I've provided some additional points to investigate. I'm sure there are many more to be found.

increment wrote:I would say the text of Dalluhn is consistent with Gygax's usage of the period, and I think the examples I've produced, most notably the roc text, show that the Dalluhn text is Gygax text.

That demonstrates conclusively that Dalluhn was compiled from more than one source; partially Gygax, partially Arneson. Now that I have no trouble believing, and perhaps the compiler is even Arneson. But it doesn't really explain why published OD&D returns to a decidedly Gygaxian phrasing if it draws upon Dalluhn at all. It is tempting to form a linear association:

"if a nest is found" --> "if you do find their nest" --> "and if an encounter is made when Rocs are in their lair, that is their nest"

We can all tell that last one is Gygax by verbosity alone. The first one also seems like his frequent use of a passive voice. The middle doesn't really square with the way he usually writes, and in any event he certainly wouldn't *change* the first into the second, and then go back to the third. But that's a small point, and easily handwaved away except...there's nothing to support that particular arrangement.

It's a matter of pointing the arrows you drew differently. It's equally plausible to arrange those last two documents in parallel, with a common ancestor between the 1972 chainmail and Dalluhn/OD&D. (Taking this example alone, it's easy enough to put OD&D ahead of Dalluhn, even.) The only way I see Dalluhn as ancestral to OD&D is if you suppose Arneson or someone else compiled it, and then Gygax re-edited to form OD&D. But I don't think there's been any solid evidence of that conclusion.

What would be interesting would be an attempt to reconstruct a theoretical common ancestor of both OD&D and Dalluhn, and compare *that* to chainmail and other early sources, and to Dalluhn and OD&D as well. That's one way this sort of thing is done in other disciplines. Some statistical analysis of the changes, etc. Though I doubt we have enough hard data to work with.

The question becomes, did Gygax lean on Dalluhn for the OD&D phrasing, did he compile his own version in parallel, or was there an ancestral version of both that he preferred and copied? Was he aware of Dalluhn, and to what extent? Those questions have not been remotely answered. I don't know if they can be answered.

increment wrote:To fork, it must fork in some way. What OD&D mostly discards from Dalluhn is the presence of Chainmail elements, which are fielded out to references to the published Chainmail game. If we leave those aside, we see an almost purely additive process in which OD&D builds on Dalluhn (with again some minor variations which would be natural in the design process). Again, aside from just editorial re-writes, what other elements of Dalluhn that don't appear in OD&D are you concerned with? The "Animal Loads" table, which is the only Dalluhn table not present in OD&D?

Again, I'd need access to the entirety of the work. There are the racial sections of Dalluhn that are far more verbose than in OD&D. I don't think these were pared down to make OD&D. I suspect they are embellishments that didn't exist in whatever documents published OD&D is based upon.

increment wrote:On the other hand, it seems very likely that Gygax and Arneson relied on several parties in producing their own work, but they did so from the position of authors. The dynamic that collaboration implies is entirely different when it's Gygax and Arneson inviting that collaboration.

It could well be the case that this is a collaborative version of OD&D that for whatever reason didn't make the grade. We know what did, of course.

increment wrote:The simplest explanation is that this Dalluhn Manuscript was in fact a step in the development process of OD&D. It sounds like we at least agree that whatever the hell this thing is, it's the earliest form of D&D we know.

I'd counter the invocation of Occam's Razor here with Einstein's "Everything should be as simple as possible, but no simpler". It's the earliest form of...something. Not sure if it qualifies as D&D or not, but I'm not yet convinced. In any event, I can provide no further service but conjecture at this point and I wish you the best of luck in uncovering the truth. If more data becomes available I'll be happy to re-evaluate as time permits.

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Posted: Mon Oct 01, 2012 6:11 pm

Not sure if I missed this somewhere in the thread, but where/when did this manuscript originally surface and from whom?

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Posted: Mon Oct 01, 2012 7:26 pm

Of course the text is a collaboration compiled from multiple sources - if it weren't, again, that would more or less disqualify it from being a predecessor to OD&D. We have ample evidence about the twenty or so pages of "rules" that Arneson originally sent to Gygax, and evidence of further exchanges of notes and ideas along the way. We know that the text of OD&D was created by Gygax and Arneson, with thanks to the playtesters in the LGTSA and MMSA, and with help from a stable of at least five artists.

deimos3428 wrote:We can all tell that last one is Gygax by verbosity alone. The first one also seems like his frequent use of a passive voice. The middle doesn't really square with the way he usually writes, and in any event he certainly wouldn't *change* the first into the second, and then go back to the third. But that's a small point, and easily handwaved away except...there's nothing to support that particular arrangement.

...

The question becomes, did Gygax lean on Dalluhn for the OD&D phrasing, did he compile his own version in parallel, or was there an ancestral version of both that he preferred and copied? Was he aware of Dalluhn, and to what extent? Those questions have not been remotely answered. I don't know if they can be answered.

I don't think the situation is hopeless. When we look at the Dalluhn roc text, we know that the first half of it is from Chainmail. The question is, how do we get from the Loch Gloomen 1972 notes shown to the second half of the Dalluhn roc text. Who applied that edit? I don't think it was Arneson, given that Arneson apparently dumped the same text, unedited, into Bob Bledsaw's lap four year later. Whoever it was, they did some initial clean-up and normalized the text, for this first pass. And whoever that person was, they didn't seem to feel like the Gygax text from Chainmail needed much by way of editorial correction, whereas the Arneson text was heavily rewritten - that may give us a further hint about who performed this edit. Later, sometime between when Dalluhn was created and OD&D came out, a decision was made to excise the Chainmail elements (OD&D doesn't have any, anyway). So, the sentences suggesting that rocs fight as X Heavy Horse and so on get deleted. The bit about the elephants (which did not come from either Chainmail or Blackmoor) is made more exciting. The rules about finding rocs in their nests, which are complicated in both Dalluhn and the Loch Gloomen notes, are simplified considerably, but still contain recognizable elements in the final text. All this reflects a perfectly normal editorial process. While there may be other explanations for how these four texts are connected, I believe what I've presented is the most likely, by far.

As for trying to gauge what "sounds like" Gygax, I worked with early Blackmoor and Chainmail texts for five years and I doubt I could do it myself. If you're looking for something to compare against potential pre-D&D drafts, I think the Chainmail fantasy supplement is the proper text for comparison. OD&D is a collaboration, and it reflects the influence of multiple parties. I do know that I don't place much stock in judging who wrote what based on "style." Plenty of things in the Dalluhn Manuscript, when viewed in isolation, seem like they must have been written by somebody else; e.g. the "Light" spell text: "The dispellation of darkness in an area extending 24 inches in all directions radiating from the user. It lasts for a number of turns equal to 6 plus level of person who uttered it." I don't think "dispellation" is even a word. However when you see it in context, it's clear who wrote the text. And when you go back to those sources, it's clear why it was phrased the way it was initially, and why it was changed later.

deimos3428 wrote:
increment wrote:To fork, it must fork in some way. What OD&D mostly discards from Dalluhn is the presence of Chainmail elements, which are fielded out to references to the published Chainmail game. If we leave those aside, we see an almost purely additive process in which OD&D builds on Dalluhn (with again some minor variations which would be natural in the design process). Again, aside from just editorial re-writes, what other elements of Dalluhn that don't appear in OD&D are you concerned with? The "Animal Loads" table, which is the only Dalluhn table not present in OD&D?

Again, I'd need access to the entirety of the work. There are the racial sections of Dalluhn that are far more verbose than in OD&D. I don't think these were pared down to make OD&D. I suspect they are embellishments that didn't exist in whatever documents published OD&D is based upon.

As I've said previously in this thread, there are places in which the text is just different in ways that don't show any obvious connection. Only where Dalluhn and OD&D share some text in common can we make judgments about influence. Sometimes, though, text is just rewritten, especially expository text. I don't think that racial text was pared down from Dalluhn to OD&D - it was redone from scratch. This too is a normal part of an editorial process. We need to make judgments across the aggregate: some passage will give us one kind of evidence, other passages other kinds of evidence, and still other passages nothing really to work with. But all of these passages are in the same text, and a text that exemplifies all of these qualities is what we need to be considering. This was the point of my "putting it all together" post.

deimos3428 wrote:It could well be the case that this is a collaborative version of OD&D that for whatever reason didn't make the grade. We know what did, of course.

"A collaborative version of OD&D that for whatever reason didn't make the grade" is, I think, what it means for it to be a pre-publication edition of OD&D. Whatever else this thing is, it -is- a version of D&D, and a document very closely related to OD&D. I've made several blog posts about their structural relationship.

Last edited by increment on Mon Oct 01, 2012 7:45 pm, edited 1 time in total.

increment
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Posted: Mon Oct 01, 2012 7:39 pm

misterspock wrote:Not sure if I missed this somewhere in the thread, but where/when did this manuscript originally surface and from whom?

The short story is, the Dalluhn Manuscript was found among M.A.R. Barker's papers, alongside some documents dating from 1974 (including the earliest known draft of EPT). Parts of this were shown years ago to Gary, who dismissed it as a later rip-off of D&D. Arneson, on the other hand, believed it was a pre-D&D manuscript. I got dragged into this after my book came out by people who figured I should be able to authenticate it one way or another. Suffice it to say that I approached it with a great deal of skepticism, but could not dismiss it immediately, and thus spent some weeks in a pretty much line-by-line dissection of the document. I am satisfied from a purely textual analysis that it is a pre-publication transitional manuscript in the development path of D&D. Beyond that, I have as many questions as answers.

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Posted: Tue Oct 02, 2012 4:10 am

increment wrote:
misterspock wrote:Not sure if I missed this somewhere in the thread, but where/when did this manuscript originally surface and from whom?

The short story is, the Dalluhn Manuscript was found among M.A.R. Barker's papers, alongside some documents dating from 1974 (including the earliest known draft of EPT). Parts of this were shown years ago to Gary, who dismissed it as a later rip-off of D&D. Arneson, on the other hand, believed it was a pre-D&D manuscript. I got dragged into this after my book came out by people who figured I should be able to authenticate it one way or another. Suffice it to say that I approached it with a great deal of skepticism, but could not dismiss it immediately, and thus spent some weeks in a pretty much line-by-line dissection of the document. I am satisfied from a purely textual analysis that it is a pre-publication transitional manuscript in the development path of D&D. Beyond that, I have as many questions as answers.

wouldnt be possible to ask Rob Kuntz about the existence of a playtest edition? and, in case, in which form/layout...

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Posted: Tue Oct 02, 2012 5:55 am

increment wrote:... Parts of this were shown years ago to Gary, who dismissed it as a later rip-off of D&D. Arneson, on the other hand, believed it was a pre-D&D manuscript. ....

For clarity, and for readers who missed the first page of this thread, I though I would re-post the relevant information:
Foulfoot sent scans to Skip Williams who came back:

FoulFoot wrote:Gary stated, "took a look, seems to be a rip-off of the D&D game that I've never seen before." Skip was a bit more verbose (relayed from a staff member at TSR):

"I've never seen the original playtest version of The Fantasy Game, but I showed a page of what you sent me to Skip Williams, who thought it did not sound like Gygax. Specifically, he pointed out some differences in wording of similar sentences that appeared in the 1st edition 3-bk version and said that the published line sounded like Gary but the similar line in the document you sent did not sound to him like something that Gary would have changed to the published reading. Sorry if I've expressed it poorly, but there it is for what it worth: the reaction of someone who was in the Lake Geneva gaming group at the time D&D was percolating supports Gygax's story that this, whatever it was, probably was written based on the published books. Whatever it is, it must be very early. I can well believe that a fan would go to these lengths: I once created my own Risk board, cards, and counters because I couldn't afford a store-bought set. For years I preferred my variant to the original, even after I owed one. There are also numerous accounts of folks trying to tinker with and "fix" 1st edition D&D, some of which attempts resulted in whole new (if derivative) games, like T&T. Sorry not to be able to provide anything more definite."

And as regards Arneson:

increment wrote:Dave Arneson's reaction was quite different: he said "It might be 'MY DRAFT.' The one that I sent Gary way back when. OR his first draft back. Either way it is VERY COOL!"

So at the moment we have:

A - Gygax says: No
B - Arneson says: "might be"
C - All other early-TSR people so far say: No

In the absence of a genuine play-test document to compare it to, and in the face of the denial from many people around at the time, I am sceptical about whether just comparing the text to Chainmail and D&D can tell us if this document is a play-test version (or anything else). (not that it won't be interesting though!)

aia wrote:wouldnt be possible to ask Rob Kuntz about the existence of a playtest edition? and, in case, in which form/layout...

I think this is a good suggestion, surely some of the people who were in the original groups that did play-test D&D are still around? Or even those who knew Gygax and Arneson in '73-'74 and played with them.

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Posted: Tue Oct 02, 2012 8:39 am

With all due respect to Mr. Arneson, his answer about the manuscript seems totally bizarre.
"It might be my first draft..." ??????????

I cannot bring myself to believe he would have forgotten what the first draft of HIS game looked like. The game he claims to have helped create and fought so hard to claim co-ownership for, in and out of court, for years. His brain child. His baby. The game that went on to make millions of dollars and single handedly spawned the RPG hobby, making both him and Gary Gygax household names. (To gamers and business people anyway.)

I think that's a manuscript one would remember every detail of. It's either his work or it isn't. I'll take his answer to mean it isn't.

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Posted: Tue Oct 02, 2012 10:23 am

Agent Cooper wrote:I'll take his answer to mean it isn't.

Dave and I having known each other, it sounds to me more like an in-joke. Like:
"We both know I don't write things out like that, but I have extreme differences with Gary, and claiming that ms would be an obvious ploy in my favor, so I'll say that now and watch the chaos that might ensue, even though it won't come to anything." (Gary and Dave both enjoyed into such wheels-within-wheels humor.)

An alternative would involve knowing how Dave worked -- by ideas, fragments, wonderfully knitted together in his head alone. (Others did most of the written-out versions of those ideas.) So he may in fact have recognized lots of his concepts in the D-ms and forgotten who volunteered at the time to write it all out.

F

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Posted: Tue Oct 02, 2012 11:36 am

I hesitate to post Dave's entire email on this subject on a public forum because it calls out some people by name (not old time people, but current students of the hobby), but basically what the rest of the email says is that Dave wanted this manuscript for himself. Excerpts: "SAVE. Do NOT throw away.... Send to me..." I don't think the tone of the mail is consistent with it being a joke.

I do however think Frank's second hypothesis isn't far from what I think Dave was trying to say. Something he saw triggered his memory of early concepts in the game, but nothing so specific that he could provide greater detail. People here seem very sure that Gary or Dave would instantly remember a transitional manuscript from a game that is so important, but you need to remember that they didn't know the game would be so important when transitional manuscripts were circulating. Especially not at the time this would have been produced, when the future prospects of publishing the game were very uncertain (surely this is before the concept of TSR came around). It's easy for us in hindsight to suppose that every moment in the production of such a monumental game would be etched indelibly in its creators' brains, but we have plenty of good reasons to think otherwise. A transitional manuscript that shows a "snapshot" in development would only be used for a fairly short period of time, and it would be used more by the uninitiated than by Gary and Dave themselves, who had access to their own notes and improvements and so on. That's why it's easy for ephemera like that to slip through the cracks of history, and why we've been searching for these things for so long. It's also why I've argued (as I did in my book) that we should rely on what the documents can tell us, rather than what late testimony tells us.

The question of whether Gary or Dave made it is, I maintain, the wrong question. The typing of the main text and number of the pages were clearly done separately, on separate machines, which implies an assembly process. Sometime, during the process of the collaboration, this manuscript was created - perhaps Gary sent a bunch of notes to Debbie Schleicher (typist of many of the DBs) which she typed into the main text, while people in the Twin Cities hit up their friends for pictures separately and sent them back to be collated. That's just a perhaps, but if we think about how transitional drafts of OD&D would have come together (independently of what we see here), that model of collaboration doesn't seem at all far fetched.

Comparisons with Chainmail and OD&D and Blackmoor show us that this document preserves pre-OD&D rules. Even if you are remain skeptical about this document being in the literal development chain of D&D, the fact that a document exists that preserves any rules from this transitional period would still be, I'd think, the biggest news in the history of the hobby in some time.

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Posted: Tue Oct 02, 2012 11:44 am

Hi all,

I had a few minutes to review the Corner of the Table Vol 4 no. 2 which arrived in the mail last week.

A few observations may be of interest.

First, it appears that Dave wrote/edited the title page and pages 7-9. The title page is not paginated. Pages 7-9 are paginated by hand along the top edge.

Pages 1-6 were written by Steve Shutter/(Schutter) on a different typewriter with pagination in type along the top edge.

Dave's writing is informal, lacks concision and is riddled with misspelled words. Yet, in the campaign notes section he specifically asks for additional notes regarding one of the campaigns. I interpret this to mean that he understands the relative strength of his skills relative to Shutter and the unidentified author of the campaign notes.

Second, he notes that he "has managed to get another issue of COTTT out to all it's wonderful subscribers (Three or Four I think) and getting all those wonderful articles in return (My thanks to Wesely and Schutter) for publication in COTTT".

Three or Four?

Third,

"Next month there will by a Black Moor article and information on a proposed new campaign tht some members have shown an interest in of late."

Black Moor was in discussion BEFORE the Brown Stone game!

If the DM was pre OD&D then this COTT should provide a near contemporary example of DA's writing style and typing skills. Neither conform to the limited sample of the DM that we have been shown.

Further, if other examples of DA's writing demonstrate the informal, near rambling and extremely personal tendencies of this COTT title page/intro, then one would expect the DM to have a similar preface, even were it retyped and edited by a third party. Unless DA can be documented to have enrolled in writing and typing lessons between 1972 and 1974, I think it unlikely that he was directly involved in the DalM.

I remain concerned that neither Arneson, nor Gygax claimed authorship of the DalM. Now based upon examination of the COTT, I agree with others that I do not believe Arneson had the writing or typing skills to pull it off.

M.A.R. Barkerâ€¦. on the other hand, had the ability to create the DalM independently of Gygax/Arneson. Whether or not the DalM developed parallel and predates ODD or evolved after publication of ODD as a personal project can only be a speculative matter. It is easy to forget that even if the DalM does predate OD&D that one can not presume that it predates play test and drafts to OD&D that remain unknown to use, but would likely have been available and/or known to M.A.R. Barker. I posit that no element in the DalM manuscript that might predate published ODD can be proven to predate yet unknown playtest copies of ODD. Publication is the final step on the product step.

Consequently, even if textual analysis can demonstrate that we may reliably use the publication of ODD as a terminus ante quem with which to provide a latest date limit for the DalM, then we remain unable to provide a Terminus post quem or to directly associate the DalM with the development of ODD. Quite simply, it appears that too few early manuscripts related to the early development of D&D survive for us to positively date the DalM. We do not know if it is evidence of the development of ODD or is a separate development by a known (and brilliant) third party.

The discussion is certainly fascinating and is bringing new knowledge of the development of the game forward. I look forward to more down the road.

In any event, I hope a few people enjoy learning that Blackmoor was in discussion among a very small group of Arneson's gaming buddies long before any of us likely supposed.

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Posted: Tue Oct 02, 2012 11:50 am

I posted after you and I agree that the manuscript is exciting and big news to the hobby. Is there some reason we should be convinced this is not the product of M.A.R. Barker? Am I missing something? Didn't M.A.R. Barker have possession, access and wherewithal? I haven't seen Barker's early manuscripts... does the manuscript fit his hand? That question seems an obvious avenue to pursue and could at least end the authorship part of the discussion.

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Posted: Tue Oct 02, 2012 12:06 pm

Here are some quotes I found compelling in this discussion:

FoulFoot wrote:My vote? It was a fanatic fan who did it on his own, probably based on the playtest version of D&D that he had sitting on his desk. He did it shortly after the LBBs were released, maybe because he was incensed that the LBBs deviated as they did from the playtest version. That would explain a majority of the language issues you bring up.
Foul

darkseraphim wrote:This guy ran off, fiddled with the rules to make them "more Chainmail-ish and more Blackmoor-ian" or something, and typed up his own manuscript working from Gygax's first manuscript prose. He then typed up (~early 1974) a refined version (I have a hard time believing someone could come up with a right-justified typewritten manuscript on the fly), and either he or his buddy illustrated it.

The resulting manuscript was used and distributed in Minnesota as Beyond This Point Be Dragons, "the real rules," because Gary's rules were "wrong" and going in the wrong direction from a Twin Cities perspective.

SimperingToad wrote:I don't think it's out of the realm of possibility of being a fan-made work. The text resembles something that comes off the standard typrwriter; monospace font, left justified, right-ragged. The other fonts are easily done via press-type (basically rub-on transfers) or each letter being set by hand from a series of tabs (I don't recall the name of this); in either case, it might mean the person involved had access to publishing material like I did when I was in High School working on the school newspaper.

With regards to illustrating a fan-made work, I used to do this sometimes when making my own adventures back in the early '80s, so I don't see it as being highly unusual. Merely very absorbed in doing a project 'properly.' :D

Someone's take on 'how-it-should-be', maybe intended to be sent to Gary/Dave for consideration, but never done?

Zenopus wrote:But just to play devil's advocate - any one particular change could be the result of someone trying to clean up the text. Perhaps someone doesn't like the term "alignment", so goes with the one instance of "divisional" they see in the text and edits the rest to make it match? Even if the rest of the differences are from the original playtest, how do we know that particular change is?

grodog wrote:So, while the Dalluhn ms. reproduces many OD&D rules, that seems fairly par for the course for the kind of homebrew document that the Tome of Mid-Kimia represents---it's as much as campaign-specific set of reference sheets as it is a rules booklet, per se. That is, that the quality of the effort put into the document in terms of layout and art doesn't necessarily mean that the Dalluhn ms. was (or wasn't) a homebrew doc or an OD&D playtest doc either. Both are viable possibilities.

red_bus wrote:(3) Thus we are reduced to comparing it to the early rules. It could be a test version, or a fan/player copy, or an early attempt at a better set of rules, or some other etc...

(4) it looks like in some places it is more extensive than the 1st print rules, and in some places less extensive. It will be hard to argue from that position that it predates the rules or was drafted at the same time (or slightly later). Because:

- Where it is more extensive, that can be both an argument for being: (a) a homemade player-copy where the author has added in more information to his homebrew version, or (b) being a test version that had the information dropped from the final rules.

- Where it is less extensive, that can also be both an argument for being: (a) a homemade player-copy that omitted information, or (b) a test version, where the extra information was added to the final rules.

Without someone who was there at the time laying claim to this as a test version, or finding another test version to compare it to, I worry we will go round & round with speculation ...although that would be fun too :D

Agent Cooper wrote:With what evidence there is right now I would go along with the theory that a very dedicated fan created this.

I also believe it is a very early fan-work.

increment wrote:The idea that one of the playtesters of D&D would generate a manuscript like this purely to simplify, correct and embellish, without putting in substantive ideas of their own, doesn't seem plausible. To do it in the necessary timeframe, given the length of the text and its complexity, also seems very dubious.

I think a fan work is plausible because its corrections, length, complexity, and illustrations and that is plenty substantive for many people. I think part of my belief in this matter are the number of homebrews I have seen just in my limited experience. Part of the allure of D&D is its immersion and detail. I have met few dumb people who play D&D. Tables, maps, rules, and charts fill the D&D world, and it's just so tempting to create your own adventure, rule set, spell, or monster.

Occam's Razor is appropriate, "other things being equal, a simpler explanation is better than a more complex one."

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Posted: Tue Oct 02, 2012 12:22 pm

Pipswich wrote:I posted after you and I agree that the manuscript is exciting and big news to the hobby. Is there some reason we should be convinced this is not the product of M.A.R. Barker? Am I missing something? Didn't M.A.R. Barker have possession, access and wherewithal? I haven't seen Barker's early manuscripts... does the manuscript fit his hand? That question seems an obvious avenue to pursue and could at least end the authorship part of the discussion.

In case it wasn't clear from my book, Pipswich, I do have access to every issue of COTT and I'm familiar with Arneson's writings of the era. I duly considered them when I made my analysis of this manuscript. The roc text I cited above shows very clearly how at least some text written by Arneson, and some text written by Gygax, shows up in the DM. I agree with your assessment of Arneson's editorial failings, and yes, they lead me to believe it's doubtful that Arneson had editorial control over the DM. But if you look at that editorial pass that someone (Gygax?) made over the roc text, you can see how his contributions factor in nonetheless. Nothing I've read in COTT makes me doubt that examples like the roc one I've shown are indicative of the production method of the document.

The document does not match Barker's typewriter, his evident handwriting, or the content in the earliest drafts of EPT. I think it's pretty unlikely that Barker created it. Barker did however play in the games of a number of the key Twin Cities MMSA crowd in 1974, any one of whom might have retained transition material from the era. Again, I must insist that looking for a single "creator" is not going to get us anywhere. There were obviously several people involved in the production of the document.

increment
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Posted: Tue Oct 02, 2012 12:37 pm

benjoshua wrote:Here are some quotes I found compelling in this discussion:
...

I also believe it is a very early fan-work.

I am certainly aware that public opinion on this forum is not with me here. I had not been pinging or updating this thread myself because I sensed that, but when deimos posted a somewhat sympathetic note (he did seem to be arguing for a pre-D&D account of the document), I started replying. I am not trying to steamroll through my conclusions here. I thought that I could bring some compelling evidence to the table that this is basically the most exciting find we'd heard of in a long time, but I do gather that this discussion is mostly just frustrating to all sides.

I understand that you believe it's a fan work. Again, based on my own research into the history of D&D, combined with some common sense principles concerning why people made fan works and so on, I think that's a very remote possibility. I'm sorry that I persist in presenting this view in spite of the consensus you're demonstrating with the above quotes, but I really think it would be a shame if we as a community turned our back on this remarkable resource. I don't think we're going to come to any agreement by discussing it in a thread like this, to be honest. I'm working on some ways to move forward with this. I fear though that by engaging in this sort of discussion all we're doing is getting more entrenched and invested in our respective positions.

benjoshua wrote:
increment wrote:The idea that one of the playtesters of D&D would generate a manuscript like this purely to simplify, correct and embellish, without putting in substantive ideas of their own, doesn't seem plausible. To do it in the necessary timeframe, given the length of the text and its complexity, also seems very dubious.

I think a fan work is plausible because its corrections, length, complexity, and illustrations and that is plenty substantive for many people. I think part of my belief in this matter are the number of homebrews I have seen just in my limited experience. Part of the allure of D&D is its immersion and detail. I have met few dumb people who play D&D. Tables, maps, rules, and charts fill the D&D world, and it's just so tempting to create your own adventure, rule set, spell, or monster.

Occam's Razor is appropriate, "other things being equal, a simpler explanation is better than a more complex one."

I have a pretty extensive experience with the earliest documents related to D&D. This is a significant outlier.

red_bus
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Posted: Tue Oct 02, 2012 2:40 pm

increment wrote:I am certainly aware that public opinion on this forum is not with me here....

I don't think the members here are against you across the board. They are certainly for this manuscript as an interesting resource, and as a source of early information about the development of the game we both play and study. They are however much more skeptical that this is - as you confidently named in the thread title - the (fabled) pre-publication manuscript.

I would be really interested in looking at the whole document and seeing for myself how it compares with early D&D, Chainmail or other games. And I think many other members here would be as well - think of us not so much as "public" opinion, but also fellow specialist collectors. Although most may not be as studied as yourself, I am sure we can provide some useful input into the study of this document. :)

increment wrote:...this is basically the most exciting find we'd heard of in a long time...

Totally exciting! Even if we never know for definite just who the author(s) were, or where or why it was created. Although personally I also think that there is loads of other exciting stuff currently going on in our world as well (e.g. new, old-school rules and adventures etc...). But yes, lets see more please :)

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Posted: Tue Oct 02, 2012 2:58 pm

I agree with Red Bus. And, I certainly don't have enough information to be "entrenched".

As for the COTTT, it is clear you have long had access to them. However, you waded through a mountain of material to produce your book and one can not know if a particular tidbit caught your attention unless one notices you quoting it. My intent in sharing some tidbits from COTTT was not to suggest you had not seen them, rather it was to share some information that others here might enjoy.

As a lifelong book seller/collector, for many years I routinely set aside commercial D&D materials in a couple of boxes for myself. But, I did not start collecting unique and more interesting things seriously until several years ago. As a second or third generation collector of most of the items in my collection... I seldom have an opportunity to contribute any new information or facts about them to Acaeum. It's fun to get to do so once in a while!

Keep up the great work and don't wander away from Acaeum. I think you are a breath of fresh air around here and causing more serious academic discussion about the games origins than I have ever seen. I am sure many of us envy your access and ability to spend so much time with original materials! I, for one, don't intend to hold that against you though, even if your theory about the origins of the DalM doesn't pan out in the long run. The point of research and discourse is not to be right, but to participate in the discussion that advances knowledge. Kudos to you!

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increment
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Posted: Tue Oct 02, 2012 3:50 pm

Very kind of you both, Pipswich and red_bus. Sorry to be a bit snappy.

I do understand in retrospect that the confident way I presented this, effectively dismissing Gary's own testimony, showed up to a lot of people like basically an attack, or at best a huge presumption. That really wasn't my intention. In the course of working on my book, I ended up contradicting a great many things that Dave and Gary and others said in recent years, and I guess I'm a bit desensitized to it. As for presenting this factually as "a" (I wouldn't say "the," there could be others before and after) pre-publication manuscript, I'd say that in the process of doing history you present what in your judgment the evidence supports. You're never 100% sure, if you're being responsible. But based on what I know today, I don't think any other explanations for the text of this document are tenable. Once we get beyond the text, I have more questions than answers, about how exactly this got produced. But letting those questions obscure the value of the text would be a tragic mistake, I think.

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Posted: Wed Oct 03, 2012 2:20 am

deimos3428 wrote:
6. Page 3 of Dalluhn uses the word "amoung". This suggests Canadian or UK insertion of a "u" in some words. Might help in pinning down the author, or it might just be an error.

It's an error; that certainly isn't a UK spelling.

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