There was also this article from The Scroll #7 by Sage Lore that I posted a while back in the NonTSR thread:
Here it is word for word from The Scroll #7:
Dear Roger,
I thought it a good idea to drop you a line regarding the book review of HEROIC WORLDS done for HIT POINTS by Paul Cardwell, Jr. Mr Cardwell did a fine review, but I hate to see misinformation printed by the author of the book taken as "Good historical research". It isn't, and that is easily demonstrable.
Poor Lawrence never seems to get anything right. If the mine of misinformation I discovered in the few portions of the book I did read is perpetuated throughout the work, there can be little doubt it is not more than a compilation of unsupported allegations, Shick's whimsy, and his bias despite his having evidentially asked for and received assistance from many authors, myself included. It is noteworthy that he didn't really ask me questions about most of the socalled factual material he relates, though. Here are some examples of the errors in the work:
When Guidon Games published the original edition of the CHAINMAIL rulebook in 1971 it was complete with "Man-to-Man Combat" and "Fantasy Supplement" sections - both of which were solely authored by me. (The work also bore me suggestion that for dealing with underground activity, such as mines and counter-mines, graph paper should be used.) This was the first set of fantasy miniature rules, possibly the first fantasy game, published. In the Fantasy Supplement Heroes required four hits to kill, Superheroes eight. The whole of the D&D class, movement, combat spells, and similar systems were taken straight from CHAINMAIL, with armor classes reversed for a "difference".
Dave Arneson was a member of the
IFW, of which I was one of three founders, and my "Castle & Crusade Society" sub-chapter of the
IFW. I published the initial version of the CHAINMAIL rules in the "Doomsday Book" magazine of the C&C Society. Dave approached me at an early GenCon, and told me about using CHAINMAIL rules with his group, having recently moved them from table-top to paper and pencil. This was in 1972.
In his commentary of the "history" of the game, Lawrence mentions the DUNGEON! game done by Dave Megarry. I developed that work in the form in which it was initially published by TSR. It was little more than the CHAINMAIL "Fantasy Supplement" set in a dungeon labyrinth, but as TSR was the publisher, we had no objections to that, and I loved the game. There was an "Elf", "Hero", "Superhero", and "Wizard" using Fire Balls and Lightning Bolts from CHAINMAIL as player tokens/characters whose probabilities of success in combat were based strictly on those aforementioned rules, complete with a two-dice roll and the monsters encountered were for the most part likewise drawn from CHAINMAIL.
Shick suggest Arneson wrote at least a portion of the D&D game. In fact, Arneson in a letter published in DIFFERENT WORLDS magazine (number 3, I believe) states that he didn't write a single word of that work. His contribution was inspirational, so to speak.
With respect to Boot Hill, that game was begun by Don Kaye (my original co-founder of Tactical Studies Rules) and me in 1972. Don died before we could complete it, so Brian Blume took over co-authorship. It was, at best, a semi-roleplaying game of action-adventure shoot-em-up quite different from D&D.
Likewise, Lawrence completely overlooks the really interesting WARRIORS OF MARS game rules which Brian Blume and I co-authored at about the same time. The play was baed on Burroughs' "John Carter of Mars" series, as was eventually taken out of print by TSR, but that game was truly roleplaying and should have been noted.
Shick asserts that M.A.R. Barker's
RPG work, EMPIRE OF THE PETAL THRONE, was edited by TSR to make it closer to the D&D game than it was in his supposedly original version. In fact, Barker played D&D and "borrowed" freely from those rules, as he said at the time in correspondence to TSR. However, I can assure all readers that I took the professor's manuscript to the printer's untouched with respect to text of copy editing, for Barker's efforts could not be improved by me efforts in that regard! The same was true for the board game, WAR OF WIZARDS, by Barker, also published by TSR at about the same time. The professor was quite proud of his work in regards to submissions of such clean manuscripts, and accompanying art, and would surely have informed any inquirer of this fact. Barker sent the material "copy ready", and as we were a poor and struggling company, we took advantage of that!
Another misstatement from the author has to do with the imagined effects of the publication of GREYHAWK supplement to D&D. Shick suggests that this was the trigger which opened the game rules to "tinkering" and a release of "creativity" and expansion on the game which I thereafter attempted to stem in a series of articles in DRAGON magazine. Utter nonsense. There is at best a kernel of fact in that bit of opinion. "Tinkering" began immediately, in 1972-3, in fact, when I sent out a dozen or so 50-page prototype rules manuscripts to my compatriots. It continued all along in D&D, and that made tournament play at conventions nearly impossible. I ran most of those events then, and I know it for a fact. For example, three different groups playing D&D at U.C.Berkeley wouldn't speak to each other because their play was so radically different. That was a sorry state of affairs! The articles I penned, as it were, indicated this but pertained to AD&D, not D&D at all. The success of the RPGA and the massive tournaments it sponsors are proof of the pudding. So is the persistence of AD&D as the fantasy
RPG to date.
I submit that the so-called "burst" of "creativity" came when it was observed that D&D was making money. In truth EN GARDE, what I believe was the first non-TSR
RPG, was not a blatant steal from D&D, but which other weren't?
Meanwhile, observe the number of "improved" fantasy
RPGs that have come and gone since D&D was first released...
After getting that far in the book I skipped to the last part and then set it aside, for it was plain that the author did not do a worthwhile job. In fact, Lawrence's opinions about the "best" and "worst" works in the conclusion only highlight the fact that his highly questionable, not to say shoddy, research is also colored heavily by his preconceptions and prejudices.
If Mr. Cardwell hadn't taken verbatim the work being touted as "A History and Guide to Role-Playing Games" I wouldn't have taken the time to comment, but he was obviously misled, so I thought I should point out those errors of fact and matters of opinion evident in the first few pages of material. Cavet emptor!
Best regards
Gary Gygax
