The First Person To Ever Play A Wizard: A Short Clip

This is a short interview clip with the first player of a wizard in an RPG, posted by David Megarry. Peter Gaylord played in Dave Arneson's Blackmoor campaign as the Wizard of the Wood in the early 1970s. Peter passed away earlier this year, aged 73. This was before D&D; Blackmoor was Dave Arneson's campaign setting, and was initially a wargaming setting and then part of what evolved into D&D.

[video=youtube;qnY_2qC1L34]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnY_2qC1L34[/video]​

"There has been a lot of demand for more information about Secrets of Blackmoor, as well as a desire to see more footage. Film making is a long process. Until a film is finished, all you have is masses of footage. We really appreciate all of the supportive messages people have sent and we want to thank you for your interest in this project.

This week, we've taken a small amount of time away from working on the movie and clipped together a brief segment from Pete Gaylord's interview.

Pete Gaylord was part of Dave Arneson's gaming group. He played one of the more famous characters in Arneson's Blackmoor games: The Wizard of the Wood.

Just as there is a first dungeon master, there is a first wizard.

Pete is the first person to ever be a wizard in a role playing game. His input as a player in Blackmoor is largely undocumented, yet without a player who wanted to be a wizard, Arneson would not have been forced to adapt his game to include magic spells. His story really is one of the secrets of blackmoor.

We hope you enjoy seeing Pete explain a little bit about his role in the creation of Blackmoor. This interview is very special to us. Pete is missed by everyone who knows him. His legacy is immortalized any time a D&D player decides to be a magic user."

Harvard's Blackmoor Blog wrote about the Wizard of the Wood here.

 

[Shardstone]

What an annoying interviewer. Framing his questions the way he does, forcing the interviewee's to constantly stop and go back, it's super annoying.

 

[JRedmond]

Agreed I was interested in just hearing him tell the story and the interviewer kept ruining it. You need to know when to shut up and let the person talk.

 

[EthanSental]

Cool seeing him wearing a D&D tshirt as a 70+ year old gamer.

 

[pming]

Hiya!

Kind of agree with the above with regards to the interviewer. That said, what I found most interesting is towards the end when the Wizard of the Wood explains that with Dave's game everyone could put in their 2¢ for ideas. If Dave and everyone liked it, he'd implement it into the campaign.

The reason this struck me is that it is exactly how I learned back in '81 (when I took the DM'ing reigns). Back then there weren't any 'supplemental books', roughly speaking...at least not available up here where I live (Whitehorse, Yukon Territory; Whitehorse didn't even have paved streets then, nor sidewalks...we did have a boardwalk on Main Street...and we had a grand total of ONE traffic signal; population at that time was around 12,000 iirc). Ahem...where was I? Oh yeah...availability of any game related stuff was through one place called "Jim's Toy and Gift". It was a single 4' wide, 4 shelf high display shoved into a back corner. Needless to say, we got what we got.

Hearing what Peter mentioned was a nice reminder of where the game's roots *actually* came from...a group of people making up in a fantasy world. I don't hear that very often nowadays. Now its all about players trying to convince a DM to buy/use some particular book or option the bought or found in a Sage Advice online article. Questions players ask are very heavily weighted towards "Using the books, how do I get X out of my character?". I, and a few other old grognards, frequently come back with the basic "Ask your DM or tell him/her what you want. Then make stuff up" as our first answer. Sometimes it's taken to heart, other times it's ignored at best, or berated as "not RAW" or playing the "mother may I" game BS that is somehow a 'thing'.

Anyway...it put a smile on my face to be reminded of how and where the game came from. When my players venture back into Eisla (my 1e campaign), this is how we play; the books are there to be used as guidelines. If somethings not there, and it seems like a cool idea...I implement it. IMHO, this is the best way to play any RPG. (not the only way...just the best way...IMHO <--- please note that last acronym!).

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[Zarithar]

R.I.P.

I love hearing about the earliest days of the hobby. One of the first adventures I was ever subjected to as a player was The Temple of the Frog (not the 86 module, but the one from the original Blackmoor supplement), so it is great to hear from someone who was so influential in those early days.

 

[pemerton]

a group of people making up in a fantasy world. I don't hear that very often nowadays. Now its all about players trying to convince a DM to buy/use some particular book or option the bought or found in a Sage Advice online article. Questions players ask are very heavily weighted towards "Using the books, how do I get X out of my character?". I, and a few other old grognards, frequently come back with the basic "Ask your DM or tell him/her what you want. Then make stuff up" as our first answer. Sometimes it's taken to heart, other times it's ignored at best, or berated as "not RAW" or playing the "mother may I" game BS that is somehow a 'thing'.

I don't really get your gripe here.

Asking a GM "Can I use published option XYZ?" doesn't seem that different from asking the GM "Can I use super-berries to memorise higher level spells than I can normally cast?" In either case the GM presumably makes a decision based on considerations of (i) game balance, and (ii) what makes sense in the shared fiction.

 

[Henry]

I can see what he's saying, in that it's not the player or DM coming up with these ideas; rather, in my experience most GMs won't give a second glance unless the mechanic in question comes from a game designer or, more likely, "official sources only." A lot of gamers don't seem to be clued in to the secret that the only difference between a game designer and a gamer, to paraphrase Mythbusters' Adam Savage, is writing crap down.

 

[Koloth]

I don't really get your gripe here.

Asking a GM "Can I use published option XYZ?" doesn't seem that different from asking the GM "Can I use super-berries to memorise higher level spells than I can normally cast?" In either case the GM presumably makes a decision based on considerations of (i) game balance, and (ii) what makes sense in the shared fiction.

IMO, a lot of difference actually. If you use published option XYZ, the player knows going in what the benefits are and the detriments. Any deviations from the published rules can lead to rules lawyer discussions. Using the "Can I use super-berries?" approach, the player doesn't know all of the benefits or detriments. If the DM says sure try it, the berries might allow higher spell use. Might not. Might allow higher spell use and piss off the local druid. Might have a % chance of lowering INT scores with each use. The DM is free to reward player inventiveness without running afoul of some obscure rule published in errata 3 for supplement XYZ rev 2. And the player is free to use her imagination to try new things without being limited by the published material.

 

[Lanefan]

I don't really get your gripe here.

Asking a GM "Can I use published option XYZ?" doesn't seem that different from asking the GM "Can I use super-berries to memorise higher level spells than I can normally cast?" In either case the GM presumably makes a decision based on considerations of (i) game balance, and (ii) what makes sense in the shared fiction.

There's a rather big difference, in fact.

Player A, the old-schooler, is asking whether she can use something she has (probably) thought of herself. Original thinking by Player A.
Player B, the modern type, is asking whether he can use something someone else thought up, standardized, and put in a book. Not original thinking by Player B.

In either case it still comes down to the DM to allow it or not; the difference lies in the material's source, and in independently thinking of something new to try.

Lanefan