WotC biffs some D&D history

[buzz]

From the their A Brief History of Dice

The 1974 "Blue Box" edition of D&D came with a full set of (badly made) polyhedral dice.

1977, good sir.

 

[Ranes]

Quite.

 

[Ranger REG]

Don't remember the 1977 nor the 1974 dice. Only remembered the 1980 dice.

 

[ssampier]

Is that what they mean by chits? I never understood that term. :\

 

[Ranes]

Chits were little numbered pieces of card used to generate random numbers when TSR suffered from a shortage of these babies.

The photo (sorry it's blurry; my phone is my only camera) shows a bag of dice from a 1978 '79 basic set. The bag is unopened.

 

[Legildur]

Don't remember the 1977 nor the 1974 dice. Only remembered the 1980 dice.

Were they the soft green ones? (from the Basic Set?)

 

[trancejeremy]

Hmmmm, I never had the basic set, but my friend did and his came with dice that you had to use a crayon to fill the groves of the numbers in. (In fact, back then, most dice you bought in a gaming store were like that, too).

 

[Glyfair]

Hmmmm, I never had the basic set, but my friend did and his came with dice that you had to use a crayon to fill the groves of the numbers in. (In fact, back then, most dice you bought in a gaming store were like that, too).

IIRC, one version of the Holmes basic set had the crayon included in the set.

 

[Ranes]

Wow! We're getting into minutiae worthy of the acaeum. One thing I've learned from spending too much time there is that the ends of different print runs sometimes contained hybridised contents. My set is onesuch. Here's the acaeum entry that almost describes the contents of my set (I've italicised the part where the components match):

# Sixth (Nov-Dec 1979)

* Blue box with a picture of a red dragon (artwork by Sutherland)
* Wizard logo
* Code in the upper right is "1001"
* Angled yellow banner in upper left says "Basic Set With Introductory Module"
* One of the following two combinations (and no, this makes no earthly sense):
o 48-page rulebook: Wizard logo, with "2001" in upper right. Inside says "Second Edition, Nov 1978". B2 Keep on the Borderlands (First print, no shrinkwrap)
OR
o 48-page rulebook: Wizard logo, with "2001" in upper right. Inside says "Third Edition, Dec 1979". B1 In Search of the Unknown (First print, no shrinkwrap)
* Cardboard chit sheet attached to the rulebook, featuring dice chits, a "how-to-use" description, and a dice coupon
* Bottom of box shows rulebook, neither dice nor chits, module B1 (even though some sets include B2), and has a Wizard logo
* It is apparent that in this "transition" set (when TSR was switching between Second and Third Edition rulebooks, and between B1 and B2), that they played mix-and-match with remaining stock of rulebooks and modules

...And dice. According to the acaeum, chits were used from 5th-7th prints with dice and crayon being in prints 1-4 and pre-marked dice in prints 8 and after. Yet mine most closely matches a 6th. Earlier print runs had rulebooks marked "Second Edition, Nov 1978" and later print runs contained B2, not B1.

So, I should have chits. But I have dice.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Chits were little numbered pieces of card used to generate random numbers when TSR suffered from a shortage of these babies.

The photo (sorry it's blurry; my phone is my only camera) shows a bag of dice from a 1978 '79 basic set. The bag is unopened.

Shoot, those are nice dice. I never saw a set from that era that had multi-colored dice or pre-colored in numbers. All of my sets had cheap blue dice and a crayon. I still have the dice, but they don't get much use.

You're also missing a d10. Did TSR get cheap later, and go to lower quality dice without painted numbers, but added the d10?