AD&D Publication Timeline -- weird

[GreyLord]

I was a kid at the time, only 11, and my friends and I often didn't understand the difference between the rule sets. We usually played with a mix of OD&D, BD&D and AD&D and didn't really notice or care about the differences. It worked fine for us.

So when AD&D PHB came out, but before AD&D DMG came out, we were playing just fine with a mix of OD&D and Holmes BD&D. We didn't think anything was missing, and when the DMG came out it was just more interesting stuff to throw in our mix.

That describes much about what everyone did, not just the 11 year olds!



From my blog (which I still need to write more entries on ENW)

This time they weren't simply called Dungeons and Dragons, it was called Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. Note the Advanced...because we were ALL such experts back then (that's a little sarcasm there...it's a little hard to convey in writing). It was more rules heavy then the original, even with supplements, but in a way it heralded the beginning of something great.

Maybe I didn't notice before then, but the original D&D took off with some wargamers, and was a niche group amongst a niche group. It grew, but I didn't notice tons of people playing it yet. However, something started with AD&D, something magical...something great that eventually promoted it into the mainstream. That comes later however.

When AD&D first came out, it didn't come out all at once. It came out piecemeal. In that light, we didn't get it all at once. In fact, I completely skipped the original Monster Manual for years. I didn't see anything so significant at the time that I needed to spend money on it (I guess I was pinching pennies, even then), and so didn't get it. We DID get the Players Handbook when it came out, but we used all the old monsters from the other books. We even used stuff from Holmes.

We next eventually got the DMG. That was one heck of a book. There were so many rules, and so much ground covered, I don't think we ever used it all.

Our game became sort of a mesh between the original OD&D, Holmes, and AD&D. We used all the AD&D classes and weapons damages, used Holmes and OD&D for monsters and the other rules, and the DMG for To Hit tables, Saving Throws, and items not covered by anything else that we thought was cool and wanted to incorporate into our game.

I don't think I was alone during that time period. EVERYONE took what they wanted from the rules, and incorporated what they already knew. It was a hodge podge where basic ideas united us, but everyone had their ideas of what to include in their game and what not.

We all seemed to get along, there were no rabid argument in my experience of what we had to include or what we couldn't. There was no irate edition wars. The new guys (those many of you would call Old Geezers now) typically would pick up and play AD&D by the rules, and were much more strict on it then we were, but we understood, and encouraged them to play. It was great, and we'd play in games they DM'd...and they'd then play in the campaigns we'd DM.

In between getting the PHB and DMG it was indeed like playing with the old rules with the new stuff, and no I didn't have Dragon Mag to tell me what the hit tables were. It all was a sort of conglomerate.

Even when we get to 2nd edition I still had a conglomerate of rules bound together, so 2e core with 1e rules grandfathered in all over the place.

3.X was the real changing of this idea for me and those I was with.

"The actual philosophical change occurs when someone, I forget whom, sent Gary Gygax a copy of a pre-made adventure, Palace of the Vampire Queen. Many of us looked at it—I even picked up a copy for myself-- in a mode of perplexed inquiry. The majority of us were vocal about why anyone would want someone else creating things for them and their campaign worlds whereas all of the resources in primary and supportive categories were available to them to create their own material." - RJK

From here, TSR move to produce adventures. There's a small gap between the 1976 printing of PotVQ and the 1978 printing of G1. The original ones on hand are the tournament adventures for Origins (G1-3), and - if I have it correctly - they premiered for sale at the convention. The gap is probably mainly because TSR is so amazingly small. For the largest part, we're talking mainly about Gary Gygax when it comes to D&D - and he's somewhat distracted pulling together the notes for AD&D, as well as running TSR.

In the early history of D&D, there are three figures that stand out for me:

Gary Gygax, for creating a large part of it and shepherding the game into its AD&D form and its initial adventures.

Tom Moldvay, for editing the Basic D&D set of 1981, which brought the game into a form that new players could understand.

Tracy Hickman, for showing what was possible with the adventure module.

Cheers!

On the modules idea, I have to say I actually was more of the Kuntz philosophy, I saw NO reason to actually buy and run modules for many years. I simply ran with my own ideas. I DID buy Campaigns when they came out, however, for worlds to run adventures in, but I liked running my own stuff.

I think I bought a boot Hill module once, but it wasn't until Star Frontiers that I actually bought a bunch of modules, and they were all Star Frontiers, nothing for AD&D at that point.

I don't think I became an active module and adventure buyer until 3.5, at which point I've gotten a lot of what they put out. Before that however, others may get the modules, I didn't.

I suppose they all have their treasures from high priced modules these days, where as I just have a bunch of worlds, campaign settings, and rules.

 

[Beginning of the End]

Since that one find, I've never seen anything JG, anywhere. It amazes me how often the company name and material gets mentioned around here.

When did you start playing? JG's last significant product was in '82 or '83. By the mid-'80s they were dead and gone.

They were huge in the '70s. But if you came on the scene after '82, you were unlikely to hear about them unless you were gaming with the "old timers".

 

[The Shaman]

I believe if you look into it, some of those books had published dates of X, but were released some time later. I believe the PHB was delayed until basically 1979, and the first DMGs were recalled because of printing errors, so they didn't show up until pretty much 1980 as well.

Not even close, actually.

We started with Holmes and the 1e MM, added the 1e PHB in '78, and then added the 1e DMG in '79, all according to the schedule quoted above.

We also used the OD&D supplements and Arduin Grimoire at various points.

 

[David Howery]

On the modules idea, I have to say I actually was more of the Kuntz philosophy, I saw NO reason to actually buy and run modules for many years.

I got into D&D in 1980, when I was halfway through college (had a lot of science classes with labs, not a lot of free time). My group ran pretty much every module that came out (and those in Dragon too) just because all of us lacked the time to write our own every week. I remember running through a few JG modules that someone had, but they weren't widely available in my neck of the woods. For that matter, I can remember several DMs giving their homebrew adventures to other DMs in a pinch, just so the game could go on every week...

 

[wrecan]

Keep in mind that TSR wasn't really what you would call professionals yet. most of what they published was the stuff they had already run for their campaigns or created for conventions. The S and C series were all stuff written for cons, that they then published to keep bringing in income to let the company survive.

 

[grodog]

FWIW, I started playing in 1977 with Holmes, but didn't own that set or any D&D books of my own until 1980 when I bought the MM, PHB, and DMG in one fell swoop. Until then, we played homebrew stuff with the guy down the block who taught us how to play, and some modules as they became available (B1 and B2 for sure the first few years).

The few JG titles I saw BITD were all later titles that were crap (Wondrous Relics still sticks out as particularly abysmal), both in content and production quality. Based on them, I disparaged JG for years, until eventually I found Caverns of Thracia, the Book of Treasure Maps, and other good titles (but this wasn't until the late '90s or so, probably). Arduin wasn't something I knew existed except via mentions in The Dragon, either, although there were a number of non-TSR publishers in the local convention scene.

 

[SSquirrel]

I started playing in 87 and always wondered about the whole large gap between the 3 core books. When WotC released 3rd Ed, I thought it was dumb that they were spacing things out for the releases. 4th Ed releasing all the books on the same day made so much more sense to me. I seem to recall the explanation they gave w/3E was to make it easier on people to space the purchases out, but that logic fails. People could choose NOT to spend $60 (intro price) on the 3 books day 1 if they didn't' want to.

 

[Plane Sailing]

City-State of the Invincible Overlord

I always longed for the CSofIO. Couldn't afford it though, but I did purchase JG 'Thieves fortress of Badabaskor' though. Not particularly great quality, and I didn't bother buying anything else from them after that.

Thieves of Fortress Badabaskor | RetroRoleplaying

 

[JeffB]

For my own tastes Judge Guild had a far greater talent for NAMING modules & supplements than they did for writing them. No other company has captured my imagination through Titles, like JG did with their D&D/AD&D and Traveller product.

They made a small handful of gems, and some had great ideas hidden among the beer & pretzels whimsy/monty haul/munchkin design , but throughout the line most were marginal at best and many were complete stinkers. I can see why Gary eventually pulled the license. The quality of TSR steadily rose as it neared the 1980 mark, while JG's quality steadily dropped as it neared the same.

I found things like the Ready Ref sheets to be the greatest contribution to my games, and then I would steal pieces from the modules/sourcebooks. Towns, encounters, misc plots, NAMES of places, etc.

 

[Beginning of the End]

The few JG titles I saw BITD were all later titles that were crap (Wondrous Relics still sticks out as particularly abysmal), both in content and production quality. Based on them, I disparaged JG for years, until eventually I found Caverns of Thracia, the Book of Treasure Maps, and other good titles (but this wasn't until the late '90s or so, probably). Arduin wasn't something I knew existed except via mentions in The Dragon, either, although there were a number of non-TSR publishers in the local convention scene.

Once you get past Paul Jaquays the quality of the line is pretty thin. (There's about a half dozen products by Jaquays which all excellent and then there's maybe another half dozen products which are excellent, a few that are good, and then a lot of crap.)

But, with that being said:

- They may not have technically had the first module ever published, but very few people ever actually saw Palace of the Vampire Queen. For 2+ years they were the only game in town.

- CSoIO was the first city supplement every produced. And it's still remarkably good, providing utility that many city supplements still fail to duplicate.

- Caverns of Thracia maybe the best dungeon crawl ever published. It certainly ranks in the Top 5 in terms of complexity and depth, even after 30+ years.

- The groundbreaking nature of the Wilderlands also can't be understated.

- Nor can their contributions to Traveller.

- The influence of both CSoIO and the Ready Ref sheets on the AD&D DMG is, AFAICT, significant. There is utility in those products which did not previously exist in D&D and then later became a core element of D&D.

- And quite a few of their products were daringly experimental. Sometimes that resulted in failure. But, OTOH, look at even a lesser-known product like Frontier Forts of Kelnore: Here you had a product which included a comprehensive system for quickly modifying and customizing a preset map into dozens or hundreds of different configurations. In a modern era of dungeon tiles, you'd think this product model would have been duplicate dozens or hundreds of times. But, inexplicably, it hasn't.

It's easy to look back at JG and say, "Boy, the Model-T sure was a crappy automobile." But there's a reason why they had a rep.

(Of course, there's also a reason why they lost that rep.)