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General Tabletop Discussion
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D&D Historian Ben Riggs on TSR's Salaries in the 1990s
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<blockquote data-quote="Mannahnin" data-source="post: 8507898" data-attributes="member: 7026594"><p>Gygax was famously prolific, putting out scads of material through the 70s (including marketing, correspondence with fanzines and so forth) as well as writing rules. But TBF, despite his singular control on it (plus then-rookie editor Tim Kask) 1E is still kind of a mess. The MM is pretty clean, although much of it is clearly written for OD&D. The PH is pretty solid and probably the cleanest piece of writing (despite the weapon adjustment vs armor rules never being fixed from Greyhawk), although of course a lot of core rules were held back for the DMG, and "cleanest writing" is still kind of backhanded praise when you look at stuff like the ability score charts. <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite18" alt=":ROFLMAO:" title="ROFL :ROFLMAO:" loading="lazy" data-shortname=":ROFLMAO:" /></p><p></p><p>The 1E DMG is the real monster. I love the thing. His prose and advice in there are SO evocative and inspiring in many places. But some of the rules are incoherent and he clearly never really played with or tested (like grappling, overbearing, pummeling, and psionics), some rules incredibly cumbersome (like initiative) and other rules clearly written with the expectation that the reader was already familiar with and had a copy of the simpler, more gameable versions in OD&D, leaving much less clear and playable versions in the DMG which were really meant to be advanced <em>additions</em> to OD&D (such as diseases, poisons, basically everything to do with travel, as well as aerial and naval combat).</p><p></p><p>Sorry for the tangential semi-rant.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Mannahnin, post: 8507898, member: 7026594"] Gygax was famously prolific, putting out scads of material through the 70s (including marketing, correspondence with fanzines and so forth) as well as writing rules. But TBF, despite his singular control on it (plus then-rookie editor Tim Kask) 1E is still kind of a mess. The MM is pretty clean, although much of it is clearly written for OD&D. The PH is pretty solid and probably the cleanest piece of writing (despite the weapon adjustment vs armor rules never being fixed from Greyhawk), although of course a lot of core rules were held back for the DMG, and "cleanest writing" is still kind of backhanded praise when you look at stuff like the ability score charts. :ROFLMAO: The 1E DMG is the real monster. I love the thing. His prose and advice in there are SO evocative and inspiring in many places. But some of the rules are incoherent and he clearly never really played with or tested (like grappling, overbearing, pummeling, and psionics), some rules incredibly cumbersome (like initiative) and other rules clearly written with the expectation that the reader was already familiar with and had a copy of the simpler, more gameable versions in OD&D, leaving much less clear and playable versions in the DMG which were really meant to be advanced [I]additions[/I] to OD&D (such as diseases, poisons, basically everything to do with travel, as well as aerial and naval combat). Sorry for the tangential semi-rant. [/QUOTE]
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