Re: S&W "White Box" clone of the first ever D&D system

Posted by MortiS-the-Lost on Feb 18, 2010; 2:15am
URL: http://the-lost-and-the-damned.71.s1.nabble.com/S-W-White-Box-clone-of-the-first-ever-D-D-system-tp4568607p4589697.html

Yea, sorry that was only supposed to be a few lines about the commercial viability of the various OD&D clones that have sprung up recently. I think I've been a lot more harsh than I intended and ranted on for far too long. I certainly didn't mean to come across as not liking the OD&D clones, OSRIC has become very useful when working out rules for my group's home-brew games.
On reflection I'd say S&W (and by extension the other  retro-clones) is probably aimed at nostalgic people like me and you, as it gives us something to rattle at the newbies who wanna play 4th ed when we want to show them how D&D should be done.

Ok now I’m going to shift subject back to what I intended to talk about last time before I got carried away ranting about OGL products. The line up of Classes in early D&D and S&W ...

The classic Dungeon-delving party (according to many) consists of a Fighter, a Magic User, a Cleric and a Thief.  It’s worth noting that in the Red and Blue books Fighter, Wizard, Cleric and Thief where the human Classes while Elf, Dwarf and Hobbit/Halfling were non-human Classes (but of course AD&D decided that Race and Class should be different things) The D&D board game reflects this same party dynamic as do the basic and starter sets from the 3rd to 3.5  period, I'm sure most people reading this are familiar with Regdar, Mialee, Jozan and Lidda (but 3rd edition itself decided Bard, Monk and pretty much everything was a core class and don't even get me started on 4th) oh and the first D&D set I owned  The NEW Easy to Master Dungeons and Dragons  also has the 'core four' as the humans classes and then the 3 non-humans as classes. (I think I've mentioned enough examples for now)

My own idea of the classic dungeon line up is Fighter, Elf, Dwarf and Wizard, but I think this is due to me having started out with HeroQuest (and Lord of the Rings might have had something to do with it too)


 ^ To try and avoid confusion (at the risk of causing further confusion) here's a picture of a bunch of the older Player's Handbooks from the various Editions and Revisions of D&D I own (and a Goblin)

Like you I haven't ever got my claws on the original D&D 'White Box' (or was it 'Brown Box'?) and the earliest version of D&D (as opposed to AD&D) that I own is the Red and Blue Books with the Larry Elmore covers (the same ones you had?). So I had to do a little research (Mainly reading Wikipedia) to fill a few gaps in my knowledge of that period.

So, yes the first ever published D&D had Fighter (or Fighting-Man), Wizard and Cleric ... but no Thief. As you said it seems a bit odd that a staple of fantasy novels like the Thief was left out and yet the Cleric made it in, but there are reasons it turned out that way.

The first question I'm going to try to answer is 'why did the cleric come first?' and I must warn you that in this next bit I ramble a bit, but it does get to the point eventually.

First of  all, as legend has it D&D was based on the original  Chainmail  game (published in 1971 – not to be confused with the D20 Miniatures game of the same name published circa 2002) but White Box D&D wasn't just based on it, it used Chainmail as it's combat system (what later became the D&D combat system was offered as an optional part of the rules) being a large scale tactical battle system Chainmail didn't really have rules for Thieves and yes it didn't have rules for Clerics either, but I think I can explain their development at this stage.
This is where things get a little unclear as Gygax liked to boast and take credit for things, so exactly who did what is difficult to determine but it's clear that he did not come up with D&D all by himself. Pre D&D Gygax had added fantasy elements to Chainmail in 'The Fantasy Supplement' basically substituting 'historical' troop types for fantasy creatures. Large monsters counted as large groups of men, Heroes (Fighters) counted as smaller groups of men and Wizards basically were artillery units (some might argue they still are). Still no sign of Clerics though.
The legend continues with Dave Arneson using the Chainmail rules as the basis for a game called 'Blackmoor' (which would later become a D&D setting) in which players controlled 1 figure each (Bla, bla, bla role-playing bla bla) the debate as to whether these were the first games of D&D or not is irrelevant to this discussion (and pointless in general), but I remember reading on an OD&D forum I came across that the original Cleric was created at some point during the early days of Blackmoor as a Vampire-Hunter type character with rules for healing magic and the like. In case anyone is interested it was probably this page http://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=34843&start=15
So it was from there the Cleric evolved and was incorporated into the main game. Here you can see the game starting to take shape, before Clerics there were only 2 classes (Fighter and Wizard) and as such it could be said that in historical games there is only the Fighter class(!).
Therefore Clerics, if you think about in these terms 'fill the gap' between Fighter and Wizard, they can cast useful spells (mainly healing) but can also take part in hand-to-hand combat; an obvious extension of game play.
Interestingly in HeXeN (a fantasy action RPG based on the DooM engine) the Cleric is kind of 'mid-ground' character somewhere between the Warrior and the Mage, good with both combat and magic but master of neither.

So there you have it Clerics mostly likely came before Thieves as a Class mainly for game-play reasons.  

Wow! It's late now and I've been writing for quite a long time, I'll talk about Thieves (in needless detail) and other early D&D stuff another night. I hope ramblings thus far have been interesting and answered a few questions (ha! I've probably raised more questions than I've answered).