Men and Magic, Monsters and Treasures, Underworld and Wilderness Adventures, plus supplements

Posted by Billiam Babble on Feb 19, 2010; 6:10pm
URL: http://the-lost-and-the-damned.71.s1.nabble.com/Men-and-Magic-Monsters-and-Treasures-Underworld-and-Wilderness-Adventures-plus-supplements-tp4599289.html

After feeling a little out of depth when comparing Swords and Wizardry's Whitebox rules to 1974+ Original D&D, I decided it was time to return to searching for those mythical three booklets which appear during the early editions of Dungeons and Dragons.  

Acaem provide a useful reference here regarding the early editions, now often referred to by players and collectors as "Original D&D" http://www.acaeum.com/ddindexes/setpages/original.html

"Contains three booklets (Men & Magic, Monsters & Treasure, Underworld & Wilderness Adventures"

Wizards and the Coast originally provided pdfs for nostalgia reasons (with a charge I believe), but recently pulled the documents from their websites (so multiple forums will tell you if you type "OD&D rules download" or similar into Google!)

I found these on esnips.com and I'm hoping it's okay to post them here for non-profit reference:

Rules Booklets

1.  Dungeons_and_Dragons_%28_Book_1_%29_-_Men_and_Magic.pdf
2. monsters_and_treasures.pdf
3. underworld_and_wilderness.pdf

According to reviews, it is assumed that the player has access to the Chainmail miniatures battle rules
Chainmail_%28_3rd_Edition_%29.pdf

Supplements (settings and new rules some of which develop into AD&D)
I. supplement1greyhawk.pdf
II. (Edit file resubmitted: blackmoor.pdf )

Greyhawk is a general rules expansion, with new combat rules, additional character classes (paladin and thief), as well as new monsters, spells, and treasure.
Blackmoor is the second expansion, adding underwater rules, two new character classes (monk and assassin), and hit location rules.  It also contains the first scenario ever published for a role-playing game, "Temple of the Frog", which was later developed into module DA2 Temple of the Frog.

 
from http://www.acaeum.com/ddindexes/setpages/supplements.html

There's quite a few more out there, but there's enough to quite started with here.

At the time of posting I've yet to read these thoroughly, but I am mostly curious about the changing dice mechanics.  Forums inform me that Chainmail apparently uses 2d6 for hit rolls (will check this), the d20 rule is cited as optional in the early rulebooks.

I'm hoping that I haven't used too much of Mortis's file space quota.  Also, the head of the forum gets the final say on whether I can post these here and I respect his to decision to rule against etc. etc. yadda yadda ...