Miniature Monday

I (will) have OD&D booklets

I snagged the three LBB's on eBay for $90. They look to be in very good condition. I'm excited. I haven't had a hard copy of the OD&D booklet since mine mysteriously and tragically disappeared during my freshman year of college.

Miniature Monday

Topographical maps

The USGS recently posted GeoPDF's of more than 140,000 historical topographical maps. I've spent the last hour looking at the ones for my home town.

Alternative Holmesian elf advancement

This odd74 thread suggests a reading of blue book elves I quite like. Rather than treat elves as dual-class magic-users/fighting-men, give them half their earned experience points and apply those XP to the fighter advancement table only. When they gain a level on the fighter advancement table, they also gain spell capacity of a magic-user of the same level.

I may start using this in my games.

Miniature Monday

Annotated OD&D

I've started annotating the original D&D booklets, adding notes as I find interesting factoids on internet forums or have a spare moment for my own research.

As a page or section accumulates a goodly heft of footnotes, I'll post them here.

These notes apply to the dedication on the title page of Men & Magic. I welcome comments, corrections, and additional insights, which I shall jealously rake into my private hoard.

1. Gygax and Jeff Perren published the Chainmail wargame rules in 1971.
2. The fantasy rules were included as a supplement to the non-fantasy wargame rules in Chainmail. Most of the monsters and spells from Chainmail reappear in Dungeons & Dragons.
3. The MMSA wargammers lived in Minneapolis-St. Paul in the mid 1960–70’s. Dave Arneson joined the MMSA in high school.
4. The LGTSA wargammers met weekly in Gygax’s basement during the 1960’s and 70’s. Gygax named his company Tastical Studies Rules (TSR, Inc.) as a reference to its roots in the LGTSA.
5. Rob Kuntz played the character Robilar in Gygax’s game, and eventually became co-referee of Greyhawk. Kuntz was the sixth employee hired by TSR, where he held numerous positions over the years.
6. Gygax’s childhood friend Tom Keogh died in 1968. On the dragonsfoot.org forum, Gygax shares this memory: “When I was a teen my dear friend Tom Keogh would sometimes make-up to look like Lugosi as a vampire—a pretty faur imitation too, and tom had made a costume similar to Lugosi’s with a high-collared cape too.” The magic item name “Keoghtom’s Ointment”, which first appears in the 1979 Dungeon Master’s Guide (p. 149), plays on Tom Keogh’s name. Dragon Magazine 71 (p. 20) details Keoghtom as a Greyhawk quasi-deity.
7. Greg Bell supplies most of the illustrations, which bare a striking similarity to comic book panels from Strange Tales #167 (April 1968)
8. David Sutherland would become one of the most important illustrators of AD&D.

Can anyone identify which illustrations in the LBB's were created by Sutherland?