Dragons At Dawn Offered A Glimpse At Early RPG History
This is from an old, defunct blog I had...
D.H. Boggs happens to be a big fan of Dave Arneson, the man who created many of the concepts that became a part of Dungeons & Dragons. So, about five years ago, he started working on recreating the game that Dave played with his friends in Minnesota back in the early 1970's.
The story goes something like this. Gary Gygax and Jeff Perren created a rules set for a war miniatures game called Chainmail. In it, fantasy creatures were added along with spells and concepts new to miniatures gaming.
Gygax and Arneson had worked on a game called Don't Give Up The Ship, which would offer the inspiration for armor class to role playing games. Actually, there wasn't really a role playing game back then. Arneson and others played a game called Braunstein with Dave Wesley as game master in the late 1960's.
Wesley had introduced the concept of role playing the characters in the game, and it produced some interesting results. Fast forward to Wesley joining the military and Arneson taking over the game. Arneson had seen the Chainmail rules, but they didn't quite match what he was looking for in a game.
As Dave explains it, after a day of eating junk food and watching creature features on TV, he was inspired to create a whole fantasy world setting that he would take his players through. The land was called Blackmoor, and the castle became one of the main attractions.
Dave introduced the concept of each player running one character, hit points and armor class, experience points and gaining levels. He also had a desire to get the characters to explore the mysterious dungeons underneath the castle. Once they did, the first "dungeon crawl" was born.
We know some of the history from there. Gygax sat in on one of Dave's popular games. Dave had been scribbling rules in a note pad. Sometimes these rules were written in the moment when a decision was needed. He wanted to be fair and consistent with all of his players. Gary took those rules back home with him, and eventually, Dungeons & Dragons was born.
What Boggs did was gather comments that Arneson had made about the early days in interviews. He also gathered information from players who actually played in Dave's games back them. He used this to create Dragons At Dawn, the game that is as close as anything to what Arneson was playing back before Dungeons & Dragons was born.
This took many hours of work for Boggs to put together, because his desire was to be as faithful to Arneson as possible. When he had to use his judgement on a rule that Arneson never explained, he tried to be true to what he thought Arneson would have done.
Though the rules are very primitive compared to today's standards, Dragons At Dawn is a playable game. But, it's more than that. It's also a glimpse at the past with many quotes from the man himself.
I loved this book, because I've always felt Arneson's contributions to the role playing game experience have been downplayed. It's not surprising given that Gygax ran the company and was at the forefront, and Dave was sort of left behind. It never would have happened without Arneson creating some of the key concepts of the game.
I don't know why, but I was thinking about Dragons At Dawn today. I managed to buy my copy a few years ago, and that's a good thing. Boggs has taken it off the market, but not because he was told to. Instead, he has a new project in mind and wanted to devote his time to that.
It's called Champions Of Zed, which he calls a complete rewrite of the original Dungeons & Dragons rules. Gygax and Arneson have gone on record saying the rules back then were not done to their satisfaction, which eventually led to Gygax creating Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.
Boggs has taken comments made by both men through the years on what they wanted to do with the rules, and it gets better. He has a copy of the original manuscript of revisions Arneson wanted for the original game,. Of course, those were rejected back then.
It's a rather interesting project that is much like Dragons At Dawn, but in this case, he's attempting to create the version of the original Dungeons & Dragons that could have been had Gygax and Arneson had their way and also worked together on it. Boggs had a Kickstarter campaign that doubled what he was asking for, so the project has proceeded.
I think it's a good thing, but its still a shame. I think Dragons At Dawn should still be put out there for those who are interested. It is a fascinating look at some of the early history of the creation of a game that millions of people through the years have played and enjoyed.
A Gamer Reviews Dragons At Dawn: apaladinincitadel.blogspot.com/2010/04/dragons-at-dawn-rpg-review.html
