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Post by jasonzavoda on May 1, 2012 11:07:32 GMT -6
I think you have to also take into consideration that there were doubtless truckloads of mail with rules questions and suchlike flooding the mailboxes of TSR. I'm sure that ANY game designer dealing with that sort of thing for very long would be found shifting from a "free-wheeling" to "officialdom" mindset, if for no other reason than to preserve their own sanity. As Tim Kask says in his article in Knockspell #1, "...The fun started to leech away within months. Now there were dicta, dogma and regulations; gone were the days of guidelines. And who was to blame for this sorry, disreputable state of affairs. The players…" At the time A&E#1 was released, June 1975 there were not a great many of the D&D set that had been sold. 1,000 copies produced in Jan. 1974 with some problems concerning production (book 3 may have been damaged or misprinted and disgarded. according to the Acaeum) and an updated 1st print around Dec 1974. How many of that first 1,000 were sent to game and hobby stores rather than into the hands of DMs? It is said that it took 11 months for TSR to sell out of the Jan. 1974 printing which would be a sizable number less than 1,000 copies. In Jan 1975 TSR produced a 2nd print of the boxed set (1,000 to 2,000) copies and took 6 months or so to sell out. The thing that is so intriguing about the early issues of A&E and Gygax's letter in issue #2 is that there wouldn't have been truckloads of mail to TSR as there soon would be. Look at the early issues of The Strategic Review where they are asking for articles and contributors (How quickly that would change). Spring 1975 is the infancy of the game, though its popularity is growing in leaps and bounds. I think the letter in A&E#2 shows Gygax the hobbyist just starting to become Gygax the businessman. I believe the comments regarding stark revisions and harsh criticism of Gygax and D&D and the open support of theft through xeroxing brought out in print in A&E had a great deal to do with the change in attitude. If you look at the severe reaction TSR and Gygax had to criticism right from the start of the Strategic Review (with the fight over Origins and the Reviewer who had negative statements about D&D) my feeling is that A&E weighed far more heavily in the formation of the more conservative and litigious attidue of Gygax than it should have, simply by being one of the first D&D magazines published. Even by June 1976 A&E was still being recommended by TSR (note the small comment to this effect at the end of Lee Gold's article on Languages in Dragon #1). All my opinion of course from someone who wasn't there. And this all changed very rapidly. D&D was monstrously successful and very quickly grew beyond anything that the opinions of a small group of gamers on the west coast had any effect on, but back in A&E #2 every opinion expressed seemed to matter a hundredfold and every xeroxed copy was taking food out of Gygax's and the Old TSR guards' mouths (and their childrens). It is just that there is a conversation going on between these west coast gamers and Gygax that reveals itself in these early issue of A&E and the early issues of SR that I hadn't known existed and that I find facinating. |
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Post by Finarvyn on May 1, 2012 12:44:11 GMT -6
Hey, Jason! Glad to see that you found your way over here. I can't give out an EXALT on DF but I can here. Your A&E posts are very EXALT-worthy!  |
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Post by jasonzavoda on May 1, 2012 14:20:07 GMT -6
Hey, Jason! Glad to see that you found your way over here. I can't give out an EXALT on DF but I can here. Your A&E posts are very EXALT-worthy! Thanks very much Fin. I enjoy transcribing these old letters and articles but I also want to do some research as well. I know my ideas about the early days of TSR are very loose with only a small amount of supporting material but I hope the discussion brings out more about the history of TSR, D&D and fantasy gaming. |
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Post by Deleted on May 1, 2012 18:58:02 GMT -6
doubtless truckloads of mail with rules questions and suchlike flooding the mailboxes of TSR. By... whenever the heck Dave had moved down to Lake Geneva, what, 1975 or 1976... they were indeed deluged with mail about "official" rules, and it surprised the hell out of both of them, since they both originally advocated "it's your game, do whatever the hell you want." |
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Post by jasonzavoda on May 2, 2012 10:33:53 GMT -6
doubtless truckloads of mail with rules questions and suchlike flooding the mailboxes of TSR. By... whenever the heck Dave had moved down to Lake Geneva, what, 1975 or 1976... they were indeed deluged with mail about "official" rules, and it surprised the hell out of both of them, since they both originally advocated "it's your game, do whatever the hell you want." You can see how quickly D&D became a massive undertaking, but when did this happen? And how many in a deluge? There is a huge difference in the popularity of D&D between '75 and '76. The information about print runs has been tracked down fairly well. 1,000 copies printed for Jan '74, but an unknown number damaged which required a printing in Dec '74 of the same booklets just before a 2nd printing in Jan '75. It took 11 months to sell out the 1st run with the damaged booklets, then only 6 months to sell out the 2nd printing of Jan '75. This is still somewhere less than 2,000 (or 3,000) sets sold by July 1975. The Strategic Review is released before Gen Con and issue #1 is the Spring Issue. A&E#2 is the July issue and Gygax's letter is a quick response to the first issue from June. Before this there was the APA-L, a Los Angeles based 'Zine for science fiction and fantasy that started getting contributors posting articles about D&D. I have no doubt that there is a geometric increase in letters to TSR from Jan '74 onwards, but I have a hard time with the idea of truckloads even by Jan '75. For example, when I signed up for ebay in '95 there weren't more than a few thousand people (and it wasn't called ebay). If you had a problem you could call up and talk to Pierre who started the company. I didn't find it useful and dropped it, but signed up again in '97. My seller id# was 77 thousand and something, but I could still occassionally talk to Pierre about problems with the system, but the vice-president of the company was still answering phones back then. This quickly changed. D&D seems to have gone through this geometric then exponential growth as well. But my belief is that these early days when A&E was first published had an incredible influence on attitudes of the soon to be massively successful Gygax and TSR. I am very interested in when, exactly, the deluge of mail began and details about these early months of D&D and TSR. |
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Post by Deleted on May 2, 2012 15:09:17 GMT -6
Exactly when? Couldn't say, I moved up to Minneapolis in 1973. Rob Kuntz may be able to say for sure.
When did Dave Arneson and Dave Sutherland move to Lake Geneva, and when did TSR rent the first house on.... Broad?.... street. The frame house with the first "Dungeon" hobby shop on the first floor.
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Post by jasonzavoda on May 2, 2012 16:22:40 GMT -6
Exactly when? Couldn't say, I moved up to Minneapolis in 1973. Rob Kuntz may be able to say for sure. When did Dave Arneson and Dave Sutherland move to Lake Geneva, and when did TSR rent the first house on.... Broad?.... street. The frame house with the first "Dungeon" hobby shop on the first floor. I don't expect exactitude from anyone's memory about minutia after 35+ years. I know when the columns in SR talk about Arneson and Sutherland moving to Lake Geneva are said to be and when the anouncement about the Dungeon hobby shop was made. Not sure when Rob is going to want to talk about gaming again. Lord of the Green Dragons was pretty much all politics last time I checked in. |
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Post by Deleted on May 2, 2012 21:03:54 GMT -6
I don't expect exactitude from anyone's memory about minutia after 35+ years. I know when the columns in SR talk about Arneson and Sutherland moving to Lake Geneva are said to be and when the anouncement about the Dungeon hobby shop was made. Not sure when Rob is going to want to talk about gaming again. Lord of the Green Dragons was pretty much all politics last time I checked in. I definitely remember talking with both Gary and Dave on this very subject at that place, and then helping Dave Sutherland copy pages from my book, 'European Armor' by Claude Blair. I ** THINK ** it was the first time I saw either Dave after they had moved to Lake Geneva. That's as close as I can come. |
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Post by aldarron on May 3, 2012 9:25:51 GMT -6
Exactly when? Couldn't say, I moved up to Minneapolis in 1973. Rob Kuntz may be able to say for sure. When did Dave Arneson and Dave Sutherland move to Lake Geneva, and when did TSR rent the first house on.... Broad?.... street. The frame house with the first "Dungeon" hobby shop on the first floor. I think I can shed some light on this from some of Dave's interviews. Dave Arneson moved to Lake Geneva in the spring of 1976. I haven't seen mention of exactly when. According to quotes from him, his primary job was as a kind of talent scout, bringing in new product to TSR. He was "asked to leave" according to him, sometime in the fall of 1976. He then moved back to Minnesota, but I don't know exactly when. He worked for TSR for 8 0r ten months. As to the "deluge of mail", I don't know. Gygax seems to indicate fan correspondence began right away. I'd point out that 1000 copies is actually a lot for a small press enterprise. If you figure that there were at least 2 xerox copies for every one sold, that's 3000 DM's and maybe 15,000 players - in less than 1 year. I'd guess that Gygax would have been getting at least a few fan contacts every week from early on. |
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Post by jasonzavoda on May 13, 2012 10:49:57 GMT -6
"I think I can shed some light on this from some of Dave's interviews. Dave Arneson moved to Lake Geneva in the spring of 1976. I haven't seen mention of exactly when. According to quotes from him, his primary job was as a kind of talent scout, bringing in new product to TSR. He was "asked to leave" according to him, sometime in the fall of 1976. He then moved back to Minnesota, but I don't know exactly when. He worked for TSR for 8 0r ten months.
As to the "deluge of mail", I don't know. Gygax seems to indicate fan correspondence began right away. I'd point out that 1000 copies is actually a lot for a small press enterprise. If you figure that there were at least 2 xerox copies for every one sold, that's 3000 DM's and maybe 15,000 players - in less than 1 year. I'd guess that Gygax would have been getting at least a few fan contacts every week from early on. "
By 1976 things had changed radically from '74 and '75. The D&D explosion was well underway by late '75 from what I can tell.
But the first release in early '74 wasn't 1,000 copies. There was a problem with booklet 3, enough damaged copies that they did a 2nd order in late '74. Some copies went to staff, some went unsold in hobby or game shops.
This is the first time I've even heard it suggested that the xeroxing was as pandemic as a 2 for 1 reproduction. Can you link me to or post sources for this information?
From my own research I doubt there were 5,000 regular players and DM's by the beginning of '75 (before the 2nd printing of the woodgrain set) and personally think the number much smaller. Many of the accounts I have read suggest that players were exposed to D&D but set it aside till the game became more popular and some of the supplemental material began to be released.
My interest is where D&D was between the first relese in early '74 to a point in mid-'75. After that point things are starting to really cook and the influence of fan commentary and letters appears to wane due to the incredible success of the game. There is an evolution of philosophy about the game expressed by Gygax from the letter in A&E2 through comments in SR and then in later letters to A&E and articles in Dragon. I'm just loosely theorizing on where these changes came from.
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Post by aldarron on May 26, 2012 13:56:52 GMT -6
But the first release in early '74 wasn't 1,000 copies. There was a problem with booklet 3, enough damaged copies that they did a 2nd order in late '74. Some copies went to staff, some went unsold in hobby or game shops. Sure but how many copies are we talking about? 50? 100? 200? I've never seen an interivew where Gygax talked about this so I'ne no idea how much weight to give it. This is the first time I've even heard it suggested that the xeroxing was as pandemic as a 2 for 1 reproduction. Can you link me to or post sources for this information? There's no way to know. 2-1 is just a guess on my part and probably a conservative one. There are many statements from Gygax and co. about how common photcopies and homemade copycats were given the expense of the booklets - couple of them are mentioned in my BTPBD writeup. My interest is where D&D was between the first relese in early '74 to a point in mid-'75. After that point things are starting to really cook ... That is definetly a fasciating time. |
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