Who edited EPT?

[waysoftheearth]

Apologies if this has been asked before.

Do we know if EGG, or anyone else at TSR, edited EPT prior to its TSR publication? Or, more specifically, checked over or otherwise "approved" the D&D rules interpretations therein?

[cadriel]

The foreword credits Gary Gygax as "Tactical Studies Rules Editor." Empire of the Petal Throne was published after Don Kaye's death by TSR, Inc., and before TSR hired Tim Kask in 1975. Kask's first job was editing the Blackmoor supplement, and his hiring was announced in the Strategic Review after EPT was published.

At this time TSR basically had no employees. The Strategic Review was edited by Gary with Brian Blume credited as the Associate Editor. Other than that, there was Donna Kaye's involvement, and Dave Arneson was a partner when the new TSR was founded. So basically those four (Gygax, Arneson, Blume, and Kaye) are the only people at TSR who could have worked on this. It seems that Arneson was on staff for eleven months ending in November 1976, which makes it very unlikely that he was the one who edited EPT.

The other person involved with Empire of the Petal Throne was one Bill Hoyt, who is actually credited in the TSR version of EPT ("Presented in Association with Mr. William J. Hoyt, W.A.W. Productions."). It seems that Hoyt's credit on the book was a finder's fee because his company had already optioned the book: playingattheworld.blogspot.com/2015/05/world-at-war-tsr-of-twin-cities.html I believe that Hoyt is still around, so if anybody is able to be asked about this, it would be him.

I'd guess it was Gary but I'm not sure. increment notes that Hoyt was credited but Arneson wasn't, on p. 537 of Playing at the World.

[waysoftheearth]

Thanks cadriel.

In my copy (the TSR boxed set, 1975) I can see that the Foreword is signed by Gygax, and below his name is his title "Tactical Studies Rules Editor" and below that is a date/place "July 1 1975, Lake Geneva, Wisconsin". It doesn't seem to me to be an actual editing credit, more just his title. Also, 1 July 1975 is just about the same time Warrior of Mars came out, so Gygax and Blume must have been at least somewhat preoccupied with that title.

I'm mainly wondering how much (if any) scrutiny EGG in particular applied to Barker's interpretation of the OD&D rules? It would be great to know whether EPT's reinterpretation of the OD&D rules was scrutinised at all, or anyhow checked, approved, edited/altered by EGG, similar to what happened with the Holmes manuscript a bit later. That could potentially give us another data point on some of EGG's difficult writing in the 3LBBs

[cadriel]

Because the Tékumel foundation released it, we know what changed between the 1974 EPT manuscript and the 1975 TSR version. I guess the main questions would be which changes were done by Barker in the interim (as I understand it, the original was based on playtest D&D rules) and which were done by the TSR editor, as well as the identity of such editor. Sadly I don't think anyone checked with Brian Blume before he passed last year, as he was the last person who would've been in a position to know directly.

[geoffrey]

Aug 2, 2021 8:30:45 GMT -6 cadriel said:

So basically those four (Gygax, Arneson, Blume, and Kaye) are the only people at TSR who could have worked on this.

I think it is funny that no more than 4 or 5 guys just starting a business did a far better job editing the EPT manuscript than teams of full-time editors working for big game companies do editing 3rd, 4th, and 5th edition D&D. I seem to remember once seeing an errata for one of those versions than was longer than some rulebooks!

[Melan]

EPT probably did not see much editing from TSR. The editing standards of the OD&D booklets and even the supplements - as much as I love them - and the EPT book could not be more different. Simply put, EPT's editing quality is too good to have come from TSR. It is structured, written, and edited like a college textbook. Sections which are muddled or ambiguous in OD&D are clear and easy to understand in EPT. Things which belong together, are placed together.

Of course, Prof. Barker had an unfair advantage here! But TSR did not produce a comparably well edited work until many years later, so I would assume the works was mainly done by Prof. Barker on his own.

[cadriel]

Aug 4, 2021 11:55:58 GMT -6 Melan said:

EPT probably did not see much editing from TSR. The editing standards of the OD&D booklets and even the supplements - as much as I love them - and the EPT book could not be more different. Simply put, EPT's editing quality is too good to have come from TSR. It is structured, written, and edited like a college textbook. Sections which are muddled or ambiguous in OD&D are clear and easy to understand in EPT. Things which belong together, are placed together.

Of course, Prof. Barker had an unfair advantage here! But TSR did not produce a comparably well edited work until many years later, so I would assume the works was mainly done by Prof. Barker on his own.

But there are differences between the 1974 Empire of the Petal Throne Manuscript (available in PDF here) and the version that was published by TSR in 1975 (available in PDF here). Unquestionably the organization of the material was Barker's. The question is, who made the changes between the two? Was it Barker himself, or Gygax, or someone else (maybe Brian Blume)? It would make sense if the new version was just an update by Barker of what previously existed; a lot of numbers are tweaked,  changes to rules are made, etc. - as one would expect for a game that had been thoroughly playtested.

[grodog]

This sounds like a Q for badger2305 =)

Allan.

[badger2305]

Aug 9, 2021 10:46:19 GMT -6 grodog said:

This sounds like a Q for badger2305 =)

Allan.

My suspicion is that the changes were made by Prof. Barker in consultation with Gary. There may be correspondence between them I could dig up to shed some light on this question. I do have two observations about the edits that might be of interest. First, while there is a reference to "Good" and "Evil" in EPT, Prof. Barker was even then pretty clear that he really preferred the sense of "Stability" and "Change" which came later. Second, it is very clear that the organization of the TSR EPT is largely based on the organization of OD&D, with characters and magic, followed by monsters, followed by treasure and setting material. It's not exact, but it differs from the organization of the two volumes of the "mimeo EPT" which were Prof. Barker's playtest rules.

[Malchor]

Aug 1, 2021 7:11:14 GMT -6 waysoftheearth said:

Apologies if this has been asked before.

Do we know if EGG, or anyone else at TSR, edited EPT prior to its TSR publication? Or, more specifically, checked over or otherwise "approved" the D&D rules interpretations therein?

According to Bill Hoyt it was edited by Barker, who was a university professor after all. As Bill tells it, Gary had Rob have a look at EPT to see where there might be rules issues that needed fixing or places for Gary to “improve” the rules, as we all know Gary likes to do. However, after reading the rules, Rob could find nothing at all to fix, edit or improve.

Now there are minor changes between the green cover draft and TSR editions, so either there was a tiny bit of editing by Gary or Rob, or those were done by Barker after letting his group see the drafts.