Did Arneson Ever Use Variable Hit Points Prior to D&D?

[Sean Galland]

Hello,

I am going through my notes regarding Blackmoor's hit point system. It appears to me that the Blackmoor Bunch prior to using the D&D rules only used a flat hit point system and not any kind of die roll system such as Arneson described in a Great Plains Game Players 1974 article. Can anyone confirm this?

Flat Hit Points from from Greg Svenson's CHAINMAIL notes:

Mortal: 7
Hero: 14
Superhero: 28
Wizard: 21


Great Plains Game Players 1974:

[aldarron]

For player characters?

Maybe. The roster at the start of the Infamouse character section can be read that way, but I don't think there's any conclusive evidence. What we can say is that players did not keep track of their HP, which would lend some support to there not being variable amounts. If all were the same it would make it easier for Arneson to track.

For monsters, yes, absolutely. Among other things, the pre-D&D "mini monster manual" at the back of the FFC makes it abundantly clear that monsters had variable HP in early Blackmoor.

The section of the GPGPN pictured above is of course Arneson talking about something he says he wanted for D&D prior to publication. We don't know as far as I'm aware if he actually talked about the idea therein with Gygax, but he may well have mentioned it, but as we see from the first draft, Gygax had already developed a HP progression based on Arneson's earlier ideas.

[Sean Galland]

Thanks Aldarron. I struggle to see with the scant evidence that anyone ever used the variable dice rolling system in the Great Plains Gamers Newsletter, which is fine. It would explain why Gygax would move on to his own system of using the Hit Dice as the means of generating Hit Points in D&D, he seemed to really love rolling dice.