the Men & Magic book as a complete game

[geoffrey]

Imagine that in mid-1974 a fantasy buff in a small town found at a used book store a clear plastic bag holding a set of polyhedral dice (4-, 6-, 8-, 12-, and 20-sided) and a copy of the Dungeons & Dragons Men & Magic book. Neither he nor the bookseller had a clue as to what it was, so the bookseller let him have it for a quarter. He bought it because he regarded the five Platonic solids as curious enough to be worth the 25 cents, regardless of the unknown book's contents.

In this thread I hope to explore how the above hypothetical man might understand the book, and what sort of games and rulings he and his players might make over the years, sheltered from all other D&D and RPG products (including Chainmail and Outdoor Survival) and influences. I will be offering my own surmises, and I welcome others' contributions and thoughts as well.

[ralph]

He likes it and his curiosity regarding the other 2 books grows. He returns to the used book store only to find an empty plot...
An old guy sitting on a bench nearby sagely informs him "Well, there was a book store back in the day... 'course that was knocked down over 40 years ago..."

(Sorry. Couldn't resist.)

[aldarron]

Interesting Geoffrey, looking forward to what you come up with.

I know from time to time someone will speculate on which booklet came first, and just so folks know, the booklets were not written one at a time at all. The playtest manuscript was a single entity that Gygax divided into three prior to publication.

Anyway, its an interesting idea. I suspect that just having Men and Magic might result in a fairly Holmes like game. I imagine you'd get an even wilder result if your hypothetical fellow had only a copy of Monsters and Treasures to work with.

[geoffrey]

Our hypothetical reader in 1974 especially noticed this on p. 8: "There is no reason that players cannot be allowed to play as virtually anything..." (with the example of someone playing a Balrog). Then he noticed the alignment table on p. 9 listing dozens of different "character types", a hodge-podge of creatures from Greek mythology, European fable, Tolkien, and Universal horror/monster movies. He sees that Men, Dwarves, Elves, and Hobbits are all listed amongst the Ents, Wyverns, Wolf-Men, Chimerae, etc.

The reader said to himself, "Ah, I see what's going on here. Fighting-men, magic-users, clerics, elves, dwarves, and hobbits are all fleshed-out examples (nothing more) of the types of characters that the players can play. Those six are clearly not an exhaustive list. Neither, for that matter, is the list of several dozen character types on page 9. So creation is part of the fun of the game. We can create character types like Elric, or the Gray Mouser, or twk-men, or Barsoomian white apes, or sith, or whatever we want. No wonder the game's Forward mentions that the most extensive requirement to play is time. Very promising."

[Mushgnome]

I like where you are going with this, good stuff!

[Stormcrow]

Feb 22, 2012 19:53:48 GMT -6 geoffrey said:

The reader said to himself, "Ah, I see what's going on here. Fighting-men, magic-users, clerics, elves, dwarves, and hobbits are all fleshed-out examples (nothing more) of the types of characters that the players can play.

I think this shows more about what you want to read into it than what would actually happen. Someone with just Men & Magic would be asking, "But how do I play?"

[geoffrey]

Feb 22, 2012 23:49:09 GMT -6 Stormcrow said:

Someone with just Men & Magic would be asking, "But how do I play?"

I agree.

I am perforce barely touching even the highlights of what I find interesting in this hypothetical situation. From my opening post: "how the above hypothetical man might understand the book, and what sort of games and rulings he and his players might make over the years." Entire volumes could be written covering the minutiae of basics learned and implemented over the years: "How do I roll higher than a 9 on this 20-sided die?" Etc. That sort of thing I am passing by in silence in order to focus on what is (to me) the more interesting stuff: specifically, how this man's game might differ from that of "standard" D&D. ;D

I eagerly welcome participation by all and sundry in this thread. Tell us what you think the hypothetical man and his players would think and do!

[Mushgnome]

One thing that strikes me about the scenario is that you'd have no stats for a dragon (surprising for a game called Dungeons & Dragons). It could be like Smaug, or the luck dragon in Neverending Story, or a Chinese cloud dragon a mile long, or a mutant radiation-breathing dinosaur, or a Jeff Easley red dragon; limited only by your imagination.

The only information M&M gives about Dragons is that they are neutral or chaotic in alignment (lawful gold dragons are an "exception not noted on the Alignment table") and that our PCs are allowed a saving throw vs. their breath.

(edit) This actually reminds me of when I was a little kid, my friend and I borrowed the player's book from his brother's red box. We spent a whole afternoon rolling stats, buying leather armor and torches, and coming up with backstories for our little hobbits. We thought that was how you play D&D. That was my first D&D session; session 2 we got to play with his bro and some other friends, my hobbit was killed by an orc, I thought session 1 was more fun.

[talysman]

I think it's an interesting exercise in contrast with Searchers of the Unknown, which for all practical purposes is "D&D using just Monsters & Treasure as its starting point." I'll call it "Heroes of the Ages", to emphasize this.

I think HotA, in contrast to SotU, would emphasize class and level more. Since readers of M&M without any other volumes would have no examples of monsters with specific hit dice, they would assign class and level to each monster on the alignment table. 5th level magic-users can cast Fireball, for example, so they would possible reason that dragons would be statted as 5th level magic-users (HD 2+1, breath fire 1/day,) but perhaps comparing the dragon's scales to chain or plate and assigning a higher AC. A considerably weaker dragon, but scalable to higher levels.

HotA would have the same attack table as M&M, so the reader knows there's fighting and spell casting. There are references in the text to exploring dungeons and getting treasure (for example, the experience point section mentions killing a troll and taking its treasure,) so the reader would have a basic understanding of HotA as a treasure quest and monster battle game. There are also references to high-level characters building strongholds, so HotA would include something resembling the D&D end-game as well.

M&M has the turn undead table, so the reader would know about undead as a potential opponent, but would not have the specific descriptions in M&T; the only guideline for HotA would be the dictionary, movie, book, and comic book examples of each monster. HotA probably wouldn't include level drain.

The d20 attack and saving throw tables and 2d6 reaction and turning tables are the only resolution examples in M&M; the 1 in 6 or 2 in 6 chances are all in U&WA, so HotA would most likely implement traps as attacks or saves on a d20. The reader also would be missing the dungeon example, so HotA dungeons would be less like devious mazes filled with tricks and traps, more like a wargame.

[geoffrey]

Our Dear Reader notices that, of the six abilities, charisma seems to be the most important one. Strength, intelligence, and wisdom have no function other than affecting experience. Constitution adds or subtracts 1 point from each hit die (plus the confusing stuff regarding "survival" and "adversity"), and dexterity adds or subtracts 1 from missiles.

But charisma affects:
1. how loyal your hirelings will be
2. how many unusual hirelings (such as giant snakes, wizards, sith, robots, etc.) you can have
3. how favorably monsters will react to you
4. the morale of your retainers

All these factors affected by charisma are vital to success in the game, as apparently the players will seek great numbers of followers: "It is likely that players will be desirous of acquiring a regular entourage of various character types, monsters, and an army of some form" (p. 12).

Sure, a character will a high constitution might have 6 more hit points than another, or a fighting-man with a high strength might be 1 level higher than everybody else, but the character with a high charisma will far more than make up for it by having retainers that are both more numerous and more powerful. Who would you pick in a fight? A 6th-level fighting-man with 27 hit points and three 1st-level hirelings? Or a 5th-level fighting-man with 18 hit points, six 1st-level hirelings, and a loyal wolf-man?

[Stormcrow]

Feb 23, 2012 1:28:30 GMT -6 geoffrey said:

From my opening post: "how the above hypothetical man might understand the book, and what sort of games and rulings he and his players might make over the years."

My point is he wouldn't play games over the years. He wouldn't be able to independently come up with the idea of "role-playing game" with just Men & Magic—it's hard enough for a layman to understand the boxed set as a whole, let alone only the first booklet. At best he might decide it's an arena wargame, with characters of various abilities facing off against each other with the alternate combat and saving throw tables. But this would pall quickly; there would be no games lasting years.

I feel that you haven't sufficiently distanced yourself from your knowledge of what RPGs are or how D&D's rules work to see into this hypothetical man's mind. Rather than seeing a blank slate being filled with information, you're starting with your own full slate and erasing bits, but the parts you keep are still correctly formed. I think you may also have some kind of subconscious agenda at work here.

Frankly, I'm not sure I understand the value of this endeavor.

[geoffrey]

Feb 24, 2012 8:17:54 GMT -6 Stormcrow said:

I think you may also have some kind of subconscious agenda at work here.

Frankly, I'm not sure I understand the value of this endeavor.

The only agenda and goal I am aware of with this thread is to have fun. I look forward to any contributions anyone might make. The more the merrier! ;D

[Finarvyn]

geoffrey, you have some great thoughts and observations, but I should point out that our group had all three of the LBB and had similar reactions to them in the day. We looked at the stuff in the books as a launching point instead of a definitive end-all. I don't think that the addition of M&T and U&WA changes things that signifcantly.

Heck, one of our players even made up a "rock star" class. Bizarre.

[thorswulf]

After reading this fascinating little book and playing with the nifty "dice" our intrepid reader begins to ponder many things. After a quick trip to the public library and the same bookstore he purchased this rare treasure he or she is now armed to the teeth with numerous fantasy novels for inspiration!

Perusing the books for inspiration our intrepid reader realizes that all good fantasy stories need a MAP! So taking pen or pencil in hand our reader begins to draw a rough country or land to build the game in. Names flummox the map maker so good ones are borrowed from the novels as well!
"I have a map, some dice and some character I created with dice liberated from Risk. but who will I fight? maybe I'd better create some opposition to battle with swords and sorcery." Statistics are generated, abilities pondered and ideas are jotted down in a notebook.

As luck would have it our neophyte gamer meets up with a friend who does model railroading or makes models and wants to know if the reader would like to go out of town to a hobby shop with him. A short 2-3 hour journey ensues and the strange game is mentioned and discussed and both get excited about the game. At the hobby shop our friends discover some very interesting small toy soldiers of medieval knights and such. Even more exciting the salesperson has catologs of the figures and there ARE some fantasy types of miniatures available! Our gamer quibbles about how to spend his small allowance/savings of a few dollars. in the end he purchases a few archers, men at arms and a mounted knight, writes down the address of the manufacturer and the contact information for the hobby shop.

*Ok, this is my take on things inspired by what I dealt with in 1979. I actually had to go to Eugene, Oregon to buy my first miniature. It was in a cool little shop called Gandalf's Den. Guess who got sued by the Tolkien estate? There was a billboard in western Eugene for that shop up until the 90's, even though it went out of business by 1981!*

[Anathemata]

Without the books on treasure and monsters, I think that the divide between creatures encountered and characters played would never arise. In other words, there would be no creature generated that could not be conceivably played as a PC. Without treasure lists and the starting dungeon map, there is no given locale or goal for the adventure, or even what constitutes an adventure. The combat rules are exceedingly basic, and I suspect that the list of spells would come to be regarded as an incomplete, 'example' list before long.

If the Noble Reader were me, I would most likely assume that this was some kind of character-driven game with an emphasis on magic. I agree that charisma, followers and retinue are important in these rules and would probably gather that politics in some sense is a basic problem. Perhaps a political struggled based around Law, Chaos and the X Factors in between? Perhaps one of my players would try building a 'troll'-type character and another would create a 'unicorn' and a third would be a 'human warlord', all attempting to acquire magical might and political significance to use against the others? Or maybe they will be allies against some more sinister foe?

These things occur to me.

[warrioroffrobozz]

This actually reminds me of how I found D&D. I was browsing through an antique shop when I was nine and bought Monsters and Treasure, and Underworld and Wilderness for a total of $0.50. I thought they were interesting but obviously I couldn't play, so they just sort of sat around. But when my uncle visited a couple months later he saw them and gave me his Whitebox set as a birthday present!

[Deleted]

That's a cool story. I bought my first boxed set in a mall at a record store. I do believe OD&D was the only non-electronic/entertainment type merchandise stocked there ... it was a very small store.

[geoffrey]

Feb 25, 2012 17:48:02 GMT -6 warrioroffrobozz said:

This actually reminds me of how I found D&D. I was browsing through an antique shop when I was nine and bought Monsters and Treasure, and Underworld and Wilderness for a total of $0.50. I thought they were interesting but obviously I couldn't play, so they just sort of sat around. But when my uncle visited a couple months later he saw them and gave me his Whitebox set as a birthday present!

Your two booklets were obviously separated from the copy of Men & Magic mentioned in my opening post! ;D

[Falconer]

I think the core of the core of the core of D & D, the very minimum needed to recreate D & D play as we know it, is Vol. III, pp. 3-14 (“The Underworld”) + pp. 35-6 (“Healing Wounds” + “Time”).

And the core of THAT is pp. 8-9 (“The Move/Turn in the Underworld”).

Add in the “stuff” of D & D (characters, monsters, spells) from the 12-page Chainmail Fantasy Supplement, and you’re well on your way!

* * *

I know that’s not what Geoffrey asked. Hmm. Vol. I. Make a character, but then what? I’ll bet you anything (if he was into it enough), he’d make a Monopoly-style game board with Chance-style cards, and try to cram in enough situations into the game board to warrant use of any/all spells and special abilities from Vol. I in a few hours of game time!