Crimhthan The Great's OD&D Blog

Wednesday, February 1, 2023

Original Dungeons & Dragons Has Its 50th Anniversary In January 2024 (Feb 2023)

The countdown to the 50th Anniversary of the Original Dungeons and Dragons in January 2024 continues. Give the drama with Wizards during January 2023, it remains to be seen if they can get their act together enough to have a proper celebration of the 50th Anniversary of OD&D.

To me it is a no-brainer. They desperately need to create some good will and this is low hanging fruit.

Will they grab it? That remains to be seen.

Sunday, January 1, 2023

Original Dungeons & Dragons Has Its 50th Anniversary In January 2024

OD&D will have its 50th Anniversary in January 2024 and in February 2024 I will celebrate 50 years as an OD&D Referee!

Too many of the original gaming group have passed away, I am 85 myself and not sure I will make it to that 50th anniversary. But whether I am around to see it or not, all of you should be celebrating that day and that year. I am betting that WotC does nothing fan friendly to celebrate OD&D 50th Anniversary nor will they pay any homage to Arneson and Gygax and other people who were important in the creation of OD&D.

So I am going to attempt to blog between now and then and call out some of the people who helped bring OD&D to life.

I hope to do a lot of gaming in 2024, I hope that you do too!

Tuesday, September 24, 2019

Blackmoor Week Day I 2019

Blackmoor Week kicks off today and concludes on October 1st with Dave Arneson Game Day.

Dave Arneson’s Blackmoor - B-Ware - Sphärenmeisters Spiele

Places where Blackmoor Week and Dave Arneson Game Day 2019 have been announced.

Blackmoor Week and Dave Arneson Game Day
Blackmoor Week
Blackmoor Week 2019
Blackmoor Week 2019: 7 Days till Dave Arneson Game Day
Gearing up for Blackmoor Week and Dave Arneson Game Day 2019

This week we honor Dave Arneson the Creator of Blackmoor, the Creator of the underpinnings of Dungeons & Dragons and co-author of same. This is Blackmoor Week running from 9/24/19 through 10/1/19. Join me in honoring and remembering Dave Arneson and the debt of gratitude the entire gaming community owes to him.

Sunday, January 27, 2019

International Original Dungeons & Dragons Day

International Original Dungeons & Dragons Day, the 45th Anniversary of Original Dungeons & Dragons is today January 26th as we continue our celebration of International Original Dungeons & Dragons Month.

The original game is no longer for sale except for places like eBay and even there you have to be careful that you are getting the original version and not an adulterated, watered down version. In the real thing you will find references to balrogs, hobbits, ents and Tolkien himself. The watered down version has halflings and treants.

Over at RPGNOW you can find the adulterated version in pdf form OD&D Dungeons & Dragons Original Edition (0e). Someday, I or someone else may publish instructions on how to replace the missing text in the pdf so that you have the real thing.

Tuesday, January 1, 2019

Celebrating the 45th Anniversary of Dungeons & Dragons

I and others are celebrating the 45th Anniversary of the publication of Dungeons & Dragons (the Original) in January of 1974. Who's not celebrating? WotC for one, if you go to their D&D homepage this morning there is no acknowledgement of the 45th Anniversary of D&D. If I am still around five years from now I wonder if they will remember the 50th Anniversary?

The Original Dungeons and Dragons is very intuitive and easy to learn. The players don't need to know the rules beyond a very few basics that the referee can quickly impart and character creation takes only a few minutes and you can be playing immediately. This is a game of exploration and discovery in a fantasy medieval environment and the main requirement for players is curiosity and imagination. Those who are decisive will excel and those who suffer from chronic indecisiveness and lack confidence will quickly replace those with a confident, decisive demeanor as they grow into the roles they choose.

In the original game, the Three Little Brown Books, there are three classes: fighting-men (and women), magic-users and clerics. Many claim that is boring because the rules do not give them endless tweaks to customize their character. They could not be more wrong about that. You see in the original game, players were expected to customize their characters through play and a good to excellent referee is expected to play his part in facilitating that process by providing an interesting, fascinating living world for the character to live in. When character are cookie cutter mirror images of one another, that is not the fault of the game. The tools are there, but it takes imagination and thinking outside the box to use them.

The secret is spelled out in the rules themselves, don't play by the book, the "rules" are mere guidelines and a jumping off point from which you can go anywhere. Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax never played by the book and you should not play by the book either. Contrary to what many fake old school "experts" and the forums they inhabit claim, there is no one true way to play. They try to bind people to playing only by the book and thus lead people astray and away from the chance to experience for themselves old school play.

If you choose to limit yourself by playing by the book you are free to do that, just don't lie and claim to be old school when you do it. Playing by the book is a valid option, it is just not an old school option. Old school is defined solely by the way Arneson and Gygax played in their own campaigns and it is this, "Follow the spirit of the rules and not the letter." Old school is the way of freedom, not the way of shackles and limitations of massive rule sets and by the book play. If you choose to be shackled and limited with by the book play, be my guest and have fun that way, just don't pretend that is the old school way.

Let's spend this month celebrating the 45th anniversary of the Original Dungeons & Dragons and International Original Dungeons & Dragons Month together.

Friday, October 5, 2018

The Most Complete List (Dave Arneson Day & Blackmoor Week - 2018)

Reposted with Permission from The Ruins of Murkhill Forums

I found this list at Xizallian's Place.

Compiled Complete List (of everything we can locate)

Pre-Announcement of Dave Arneson Game Day October 1, 2018 posted on 9/22/2018

Dave Arneson Game Day 2018 Coming Up!

(Eight Days a Week)(Google if you don't get the reference

Monday, October 1, 2018

At Last It Is Here - Dave Arneson Game Day!

Happy Birthday Dave Arneson!

Now we are here on Dave Arneson Game Day, a day that unfortunately the world at large remains completely ignorant of. I went this morning a couple of hours ago to the WotC website [WotC] and was not surprised to see that they are ignoring Dave Arneson's Birthday.

So if you are reading this or one of a tiny handful of other blogs then you will know that today is indeed Dave Arneson's birthday. The thing to ask yourself is why are there only a tiny handful of blogs and a only a couple of other places that celebrate Dave Arneson's Birthday? Especially considering that none of those blogs or forums would exist but for Dave Arneson.

As of 11AM EDT Dragonsfoot forums (nothing), Knights & Knaves Alehouse (nothing), and Original D& D (nothing). Now over on The Comeback Inn The Comeback Inn there are today several threads some with real goodies. And over on The Piazza there is a thread that shares some of the same links as The Comeback Inn.

Over on The Ruins of Murkhill Forum there is this thread Blackmoor Week and Dave Arneson Game Day where they have been celebrating both Blackmoor Week (the only ones this year) and Dave Arneson Game Day with as of last night 39 blog posts so far and more to be added today.

Goodman Games is AFAIK the only game company to post anything and they have posted a two part Dave Arneson Homage yesterday and today. “Who in the World is Dave Arneson?” A Dave Arneson Homage, Part 1 of 2 by James Maliszewski and I'll link to the second part once it is up.

EDIT: Learning from Dave Arneson’s Published Works A Dave Arneson Homage, Part 2 of 2 by James Maliszewski

We are collecting the links so late tonight or tomorrow I will post all the links we have found.

So are you gaming today or did you game over the weekend. We did, as part of our circumnavigation of the world as they near the end of a multi-year trek, they are now over 40 years of game time into the journey and out of the original 12 characters only 3 have survived this far. They are closer to the end of the journey than they know. Yesterdays game was all on shipboard on the wide ocean and as they approached some islands they were beset by pirates. I hope to post about that in a few days.