Review: The Making Of Original D&D

Every DnD fan should know why July 27th is significant. It’s the birthday of Gary Gygax, the man who made it possible for players around the world to experience adventures, find inspiration, and study the rules of DnD manuals. When he passed away in 2008, the DnD community decided to celebrate his birthday as Gary Gygax Day. This year is extra special—it marks the 50th anniversary of Gary launching the groundbreaking tabletop game Dungeons and Dragons in 1974.

To mark the 50th anniversary, a book about the history and behind-the-scenes development of DnD has been released. Gergon will introduce it to you in the following lines. He is a long-time DnD GM, deeply interested in the game's evolution, and has studied countless DnD manuals.

If you feel like flipping through the book The Making Of Original D&D: 1970 - 1977 with Gergon and listening to his review, check out his analysis on his YouTube channel.

Let’s be honest, Dungeons and Dragons is a game that has influenced culture across generations, genres, and media. RPGs, computer games, board games, movies, and books—all of this and much more often stems from the system created by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson. Even though many other RPG systems have emerged over the decades, their roots draw from DnD.

The book The Making Of Original Dungeons and Dragons takes readers back to the very beginning, offering a look behind the scenes of this legendary game's creation. It’s a fascinating journey where you can examine old magazines, articles, original rules, and even letters exchanged between the creators of DnD. But let’s start from the beginning.

The graphic design of the entire book is absolutely luxurious. The paper jacket has a beautiful design, and the hardback cover features an embossed logo. Inside, you'll find 4 bookmarks, as the book's scope is monumental. The pages alternate between modern commentary and materials from even before the DnD era. Everything is perfectly scanned and cleaned for comfortable reading, yet it retains the atmosphere of old documents and even the original handwriting of Gygax and Arneson.

The book is divided into 4 chapters, but don't be fooled—it won't take you through every edition from 1st to 5th. It starts back when Dungeons and Dragons didn't even exist, and Gygax was focused on wargaming.

In the first chapter, we look at the period after 1970 and examine scanned pages of the Chainmail rules, which was the first attempt to translate wargaming into a fantasy setting, focusing on individual characters instead of entire armies. It’s fascinating to see which elements appeared in these early drafts and survived into modern versions of not just DnD, but other RPGs and computer games as well—for example, Armor Class.

The second chapter introduces the game called Dungeons and Dragons in 1973. Here, you can see the first hand-drawn maps of Greyhawk, as well as a scan of the entire first draft of the official rules, which has never been published before.

The third chapter contains scans of the complete original Dungeons and Dragons rules as they were released in 1974 under TSR. All 3 manuals are included, and if you don't own this first original edition, it is definitely a very interesting and historically valuable piece of material.

The final fourth chapter is a real treat for all collectors, as it contains various articles and expansions, as well as the complete official expansion manuals for the 1st edition of DnD—Greyhawk, Blackmoor, and even Eldritch Wizardry.

Overall, this is an absolutely amazing product. One book contains all 6 original manuals for Dungeons and Dragons in great quality, along with a wealth of material from the era of DnD's creation and behind-the-scenes content. However, the book itself doesn't recommend playing with these rules, as they are the original editions. This 1st edition was later re-released as the "white box," which included various errata and corrections—that version is definitely better for actual gameplay.

As a collector who, in addition to the 5th edition, bought the 4th and 3.5 editions to keep track of DnD's evolution, this 1st edition release is an amazing experience. It's true that compared to other books like Lore and Legends or Art and Arcana, which I also highly recommend, you won't find stunning artwork or clear information across individual editions here, because 80% of the book consists of 50-year-old scanned papers written on a typewriter. But that only makes the historical contribution of this book more valuable.

author: Gergon