Arneson's Early Thoughts on OD&D

This month marks the 49th anniversary of a debut demonstration game of the newly published Dungeons & Dragons that Arneson ran at the University of Minnesota.  He and his friends were clearly eager to showcase "their" newly published game, but as is often the case when more than one person creates a product, there were some things in the booklets Arneson would rather have handled differently.  

In a letter Arneson wrote to fellow gamer Scott Rich he asked Rich to send in a paragraph to Jim Lurvey's Great Plains Game Players Newsletter explaining the things in D&D he had different ideas about.  Arneson's paragraph was published in Issue 16 on pages 19 and 20.  The content provides an all too brief but nonetheless fascinating early look at Arnesons thoughts on the game. 

Arneson to Scott Rich

“There was also a certain amount of communication breakdown in D&D over populating Dungeon Levels and the wandering creatures therein. For one thing the weaker creatures are on the upper levels but the encounter table compensates their weaknesses by giving them higher numbers, which is OK out in the open but not in the Dungeons. Also the wandering creatures are supposed to be wandering in levels where they would normally be found inhabiting, and again in somewhat smaller levels. Now Blackmoor was not set up as a totally random Dungeon originally but with a overall plan and scheme in mind, not just a meatgrinder for adventurers. This gets me a lot of complaints about lack of action and no treasure (everyone keeps going to the same rooms and I refuse refill them to please them). Another point of mixup was that players were not intended to become harder to hit and take more damage as they progress. Instead they were to take the same amount of hits all the time (with the exceptions of spells, magic, etc.) while becoming more talented in inflicting hits and avoiding the same. This was a great equalizing influence. I should note that I gave them all about twice the potential number of hits (one die roll for the number of dice you roll is a three meaning you cast three die 3, 4, 2 meaning that you take nine hits (but you could take as many as 36 hits). Also the number of hits you could take were partially in relation to the of points the person possesses.”

Analysis

"There was also a certain amount of communication breakdown in D&D over populating Dungeon Levels and the wandering creatures therein. For one thing the weaker creatures are on the upper levels but the encounter table compensates their weaknesses by giving them higher numbers, which is OK out in the open but not in the Dungeons."

This letter was really quite a surprise to me when I first was able to read a copy, in the sense that it had been mentioned a few times here and there, leading one to expect a bitter tone from Arneson with a laundry list of strong complaints about the "communication breakdown" and what was wrong with the first printing of D&D.  That's what the hype had been, painting Arneson as something of a jerk.  The truth, as is readily apparent and often the case in life, is much more banal.   The paragraph is short and perhaps disappointingly drama free.  Arneson expresses only a "certain amount" of communication breakdown regarding only the stocking of monsters in dungeons, and a "point of mixup" regarding how he envisioned Hit Points and Damage in combat.  From the whole game Arneson finds only these two areas to be important enough to mention that he envisioned them differently - hardly the wailings of an injured man with a list of complaints.  What we do have however, is some fascinating ideas, so lets dive in.

  

Part 1 Setting up the Dungeon.                

"For one thing the weaker creatures are on the upper levels" - Arneson is telling us here he doesn't like that weaker creatures only appear on upper dungeon levels.  We can infer from that that he preferred an even distribution, or at least a distribution that allowed for the possibility of any creature to appear on any level.  That is precisely what we see in the original, pre-D&D levels of Blackmoor dungeon, where dwarves and goblins might inhabit the same level as Balrogs and Dragons and lowly orcs could be rulers of the very bottom level.

" the encounter table compensates their weaknesses by giving them higher numbers, which is OK out in the open but not in the Dungeons."  Arneson is telling us that dungeon level should not be a factor regarding the number of creatures encountered.  Thus the complex formulas such as in the Holmes rulebook for calculating the number of wandering monsters encountered based upon the size and experience level of the adventurers was not something Arneson approved of.

". Also the wandering creatures are supposed to be wandering in levels where they would normally be found inhabiting"  Arneson is telling us that only the monsters already "inhabiting" the level can become  wandering monsters.  That's precisely what one sees in Temple of the Frog.  There the monsters in each room are given a chance to be absent when the PC's arrive, or encountered wandering nearby. 

"and again in somewhat smaller levels."  This is a little tougher to catch his meaning.  I think the "smaller levels" he is referring back to "again" is meant as the antithesis of the higher numbers he disliked above.  In other words "in somewhat smaller levels (amounts) than the idea of having larger numbers compensate for dungeon level". 

So rather than talking about the size of the dungeon (smaller levels) or the Hit Dice of the monsters (smaller levels) he is talking about numbers appearing (smaller levels of group numbers).  Dungeon size really makes no sense.  Hit Dice makes some sense if taken to mean smaller totals, but no sense if taken to mean only low power monsters should wander.  So by smaller levels I think he is trying to express that the overall strength of wandering monsters should not be jacked up to match that of the Player Characters.  That makes total sense if the wandering monster is but a subset of some group inhabiting the dungeon level - a trio of goblins wandering out of a room, for example.  It is a naturalistic explanation of the appearance the monster.

"Now Blackmoor was not set up as a totally random Dungeon originally but with a overall plan and scheme in mind, not just a meatgrinder for adventurers."

Here is the heart of Arneson's objection.  The tables of U&WA create a random, meatgrinder dungeon.  Arneson's point has been echoed more recently by Dan "Delta" Collins, in a rather intense analysis he undertook with computer modeling. HERE 

Delta's analysis shows just how deadly the U&WA methods will be to parties of an experience level equal to that of the dungeon level they are on, but I think Arneson's objection wasn't just to the deadliness of it, but also, and perhaps mostly, to the senselessness of it.  He points out that Blackmoor was set up according to a plan, with forethought, and not just as a monster zoo. Arneson of course, allows for some random input, but expects the result to fall within the confines of an "overall plan and scheme". 

Looking at the surviving original keys we have of Blackmoor dungeon, I'm not sure if Arneson's players would agree that their dungeon delves were "meatgrinder free", but at least we know Arneson's ideal, and it may well have been the voice of experience talking in this case.

  

" This gets me a lot of complaints about lack of action and no treasure (everyone keeps going to the same rooms and I refuse refill them to please them)."

Here Arneson equates having an overall plan for the dungeon with restraint in restocking areas previously cleaned out by the adventurers.  From this we can infer that Arneson was granting agency to his dungeon inhabitants.  He reasoned that the monsters would avoid an area heavily trafficked by PC's, and act with some intelligence to the threats occurring in their environment.

 

 

Part 2 Attack and Defense.

Another point of mixup was that players were not intended to become harder to hit and take more damage as they progress.  Instead they were to take the same amount of hits all the time (with the exceptions of spells, magic, etc.) while becoming more talented in inflicting hits and avoiding the same. This was a great equalizing influence. I should note that I gave them all about twice the potential number of hits (one die roll for the number of dice you roll is a three meaning you cast three die 3, 4, 2 meaning that you take nine hits (but you could take as many as 36 hits). Also the number of hits you could take were partially in relation to the of points the person possesses..”

 This section has a lot of amiguity, but let's start with that first sentence.

" Another point of mixup was that players were not intended to become harder to hit and take more damage as they progress.  

The and is underlined in the newsletter on purpose, of course, and I take that purpose to indicate both these things were not intended to go together.  Arneson is saying if you have a character who is harder to hit, then that character should not also be able to take more damage.  It should be one or the other, not both.  Arneson is arguing that both together is a "double dipping" of the defensive value.

" Instead they were to take the same amount of hits all the time (with the exceptions of spells, magic, etc.) while becoming more talented in inflicting hits and avoiding the same. This was a great equalizing influence."

Arneson here indicates he decided against the "take more damage" growth in hit points (except increases that are granted by magic).  Which means he advocated for a combat mechanic that made characters get progressively harder to hit, while at the same time increasing the characters damage dealing ability by level.

Note that in D&D character's do not become harder to hit as they level up.  The "hit class" of a character or monster depends on their Armor Class, so a 1st level character and a 10th level character are both hit at the same TN depending on their AC.  Nor do they inflict damage at different amounts when using the same weapon.

When Arneson coupled "becoming more talented in inflicting hits" quote with "and avoiding the same", it seems as if he could well be speaking of a single matrix.  This would be a matrix where level was pitted against level so that a higher level character could hit a lesser level more easily, and be less easily hit by a lesser level.  I will note in passing that "X fragments" apparently had such a matrix per Jon Peterson, and we do see similar ideas expressed in other games.  For example, warriors in Barker's Empire of the Petal Throne deal out greater damage against lesser level opponents.

Theoretically, we could also be talking about a ratio here, for example a Hit Dice ratio, where a 4 HD creature had a 2:1 advantage over a 2 HD creature.  That method would seem to be open to a number of complications but may be an idea worth exploring.  

Perhaps most intriguing of all, the Adventures in Fantasy system co-authored by Arneson with Richard Snider also conforms to the principals Arneson outlined here.  Hit points are indeed fixed, being derived from a formula using 3 ability scores.  HP can only be increased a bit through physical conditioning.  

Likewise, one component of the fairly convoluted combat procedure involves the levels of the combatants being compared and the difference between them applied to the "to hit" chance in favor of the combatant with the higher level.  For example, a 10th level human fighting a 5th level human (difference of 5) results in an added 5% chance being given to the 10th level fighter to hit, whereas the 5th level fighter has 5% subtracted from their chance to hit.  Perhaps this AiF system reflects what Arneson had in mind, but perhaps not quite in the manner it appears in these rules.  Level differences between opponents may often be quite small, especially in D&D style levels, and one or two levels only equals 1 or 2 percent - hardly worth caring about.  Given that Blackmoor, at least at one point, was restricted to 20 experience levels, we could imagine a d20 system where you had to get a base 10 to hit (for example) and you subtracted or added level difference from that.  Then even a 1 level difference becomes significant.  Such a level difference adjustment would have to be capped at 10, in this example, but AiF itself has a cap of 15.  So it's not impossible Arneson had something like this in mind.

Whatever the exact method, why is this a "great equalizing influence"?  I think what Arneson meant here was not that some sort of level vs level mechanic was an equalizer, but rather, having a fixed HP number was.  The idea, I suppose, being that anybody, regardless of level, could be killed by a similar blow if it manages to land.

" I should note that I gave them all about twice the potential number of hits (one die roll for the number of dice you roll is a three meaning you cast three die 3, 4, 2 meaning that you take nine hits (but you could take as many as 36 hits).

Though the language here is ambiguous Arneson is no doubt explaining a hit point method he envisioned for D&D.  Since the text above indicates he intended Hit Points to be a permanent number, we can see that characters would range from 1 to 36 HP with an average of 11 HP.   Maybe this average is what he had in mind when he described it as "twice the potential number of hits", because a typical 1st level character had a potential of 6 maximum HP.

As a final comment I should remind the reader that Arneson wrote this letter specifically about changes he had in mind for the D&D rules after the rules had already been published.  We should not infer that any of the things Arneson proposed here were actually play tested or used to any great extent and we must especially guard against assuming that they bore any particular resemblance to Arneson's pre-D&D Blackmoor procedures.   We know, for example that the HP method he describes here was not that of 1972 Blackmoor, and we shouldn't expect the combat method to be either - though it certainly would not be impossible.  Arneson, like all of us, continued to think of ways to build and improve his game.