Fifty Years of D&D: Table of Contents

Fifty Years of Dungeons & Dragons has been out for two days now, and copies have begun to arrive in the mail. Here you can see my co-author Tony's copy, together with his collection of reference material for the essay we wrote (Tony has one of the best collections anywhere of J. Eric Holmesiana). Read more about our essay and the book both here and on Tony's blog. If you haven't order your copy yet, you can get it here on Amazon:

50 Years of Dungeons & Dragons

And I'm happy to announce that the full Table of Contents can now be found on the MIT Press site here, along with a preview of the first page of each chapter. For convenience, I've copied the ToC over to here & annotated with links to other books by a few of the authors that I'm aware of:

PREFACE - page xi
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS - page xiii

1. Is This The Golden Age Of Dungeons & Dragons? - page 1
by Premeet Sidhu, Marcus Carter, and José P. Zagal (co-author of the new Seeing Red: Nintendo's Virtual Boy, also from MIT Press)

Introduction To Designer Vignettes - page 13
by Sam Mannell

FIFTY YEARS OF DUNGEONS & DRAGONS 
Designer Vignettes I - page 15

2. Fantasy Games At Fifty: An Academic Memoir - page 17
by Gary Alan Fine (author of the 1983 book Shared Fantasy)

3. Exploration And Experience: The Game Changers - page 23
by Jon Peterson (author of The Elusive Shift, Game Wizards, and the forthcoming second edition of Playing at the World).

4. Combat In Dungeons & Dragons: A Short History Of Design Trajectories - page 43
by Evan Torner

5. “Doctor Holmes, I Presume?”: How A California Neurology Professor Penned The First Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set - page 63
by Tony A. Rowe And Zach Howard

6. Reflections On The Open Game License: An Interview With Ryan Dancey - page 79
by Michael Iantorno

7. Playing Custom: A Curious History Of Dungeons & Dragons–Based Digital Games Modifications - page 91
by Mateusz Felczak

8. A Return To The Magic Circle: Dungeons & Dragons And Friendship & Magic Fifty Years On - page 109
by Stephen Webley

INFLUENCING DUNGEONS & DRAGONS

Designer Vignettes II - page 119

9. “You’re Going To Be Amazing”: The Mercer Effect And Performative Play In Dungeons & Dragons - page 121
by Esther Maccallum-Stewart

10. The Other D&D: Religion(S) In Dungeons & Dragons From Deities & Demigods To Today - page 141
by Adrian Hermann

11. Spelling With Dice: The Role Of Dungeons & Dragons In Contemporary Speculative Fiction 161
by Dimitra Nikolaidou

12. Classrooms And Dragons: Learning From Dungeons & Dragons - page 179
by Premeet Sidhu

13. An Ensemble Of (Role-)Players? Exploring The Influence Of Performance On Dungeons & Dragons - page 197
by David Harris And Josiah Lulham

14. Forging Family Through Queer Dungeons & Dragons - page 211
by Jay Malouf-Grice

CRITICALLY PLAYING DUNGEONS & DRAGONS

Designer Vignettes III - page 229

15. “Race” And Race: Longitudinal Trends In Dungeons & Dragons Character Creation - page 231
by Amanda Cote And Emily Saidel

16. Hack The Orcs, Loot The Tomb, And Take The Land: Reflections On Settler Colonialism, Indigeneity, And Otherwise Possibilities Of Dungeons & Dragons - page 259
by Daniel Heath Justice

17. Seeking The Unimaginable: Rules, Race, And Adolescent Desire In Dungeons & Dragons - page 275
by Aaron Trammell And Antero Garcia

18. Defamiliarizing Dungeons & Dragons: Playing Out Western Fantasy In Singapore - page 283
by Kellynn Wee

19. Soft Communities And Vicarious Deviance In Dungeons & Dragons - page 301
by Victor Raymond (who blogs at the Sandbox of Doom) and Gary Alan Fine

FUTURES

Designer Vignettes IV - page 323

20. D&D&D&D&D: Imagining Dungeons & Dragons At 150 And Beyond - page 325

by Jonathan Walton

Fifty Years of D&D: Out Today!

As I wrote three weeks ago, today is the release date for Fifty Years of Dungeons & Dragons, a new retrospective compilation published by The MIT Press celebrating the half-centennial of D&D. It includes a chapter that I co-wrote, along with Tony Rowe, about the work of J. Eric Holmes. For more details, see my earlier post, "50 Years of D&D: Forthcoming Book from MIT Press".

The book is now available for regular ordering from various booksellers. Here is the Amazon order page:

50 Years of Dungeons & Dragons

"The Making of Original D&D: 1970-1977": Table of Contents

Above is a screenshot of the Table of Contents for the forthcoming book, The Making of Original Dungeons & Dragons: 1970-1977, which I've written about previously. This was shown at a 50th Anniversary Panel at Gary Con in March, and later shared on D&D Beyond, and now can be seen on the Amazon order page, where the book is available for pre-order for $99, and with a price-drop guarantee:

The Making of Original Dungeons & Dragons: 1970-1977

There's over 576 pages of content in this book, and the page numbers confirm the previously reported but still-stunning news that the tome will include all or most of the original 1973 OD&D draft (pages 84-181), the three OD&D LBBs (pages 202-328), the Greyhawk supplement (pages 356-415), the Blackmoor supplement (pages 430-497), the Eldritch Wizardry supplement (pages 506-569), plus a slew of material from correspondence, drafts, player notes, and magazine articles.

For posterity (including future searchability), here is a text transcript of the contents, into which I've inserted some of the promotional images for the book in their appropriate places:

Table of Contents

Preface (page 4)
Foreword (page 6)

Pages 8 and 9

Part 1: Precursors (page 9)

    Grayte Wourmes (page 10)

    Maps of the Great Kingdom (page 18)

    Medieval Weaponry in the Encyclopedia Britannica (page 20)

    Chainmail's Fantasy Supplement (page 26)

    

Pages 28 and 29

    

    Gygax on Armor (page 46)

    The Battle of the Brown Hills (page 50)

    Arneson's "Medieval Braunstein" (page 54)

    Blackmoor Gazette and Rumermonger 2 (page 58)

    "Points of Interest in Black Moor" (page 60)

    The Wizard Gaylord (page 64)

    Loch Gloomen (page 68)

    Outdoor Survival (page 72)

    Gygax/Arneson Blackmoor Correspondence (page 76)

Part 2: The 1973 Draft of Dungeons & Dragons (page 79)

    Greyhawk and the Revised Great Kingdom Map (page 80)

    The First Draft of D&D (page 84)

    The Twin Cities Draft (page 182)

    The Mornard Fragments (page 188)

    The "Clean-Up Crew" (page 198)

Part 3: Original Dungeons & Dragons (page 201)

    Expanding the Rules (page 201)

    Draft Versus Published Version (page 202)

    The Brown Box and the White Box (page 202)

Pages 288 and 289

Part 4: Articles & Additions  (page 329)

    Monsters' Attacks and Damage (page 330)

    Greyhawk Player Maps (page 336)

    Gygax in Europa (page 338)

    The Strategic Review 1 (page 348)

    Greyhawk (page 356)

Pages 199, ?, and 414

    Excerpts from the Strategic Review (page 416)

    Blackmoor (page 430) 

    Additional Excerpts from the Strategic Review (page 498)

    Eldritch Wizardry (page 506)

    The Dragon (page 570)

    Gods, Demi-gods and Heroes (page 574)

Afterword: A Whole New Game (page 576)

While it remains jaw-dropping that WOTC is publishing a book of this nature, and the contents themselves are far beyond what anyone would have predicted, just for completeness sake I will note a few items that are apparently not included:

---The contents only list Chainmail's Fantasy Supplement, so it looks like it will not include the entirety of Chainmail, making it a bit less useful as a complete resource for OD&D, as running OD&D using Chainmail combat also requires the non-Fantasy portions. However, you can get a reprint of the complete Chainmail for less than $10 at DMs Guild, so it's easy to find this material.

---Gods, Demigods & Heroes is listed in the contents, but starts only two pages before the Afterward, so obviously this section is just a brief look at this supplement rather than the whole book.

---There's no mention of Holmes Basic in the contents; thus, if there's any coverage it will the be in Afterword ("A Whole New Game"). I haven't seen an exact page count for the book, so I don't know how long the Afterword is. Based on the originally announced title for the book, which included the dates "1970-1976", I wasn't expecting anything about Holmes Basic in it; but when the title was tweaked to "1970-1977", it seemed possible that it might get at least a page or two of its own, possibly discussing the Holmes Manuscript, which is based purely on OD&D. 

As noted above the book is over 575 pages as it is, so I'm not really surprised that there was indeed some limit to the expansiveness of the material that they could include.

See also these earlier posts:

"How Dungeons & Dragons Started" (video about the book)

"The Making of Original D&D: 1970-1977": Everything we know about this upcoming WOTC book

Megarry's Copy of the Great Kingdom Map

50 Years of D&D: Forthcoming Book from MIT Press

Over the past five years, The MIT Press has curated an impressive series of Game Studies books, including several of great interest to myself and readers of this blog: Appendix N: the Eldritch Roots of Dungeons & Dragons (published by Strange Attractions and distributed by MIT Press), and several by Jon Peterson: The Elusive Shift, Game Wizards, and the forthcoming second edition of Playing at the World. The full list of books in their series can be viewed here.

The latest book in the series, out on May 14th, is Fifty Years of Dungeons & Dragons, an anthology tied to this year's half-centennial of D&D. It contains various chapters written by the likes of Jon Peterson, Gary Alan Fine (author of Shared Fantasy), and Daniel Justice, and edited by Premeet Sidhu, Marcus Carter and José P. Zagal, all academics at various universities. 

Having written the above, I find myself a bit stunned to also announce that I was able to contribute to this volume...! 

Specifically, among the contents is a chapter on J. Eric Holmes that I have co-written, along with Tony Rowe of the Cryptic Archivist blog, titled "'Doctor Holmes I Presume?' How a California Neurology Professor Penned the first Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set".

I haven't seen a physical copy yet, but the book is slated to be a 392-page, 6 by 9 inch papeback with 16 black & white illustrations and the color cover posted above (I'm not sure who the artist is, but I will update this when I find out). I will share the full contents of the book in a future post (Update: the Table of Contents are now posted here).

It's currently available for pre-order on Amazon ($34.99), and with a price drop guarantee:

50 Years of Dungeons & Dragons

And there is also a Kindle version available for $25.99. Other booksellers offering it can be found through the MIT Press page.

Many thanks to Tony for asking if I wanted to work on this with him, submitting the proposal for our chapter, and generally organizing and driving things forward!

See also:

Playing at the World Revised Edition Out in July, with a cover by Erol Otus!

"The Making of OD&D: 1970-1977": Everything We Know About this Book

Update:

Tony has now also written about the book: "Book update: Fifty Years of Dungeons & Dragons"

50 Years of Dungeons & Dragons: Table of Contents

Arts & Arcana on sale - get the original Tomb of Horrors

 

The Special Edition of the D&D artbook Arts & Arcana is currently selling for $69.99 on Amazon, plus when I look at the page I'm also seeing a coupon for $23.33, making the total only $46.66. If you can get it for this, it's a great deal for a set that has a list price of $125. 

The real hidden gem of the set is a reprint of the original OD&D tournament version of Tomb of Horrors, in a digest format resembling the LBBs. FWIW, the page says only 10 copies are left in stock.

Arts & Arcana Special Edition

See also my earlier posts:

Locations for the Tomb of Horrors on the Great Kingdom Map

Delta's D&D Hotspot: Tomb of Ra-Hotep

Update:

Amazon is now sold out of the $69.99/$46.66 copies; I'm not sure if they will be adding any more. There are still used copies available on the Amazon page that are being sold by third parties.

Erol Otus cover illustration for Playing at the World 2E

Yesterday on FB, artist Erol Otus shared his original, unadorned illustration for the cover of the first volume of the revised of second edition of Playing at the World by Jon Peterson, due out this July. Per Erol's post, the illustration is meant to call "to mind monochromatic publications from the earlier days like “The Strategic Review” and Fanzines". 

Given the blue color, might I add the Holmes Basic rulebook to that list?

See my previous post for more info about the revised edition, which can be pre-ordered from Amazon here:

Playing at the World, 2nd Edition, Volume 1: The Invention of D&D

Playing at the World revised edition out in JulyWith a cover by Erol Otus!

Cover by Erol Otus...!

Playing at the World, Jon Peterson's 2012 groundbreaking history of the origin of RPGs, has been out of print for a number of years, with secondhand copies going for increasingly higher prices, but as I reported previously a revised second edition is coming later this year from MIT Press. 

The expanded book will now be split into two volumes, with the first one, Volume 1: The Invention of Dungeons & Dragons, coming out on July 30th of this year. Per the publisher info, this volume "distills the story of how the wargaming clubs and fanzines circulating around the upper Midwest in the 1970s culminated in Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson’s seminal role-playing game, D&D". 

The MIT Press and Amazon pre-order pages have now been updated with the cover art: a fantastic illustration by the legendary old school TSR artist Erol Otus (shown above)*. The first volume is now available for pre-order from Amazon for $29.95, and with a price guarantee:

Playing at the World, 2nd Edition, Volume 1: The Invention of D&D

I've pre-ordered it myself.

It will be followed later by Volume 2: The Three Pillars of Role-Playing Games, "a deeper dive into the history of the setting, system, and character of D&D". This appears to correspond to chapters 2-4 of the original edition, which were: 2: Setting - The Medieval Fantasy Genre; 3: System - The Rules of the Game; and 4: Character - Roles and Immersion. 

*Thanks for captainjapan on the OD&D74 forums for this news.