Continuing the celebration of the 50th anniversary of Dungeons & Dragons, The Making of the Original Dungeons & Dragons 1970-1977 provides another entry for your “gigantic D&D books” shelf. This isn’t the first ‘origins of D&D’ book that Wizards of the Coast has published recently – 2018’s Dungeons & Dragons Art & Arcana: A Visual History was amazing – but The Making of the Original Dungeons & Dragons is still something unique. Rather than being a book of history, it is a book of primary sources – it does not tell you much about the original D&D but simply shows you, because the book consists almost entirely of scans of (1) the original 1974 version of Dungeons & Dragons; (2) material that predates the original D&D; and (3) publications from the following few years that introduced key concepts.
As such, The Making of the Original Dungeons & Dragons is more of an artifact and conversation piece that it is a book to be read from cover-to-cover. The fun for me was not in trying to read straight through the entirety of various old iterations of D&D – they are disorganized, contradictory, and pretty un-fun by modern D&D standards. (The book actively discourages the reader from trying to play the original rules; Wizards has created updated versions of the original 1974 White Box if you want to try to play something like OD&D.) What was fun was picking out the bit and bobs that have gone on to be staples for decades – spells, magic items, and monsters that have appeared in game after game.
The highlight of The Making of the Original Dungeons & Dragons might be the inclusion of the original 1973 type-written draft of Dungeons & Dragons, with hand-written notes and corrections from Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, with supplementation for additional pre-publication drafts. It is, unsurprisingly, repetitive when compared to the contents of the final published version (again, this is not a book designed to be read cover-to-cover). But it’s as early a version of D&D as you’re going to get, and you get that kick out of seeing the first versions of fireball, arcane lock, detect magic, cure light wounds, find traps, elven cloaks, boots of speed, purple worms, etc. (the spells selection seems to have the most instances of interesting things that have carried over the entire time). The highlight of the post-1974 White Box is the the first D&D campaign setting book, Greyhawk, which has another selection of now-iconic spells (shield, magic missile, anything above sixth level), monsters (the beholder!), and items, plus thieves and paladins. Artifacts and more followed in Eldritch Wizardry, another notable inclusion.
The Making of the Original Dungeons & Dragons 1970-1977 is a fun addition to the collection of someone who wants the cool factor of having copies of the very earliest D&D books around, including those pre-publication drafts (and without having to pay out for an original copy of the White Box). To me it’s just kind of neat to be able to looking at these founding documents and see the origins of this game I’ve loved for all of these decades, as much as those founding documents are definitely flawed. If you want a book to just read about the history of D&D and get a more visual experience as the game’s art improved, I would check out Art & Arcana: A Visual History.
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