Part 4: "...And a Half-Human, Half-Serpent Naga"

Part 4 of a comparison of Holmes' manuscript with the published Basic Set rulebook. Turn to page 7 of your 'Blue Book' and follow along...

Character Record, Hit Points, Gold: These sections are not titled in the original manuscript or the published rulebook. There are no changes to the first paragraph about recording your character, the single sentence that follows it, or the final paragraph about rolling for gold. The third paragraph about hit points has some changes in the first half, with regard to formatting and clarification. Here is the original:

And here is the published version (1st print):

           "First generate a random number for "hit points." To generate the numbers roll the special dice in this game — 8-sided, 6-sided, 4-sided. This represents the amount of damage the character can take. For the number of "hit points" roll the proper sided die mentioned below. The die pertaining to players' character type is rolled once per level of experience. (See the section EXPERIENCE POINTS AND EXPERIENCE LEVELS.) Fighters, including dwarves, generate random numbers from 1 to 8, clerics from 1 to 6, and magic-users and thieves from 1 to 4. Elves use a spread of from 1 to 6 as they are both fighters (1-8) and magic-users ( 1 -4). Although hobbits are always fighters, they also use a 1 to 6 point spread due to their size. Note that constitution can add or subtract hit points, but no character can have less than 1 point per level regardless of subtractions."

Holmes' sentence near the middle, which reads "One way to generate the numbers is to roll the special dice - 8 sided, 6 sided or 4 sided, but numbered cards can be drawn from a set, or some other system used" has been edited to make the use of the dice included in the game the standard, and moved to be the second sentence of the paragraph: "To generate the numbers roll the special dice in this game - 8-sided, 6-sided, 4-sided". In addition, TSR adds three clarifying sentences starting with "For the number of "hit points"... 

Notably, Holmes' original includes the information that the "alternating elves" use a d6 for hit points. As far as I can tell he doesn't clarify when the d6 is rolled for elves - when one class gains 2nd level or both? Presumably an elf could choose to only gain levels in one class, so I guess the d6 would just be rolled whenever a higher level is gained in either class.

COST OF EQUIPMENT & WEAPONS: This section doesn't have a title in Holmes' original, so it is not separated from the preceding paragraphs. Holmes did have an entry in the Contents for "TABLE Equipment and Costs". TSR changed this entry to "COST OF WEAPONS AND EQUIPMENT" in the Contents, and imported the title, with "equipment" and "weapons" reversed, here.

Holmes very precisely copies the Equipment Table directly from the one in OD&D, Vol 1, down to the exact note at the end ("Other items cost may be calculated by comparing to similar items listed above"), with just a few changes. 

Five entries are dropped; four of these are the four highest price entries in the original list, each 5,000 gold pieces or more and are all large sea-going vessels: Small Merchant Ship, Large Merchant Ship, Small Galley and Large Galley. Holmes presumably dropped these as being outside the scope of Basic level adventuring. 

The other one that was dropped is Belladonna (5 gold pieces), possibly because there was no further explanation for it or Wolvesbane in Original D&D, and Holmes may have viewed that as confusing or duplicative. Holmes also added a note to the entry for Lycanthrope that stated "All were-creatures are repelled by wolfsbane"; this is its first official description in D&D. Belladonna is first explained in the Monster Manual, which states, "If the person is carrying belladonna there is a 25% chance that this will cure the affliction if eaten within one hour. Note that this infusion will incapacitate the person for 1-4 days and there is a 1% chance of the poison in it killing the creature". This is the closest to an OD&D description for belladonna.

Otherwise, the Manuscript retains the order of items in the list, and the prices. This includes the weapons from Men & Magic in the table, which appears random at first glance but is actually in the same order as the twelve different weapon categories Chainmail, from shortest to longest (Pole Arms & Halberd go together). 

In Holmes, the price of a spear is 2 gold pieces, which one may think is a change from the 1 gp price in the LBBs. However, a spear is only price at 1 gp in later printings of the LBBs; the first printing had it  at 2 gp. This is evidence that Holmes had an early printing  of the LBBs. In the next iteration of Basic, Moldvay increased the price by one more gold piece, to 3 gp.

Holmes split the original table into two halves, but this may just be an artifact of the formatting in the manuscript, where he put the items that didn't fit on the first page on another page, and included the same headers. TSR retained this formatting as published, resulting in the table being split. 

As published, the table has no changes other than minor formatting (changing the headers from underlined to bold, capitalizing "Mail" in "Chain-type mail"), and the addition of one item added by Gygax: Tinder Box, with a price of 3 gold pieces. This is its first appearance in a D&D rulebook.

ADDITIONAL CHARACTER CLASSES: This was always one of my favorite sections, and provided a lot of flavor to the rulebook. Back when I only had Holmes Basic it provided a glimpse of the exciting material to come in AD&D. There are some interesting changes here. I'll quote Holmes' original in full:

Points of Interest:

(1) As many had guessed, in the first paragarph Holmes was just describing what was already available in OD&D. TSR simply changed his "DUNGEONS & DRAGONS, and the various supplements" to "ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS".

(2) No witch! Holmes does not have the famous reference to the witch being a subclass of magic-user, which puzzled many kids when they got AD&D and found it wasn't there. Gygax has said that he was never planning on adding a witch class to AD&D:

"That mention slipped by me, and all I can assume was that either Eric was planning to force such a class upon me, or else someone editing the work thought it a good joke to play. i never had a PC class of that sort in mind for the game."
-Gygax on Enworld in 2005, see here for a link to the original post

So now it appears that "someone else editing the work" added the reference to the witch.

(3) "seven basic classes": Holmes' terminology here, which treats dwarves, elves and hobbits as classes along with fighter, magic-user, cleric and thief, is in line with the "race as class" concept that was further developed in Moldvay Basic. However, earlier in the manuscript Holmes included references to the rules for non-human thieves in AD&D, so I don't think too much should be read into this with regard to Holmes' views that the non-human races are classes. Notably, the revised paragraph changes "seven basic classes" to "four basic classes and races", which is the only appearance of the word "race" in the first printing (the second edition adds the word to the new entry for Troglodytes).

(4) More examples of "anything" classes! Holmes original reads: "Thus, an expedition might include, in addition to the seven basic classes, an African witch doctor/magic-user, a centaur, an Amerindian medicine man/cleric, a lawful werebear, a Japanese Samurai fighting man and a half-human, half-serpent Naga". TSR cut out half of these, leaving the sentence as the familiar "a centaur, a lawful werebear, and a Japanese Samurai fighting man". All of these alternate classes were used by Holmes in his own games and are mentioned in one or another of his writings.

African witch doctor/magic-user: A witch doctor is part of Boinger and Zereth's party in The Adventure of the Lost City: Part One, Alarums & Excursions #17, November 1976.

Centaur: A centaur is a minor character that Boinger and Zereth meet in The Maze of Peril (1986, written earlier), and Holmes also mentions a centaur PC in his article "Confessions of a Dungeon Master" (Psychology Today, 1980).

Amerindian medicine man/cleric: An American Indian Cleric plays a prominent role in The Adventure of the Giant Chameleon, Alarums & Excursions #14, August 1976.

Lawful Werebear: A Beorning character is also mentioned briefly in the The Adventure of the Giant Chameleon. A Beorning character class appeared in The Manual of Aurania.

Japanese Samurai Fighting Man: A samurai is also part of the party in The Adventure of the Lost City. A samurai character class appeared DRAGON #3 (Oct 1976), and also in the Manual of Aurania.

Half-human, half-serpent Naga: A Naga PC is also mentioned in Confessions of a Dungeon Master. Nagas first appeared as a D&D monster in the Strategic Review #3 (Autumn 1975), but alternately Holmes may be referring to the Naga of Indian mythology, which have a mix of human and serpent traits but are not necessarily a human-headed snake.

UPDATE: Here's a relevant quote from Holmes from Dragon #52, when he was reviewing the new Moldvay Basic Set:

"Character classes: Player characters are restricted to being a Fighter, Cleric, Thief, Magic-User, Elf, Halfling or Dwarf. This probably covers the roles most beginning players want to try, but I am personally sorry to see the range of possibilities so restricted. The original rules (the three little brown books) specifically stated that a player could be a dragon if he wanted to be, and if he started at first level. For several years there was a dragon player character in my own game. At first level he could puff a little fire and do one die of damage. He could, of course, fly, even at first level. He was one of the most unpopular characters in the game, but this was because of the way he was played, not because he was a dragon. I enjoyed having dragons, centaurs, samurai and witch doctors in the game. My own most successful player character was a Dreenoi, an insectoid creature borrowed from McEwan’s Starguard. He reached fourth level (as high as any of my personal characters ever got), made an unfortunate decision, and was turned into a pool of green slime."

The rest of Holmes' article can be read at Sword & Shield.  

Continue on to Part 5: "Lawful, Neutral or Chaotic"
Or Go Back to Part 3: "Elves Must Decide"
Or Go Back to Start: The Holmes Manuscript