Holmes Day 2025

J. Eric Holmes at his chalkboard game table, contemplating miniatures and notes.
Taken by Tony Bernard for the 1979 L.A. Times article, "Fantasy Life in a Game Without End";
a cropped version appears with the article. Scan of the original photo courtesy Bill Galaxy.

For fans of the Holmes Basic Set, today is notable as it marks the birthday of its editor, J. Eric Holmes. And this year he would have been 95 years old, although sadly we lost him in 2010 at the age of 80.

To mark the occasion, here are some Holmes-ian highlights from the last year:

February

For Leap Day 2024, I shared a new monster inspired by Holmes' Sample Dungeon: the Giant Zenopus.

March

At Gary Con 2024, I ran two games, one of which was a session of the Forgotten Smugglers' Cave, my Ruined Tower of Zenopus-adjacent dungeon. Later in the year I worked on preparing this for publication, although I haven't been able to finish it yet.

April

At our local Scrum Con 2024, I ran the Forgotten Smugglers' Cave again, and also an impromptu fill-in session of the original Ruined Tower of Zenopus sample dungeon, which is always a blast.

May

May saw the publication of 50 Years of D&D, which includes an article, "Doctor Holmes I Presume?' How a California Neurology Professor Penned the first Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set", co-written by Tony Rowe and yours truly. Read more about the book here: 50 Years of D&D.

June

Pacesetter Games published the Islands of Peril, the latest adaptation of Holmes' original campaign maps and notes, to which I contributed a Foreword discussing the maps and notes on which it was based.

Wizkids promo photo. Source.

July

WizKids released a line of miniatures for the 50th anniversary of D&D, which included the Red Dragon, Blue Wizard and Green Knight from the cover of the Holmes Basic set. I have been somewhat frustrated with the availability of these figures, and haven't written a separate post about them on the blog, although I still might.

August 

I wrote about the return of the OSR zine Fight On #15, with an issue dedicated to Holmes, including an article by myself about how to Holmesify your OSR game.

September

I reviewed a Holmes Basic metal sign available from Ata-Boy via Amazon.

November

I wrote about the Coleman-Rider-Waite Deck tarot card The Tower, and its thematic similarities to the Tower of Zenopus.

December

I shared the "Tower of Xenopus", a writeup by Tony Stroppa of his adaptation of the Sample Dungeon for the Greek mythology-based Mazes & Minotaurs RPG.

January

Looking forward to Gary Con 2025, I wrote about the games I will be running, one of which is The Eye of Arzaz, Holmes' other sample dungeon from his 1981 book Fantasy Role-Playing Games.

 

The Making of OD&D: Half-Price Sale on Amazon

The Making of Orginal D&D is currently on sale for $49.99 on Amazon, which is 50% off the cover price ($99). This is the lowest price I've seen for the book so far, which came out back in July. It says "Limited Time Deal", but there's no date indicated, so I don't when it ends. If you've been on the fence due to the price here's your chance. Find the table of contents  below.

Find it here: 

The Making of Original Dungeons & Dragons: 1970-1977

See also these earlier posts:

Early Greyhawk Lore in the 1973 D&D Draft

"The Making of Original D&D: 1970-1977": Out Today! 

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

"The Making of Original D&D: 1970-1977": What Might the Precursors Be?

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

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

Playing at the World revised edition out in July 

Making of OD&D: Discounted at Game Nerdz

If you haven't picked up the Making of Orginal D&D, it's available at Game Nerdz for $70.47 plus shipping (if you get your order up to $75 you'll get free shipping). This is almost $20 cheaper than the current Amazon price of $89.35. The page says there are currently 26 copies in stock. I've ordered from Game Nerdz a few times before without problem. 

Find it here: 

The Making of Original Dungeons & Dragons: 1970-1977 

(includes affiliate link)

See also these earlier posts about the book:

Early Greyhawk Lore in the 1973 D&D Draft

"The Making of Original D&D: 1970-1977": Out Today! 

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

"The Making of Original D&D: 1970-1977": What Might the Precursors Be?

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

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

Playing at the World revised edition out in July

Making of OD&D: Sale for Prime Members

FYI, right now Amazon is offering the Making of Orginal D&D book for $71.49, as a "Prime Big Deal" for Prime Member which is almost $30 off the cover price $99.99, and almost $20 off the "regular" sale price ($89.36). Unfortunately I just noticed this sale and it appears it ends in about 5 hours (the Big Deal Days are Oct 8-9).

Find it here: 

The Making of Original Dungeons & Dragons: 1970-1977

See also these earlier posts:

Early Greyhawk Lore in the 1973 D&D Draft

"The Making of Original D&D: 1970-1977": Out Today! 

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

"The Making of Original D&D: 1970-1977": What Might the Precursors Be?

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

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

Playing at the World revised edition out in July

Reminder: The first volume of the revised Playing at the World is out in two days!

 

As a reminder, in just two days (July 30th), the first volume of the revised edition of Jon Peterson's Playing at the World, subtitled The Invention of Dungeons & Dragons, arrives from MIT Press with an amazing cover by legendary TSR artist Erol Otus. 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". 

You can find it here on Amazon, currently priced at $27.85, and with a pre-order price guarantee:

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

It will be followed next year (April 8th) by Volume 2: The Three Pillars of Role-Playing Games, which is "a deeper dive into the history of the setting, system, and character of D&D", and 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. 

The pre-order page for Volume 2 can be found here:

Playing at the World, 2nd Edition, Volume 2: The Three Pillars of Role-Playing Games

See also my earlier post about the release here, and see the Erol Otus art without the text here. 

The Making of OD&D book: $10 price drop on Amazon

FYI, Amazon is now offering the Making of OD&D book for $89.41, which is just over $10 less than the pre-order price of $99.99. Find it here: 

The Making of Original Dungeons & Dragons: 1970-1977

See also these earlier posts:

"The Making of Original D&D: 1970-1977": Out Today! 

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

"The Making of Original D&D: 1970-1977": What Might the Precursors Be?

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

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

Playing at the World revised edition out in July

"The Making of Original D&D: 1970-1977": Out Today!

 

Promo ad showing pages from the Greyhawk Supplement (1975)

Today is the day! As a reminder, today is the released date of highly anticipated book, The Making of Original Dungeons & Dragons: 1970-1977, a massive (almost 600 pages) tome reprinting the original D&D booklets & supplements; the original draft of D&D and a wealth of other related documents & correspondence. More details about the contents can be found in two of my earlier posts:

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

"The Making of Original D&D: 1970-1977": What Might the Precursors Be?

If you haven't ordered the book yet, it can be found here on Amazon:

The Making of Original Dungeons & Dragons: 1970-1977

Recent Promos:

The official D&D account has posted several promo photos over the last few weeks, including the one at the top of this post. Here are two of the others:

Promo ad showing pages from Chainmail 2nd Edition

Promo ad showing correspondence between Gygax & Arneson

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

Playing at the World revised edition out in July

The Making of OD&D Book: What Might the D&D "Precursors" Be?

 

The Making of OD&D comes out in less than a month, and the approximately 600-page tome was revealed "in the flesh" last week on the official D&D account on Twitter, with the above photo of an advance copy captioned: "The Making of Original Dungeons & Dragons... it's BIG!" 

If you haven't ordered the book yet, it can be found on Amazon for $99, and with a price-drop guarantee:

The Making of Original Dungeons & Dragons: 1970-1977

Based on the Table of Contents that I re-posted at the beginning of this month, let's take a closer at what might be in the interesting section "Part 1: Precursors", which covers the ancient era before the first draft of D&D (1973). I don't have any particular insider knowledge, so these are simply my best educated guesses based on titles alone:

   Grayte Wourmes (page 10) 

   Fittingly for a game that includes "Dragons" in the title, the Precursor section starts with material that is clearly from a series of articles about Dragons that Gary Gygax wrote in 1969-1970 for the Diplomacy zine Thangorodrim (named after the mountains home to Morgorth's fortress Angband), describing White, Black, Green, Blue and Mottled (aka Purple Worm) Dragons.

   Maps of the Great Kingdom (page 18)

    The use of plural "Maps" suggests this will include at least two maps. One may be the original Great Kingdom map from Domesday Book #9 (1970/1971), which was previously reprinted on page 32 of Playing at the World (2012) by Jon Peterson. 

    Another may be a later one showing the territories of the Great Kingdom; one version of this map was uncovered by Dave Megarry in 2017; see my post from that year titled "Megarry's Copy of the Great Kingdom Map".

    Medieval Weaponry in the Encyclopedia Britannica (page 20)

    In 2014, Jon Peterson wrote in a post on his Playing at the World blog that, "Gygax did indeed rely heavily on the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica for medieval information in the early 1970s for certain particulars, though that would be a story for another time". So it seems we are getting that story now. 

    I also note that on EnWorld in 2002, Gygax mentioned his "set of Eleventh Edition ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA that my most honored maternal grandfather bequeathed to me". The Eleventh Edition of EB has its own Wikipedia page.

   Chainmail's Fantasy Supplement (page 26)

    This is, obviously, the fantasy section that makes up about a quarter of the Chainmail miniatures rules. From the preview page that has been shown, the book will reprint the version from the 2nd Edition, published by Guidon Games in 1972.

    Gygax on Armor (page 46)

    

    This may be an article that Gygax wrote for Panzerfaust #43, April 1971, which Jon Peterson discussed on his blog in 2014.

    The Battle of the Brown Hills (page 50)

    This is a relatively well-known Chainmail scenario between the forces of Law and Chaos that Gygax wrote up for Wargamer's Newsletter #116, published in November 1971. These days you can play in it on a sand table as part of the Legends of Wargaming series run annually at Gary Con thanks to Paul Stormberg. This year it was run in the basement of 330 Center Street, where Gygax lived when he worked on the initial D&D rules.

    

    Arneson's "Medieval Braunstein" (page 54)

    In a 2014 post on the Playing at the World blog, Jon Peterson described a document with this same name "A surviving set of instructions for a 1970 medieval multiplayer game".

    

    Blackmoor Gazette and Rumermonger 2 (page 58)

    This is an issue of a campaign newsletter put out by Dave Arneson. The first issue can be seen here on the Playing at the World blog.

    

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

    

    An article by Dave Arneson that originally ran in Domesday Book #13 (July 1972), and was later reprinted in the First Fantasy Campaign supplement published by Judges Guild.

    The Wizard Gaylord (page 64)

    

    Likely the same "surviving character sheet from the Blackmoor Campaign, that of Pete Gaylord's character the Wizard of the Wood (best known from the brief biography in First Fantasy Campaign)" that previously appeared on page 367 of the Playing at the World book (2012).

    Loch Gloomen (page 68)

    

    Blackmoor historian Dan Boggs described, in a 2014 post on his blog Hidden in Shadows, how in the spring of 1972, play in the Blackmoor campaign moved to an area known Loch Gloomen, or Lake Gloomy. Material from this era appears in a section titled "Loch Gloomen" in the First Fantasy Campaign. So this is likely some of the surviving original material from this era written by Arneson.

    Outdoor Survival (page 72)

    

    Excerpts from the rules of the board game Outdoor Survival, published by Avalon Hill, which was in the list of recommended Equipment in OD&D Vol 1 (Men & Magic) and heavily influenced the rules for Wilderness Exploration in Vol 3 (The Underworld and Wilderness Adventures).

    Gygax/Arneson Blackmoor Correspondence (page 76)

    Personal letters between Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson prior to the development of the first draft of D&D.

See also these earlier posts:

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

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

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

Playing at the World revised edition out in July

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) (Read more about what these documents are here)

    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 other posts:

The Making of OD&D Book: What Might the "Precursors" Be?

"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