More Copyright Records

More copyright records related to Holmes Basic:

Monster & Treasure Assortment Set 1, included in the 1st edition Holmes set:

     This has a 2/15/77 publication date, indicating it was available before the Holmes Set. I've always had that impression, probably from something written on the Acaeum. M&TA Set 2 has the same publication date in the database, but Set 3 is listed as being published 5/10/78. This matches the Acaeum, which records a 1978 copyright date for Set 3. Was there really more than a year between the publication of the first two sets and the third one?

Edit: These dates do fit with the product lists for the first three printings of the Holmes rulebook. The first (1977) and second printing (Jan 1978) list the first two M&TA sets listed with prices (i.e., available for purchase), with the third as a "Future Release". The third printing (May 1978) has the third M&TA now listed with a price.

     The database doesn't have a record for the Dungeon Geomorphs Set 1, which was also included in the early Holmes sets. The Acaeum records a 1976 date for this product, which means that it may have been registered before the Copyright Office electronic records begin in 1978. Geomorphs Set II and III each have a 9/21/77 date, after the Basic Set.

Edit: On the other hand, all three Geomorphs sets are listed as available starting with first printing of the Holmes rulebook.

B1 In Search of the Unknown, included in the 2nd edition Holmes Set:

     This record indicates a 3/13/79 publication date. This seems late, as the 2nd Edition Holmes Basic rulebook is dated Nov 1978 on the title page, and also refers to B1 by name on page 39. On the other hand, the copyright information in the B1 module itself is dated 1979. Perhaps the Holmes Set that included the 2nd Edition rulebook and B1 was not actually available until March '79? Alternately, the B1 copyright record is incorrect, as the Acaeum seems to assume (dating the first print of B1 to Nov 78 despite the 1979 date). It's hard to know how accurate the registration records are, particularly because some of them were registered long after the fact; for example this B1 record was registered in 1983. Dragon magazine #22 (Feb '78) has a full-page advertisement for B1 but this doesn't really provide evidence either way.

B2 The Keep on the Borderlands, included in the 3rd edition Holmes Set:

     This record indicates a 7/2/80 publication date. This is also much later than I'd previously thought for B2. Again, the associated rulebook (3rd edition Bluebook) has a much earlier title page date (Dec 1979). And again, the module itself list the next year (here, 1980) for the copyright date, and the Acaeum indicates that it must be wrong. I'm not really sure. But if the 1st print of B2 didn't come out in July 1980, that doesn't leave much time for it be for sale until the Moldvay set comes out with a revised version (Feb 81, according to the copyright info).

Anonymous

    Saw Anonymous last night, the new "Who's the Real Shakespeare?" movie, and enjoyed it thoroughly. I don't believe the theories, but they make for an entertaining story, and they push them to the limit in this one. Lots of polearms, too.

TSR Basic Set copyright record

     Above is a record I've never looked up until now - the copyright registration for the Holmes Basic Set at the U.S. Copyright Office, which maintains the records (and is part of the Library of Congress).

     The database can be searched on-line here and includes registrations from 1978 to present. Some older titles are included if they were registered later, such as the Basic Set (registered 6/21/78). The "Basis of Claim" is "rev. text, ill. & compilation". This could refer to 2nd edition of the set (Nov 1978), but more likely just refers to the changes over the OD&D set. Each TSR product seems to have only a single record in the database, regardless of how many editions/printings. There's not another one for the Basic Set until the Moldvay Set, which has a listed publication date of 2/16/1981, giving us a date for the start of the end of the Holmes Era (the Holmes Basic Set was still available through TSR's Mail Order Hobby Shop until at least 1986).

     The most interesting piece of information in the copyright registration is the publication date of 7/10/77. This is the earliest date I've seen for the set, but doesn't necessarily mean it was available for sale at this time. The earliest advertisement I've seen is in the September 1977 issue of The Dragon (#9). This advertisement describes but doesn't actually show the set itself, just the cover art. IIRC, Dragon magazines were prepared a few months in advance, which could approximate the July 10 date. A big question is whether the set was for sale at Gen Con X in Aug 1977. There is a record of Holmes being at this Gen Con, although it wasn't until the next Aug that he was honored as a special guest for his editorial work. A few 1st print Basic Sets have been spotted with blank bottoms, and one hypothesis advanced on the Acaeum is that these represent early Gen Con releases (They could also simply be some extra copies where TSR ran out of printed box bottoms and substituted blank ones). I asked Tim Kask (organizer of Gen Con X) about this on Dragonsfoot, and he said it was a possibility but he couldn't remember any specifics. The date listed in the copyright record at least supports the possibility the set was available at Gen Con X.

Two new Hobbit books out today

   
     Each year produces a crop of new Tolkien-related books. Already having a decent collection of "Tolkien Studies" (the entire History of Middle-Earth series by Chris Tolkien; books by Tom Shippey, Douglas Anderson, Wayne Hammond & Christina Scull, John Rateliff and Charles Kane), I've grown selective about new acquisitions. But two books released today look promising. Both tie in with next year's 75th anniversary of the original publication of The Hobbit. They are currently only available in the UK but hopefully they will be released in the U.S.

- The Art of the Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Wayne Hammond & Christina Scull

     This is an book of art by Tolkien, like Hammond and Scull's earlier (and awesome) Artist and Illustrator. This one focuses solely on the art for the The Hobbit, containing "the complete collection of more than 100 Hobbit sketches, drawings, paintings and maps by J.R.R. Tolkien ... Some of these images are now published for the first time, and others for the first time in colour". And with a nice slipcover! (see picture above).

-The History of the Hobbit (One-Volume Edition) by J.R.R. Tolkien and John D. Rateliff

     This book combines the two volumes of the History of the Hobbit published in 2007 (Mr. Baggins and Return to Bag-End), with corrections and new additions. I have the originals and love to pick one up before bed and read one of the short essays by Rateliff on various Tolkien themes. In a recent long interview at Middle-Earth.Xenite.org, Rateliff said the following about the new edition:

 "...I spent this summer preparing the new edition that’ll be out soon (sometime later this month, I think). I’d prepared a new appendix (Appendix V: The Author’s Copies List) and what I call the Addendum several years back, but they needed a lot of work to see them through the press. Esp. the latter, which represents a few pages of new material by Tolkien, mainly dating from circa 1965-66 (found by Christopher Tolkien in one of his father’s copies of The Hobbit, but too late for me to include in the original printing).

This is a ‘new edition’ in that it adds some new material at the end and fixes errors where I’m aware of them. But it’s not a complete re-write: we weren’t able to re-typeset the whole, so I couldn’t add as much new material as I would have otherwise. For example, information I’d put up on my blog re. a Sixth and Seventh ring of invisibility that could have been among Tolkien’s sources for Bilbo’s ring is referenced in a daggered note referring people to the blog entry, since we weren’t able to squeeze whole new paragraphs into that chapter. A long piece on trolls turning to stone in Grettir’s Saga (which I owe to Marjorie Burns) and in a piece by Helen Buckhurst (which I owe to Doug Anderson) appears in abbreviated form. I’d also have liked to add more acknowledgments than there was room for, to thank all those who sent in errata by name. I was able to add about a page regarding a still-earlier form of Denham’s list. And the whole benefits from Charles Noad’s scrupulous proofing."

Dr. Holmes and the Cthulhu Mythos in Deities & Demigods

Every player of AD&D knows the story of how the Cthulhu Mythos was excised from later printings of Deities & Demigods ("Banned!" as some Ebay auctions would have you believe). Theories abound as to why this occurred, but what is little appreciated is the role Dr. Holmes played in co-authoring this material. In the Credits and Acknowledgments section of D&DG (pg 4), Holmes is thanked "especially for his help with the Cthulhu Mythos", but his contribution was more extensive than this implies.
    
Back in the summer of 1977 at Gen Con X, Dr. Holmes and Rob Kuntz met and discussed writing a summary of H.P. Lovecraft's mythology for a revision of Gods, Demigods & Heroes for AD&D. This was just prior to the initial release of the Basic Set edited by Dr. Holmes (Fall '77). Holmes and Kuntz corresponded several times, which resulted in a collaboration, "The Lovecraftian Mythos in Dungeons & Dragons", published in The Dragon #12 (Feb 1978). This article was presented in a Sorcerer's Scroll column by Rob Kuntz, but the introductory paragraph attributes it to "Dr. Holmes ... with additions by my humble self". Kuntz later wrote that the original draft was by Dr. Holmes and that he added "Hastur and a few others". A letter from a reader in The Dragon #14 criticized some details in the article, and was followed by a letter from Dr. Holmes in The Dragon #16 (May 1978) titled "A Rebuttal to "The Cthulhu Mythos Revisited"", which ends with an editorial note indicating he was a co-author of the original article. In this letter, Holmes implies that he worked on at least the entries for Azathoth, Cthulhu, Elder Signs, the Necronomicon, the Old Ones, and Shaggoths [sic]. For example, he writes: "My description of Alhazred's fate is taken from H.P. Lovecraft's "History and Chronology of the Necronomicon"". Now compare the material concerning Alhazred in the original article and in D&DG:

"Alhazred was seized in the streets of Damascus by invisible demons and devoured horribly in front of many witnesses. Those who have studied his writings have sometimes met a fate nearly as terrible" (The Lovecraftian Mythos in D&D, pg 18-19)

"Alhazred was later seized in the streets of a desert city by invisible demons and devoured horribly in front of many witnesses. Those who have studied his writings have sometimes met a fate nearly as terrible" (D&DG, page 48)

As can be seen, these two excerpts are almost the same. Some entries in the D&DG chapter were revised more than this, but each entry in the D&DG chapter corresponds to one found in the original article. Only one entry in the original article ("Yig, Supreme God of Serpents") is not found in D&DG.

I think the evidence, particularly Rob Kuntz's statement, points to Holmes being the primary co-author of the original article, and since much of the original article remains in the D&DG chapter, in my opinion he deserved a co-author credit for that section of D&DG.

Sources:
-"The Lovecraftian Mythos in Dungeons & Dragons", article by Rob Kuntz and J. Eric Holmes, THE DRAGON #12, Feb 1978, pg 18 & 20-21
-“A Rebuttal to “The Cthulhu Mythos Revisited”", letter by J. Eric Holmes, THE DRAGON #16, May 1978, pg 22.
-"Cthulhu Mythos", DEITIES & DEMIGODS, 1980, pg 43-48
-Post by Rob Kuntz, 2002, Pied Piper Publishing Forums, "General OAD&D Trivia" thread
-Post by Frank Mentzer in forums.gencon.com, 2004, describes auction of Holmes-Kuntz correspondence and manuscript
-J. Eric Holmes Annotated Bibliography

This topic was originally discussed here at the OD&D Discussion Forums.

See also: Part II, where Holmes' original manuscript for the Dragon article is examined.

Holmes Basic, as intended

Over on Dragonsfoot, forum member paleologos describes playing D&D with his young son for the first time, using the Holmes rules.

Phantom Cat

Rubens, Study of a Griffon and a Mountain Lion

     The module B2 also contains several dangerous "normal" animals that don't appear in the Blue Book, including huge dogs (page 8, jewel merchant's quarters), adders (page 10, bank vault) and a puma (page 13, mad hermit). Here is a standardized version of Gygax's puma for Basic/OD&D, re-christened "phantom cat" (after the real world phenomenon):

Phantom Cat

Move: 150 feet/turn
Hit Dice:  3 + 3
Armor Class: 6
Treasure Type: nil
Alignment: neutral
Attacks: 3
Damage: 1-6 hit points each

    Solitary "stalk and ambush" hunters including pumas, jaguars and other more mysterious large cats such as the onza. They roam large territories in the deep woods, swamps or other wild areas, yet are seldom seen. Due to their speed (18 dexterity) they attack first in each round. In the first round of combat they will leap on an opponent from a high place (tree branch or cliff), gaining a +2 to hit on each attack for the first round. Thereafter they will fight normally from the ground unless given the opportunity to return to a height and leap again.