Wednesday, August 27, 2014

1974 Dungeon Variant, Now for Download


One of the many pleasures of writing about the history of games is receiving unexpected correspondence from the people whose work I study, sometimes people who are very surprised to learn that a pastime they briefly enjoyed decades ago has brought them to the attention of posterity. Such was the case with Craig VanGrasstek, whose 1974 Rules to the Game of Dungeon I covered on this blog (and in Playing at the World) as the earliest known Dungeons & Dragons variant. Craig wrote to me having long lost any copy of the Rules and understandably curious about my interest. This is easily explained: the Rules provide one of our earliest windows into fantasy role-playing as practiced by some of its first fans, a tradition that has survived as "Minneapolis Dungeon."

In the course of my exchange with Craig, he volunteered to make his work available to the readers of today. We therefore present this week the complete text of the Rules to the Game of Dungeon [download PDF] as Craig VanGrasstek originally wrote it up in the summer of 1974. I provide a bit of commentary and context in an Afterword and in endnotes. After the jump, we review three of Craig's play records from 1974, which give further insight into how this important early community went about dungeoneering. Give it a try the next time you want an "old school" experience, and see how it plays!

Monday, August 11, 2014

Gen Con 1968 and Today


With Gen Con in Indianapolis this week, today we're exploring what is almost certainly the first press coverage of the convention, just following its debut in 1968. This comes from a regional paper, the Beloit Daily News, and it ran two days after the first Lake Geneva Wargames Convention - no one called it Gen Con yet. We can read within that Gary Gygax hosted the convention, and other familiar names from the International Federation of Wargaming feature into the story as well, among the "over 90" gamers who attended.

Expect attendance to run a bit higher than that this weekend, but you still might stumble over me wandering the halls: and on Saturday afternoon at 2:00, I will be appearing on the D&D Documentary panel at the Westin (the room is Capitol I, http://gencon.com/events/66470).