So in my initial Intro post, I mentioned wanting to take a deep dive into Original Dungeons and Dragons, so lets explore what that is going to look like.
Over on the Audio Dungeon discord they've been running a Hobbit Slow Read, following on from doing the same with the Lord of the Rings. I've fallen off the wagon reading and probably won't join back in but the Lord of the Rings slow read was very fun and a very different experience from simply reading the work. If this sounds interesting, then you should listen to Mirke's excellent podcast episodes where he and his daughter share their thoughts on the current chapter: here
I'd been toying with doing a similar thing with RPG products (game systems and modules) but then I stumbled across this reddit post titled 'Complete Reading Order Question' and that gave me the inspiration for this series. I'm going to work my way through reading each entry of this list, slowly section by section, sharing any insights that I gain from the activity. Its a very long list, so for now I'm going to put an arbitrary stopping point of 1975 (with the release of the Blackmoor supplement).
This is the order I intend to read in then, ordered with an approximation of publish date:
I'm probably missing a lot of content here, but I think this is a good starting point. I'd like to dig into some of the other third party material that was being released at this time. For example, Alarum and Excursions had its first issue in June 1975 but tracking down some of this work might prove difficult. Additionally there are later products which refer back to these products and this time, like the First Fantasy Campaign.
If you've got suggestions for what I'm missing, please let me know. This isn't a scholarly activity so I'm not terribly concerned if I do end up making a mistake and missing something, or getting it out of order, but I'd like to try and be thorough.
Do I have any goals for this endeavour? Not really, other than to simply enjoy the process and maybe gain new insight or perspective. However, I will likely collate some sort of notes or reference material. Additionally I'm toying with the idea of a series on “Creating your own retroclone”, though its more likely that I talk about some potential house rules (I've got some already lined up which I think are interesting).
Well first up is Chainmail, I have the 3rd Edition printing from Drivethru. Just looking at the table of contents now, I think I'll read the introduction and the turn sequence (roughly 5 pages) to start. So if you want to join in and call in with some of your own thoughts please do so, otherwise I'll be asking for feedback as per usual.