Thursday, September 14, 2017
Part 23 5 There Are Many Kinds of Dragons
Part 23 5 There Are Many Kinds of Dragons
In this post I cover material I didnt have the first time through:
Part 23.5 of a comparison of Holmes manuscript with the published Basic Set rulebook. Turn to page 24 of your Blue Book and follow along...
The Material from the Missing Page
As mentioned here and here, numbered page 67 is missing from all copies of the 138-page final version of the Holmes Manuscript. Which meant that I skipped the material as I went through the manuscript. Later, Billy Galaxy sent me photos of pages 62 and 63 of an earlier draft of the manuscript, which cover the missing material. The earlier draft has art by Chris Holmes drawn directly on the pages, so here we get to see his illustration of a dragon as a bonus. Chris writes, "Notice how I put the dragons� leg behind the text. That would be clever except I didn�t think that they would reset the text in type. If we hadn�t done the drawings right on the manuscript they probably would have been lost."
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| Page 62 of an earlier draft of the Holmes Manuscript; art by Chris Holmes |
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| Page 63 of an earlier draft of the Holmes Manuscript |
After looking over Holmes material from this earlier draft and comparing it to the published ruleboook, I think this page was missing from the copy(s) of the manuscript that Holmes sent to TSR. The published rulebook entries in the Monster List differ from Holmes originals more than most other entries. Generally Gygax edited the manuscript simply by placing a new sentence or two at the end if additions or clarification were needed, but here the entries have been completely re-written.
Dopplegangers
Page 66 of the final version of the Holmes Manuscript has the title "Dopplegangers" at the bottom of the page; the rest of the entry was on missing page 67. But I presume this let TSR to know that Holmes intended to include Dopplegangers in Basic.
As you can see above, Holmes write-up is two simple sentences, drawn from the original in the Greyhawk Supplement. Holmes omits the immunity to Sleep/Charm, and gives them a +2 save versus magic rather than a save as a 10th level Fighter. Looking at the Men & Magic Saving Throw Matrix, a 10th level figher should get a +4 over that of a 4th level fighter (which is what a 4 HD monster should save as).
In contrast, the published description for the Doppelganger is seven sentences over two paragraphs, much longer than what Holmes wrote. Some of the sentences are very close to the Greyhawk description, so it looks like the author went back and re-wrote/expanded the original entry. The later Monster Manual entry is of similar length although the specific text has been rewritten again. The published rulebook paragraph gives the correct saving throw values for spells and wands for 10th level fighter.
Dragons
The beginning of Holmes manuscript entry follows the format established in OD&D:
OD&D, Vol 2: "There are six varieties of Dragons, each with separate characteristics
in particular and other things in common. The varieties will be dealt with first"
Greyhawk: "These additional varities of Dragons conform to the typical characteristics
of their species except where noted..."
Holmes manuscript: "There are many kinds of dragons described in Dungeons & Dragons and Greyhawk. Only four are covered here."
Published rulebook: Four additional introductory sentences, followed by "Of the dozen different kinds found in ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS only four will be covered here."
The wording here in the published Basic rulebook does echo that of the manuscript, so perhaps TSR/Gygax did read & edit this material, just to a greater degree than in other parts of the Monster List. Its hard to tell for sure.
In each case, these sentences are followed by a short table describing the different types of dragons. OD&D Vol 2 has six types, Greyhawk adds six more (including two unique), and the Holmes Manuscript and published rulebook each cover only four of these, a different set in each. Holmes drops Black and Green Dragons, and moves Red Dragons to the first line, resulting in Red, White, Blue and Gold. He otherwise keeps each of the columns of the Dragon table on page 11 of Vol 2.
The published rulebook includes Black and Brass instead of Blue and Gold; the Brass dragon being from the Greyhawk Supplement. It also replaces the Chance of Talking and Chance of Sleeping columns with an Alignment column. For three of the dragons, it uses the interesting dual alignment format that appears in some entries in the Holmes rulebook (e.g. "neutral/chaotic good" for the Brass Dragon).
In the manuscript Holmes follows the table with two paragraphs on Breath Weapons which very closely follow the material in OD&D, Vol 2. He then make clear that the breath weapon damage is equal to the dragons hit points, which was not
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