So, let's talk about Dungeons and Dragons editions briefly, just as a note for future reference when I post Goblins, Part 1.
Credit goes to the many contributors to wikipedia. Donate to that site occasionally, yeah?
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Not listed on the chart above is Chainmail, the war and tactics game that was created just before D&D in 1971, and acts as the precursor to D&D due to the inclusion of an original set of "fantasy-based" rules. I mention it now only because there are several monsters listed in that section which we will include when relevant during our monster breakdowns.
Cover art for Chainmail.
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You see there in 1974 - Original Edition, otherwise known as OD&D, or some refer to it as zero edition and 0e. Most gamers of today wouldn't even recognize the rules of 0e, frankly. Every weapon in the game used the same damage dice, among many other obscure rules that don't exist today. Many of these rules were pulled straight from Chainmail, even referencing it and assuming familiarity with its rules.
In fact, this version of D&D is considered one of the hardest to parse, due to its creation as an at-home project by a couple of non-designers. The rules regularly omit important details, refer to war-gaming rules that it expects you to know already, and otherwise organizes its information very poorly.
Cover for 1 of the 3 volumes of 0e. Also sometimes called 'White Box D&D'.
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Then in 1977, all hell breaks loose, and the game splits. Rapid fire, you can see above the addition of both AD&D (Advanced Dungeons & Dragons) and at the same time Basic (Holmes).
It's hard to articulate with brevity the breakdown of what's actually happening here, in part because there's actually additional missing pieces: after the release of 0e's core rules, several additional rules and supplements were released, most notably Greyhawk (the first to include Paladin's as a playable class).
The expanded rules of 0e that were folded or edited out of Basic Edition.
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Greyhawk's additions as well as several more neat rules were included in Basic, which acted as a rewrite of 0e for formatting, clarity, and some minor expansions beyond Greyhawk.
All at once, Holmes' Basic acts as a rewrite, a simpler introduction to AD&D (more on that momentarily), and a game all its own. It was marketed as the "learning" version of D&D. Notably, Holmes Basic only included levels 1-3 of play, and was generally an odd duck, but as an intro to the more complex machinations of the bigger fish alongside it, it was popular and many a youngin', one day to become an old grognard, started here.
Interesting story, Eric Holmes threw this version together so that he could teach his kids to play, and offered the more organized version of the old rules to TSR (D&D's parent company). They took it, released it as an official version, and refused to pay Holmes' for it. Tsk, tsk.
Successful as a product, they would create a new, more refined version of it in time.
Butt-fucking-ugly, but a diamond on the inside. Much like me.
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In 1981, we get B/X. B/X stands for Basic/Expert. Not to be confused with Eric Holmes' Basic, Tom Moldvay's Basic was edited and streamlined by a different gentleman, and is considered by many who preferred 0e to the later 1e to be the definitive best version of Dungeons & Dragons. It's also the most likely inspiration for the most popular OSR rulesets. I really need to do an OSR post soon, it's going to come up a lot.
To begin with, B/X was actually two books, Moldvay's Basic Rules, and Dave Cook's Expert Rules. Moldvay's Basic included a simple and clean, what some call "distilled" and "pure", D&D experience, in a teachable format, with an inclusion of many of the supplemental rules from Advanced D&D without the unnecessary fluff. Stuff like wilderness/survival rules and the ability to manage and run your own domain (kingdom-building, fuck yeah!). All at only 64 pages. Dave Cook's Expert (partially co-written by Steve Marsh) expanded the level cap up to level 14!
Where Holmes' Basic clarified a lot of the wild west that was OD&D, B/X streamlined and simplified further. Where Basic was a single book, B/X was released as two box sets, Red Box and Blue Box (sometimes referred to as such).
Simple and clean is the way that you're making me feel toni- Oh! Hi. Didn't see you there.
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Here we have BECMI. ‘Basic’, ‘Expert’, ‘Companion’, ‘Masters’ and ‘Immortal’.
You know, there's a general sense of maturity and polish on these covers that appeals to me. D&D was finally being taken seriously, and didn't have the dare-I-say cartoonishness of previous editions.
Not to be further confusing, but this isn't Holmes Basic, or Moldvay/Cook's Basic/Expert. Now, we're onto Mentzer's BECMI, who if my history is correct, compiled the whole thing.
Generally speaking, this is my favorite older edition of D&D personally. Basic and Expert were further distillations and revisions of Moldvay/Cook's D&D. Companion was a further expansion of the level cap from 14 to 25, in addition to compiling the scattered and difficult to understand stronghold building rules from all the other editions, and adding in playable Druids!
Master further raised the level cap to 36, as well as introducing the Mystic class, which later would have the psionic flavoring removed and be converted into what we now think of as the Monk class. Also, more spells, more monsters, more stuff to play D&D with. There were expanded stronghold rules, compiling and revising the domain rules from the earlier versions into a more incremental experience, transforming your stronghold from a building into a city into a nation into an empire. This book alone is what makes this version of D&D my favorite older edition, as it is the only book in all the many versions of D&D that seemed to understand how to market rules expansions. Modern D&D sucks at this, truly.
Finally, Immortal added rules to the game allowing players to become more than heroes, ascending into godhood.
Fundamentally, the difference here is that BECMI did not hold onto the philosophy that players would move on from a "teaching" version of D&D to Advanced D&D, thus the old rules got expansions that would not have been otherwise necessary, as they'd be covered by AD&D.
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And finally the Rules Cyclopedia from 1991, which contained all of BECMI and several additions on top of that with a few minor fiddly changes, all in one fancier edition.
Sexy lil' book, innit?
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It's worthwhile to note here before we get into Advanced D&D that a fundamental difference between this "teaching" line of books and the Advanced line of books is that Basic assumed you only needed to know so many rules before you could actually play, and only included those rules (until BECMI, at least). Advanced, on the other hand, included coverage for as many rules and scenarios as they possibly could. Many today believe that the Basic line, B/X in particular, is really the truest form of D&D as it doesn't include anything more than the purest, most necessary rules to play; and it is that idea that sparked the movement that would become the OSR in the early 2000's.
The lack of concrete official rules to cover every possible scenario meant that DM adjudication of rules happened more often, and DM's were given more freedom to do so, resulting in more organic gameplay, and less intrusive interruptions from the rules themselves to the kind of game your table wanted to play.
In any case, the teaching line of books was popular enough to cause TSR to continue to iterate and transform it from 1977 until 1991 when, after the Rules Cyclopedia was released, the Basic line saw its final sunset and Advanced D&D would become the priority. Still, the Basic line never lost steam in the hearts and minds of those that played it, and the OSR resurgence made it clear than ever that not everyone thinks "newer" means "better".
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Back on the other timeline, alongside Holmes Basic, we see the release of Advanced D&D 1st Edition, or what is otherwise known as 1st Edition and 1e.
The 3 core rulebooks of AD&D 1e.
The codified, to-this-day still king of the hill, 80's D&D. Combining and expanding on all of the rules that came before, and covering many more of the various weird things that can happen in Dungeons & Dragons, this version was the first to use the standard 3-book core set of the PHB, DMG, and MM, seen above.
Notably, this version is the one that was most heavily involved in the Satanic Panic, even the covers alone looking like half naked demons to the eye of the untrained 80's Karen.
While the PHB in more modern times includes, typically, all of the rules to play D&D; AD&D actively hid rules from player's putting the gameplay mechanics in the DMG only, and leaving pretty much just the most base gameplay elements and character creation rules in the hands of the player. This is a further reflection of the early belief from D&D's creators that the rules were meant to be obfuscated, and sometimes disregarded entirely for the benefit of the game itself. At the same time, there was a clear push in the book that you as the DM should stick to the rules wherever the rules pre-existed, or else it wouldn't be D&D any longer. That perspective does not mesh with veterans of the OD&D era, who prefer in many cases to make rulings, and homebrew the hell out of some mechanics.
In the modern day, we often take for granted many aspects of tabletop gaming, if only because as a hobby its been around for a while, and many people have a learned understanding of the expectations of the game, and what it looks like to play games like this one. But in that day, that wasn't the case at all, and so these books really set the standard for what role playing games look like at-the-table.
There's not much to say else-wise, save for that there was a lot of money and effort behind AD&D 1e, with many additional books released and many new and innovative ideas tossed around. But, all things come to an end. Ownership of D&D's parent company changed hands, and AD&D 2e was released in 1989, right around the same time as BECMI, and it signaled a clear shift in thinking on the part of the developers.
This has nothing to do with anything, its just funny.
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So, lets clarify a few things. Firstly, Gary Gygax, the guy that arguably invented D&D was not longer with the company at this point. 1e was going crazy with extra books, and rules spread across numerous sources. Not to mention the significant backlash from the Karen-demons during the Satanic Panic.
D&D was in the news for bad reasons, it was known for being math-heavy, it was a nerds game for nerds of the highest caliber. TSR didn't like that. Like most companies, they knew you can't make all the money in the entire world if a big chunk of the world doesn't buy the product because they think it makes you worship the devil.
More Jeff Easley, everyone. The mad lad has done it again. Remember that picture from the other day? That was on the DMG.
References to demons and the hells get removed, rules from across many sources get streamlined, things are universally brought to a more kid-friendly place and everything get's redesigned and rereleased. Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition is born.
To start, the whole philosophy shifted in terms of what the game was supposed to be. Previous editions of D&D focused on players as scroungers, dicking around in dungeons, barely surviving to try to make it out with treasure and maybe try again. But 2e wanted to get away from that, and embrace a sense of power and epic battle. They wanted you to feel like a HERO (tm).
Lot's of things shifted as a result. Balance, progression, spells, monster difficulty, the overall transparency of the games mechanical systems all got overhauled. Many mechanical touchstones recognizable in later Wizards of the Coast editions of the game can be found in their infancy here.
Several notable settings got released in this time period as well, including Planescape, Spelljammer, and Dark Sun. Additionally, tabletop gaming beyond Dungeons & Dragons was beginning to catch on with stuff like Vampire: The Masquerade, and my personal favorite Shadowrun, being released during this time.
Sadly, where older editions of D&D maintained that the rules of the game were simply tools for the DM to use as they please, newer editions -even up until today- trended towards the belief that rules were to be handed down from on high by the company and that the rules were for all the players, not the DM per se. There were positives and negatives to this idea, as can be seen by the sheer volume of people who play old editions of D&D and other games, or retro-clones of those games, in order to get away from that very idea and return to the old do it yourself days of gaming.
TSR gets bought out in 1997 by Wizards of the Coast, due in no small part to their success with their other game, Magic: the Addiction, and they would soon release their own edition to get away from the royalty payments of yesteryear.
At a glance, I don't think this is even a quarter of the 2e books that were ultimately released.
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My god, the sheer number of books in 3rd edition. I have more than this on my own shelves from this edition, and I know for a fact, I don't have even 10% of them.
So, Wizards of the Coast's first foray into the ttrpg world was 3rd Edition, in the year 2000. 3e was unbalanced, and was shortly fixed thereafter in 2003, when 3.5 was released. In short, 3e was buggy and unbalanced, and numerous changes needed to be made because the game developers didn't account for many things they should have. Druids can turn into monsters, just like druids of 5th edition can, except that they didn't account for monster's innate abilities in 3e, so Druids even at low levels were jsut significantly more versatile than every other class. For example.
3.5e was backwards compatible with 3e sourcebooks, so unless WOTC specifically rereleased the book, it can be assumed to be fully compatible with the 3.5e rules.
3/3.5e was the first time that D&D truly stepped fully into the player-centric philosophy of tabletop gaming, creating numerous books that were for player's alone, for specific classes, or books with nothing but new spells, and so on. Stuff that a DM ultimately never needed to look at to actually run a game, if they didn't want to.
Inadvertently, they created an incredibly fun, but incredibly different kind of rpg. One that many people remember fondly. I imagine its unlikely we'll ever see something like an OSR for this edition though, due to the fact that Pathfinder exists. Pathfinder 1e was a 3/3.5e clone that was supported until shortly after 2019 when Pathfinder 2e released. It was created in response to the overall community distaste for 4th edition D&D.
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Not gonna' lie, the artwork in 4e is probably my least favorite. Too stylized and cartoony for my taste. Give me more of that high art stuff, or alternatively I do enjoy the sketchpad scribble style of rpg art as well.
4th Edition D&D was, to put it mildly, a fiasco. WOTC, for its part, had faith in their product and a solid plan. They intended for 4th Edition to be books that you'd buy and pair with a digital platform to actually run the games, but that you wouldn't need per se if you wanted to play in the old way. They underestimated their fanbase though, and over-utilized very board-gamey and video-gamey mechanical elements. Elements that, to their credit, were well designed but simply don't belong at a table where miniatures aren't present. 4e leaned heavily on grid-based tactics, and it becomes unmanageable at times without an appropriate medium to express those tactics.
To be fair, WOTC was thinking clearly here. Digital tools and video games were, and still are, king of the market. World of Warcraft was just taking off, and they had every chance to get ahead of the curve and do something incredibly innovative and fun. But alas, life happens.
Anyway, the lead programmer in charge of that digital platform killed his wife, shooting her multiple times in a parking lot before killing himself. His name was Joseph Batten, and you can google that story for yourself pretty easily. Given that it was a small team, and given that the community was already losing faith in WOTC because the digital tools weren't yet released and they were effectively missing half of what 4th edition should have been, WOTC cut their losses and moved on to Fifth Edition.
More recently, 4th Edition has seen an odd resurgence thanks to the advent of third party digital battlemaps like Roll20 and Fantasy Grounds. Its been applauded for many of the decisions it made, not the least of which beings its 1hp minion rules that I use regularly, and its monster creation and battle creation rules, which allowed for consistently easy to run combats with balanced and effective enemy party makeups. We'll be making good use (when building our monster manual) of the monsters from 4th edition for its mechanics, at least. Not as much for the lore.
There was also the release of 4e Essentials, which was a paired down and simplified take on 4e, ultimately compatible for the most part with base 4e. The differences are so minor, I won't go into detail here, but suffice it to say at some point WOTC started trying new things because 4e wasn't working. Many elements of Essentials ended up in Fifth Edition.
As an aside, 4th Edition's lore was an odd bird. Where previous editions of D&D used multiple different settings, or simply just a generic "fantasy" setting, 4th Edition created its own setting referred to as "Points of Light". I don't have much to say about it, beyond that it borrowed various elements from several settings that were used in older editions, including Planescape's planar wheel, and some of the lore from Forgotten Realms. It was an odd setting, and it was retired for a reason, but it acts as a step towards what would eventually become the Fifth Edition paradigm of attempting to slowly merge all of the best elements of previous edition settings into one, under the Forgotten Realms umbrella (which had previously been its own unique setting).
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That brings us to the current day, with Fifth Edition, which is sunsetting as we speak.
Again, I have way more than this from this edition. I just found this picture on google. I'm dangerously close to owning every 5e official book now.
5e's fine. It's the culmination of years of WOTC taking D&D in a different direction, but its still, at its core, Dungeons & Dragons. Things are changing all the time in the TTRPG world though, the internet has put a significant dent in making D&D more accessible, the culture surrounding it has shifted radically, Critical Role and other live-play streaming games exist now, games that take the narrative-heavy options that 5e enables have created their own off-shoot genre: ttrpg story-games.
And now, of course, D&D One is coming, which is labelled as a sort of 5.5e more than a 6e. WOTC has returned to the "digital tools" philosophy of 4e, and begun re-engaging with online battlemaps and other digital tools through D&D Beyond.
My opinion on D&D One is essentially, I'll believe it when I see it. Right now, its just more WOTC bullshit, so it doesn't mean much to me. In the timeless words of David Bowie: "Turn and face the strange changes, there's gonna' have to be a different man. Time may change me, but I can't trace time."
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All that to say, the editions we'll be addressing for every monster we cover will be:
Chainmail (when relevant)
B/X (other 0e editions only when there are significant differences for the monster in question)
AD&D 1e
AD&D 2e
3.5e (unless 3.0 has something interesting to add)
4e
5e (and 5.5e if there's anything of note)
Jesus H, this has been a long one, but it needed to be done for the sake of later articles. I'll keep truckin', but I may take a break from posting until I've gotten more done on Goblins Part 1. I'm real excited for it ya'll.
