Men & Magic
Volume 1, Men & Magic, is the players’ handbook of the
white box edition. Inside this 36 page
digest sized little brown book are the rules for making a character and playing
the character. In the “Forward”, Gary Gygax refers to both the Castle and
Crusade Society (the first players of the game) and authors of adventure
fiction such as Burroughs, Howard and Leiber. Thus the connection with fantasy
literature is there from the beginning. In the Introduction the authors
underline that the rules are guidelines to follow rather than absolutes to be
strictly adhered to. Again we see that spirit of adding something of your own
to the game that I so much enjoy about the white box. Among the recommended equipment is the Avalon
Hill game Outdoor Survival (presumably for the wilderness map and survival
mechanics) and the miniatures rules Chainmail co-authored by Gary Gygax and
Jeff Perren. The rules don’t mention other options for maps or combat rules,
but those type products would quickly grow out of the early gaming industry. The referenced Chainmail miniatures rules were
written for medieval wargames and contained a fantasy supplement which had been
the basis for the early fantasy gaming experiences that eventually lead to the
white box. The new role-playing idea was to take conflict between units of troops
on the gaming table and transition down to each person playing an individual
hero (player character) rather than a unit. Add a progression table and define
classes or professions and we have the basic idea for role-playing.
The fantasy
literature, especially the work of J.R.R. Tolkien, often involved races of
non-humans such as dwarves, elves and hobbits. White box players can take on
the role of dwarves, elves or hobbits in addition to human characters. Each of the non-human races have class and level
limitations, human characters may be of any of the three classes and may
progress to any level. At the center of the character idea in white box are character
classes, there are three of them, Fighting-Men, Magic-Users and Clerics. I assume use of the word “men” in both the
book’s title and in the class refers to the “race of men” not the gender, but
it was the 1970’s. Not surprisingly, Fighting-Men
fight, Magic-Users cast spells and Clerics do a little of both as well as
provide healing and turn away the undead through faith. Each character starts at level 1 and with
experience points gained through “adventuring” (playing the game) advances to
higher levels. Dwarves and hobbits are
Fighting-Men, but top-out at 6th and 4th level
respectively. Elves in white box are both Fighting-Men and Magic-Users, but
must pick one or the other to be during any one adventure (play session). Available equipment such as swords and armor is
limited by character class.
Characters and their monster opponents in the game are
divided into 3 Alignments, Law, Neutrality and Chaos. Those alignment terms
have their origins in certain fantasy literature (works of Poul Anderson and
Michael Moorcock come to mind) and their use in the game further helps to connect
the white box game with its literary cousins. In the almost 40 years I’ve been
involved with this hobby I have seen numerous player characters (the in-game
hero) named for favorite characters from books, movies and comics, further
testimony to the link between literature and the game.
Each in-game persona, or player character, has six
Abilities, defined as Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, Wisdom, Constitution
and Charisma. These six white box
Abilities determined by a score of three six-sided dice, would become the
standard identifying features of player characters and continue so in the
newest edition of the game and in many/most role-playing games over the years
and to date. The Ability scores are determined by the referee rolling three
six-sided dice and assigning the total score to one of each of the abilities
until scores for all six are created.
Yes, white box says the referee rolls Ability scores! Presumably this also helped eliminate characters
with disastrously low Ability scores as the kindly referee would not force a
player to play a hopeless character.
Ability scores do affect certain aspects of the game by being
particularly high or low in value, but not so much so as in later editions of
the game. For example there is no bonus/penalty
to high/low Strength other than to add/subtract a percentage to earned
experience of Fighting-Men if the score is above/below “average”. Average is defined as scores between 9 and
12. One of the changes that often occurred as referees added to the rules
making the game uniquely their own was to make the Ability scores more
important by tying plusses and minuses to certain dice rolls based on Ability
score values. I see that as the beginning of the power-creep in player
characters and character sheet tinkering as players sought to min/max their
penalties and bonuses. In its worst
form, this tendency can result in playing the character sheet rather than the
game and the phenomena of munchkinism (a super-character that “breaks” the
game).
Non-player characters are all those people and monsters that
inhabit the game-world that are not player characters. The referee creates and for the most part controls
these non-player characters. Non-player characters could be hired by the
players to perform certain in-game tasks and I get the impression the white box
assumes players will do this on a regular basis. Through the use of magic non-player characters
can be “charmed” which allows the player some control over the actions of the
non-player character. In white box the
adversaries or monsters have morale and may surrender or flee rather than fight
to the death. Combat is an important
part of white box play and I would expect given its wargames ancestry. Player characters have a random amount of
money available, usually termed “gold pieces” which can be spent in-game to
purchase equipment, much of which is geared toward combat. Various weapons (all of which do one
six-sided dice worth of damage) and armor are available, but often their use is
restricted by character class.
Fighting-Men can use any weapon, armor or shield, but Magic-Users are
limited to a dagger and no armor or shield.
The Cleric can use any armor and shield, but only blunt weapons such as
the club or mace. Since all weapons do a
single six-sided dice score of damage, this doesn’t seem as big a deal as in
later editions of the game.
Each player character, monster and non-player character has
Hit Points which are determined randomly by rolling a number of six-sided dice
and perhaps adding a number to the sum of the dice score. The three classes all have differing dice for
determining hits. The number of dice and
adds get higher as the character increases in levels. Each class has its own table showing
experience points needed to progress to the next level, number of dice for
determining hits, fighting capability and number and level of spells (if
any). In addition the Cleric class has
the Clerics verses Undead Monsters table which shows a dice score by level that
is needed to affect Undead Monsters. Fighting
capability is listed in terms used in the Chainmail miniatures rules mentioned
as recommended equipment. Really with the number of references the white box
makes to Chainmail, I would almost say it is required to fully understand the
game. The white box does list an Alternative
Combat System, which uses the familiar twenty sided dice scores later editions
were built around and it can be played without reference to Chainmail using
this combat alternative. I recall that my friends and I had a great deal of
difficulty with combat in our early attempts learning the white box and this I believe
was due to the fact that none of us had access to Chainmail at the time, nor
did we have a twenty-sided die (those were not readily available until the
popularity of the game increased). As I look back I wonder why the Chainmail
mechanic wasn’t included in the white box rules. Maybe there were copyright issues? Anyway, the use of standard six-sided dice throughout
would have made the game more accessible, but ultimately the “funny dice”,
especially the twenty-sided die came to be part of the mystic of fantasy
role-playing. Possession of the “funny dice”
became almost a membership card in the exclusive club of the hobby insiders.
Experience points which are accumulated in order to advance
to the next level in the character class are awarded based on acquiring treasure
(gold and other in-game coins, gems and magic).
Note that experience is awarded for treasure acquired, not monsters
defeated. Killing monsters, who guard
treasure was often an in-game necessity, but if the wily players could obtain
the treasure without risking hit point loss, that worked too. Each character
class has its own experience table and level breakpoints (identified by level number
and level name) and the differing progression rates is considered part of the
game-balance of white box. Having said
that, I don’t believe game-balance is as important in white box as it has
become in a lot of games developed since. It does have its own, internally
consistent method of balancing things to a degree, however, so the concept is
addressed by the designers.
Magic-Users and Clerics have access to magic in the form of
spells they can cast. Pages 23-34 of Men
& Magic are devoted to explaining those game magic spells. The individual
class experience tables for the Magic-User and Cleric classes list the number
of spells of each level that the character can memorize and cast. There are five levels of spells for the
Cleric and 6 levels listed for the Magic-User. As the game evolved into
subsequent editions the list of spells would grow, but the basics are here in
white box magic. Consistent with the general theme of personalizing and adding
to the game is a section at the end about player characters researching in-game
and designing new spells.
Specific magic spells from the available list are prepared
each day (in game time) and once cast by the character they are used-up for
that day. This system of game magic is
often referred to as Vancian in reference to the Dying Earth novels written by
Jack Vance in which magicians memorize spells in a similar manner. Again we see
the connection to fantasy literature. One of the more obvious points I am
making here in this blog is that I believe white box D&D is an extension of
the fantasy literature, as read by white box authors Gygax & Arneson, into
a new realm of do-it-yourself story-telling/adventure gaming building on a lot
of the character concepts, imaginary worlds and flavor of those literary
sources. In other words, white box and
the similar games that followed, allows one to enter into a world we have only
read about and imagining the actions of our player characters to experience
that world on a new and unique level not really available to anyone previous to
the white box. I think that’s pretty
powerful stuff!
