Men & Magic

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 6^th and 4^th 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!