Join me as I review Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Players Handbook by Gary Gygax live! Share your thoughts on this sourcebook released by TSR Inc. in June 1978. You can purchase the AD&D Players Handbook here: https://www.dmsguild.com//product/17003/players-handbook-1e?affiliate_id=50797
About Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Players Handbook
The 1st Edition Player’s Handbook is back!
No more searching through stacks of books and magazines to find out what you need to know. The Player’s Handbook puts it all at your fingertips, including: All recommended character classes: Fighters, Paladins, Rangers, Magic-Users, and more.
- Character Races: Dwarves, Elves, Gnomes, Half-Orcs, Humans, and more.
- Character Level Statistics.
- Equipment lists with costs.
Spell listings by level and descriptions of effects (including many new spells!).
As a dungeon adventurer or Dungeon Master, you will find the contents of this book to be what you have been waiting for. All useful material is now compiled under one cover, especially for players!
Review
Intro
Welcome to another DragonLance Saga review episode. It is Kirinor, Holmswelth the 3rd. My name is Adam and today I am going to give you my review of the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Players Handbook by Gary Gygax. I would like to take a moment and thank the DLSaga members and Patreon patrons, and invite you to consider becoming a member or patron. You can even pick up Dragonlance media or get $10 by signing up to StartPlaying.Games using my affiliate links. And don’t forget to pick up your free copy of Dragons of Ash and Twilight on dlsaga.com. This is my perspective only, and if you have any thoughts or disagree with mine, I invite you to share them in YouTube chat.
Review
- Players Handbook (1978), by Gary Gygax, was the first book of rules for the AD&D game.
- It was published in June 1978 and seen by many for the first time at Gen Con XI (August 1978).
- The cover by Dave Trampier — which shows adventurers looting an idol after killing their foes — is one of the most famous in D&D history.
- Trampier’s famous cover was replaced in 1983 by a Jeff Easley painting of a wizard. Most people agree that the later image is more professional, but much less memorable.
- illustrations by Dave Trampier and David C. Sutherland III
- The D&D game began with the OD&D box (1974), which was expanded with four supplements (1975-1976) and additional articles in The Strategic Review (1975-1976). However, by the time that Supplement III: Eldritch Wizardry (1976) was published, TSR had already decided that the system — which now spanned a half dozen books and several newsletters — needed to be unified and cleaned up.
- A new Basic D&D (1977) came out first, thanks to the singular efforts of J. Eric Holmes, but it was just an introductory book, intended to shepherd new players through the first three levels of play. What D&D really needed was a revamped game for the more advanced players: Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.
- The AD&D system technically began with Monster Manual (1977) in December 1977. This compendium of monsters showed off the increased detail that would be present in the new AD&D game, but it didn’t give much hint at the game mechanics. That would await the publication of the AD&D Players Handbook (1978) six months later.
- Despite the publication of AD&D, Gygax claimed that the original “D&D will always be with us”. He thought that OD&D and AD&D served different audiences, and that there was no reason to retire the original. OD&D did indeed remain available into the ’80s. Afterward, later editions of Basic D&D (1981, 1983) picked up the mantle of OD&D as the simpler and looser D&D game.
- The Players Handbook appeared in 17 different printings from 1978 to 1990.
- The biggest change came with the 8th printing (1983), which was when the new Jeff Easley cover appeared as part of a general rebranding of the AD&D line.
- In the modern day, the 1e Players Handbook has been reprinted twice more — once in a miniature collectible edition produced under license by Twenty First Century Games (1999), and once in a deluxe limited edition produced by Wizards of the Coast (2012) to support the Gygax memorial fund. The 2012 edition featured reset text.
- it only contained the most crucial rules needed by the players
- you won’t find rules about how to actually roll your abilities! The Dungeon Masters Guide (1979) has that! Similarly, there are no rules for combat or even saving throws! Instead the player only got summaries of what the rules systems were like — not the actual systems!
- players were kept in the dark about the rules of the game, and the game master was the ultimate arbiter of all the game’s mechanics.
- Gygax claimed It is neither an expansion nor a revision of the old game, it is a new game.
- D&D is only a loose structure … [while] AD&D is a much tighter structure which follows, in part, the same format D&D does, but it is a much stronger, more rigid, more extensive framework …
- First, Gygax thought that the tighter framework would keep players from house-ruling D&D.
- Second, Gygax thought that it would create “a better platform from which to launch major tournaments”
- Third, Gygax thought that it would better orient D&D toward its actual audience.
- D&D is only a loose structure … [while] AD&D is a much tighter structure which follows, in part, the same format D&D does, but it is a much stronger, more rigid, more extensive framework …
- OD&D play topped out in the first ten levels of play, while AD&D pushed viable play into the teens.
- The D&D Outer Planes appeared for the first time in “Planes: The Concepts of Spatial, Temporal and Physical Relationships in D&D”, an article by Gary Gygax for The Dragon #8 (July 1977). Players Handbook reprints the Dragon planes in largely the same form. There are 25 total, including the prime, positive, and negative material planes, four elemental planes, the ethereal plane, the astral plane, and 16 outer planes.
- The entire roleplaying world was in a strange hiatus between the publication of AD&D 1e’s Players Handbook (June 1978) and Dungeon Masters Guide (August 1979). During this interim, TSR began publishing official AD&D products, such as the original “G” adventures (1978), but there were no AD&D rules to play then with! To help resolve this issue, TSR published an emergency sneak preview of AD&D rules in Dragon #22 (February 1979), but for the rest of AD&D’s rules, players had to wait another six months.
- Gygax was the co-creator of D&D alongside Dave Arneson, but the AD&D books would only bear his name … a point that led to legal contention in 1979.
Outro
And that’s it for my review of the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Players Handbook by Gary Gygax. What do you think of this first AD&D players handbook? What is your favorite edition of Dungeons & Dragons? Feel free to email me at info@dlsaga.com or leave a comment below.
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This channel is all about celebrating the wonderful world of the Dragonlance Saga, and I hope you will join me in the celebration. Thank you for watching, this has been Adam with DragonLance Saga and until next time Slàinte mhath (slan-ge-var).
