Hi,

the illustrations look like more than one hand.

Cheers,
KAL

SimperingToad wrote:I don't think it's out of the realm of possibility of being a fan-made work. The text resembles something that comes off the standard typrwriter; monospace font, left justified, right-ragged. The other fonts are easily done via press-type (basically rub-on transfers) or each letter being set by hand from a series of tabs (I don't recall the name of this); in either case, it might mean the person involved had access to publishing material like I did when I was in High School working on the school newspaper.

With regards to illustrating a fan-made work, I used to do this sometimes when making my own adventures back in the early '80s, so I don't see it as being highly unusual. Merely very absorbed in doing a project 'properly.'  :D

Someone's take on 'how-it-should-be', maybe intended to be sent to Gary/Dave for consideration, but never done?

Again, I don't think it's out of the realm of possibility. I'm never 100% sure of anything, as a matter of policy. But to me, as I've said, this question comes down to the state of the rules system itself. There's systems that we'd read as 'how-it-should-be' and then there's others we read as 'this-in-a-direct-ancestor.' No one is really providing an alternative explanation for the points about the rules I raised on my blog (which, again, are only examples among many others) - skeptical discussion here to date has just been about the pictures and the production quality. To argue that this is a 'how-it-should-be,' you need to argue from the rules, not from the pictures. Explaining the examples I provided would be a good start.

That sounds sensible. It looks like this has been discussed for quite a few years - would be good to get some more information on what it might be, and also to see a bit more.

No one is really providing an alternative explanation for the points about the rules I raised on my blog

As darkseraphim wrote above, it's hard to digest, follow and respond to your (and Dan's) arguments without being able to see the totality of the document.

But just to play devil's advocate - any one particular change could be the result of someone trying to clean up the text. Perhaps someone doesn't like the term "alignment", so goes with the one instance of "divisional" they see in the text and edits the rest to make it match? Even if the rest of the differences are from the original playtest, how do we know that particular change is?

I'm envisaging this scenario: Someone who had the playtest document re-typed it, in the process cleaning it up, editing it and adding the artwork. Perhaps to sell as a cheaper "D&D" to those looking for a copy? While it would have value as preserving the playtest in some form, we wouldn't really know if any one particular difference from OD&D was original or was changed later.

One thing that struck me when looking at it a few months ago is that it seems better organized than OD&D. The tables are numbered sequentially (something not found in OD&D) and the text refers to these tables by number. Further, there's a Glossary of Terms. This seems like a strange thing to have in the playtest version but then drop from the published version.

darkseraphim wrote:

increment wrote:No one is really providing an alternative explanation for the points about the rules I raised on my blog (which, again, are only examples among many others) - skeptical discussion here to date has just been about the pictures and the production quality. To argue that this is a 'how-it-should-be,' you need to argue from the rules, not from the pictures. Explaining the examples I provided would be a good start.

Well, I don't see how we can make any theoretical contributions or do any research without (a) a copy of the manuscript and/or (b) a report from Phil Barker's archivist on his EPT development box contents.  We're really not in any position yet to refute or agree to anything, because there is no basis on which to form an objective opinion of the material at hand.

Because the material is not at hand.

Unless I'm missing something, we (the non-Jon, non-Paul, non-Jeff, non-Dan "we") have a couple scanned pages and some scanned artwork, correct?  Isn't the next step, given that sparsity, simply to see what Jeff comes up with?

I hope that Jeff does come up with something decisive, but honestly, history rarely delivers us a smoking gun. I can say from working on my book that authenticating early documents requires more than just passing them before people who should be in the know. When I produced the Wizard Gaylord sheet for, for example, Pete Gaylord, he didn't recognize it or place it in the Blackmoor campaign. The evidence I present for it is entirely dependent on its relationship to other early sources. I believe this is the most reliable way to authenticate early documents, and it's the model I am following for the Dalluhn Manuscript.

While we're waiting for Jeff to return with more data, I will post more pieces of the story on my blog. Again, my post last night was just a start to the evidence I see. Tonight I focus on one small segment of the Dalluhn Manuscript: the example dungeon. Hopefully these scans will give people here more of a sense of the character of the document, and its relationship to OD&D. You can see it here.

Agreed, that would be fun   .

My concern about the artwork is not its quality, but rather the simple fact that there is artwork.  Why would artwork be necessary or desirable in a play-test manuscript?  Artwork would seem to me to be something you would include to make a product attractive and desirable to potential buyers of a product, and, hence, would be something you would add at a pre-production stage to convince an editor/publisher that you have a marketable product.

Unless, of course, the artwork was included because what you're putting together is a copy of something you've seen and liked that has already passed through the pre-production stage or has already been published (such as the OD&D rules).

Is this a fair summary?

There is no known author.
There is no known date.
The handwriting does not match Gygax/ Arneson.   (Although it would be convenient if it were in G/A handwriting, it is possible others for whom we have no handwriting samples, may  have produced a play test copy).
A reliable source has shown this to Gygax and he denied the attribution.  (Although both memory and potentially motive can be questioned).
This material has been known/around for a long time and seen by many people "who were there then?" who have not reached the conclusion that it is playtest material.  (although scholarship evolves and becomes more thorough over time and some of our preconceptions will certainly prove false).
Textual evaluation remains inconclusive.

Re: the artwork.  Look at the Aponion/Aphonion in non tsr fun finds for one example of many of playtest materials illustrated by a friend on a whim.  I am sure many of us own home brew material that includes illustrations for no other reason than the pure desire to illustrate.  Even, when not designed for publication.  Artists, professional and amateur create art because they want/like/have to do so.  Fortunately for us... and especially when they are young... they don't always need the motivation of profit to do so.

Personally, I require a more thorough and concrete set of reasons that this manuscript predates publication before I will accept the attribution.  (Neither, am I willing to go on record that it is wrong without additional information.

For the record, I can not say that I do not have a dog in this hunt.  So, qualify your judgement of my comments with the realization that were I to decide this is pre publication playtest material, I would be among those chasing the manuscript privately first, or at auction second.   Although I can honestly say that I currently have no interest in this manuscript, that opinion is subject to change with additional revelations/knowledge.

This fun discussion  seems destined to spin in circles for a while.  Enjoy the donuts and wheelies, fellow enthusiasts.

Pipswich

red_bus wrote:(4) it looks like in some places it is more extensive than the 1st print rules, and in some places less extensive. It will be hard to argue from that position that it predates the rules or was drafted at the same time (or slightly later). Because:

- Where it is more extensive, that can be both an argument for being: (a) a homemade player-copy where the author has added in more information to his homebrew version, or (b) being a test version that had the information dropped from the final rules.

- Where it is less extensive, that can also be both an argument for being: (a) a homemade player-copy that omitted information, or (b) a test version, where the extra information was added to the final rules.

Without someone who was there at the time laying claim to this as a test version, or finding  another test version to compare it to, I worry we will go round & round with speculation ...although that would be fun too  :D

I don't think the situation as so dire as you make it out to be. As my first blog post about this indicated, in the places where the Dalluhn Manuscript is more extensive, like in the combat system, we can see vestiges in the text of OD&D that strongly suggest that pre-OD&D had more extensive material. We can also point to things like the terminology of "division" instead of alignment appearing in some OD&D sections. These arguments show that, for those sections anyway, the Dalluhn Manuscript is not a fork off of the evolutionary tree - it preserves the material that preceded OD&D. We need to look at the character of what was seemingly added or dropped in order to understand how it informs the sequence. Again, my first blog post was an attempt to position the question exactly that way. My post about the sample dungeon poses the question, "would you revert this OD&D text to what we see in Dalluhn?" The character of the additional material in OD&D for that section is really just embellishments and corrections, logical continuations from what we see in Dalluhn. Dropping, say, three pages of a combat system is a very different sort of change, and we need to consider it differently. So I believe we do have tools of analysis that can get us out of the trap you describe above. They're not easy to apply, and we can't overpromise what they can deliver, but they shouldn't be discounted either.

Also a quick aside: I hope, even if I'm not winning any quick converts here, that people at find the general argument interesting and would like to see more here about the sorts of posts I've put up. If that isn't the case, do let me know (privately if you like) and I'll stop reflecting this material here.

increment wrote:
Also a quick aside: I hope, even if I'm not winning any quick converts here, that people at find the general argument interesting and would like to see more here about the sorts of posts I've put up. If that isn't the case, do let me know (privately if you like) and I'll stop reflecting this material here.

I don't find the general argument interesting, I find it fascinating. I am not convinced but I certainly want your reflections and research to continue and be posted here.