The Harnish
Germany
Duisburg
NRW
Cult of The Harnish Leader
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I picked up WotC's 30 Years of Adventure: A Celebration of Dungeons & Dragons up on Ebay and figured I'd provide an overview and review although in all fairness, it's hard to review a book that was released six years ago and is now out of print. However, it is still available on a few book store shelves and on Ebay so this might be of interest to prospective buyers.
While much of the story told by the book is probably known to a long-time fan of D&D, there are also a lot of interesting little facts and insider info that most won't necessarily have heard before. The book also provides a variety of single-page profiles of celebrity D&D players which include Wil Wheaton, Stephen Colbert, Mark Tremonti, Ed Robertson, & Tom DeSanto. The foreword, written by Vin Diesel, is a nice trip down nostalgia lane too.
While the book is hardly a scholarly history of D&D, it does provide the average reader with a nice overview of both the timing of the various major releases as well as some of the creative thought and process that went on behind them. It also provides an interesting (though frequently told in other places) account of the fall of TSR and its sudden acquisition by Wizards of the Coast. Rather than providing a chapter by chapter review of the entire book, I thought I'd pick out a few of the more interesting bits I came across and comment on those.
* Aside from the obvious origins in the CHAINMAIL game, D&D's ties to miniatures began as far back as 1976 when Ral Partha began producing miniatures for the game. I had some of these miniatures years ago but never realized that they appeared that early in the life of the game. (p. 32)
* The reaction to the introduction of 2nd ed. is also interesting since it mirrors some of the vitriol that you still read about 4th ed. At one point the book talks about angry fans writing that in attempting to make the game more accessible, TSR was dumbing it down so that "Now anyone would be able to play the game!" (p. 160)
* Another interesting parallel with the current approach with WotC's release schedule on 4E is the 2nd edition's use of the Player's Handbook Reference Books which were meant to allow for "continual revision and expansion of the rules." Of course anyone who played 2nd edition knows what they ultimately did to the game, including the author of the chapter (Steve Winter) - they started a progressive power creep that ultimately broke the game. The sad irony here is that although TSR/WotC knew what power creep did to the game, they went on to do the same thing with 3rd edition and seem to be on the same track with the latest edition. So much for the idea of learning from past mistakes. (p. 168-170)
* The "black box" D&D game (aka Ten-Seventy) sold over a half million copies worldwide, making it one of TSR's most successful products. (p. 193)
* Regarding the name "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons" - one of the main reasons that TSR added the "advanced" word to the title was to get around paying royalties to Dave Arneson. The reason the game switched back to using just the title "Dungeons & Dragons" with the third edition is that WotC (under Adkison's direction) made a sizable settlement with Arneson to release all claims to the name. (p. 247)
* In the process of creating the third edition, game designers assembled a list of game elements that they absolutely couldn't change if D&D were to remain D&D. These included: AC going down (AC-10 was considered an iconic touchstone), keep all the core races and don't add any, and ability scores had to range from 3-18. If you've played 3rd (or 4th) edition you know the punchline: These were the first things they dumped in developing 3E. Again, the irony here is that many people say 4th edition changed things so much that "it isn't D&D anymore" but few seem to realize that it was 3rd edition that was the major departure from the original game and that WotC had a history of radical changes so the alterations in 4E shouldn't have come as such a surprise. (p. 254)
*Another funny bit from the 3rd edition chapter is this bit "Another school of thought was to simplify and streamline D&D. The justification for this line of thinking was that D&D, as a game had grown out of wargaming, was too rules heavy and played more like a miniatures game than a roleplaying game "should" play like." They were talking about 2nd edition! (p. 255)
The book, which was written in the middle of the 3rd edition year, also talks about the d20/OGL license and its great success, but doesn't ever mention the negative effects of the license, namely the glut of terrible products that came out as everyone and anyone jumped on the OGL bandwagon and the backlash within the industry as consumers and shop owners got sick of being burned by crappy d20 books.
Is the book worth the cost if you can find one at a reasonable price? I'd say that if you're a fan of D&D the answer is "Yes" although I'm not sure anyone is going to be interested in reading it more than once. However, for those of us who grew up playing early editions, it's an enjoyable enough read and worth the price, especially if you can circulate it amongst friends who also might enjoy the nostalgic trip down memory lane.
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