Original Dungeons & Dragons or OD&D (1974-1976), also known as "The Original Game", was the first version of the tabletop game Dungeons & Dragons. It was created as a companion book to the miniature-based wargame Chainmail. It was co-written by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson and published by TSR in 1974 as a set of three digest-sized books (the "little brown books" or LBB): Men & Magic, Monsters & Treasure, and The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures. There were three original classes (Fighting-Man, Cleric and Magic-User), four races (Human, Dwarf, Elf, Halfling) and only three alignments (Law, Neutrality, Chaos)note .
Humans could choose between all three classes and advance in their chosen class without limit, while other races were restricted in class options and max levels, but still potent due to their racial abilities. Hit Points, weapon/spell damage, and initiative were all rolled using a d6, there are five Saving Throws that used a "meet-or-higher" roll on a d20, and To-Hit rolls used descending Armor Class (also on a d20). Spell levels were limited to 6th level spells for Magic Users and 5th level spells for Clerics.
The game shows some holdovers from its wargaming roots, most prominently the assumption that players are not very attached to their characters. Character creation is very fast, as is the possibility of character death, and one should simply send another brave soul to join the party should the old one perish. There's even an inheritance mechanic to let your new character start with some of the old one's treasure (unless the rest of your party isn't willing to give it up...). Resurrection magic exists, but is not available for the first few levels.
OD&D received numerous supplements, both officially released and from magazine articles. Combat rules came from the Chainmail rulebook until Supplement I provided an "alternate combat system" which went on to become the standard system of the game.
Supplement I: Greyhawk - 1975: Introduced the Thief class, the Paladin as a Fighting-Man subclass, Half-Elves as a playable race, and more monsters. The level and class restrictions for other non-humans were revised to account for the addition of the Thief and new rules for high ability scores. Magic-Users gained 7th-9th level spells, but only if their Intelligence score was high enough, while Clerics gained 6th and 7th level spells. It also introduced an "alternate combat system" and revised other rules to distance itself from Chainmail.
Supplement II: Blackmoor - 1975: Introduced the Monk as a Cleric subclass, the Assassin as a Thief subclass, a system for diseases, a system for attacking specific parts of the body, rules for underwater adventures, and even more monsters. Also contains the very first TSR-published adventure module: The Temple of the Frog for the Blackmoor setting.
Supplement III: Eldritch Wizardry - 1976: Introduced the Druid as a Cleric subclass and the option for human psionics (restricted to non-subclass users). It also marks the first appearances of the Demon Princes Orcus and Demogorgon, as well as the lich-turned-deity Vecna.
Supplement IV: Gods, Demi-Gods & Heroes - 1976: The last official supplement. Introduced deities, demi-gods, and legendary heroes from mythology and religions both real (Egyptian, Celtic, Norse) and fictional (Hyborean and Melnibonéan) for two purposes: 1) as a means of integrating pre-established mythologies into campaigns, and 2) an attempt to dissuade DMs who let their players become super-powerful by giving them opponents that could wipe the floor with them. The latter effort rather backfired, and instead contributed to starting the idea of "if you stat it, they will kill it". Modern reprints dropped the fictional pantheons due to licensing issues.
Swords & Spells - 1976: The unnumbered "fifth" supplement, written by Gygax. Touted as the "grandson" of Chainmail, this sourcebook introduced rules for upscaling the combat in order to portray large scale battles. The supplement was not that well received when it was released and was not included in the 40th Anniversary White Box collection.
Tropes in Original D&D include:
- All Swords Are the Same: All weapons (wielded by player-characters) deal the exact same damage, 1d6. If the game is played with the "Chainmail" system, however, the type of weapon affects the chance to hit the enemy, depending on their armor type. Greyhawk introduced variable weapon damage and armor type adjustments to what was the "optional" combat system in the original rules, at the same time making it the "official" combat system (replacing Chainmail).
- Bag of Holding: This is the Trope Namer. The Bag is a magic item that "will contain 10,000 Gold Pieces as if they were only 300" (weight in this edition was measured in terms of gold pieces).
- Bubble Shield: In White Plume Mountain, the players will encounter "The Beast in the Boiling Bubble," a Giant Enemy Crab inside a magical air bubble in a lake of boiling hot water. If the dungeoneers are careless with their weapons, they could end up bursting the bubble and being boiled alive by the lake water.
- Crutch Character: Non-human races have various special powers that men don't but are limited in their maximum level (e.g. dwarves get a large bonus to saving throws but can only reach level 6). Thus, a non-human will start out stronger than his human peer, but eventually falls behind hard.
- Early-Installment Weirdness:
- As mentioned in the work description, the original game was a spinoff of a tabletop wargame called Chainmail, so the very first books required possession of the Chainmail game and the Avalon Hill game Outdoor Survival (which was used for overland adventuring). The basic concept of the game is much more like a wargame than the interactive storytelling experience of later editions.
- As above, if game is played with the "Chainmail" rules for combat (instead of the "alternative" d20-based system, which formed the basis for combat in all later editions), combat is resolved exclusively with use of d6 dice, depending on sub-system usednote
- The manual recommends that there be about 1 "referee" per 20 players, anticipating that the players in each session would be drawn from a larger pool and never stay consistent from game to game. Modern DMs would probably have a nervous breakdown at the idea of having 20 different players to deal with (though, as noted above, the assumptions about what the "referee" needs to keep track of were quite different).
- The game explicitly stole names from J. R. R. Tolkien's works (such as ent, balrog and hobbit) before being threatened by Tolkien Enterprises, causing the Suspiciously Similar Substitute creatures that have become standard (e.g. treant, balor and halfling) to be introduced.
- The hiring of various NPC specialists and combat-allies is a core part of the game at higher levels, and not doing so will likely leave you underpowered. As opposed to later editions where NPC party members are usually more optional.
- The Character Alignment system in the first boxed set only had three alignments: lawful, neutral, and chaotic. The famous nine-alignment system didn't show up until Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.
- There were only 4 (later 5) races to choose from (Human, Dwarf, Elf, Halfling/Hobbit, and Half-Elves from the Greyhawk expansion) and no option for custom races. Most of the other races people consider central to D&D and its cousins, such as Half-Orcs, Gnomes, Tieflings, Aasimar and Dragonborns, weren't available (or hadn't even been conceived of yet). That said, there was a note that the players and referee could work together to come up with other options. The only caveat being that they started off relatively weak and worked their way up the ranks.
- Due to the early implied campaign setting focus being very humancentric, the playable non-human races were unable to level to the point they could establish strongholds in the wilderness. After the thief class was introduced as their only unlimited leveling class, the only "stronghold" they could establish were thieves' guilds in already established cities.
- Expanding Thrown Weapon: Dragon magazine #5 article "Witchcraft Supplement for Dungeons and Dragons" magic items.
- Hill Seeds are small black spheres that, when thrown, expand until they are several yards across. Any living creature they hit is crushed and killed and any object hit takes damage as if hit by a triple bombard.
- Mountain Seeds are small black spheres that, when thrown, expand until they are the size of a castle. They can be used to smash a town or crush an army unit.
- Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards: OD&D started the long, long history of this trope in the series. The book even comments:
- Reincarnated as a Non-Humanoid: The spell reincarnation brings back a character as a random creature of their alignment (law, neutrality, or chaos). For instance, a lawful human would have an equal chance of reincarnating as a human, halfling, patriarch (cleric), treant, unicorn, pegasus, hippogriff, elf, werewolf, roc, dwarf, or a centaur.
- Role-Playing Endgame: Characters can level up all the way to demigodhood, whereupon they can rest on their laurels or voluntarily De-power themselves and live another mortal life. If they reach demigodhood again, they Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence and vanish into realms unknown.
- Spell Levels: Probably the Trope Codifier. In Original D&D, both arcane (wizard) and divine (cleric) spells are split into six and five tiers, respectively, with characters of certain level getting only so many spells of certain levels to memorize. The Greyhawk supplement increased them to nine tiers for arcane spells and seven tiers for divine spells. It stayed this way from OD&D all the way through AD&D 2nd Edition.
- Spiritual Antithesis: Is this to the original Chainmail. Compared to Chainmail, where each player commands an army against another player's army, Dungeons & Dragons was — and continues to be — a cooperative experience with each player controlling just one customizable character rather than an army, with high-level Fighting Men blurring the distinction a bit.
- Surprise Slide Staircase: Rules booklet "Book 3 The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures". In the sample map of an underground level, a false set of stairs that appear to lead up will turn into a slide that goes down to a lower level.
- Writing Around Trademarks: The earliest printings of the original boxed set call the race of little people hobbits, as one might expect from a Lord of the Rings influenced game. Grumblings from the Tolkien estate led this to be changed to halflings (along with a couple of monster names, such as "Ents" becoming "Treants" and "Balrogs" becoming "Balors"). Ironically, Tolkien also coined the word "halfling", but apparently it was generic enough to pass.
