So it turns out that I have a bunch of back issues of Great Plains Game Player and its successor, Gamelog, both of them published by Jim Lurvey. Jim’s a great guy – I can say that, having known him off and on for nearly 30 years now.
It just so happens that in an early issue of GP2, there’s an article by one Gary Gygax, about the relationship between strength and weapons damage and other abilities. Looks like the prototype for the strength tables in Greyhawk. (I understand from a conversation with Jim a couple of years ago that GP2 was where the Thief character class first appeared, too.)
And then there’s The Ryth Chronicle – John Van De Graaf’s ‘zine of campaigns along the Ryth River, “published as a public service by the Yggrdasill papermill” with the first issue appearing in the 4th week of March, 1975, if I’ve got it correctly. Interesting thing about John’s campaign is that he started keeping records from the 3rd week in November of 1974, so his campaign started with the original three booklets sans Greyhawk. As a historical record, this is an amazing snapshot of what gaming was like Way Back Then.
Details to follow…. 🙂
It's a small world. Jim lives near where I grew up, so I went there with another friend of mine (Tom O'Neal) to play miniatures when I was a kid.
Ryth Chronicle is relevant to my interests. Please give every piece of information you can 😛
Shannon – weird. Though since I have family in South Dakota, I've become aware of how the entire state is like a small town – people know one another all over the place.
1d30 – Sure! I will probably start posting a series related to it, relatively soon. I want to complete the spreadsheet of the data from the first issue.