What can be said is limited. I have no special problem with any of this as it is. I fully realise that space is at a premium, and that likely the quality of press the writers were working with would tend to bleed should they have attempted a smaller font. They may in fact have been limited to the use of traditional typesetting, where the letters had to be physically arranged by hand in trays, word by word, with a composing stick, which was a handheld tool that held the type in place. Little slivers, "spacers," were used to provide consistent gaps and separate individual letters to produce paragraph justification. The process is meticulous and might be done alone or with other people working at the same time.
I learned how to do this at Simon Fraser Junior High in Calgary, in 1979, because the school had such a press. It's fascinating, honestly, and I hadn't possessed my passion for writing fully at that time, though it was coming fast. We had only a few font sizes to choose from, with pretty much all of them outside the norm being for Headings, not smaller words. The ease with which we could run out of "e"s or "z"s was an issue, not one that a city newspaper would have dealt with in the 1930s. By the 40s and 50s, phototypesetting and offset printing began to replace hand typesetting, but the latter was still around in small towns when I was a boy.
I learned how to do this at Simon Fraser Junior High in Calgary, in 1979, because the school had such a press. It's fascinating, honestly, and I hadn't possessed my passion for writing fully at that time, though it was coming fast. We had only a few font sizes to choose from, with pretty much all of them outside the norm being for Headings, not smaller words. The ease with which we could run out of "e"s or "z"s was an issue, not one that a city newspaper would have dealt with in the 1930s. By the 40s and 50s, phototypesetting and offset printing began to replace hand typesetting, but the latter was still around in small towns when I was a boy.
It's because of this sort of experience that I'm often impatient with readers who see only the words. Where an underline passes through a word rather than under it, where it belongs, that says "typesetting" to me. In typesetting, underlining is done manually using a physical tool like a ruling pen or a hand-held underlining device. It's possible that the typesetter misjudged the alignment of the tool here, causing it to cross over the characters instead of appear under them; it might have been that after the placement, something in the frame shifted that caused this one little bit to move out of where it should have been; and it might have been placed insecurely to start, by an amateur, not realising that it could shift after the press began to operate. I can't think of any way this could have happened if the print had been done by phototypesetting, which I also learned how to do years later when working for the U of C Gauntlet.
We can frame what the publishers of the White Box set did as an amazing achievement, to employ such a backward technology in a gigantic effort to produce these books... made more amazing now that the readers understand the obstacles that had to be overcome. I cannot buy in, however. Every press overcame these obstacles; universities published weekly papers of more than a hundred pages using this process. We see it as monumental and difficult — they saw it as ordinary. It's in the perspective.
I think the lesson here is to comprehend just how far in the past the set was... and how advanced our present is. If the set is clunky, creaky, troublesome and clumsy, granted, there's room to be made for that. But English was still English then, the grammar that was applied to every other book, magazine, brochure and newspaper in 1973 was also in place for the White Box set. Their failure to use grammar properly is not excused by their having to use the technology they had. It could be argued that proper grammar and consistent language usage were even more important as they were the primary way readers engaged with knowledge at that time. If anything a higher level of scrutiny would have been applied by contemporaries than we apply today, when visual and spoken media far outweighs writing.
I'm being deliberately contrary here to make a point. It's generally assumed that the concept of D&D, set alight by this set of rules, is proof that the books are good. What I'm arguing is that the concept was so powerful, so meaningful, so game-changing, that it succeeded in spite of the total failure of these books to do their work. Each time in the last week that I've had someone come forward to correct some thinking of mine regarding the opinions I've given, it's to say how they interpreted the rules. They don't quote the rules to me; they don't say, "See this word here, that refers to this concept." No, what they say is, "I always thought it meant..." That right there is the problem. If you thought it meant something, then whatever it actually did mean is a movable feast. That you thought of it that way doesn't mean everyone did, it doesn't mean I do, and that's a sign of a communication done badly. There's no excuse for that, no matter how much you love this set of books.
In technical writing, especially for something as intricate as a game that relies on clear communication, there’s no room for ambiguity. If the rules were effective, everyone would be quoting the same passages, using the same language to describe the game mechanics. But instead, players filled in the blanks with their own interpretations. Which only makes for a number of inconsistent interpretations. That's not how we make games well.
Complimenting that is the pile of evidence for how little actual knowledge the makers had of things they casually included in their rules. Take the example of the "potion or wineskin" weighing the equivalent of 30 pieces of gold. A wineskin typically holds between 33 and 50 fluid ounces, about 1 to 1.5 litres of liquid. To quaff that amount would take most likely a few minutes. For most people, just drinking, it would take anywhere up to 20 minutes. If you quaffed all of it as fast as you could, two things would happen; first, you'd be terrifically bloated. It would also put tremendous pressure on your bladder... and for some of you, who have reached my happy age in life, you should also know that drinking a flood of water this quickly will cause the liquid to skip the bladder and just continue right down your small, and then your large intestine. Resulting in... while, I assume you can guess.
Yet, we're of course able to quaff a potion in a fingersnap, which is... the same weight as the wineskin? How, exactly? An empty wineskin weighs about 0.5 to 1.5 lbs. (225-680 grams). If the potion bottle, which is denser than the wineskin, were to hold 1 liter of water, it would be the size of my milk carton, 10 inches tall and 3 inches in diameter. Want to quaff that in one round? Hm?
Somebody is going to raise their hand and say, at this point, "I always thought it meant that because the potion bottle is more fragile, it needs more space in the player's backpack, because it needs to be stuffed somehow with cotton or such so that it doesn't break." Uh huh. Gygax makes this exact interpretation at the end of the 1979 DMG. But what if I don't use the stuffing? What if I use my clothes? What if I make the bottle unbreakable somehow? How much does it weigh then? Even if it automatically breaks, that still doesn't make it somehow weigh more than it does. And how do we know how much stuffing is actually needed? And why isn't the stuffing given a weight?
I hate to go all Occam's on this, but really it just sounds like they had no fucking idea what a wineskin was, nor any actual idea how a potion flask should be sized, so they just pulled convenient numbers of out their ass and said, "Trust us." That's not very... um... rational. But no, I'm not done.
Somebody is going to raise their hand and say, at this point, "I always thought it meant that because the potion bottle is more fragile, it needs more space in the player's backpack, because it needs to be stuffed somehow with cotton or such so that it doesn't break." Uh huh. Gygax makes this exact interpretation at the end of the 1979 DMG. But what if I don't use the stuffing? What if I use my clothes? What if I make the bottle unbreakable somehow? How much does it weigh then? Even if it automatically breaks, that still doesn't make it somehow weigh more than it does. And how do we know how much stuffing is actually needed? And why isn't the stuffing given a weight?
I hate to go all Occam's on this, but really it just sounds like they had no fucking idea what a wineskin was, nor any actual idea how a potion flask should be sized, so they just pulled convenient numbers of out their ass and said, "Trust us." That's not very... um... rational. But no, I'm not done.
During the medieval era, you know, the time D&D happens in, stated firmly in the introduction of this book, the florin and the ducat were the two most common coins of the time period. Each weighed, somewhat inconsistently, 3.5 to 3.7 grams. A rare gold coin, like Britain's angel, was sometimes closer to 6.5 to 7 grams.
IF a potion or a wineskin weighs 30 g.p. in any system based on the actual size of actual gold pieces, it would weigh about 3.8 ounces. This is only possible if its empty, since the liquid would obviously weigh more. The shield above weighs 18.5 ounces, or about 1.2 lbs. The plate armour weighs 6 lbs.
This has always been, for me, the grossest evidence of not doing their research, which has continued to be foisted on the public since. I don't really care if we want to use an arbitrary measurement and then use it for weighing stuff. What I don't understand is why "pounds" wasn't a practical measurement here, and why "ounces" weren't, since they could never be misconstrued, while the re-invention of the gold piece as an object that weighs 12 times the weight of an actual medieval gold coin was "simpler" somehow. How is it possible to misconstrue that plate armour weighs 75 lbs? Or that a shield weighs 15? WHY does it have to be translated through gold pieces. And why, if it does, is the SIZE of the gold piece inflated to this gigantic hunk of metal that never existed at any time through history?
Because, Occam again, the writers didn't know jack shit about the time period they were writing about. And even more inexplicably, The arbitrary system of weight based on gold pieces instead of using practical, real-world measurements has carried over through the decades, even in more modern editions of D&D. It's not an "early" issue; it's a persistent flaw that has been perpetuated by decades of game design without addressing the core problem.
WHY?
No, don't bother. Because you're going to start with, "I've always thought that..."
As far as the rules for calculating encumbrance? Same question as to the equipment list: how much do clothes weigh? If I drink a beer, and I haven't pissed it out yet, how much does that change my encumbrance?
IF a potion or a wineskin weighs 30 g.p. in any system based on the actual size of actual gold pieces, it would weigh about 3.8 ounces. This is only possible if its empty, since the liquid would obviously weigh more. The shield above weighs 18.5 ounces, or about 1.2 lbs. The plate armour weighs 6 lbs.
This has always been, for me, the grossest evidence of not doing their research, which has continued to be foisted on the public since. I don't really care if we want to use an arbitrary measurement and then use it for weighing stuff. What I don't understand is why "pounds" wasn't a practical measurement here, and why "ounces" weren't, since they could never be misconstrued, while the re-invention of the gold piece as an object that weighs 12 times the weight of an actual medieval gold coin was "simpler" somehow. How is it possible to misconstrue that plate armour weighs 75 lbs? Or that a shield weighs 15? WHY does it have to be translated through gold pieces. And why, if it does, is the SIZE of the gold piece inflated to this gigantic hunk of metal that never existed at any time through history?
Because, Occam again, the writers didn't know jack shit about the time period they were writing about. And even more inexplicably, The arbitrary system of weight based on gold pieces instead of using practical, real-world measurements has carried over through the decades, even in more modern editions of D&D. It's not an "early" issue; it's a persistent flaw that has been perpetuated by decades of game design without addressing the core problem.
WHY?
No, don't bother. Because you're going to start with, "I've always thought that..."
As far as the rules for calculating encumbrance? Same question as to the equipment list: how much do clothes weigh? If I drink a beer, and I haven't pissed it out yet, how much does that change my encumbrance?
This page, 16, however, is simple and straightforward game mechanics. The numbers don't need discussion, the columns are fine, we can assume that once you hit those level peaks you're done. I have nothing whatsoever to add. It's fine. In fact, it's probably the best page of the books so far.
The barbarian is fine. Comic-style, of course, superhero musculature on the thighs, better drawn than anything else here so far, the sword's a bit long but that's irrelevant. It shows how the poorly drawn dwarf from earlier really is pretty much the barbarian above. If I had seen the image when I started D&D (and I don't remember having done so), I'd have probably thought, "Yeah, awesome."
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