The "lost" witch of Holmes Basic was mentioned on the Old School FRP tumblr today.
Originally shared by Paul Vermeren
Evidence that a witch "subclass" was originally slated to appear in AD&D. It's interesting to think about what subsequent versions (and spinoffs) of AD&D would have been like with an additional class in the mix. Were any of the witch classes that appeared in Dragon written by Gygax?
http://oldschoolfrp.tumblr.com/post/149705739402/from-the-1977-blue-book-basic-dd-rules-which-j
Not that I know of, Zach: the one that appears in TD#5 was anonymous, and apparently no one ever claimed it as their own work that I'm aware of. The others were written by non-Gygax folks:
ReplyDeleteWitch NPC class
- "Another Look at Witches and Witchcraft in D&D" by Ronald Pehr in TD#20
- "Brewing Up a New NPC: The Witch" by Bill Muhlhausen, et al in Dragon 43
- "Witchcraft Supplement for Dungeons & Dragons" by Anonymous in TD#5
Witchcraft
- "Witch, The" by Bill Muhlhausen in Dragon 114
Real-world basis
- "'Real Witch': A Mixture of Fact and Fantasy, The" by Tom Moldvay in Dragon #43
FWIW, I always liked the version in TD#5 (also appearing in Best of Dragon #1), and signficantly leveraged it as well as Muhlhausen's article in 114 as the basis for my witch (I don't think I had Muhlhausen's earlier article available at the time).
The witch in Dragon #43 was a big deal for me back in the day, but one in #114 was what really convinced me that this would be a class worth developing and playing.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Allan. I left some comments in response to Paul's post, including a link to a chronology of the witch class, and I thought they would be easily viewable here. But there's no link directly to Paul's post and comments just the link he shared. I'll have to remember that in future posting.
ReplyDeleteThis is the witch class chronology from odd74 by Demos Sachlas that I posted for Paul: http://odd74.proboards.com/thread/5725/witch-class-holmes
ReplyDeleteWhat I didn't realize until I saw your comment is that the Dragon #43 and #114 witch classes were both by the same author, Bill Mulhausen.
ReplyDeleteI also wrote: Holmes did not include witch in the draft of the paragraph [OS FRP] quoted, so added by TSR; Gygax specifically denied it, so either he forgot or it was a secondary editor; Holmes did mention a "witch doctor" in the list of non-standard PCs that was edited out; Read more here: http://zenopusarchives.blogspot.com/2013/11/part-4-and-half-human-half-serpent-naga.html?m=1
ReplyDeleteThe witch in Dragon #20 is for OD&D (or Holmes), although it came out in Nov 1978, more than a year after the Holmes rulebook was published. The thread by Demos Sachlas (linked above) also has his Holmes version of this write-up; that is, he extracted the level 1-3 info.
ReplyDeleteEventually I plan to do a one-page spell sheet of the Dragon #20 witch spells for Holmes Ref, in the same format as the M-U/Cleric spells. #holmesref
ReplyDeleteZach H: I'd forgotten that the witch was a TSR addition; do we know who else was editing the Basic Book besides Gary and Eric?
ReplyDeleteNot specifically. Gary said that he was responsible for the manuscript, but also referred to others such as the "production people" mentioned in Dragon #35 when he talked about working on the Basic Set. There couldn't have been too many folks working at TSR at the time - early '77. Tim Kask was already working on The Dragon. Perhaps Mike Carr?
ReplyDelete