04-25-2016, 12:31 PM
Havard Wrote:... Any particular reason why you think this particular section is what was discarded? I agree that the things being cut likely appeared in the FFC, but never gave any thought to what specific sections might have been submitted.
-Havard
Yeah. So the whole thing reads like something written for publication; IOW it is not a bunch of campaign notes or a player handout.
If you look at the details, it is very clearly written for published D&D.
Now, we know that Supplement II was pubulished at the very tail end of 1975 after several months of editing at the hands of Blume first and Kask second. So we can safely assume the manuscript was submitted sometime between mid summer to early fall of 1975 (roughly August to October)
Let's look at the class list given in the Special Interest section:
Fm
C
Mu
Ranger
Paladin
Assassin
Merchant
Sage
Okay. First 3 are from the 3lbbs, of course. Ranger comes from the summer 1975 issue of Strategic Review.
What classes are missing from the list? Thief? yes, sort of, but we do have Assassin. Also Paladin comes from Greyhawk so Supplement I is definitely included.
Illusionist and Bard from the Strategic Review are missing for sure, as are any of the classes found in Dragon magazine. Illusionist wasn't published until the winter issue of 1975; Bard, came out in the spring of '76. So only the Ranger class could have been known to Dave when he was writing Supplement II.
Now of the last 3 classes, Assasin and Sage are both found in Supplement II. Merchant is not, but Monk is, and we know that Blume invented the Monk class. My suspicion is that he tossed out Arneson's Merchant and replaced it with his monk. (which makes one wonder if any of the Merchants mechanics became part of the monks) In any case, there was no published Monk when Arneson was writing Supp II.
So the Special Interest Class list fits exactly the classes available to Dave in the summer of 1975 when he would have been writing Supp II.