Laying the Foundations, Pt. 3

Whether it's Nike's swoosh logo or McDonald's golden arches, Apple's iPhone or Heinz ketchup, corporate and product brands capture the attention of (and in/directly engage) nearly everyone on a daily basis. Modern branding was born in the mid- to late 19c, maturing in parallel with a middle class all too eager to spend its leisure time and money, but it's the nearly seventy years since 1945 that chart our current relationship with companies via brand recognition, brand identification, brand loyalty, etc. Indeed, the proliferation of technical terms for how we interact with brands is itself a sign of their intimate role in our contemporary lives.

As I noted in a recent post, TSR Hobbies, Inc., first began to exhibit its own brand self-awareness during the period from mid-1975 to mid-1977 -- moving to a slicker trade dress for its products, launching a hobby-wide magazine (The Dragon), adopting a pictocentric logo (the D&D lizard man). The culmination of that process, however, would be nearly a decade in coming, and perhaps inevitably, it was a process that would both reflect and reconfigure the company's identity and implied values as well as re/define its employees, customers, and critics. So many changes had occurred by the end of 1985, in fact, that TSR constituted an entirely different brand.

Because B/X D&D was on the market during the years just prior to those changes' culmination, it's worth keeping their trajectory in mind. Not every individual development did or could impact the Basic D&D line, but each and every one of them reflects the TSR brand's destination, one that was fast approaching even as the 1981 rules continued to sit on store shelves.

• Adventure modules went through two redesigns between 1978 and 1983, eventually settling on a more modern logo and cover presentation. The innards were likewise adapted to a more rigid "customer-friendly" template -- heavy reliance on boxed text (to be read aloud by the DM) is perhaps the most widely recognized of those interior changes.

• In mid-1983 BD&D underwent a mass-market retooling under the auspices of Frank Mentzer, accompanied by Larry Elmore artwork. BECMI became the "gold standard" for the non-Advanced D&D line, and while many of its rules were either identical to or only slightly modified from the 1981 edition, its sensibility is much more mainstream and consumer (i.e. pre-teen and teen) friendly.

• AD&D's hardcover rulebooks were likewise updated, beginning with 1983's Monster Manual II. All previous releases, with the exception of Fiend Folio, were reprinted to match. (Deities & Demigods was renamed Legends & Lore to forestall criticism from conservative critics, clergy, and parents.) The orange spines and sleeker artwork of Jeff Easley remain visual hallmarks of those versions, at least for my generation.

• TSR had always published games other than D&D, but a cadre of RPGs occupied the company's shelves by 1985. Gangbusters 1e (1982), Star Frontiers 1e (1982), and Gamma World 2e (1983) joined Top Secret 2e (1980), Boot Hill 2e (1979), AD&D, and BECMI. Not to mention the licensed properties that routinely made their way into TSR's catalog -- Marvel Comics' superheroes (1984), Conan (1984) and (later, in 1986) Red Sonja, Indiana Jones (1984), and Fritz Leiber's Lankhmar (1985) all put in appearances.

• The much-loved Dungeons & Dragons Saturday-morning cartoon ran for three seasons between 1983 and 1985, capitalizing on the game's growing popularity and vaulting it into the mainstream in a way no other RPG property has ever managed. And whether due to Gen-X nostalgia or their quality of production (or both), they remain highly popular, easily besting D&D's more recent adventures in live-action Hollywood.

D&D: 1976-77

This post is the second in a series of chronological reviews illustrating my "wave and transition" approach to Dungeons & Dragon's development. I would again emphasize that these posts are cursory at best; additional details will be presented as I begin focused analyses of individual creators, products, etc. in the months to come.

Pt. 1 - D&D: 1970-76

Transitional Period B (1976-77)

The first production-level hints of D&D's growing market and marketing success appear in late 1975. Chainmail 3e gains a slick silver cover. The original D&D (OD&D) boxed set gains new cover art and goes all white. Timothy Kask becomes TSR's first outside editorial hire, taking over, among a slew of other duties, as editor of Strategic Review with issue 5 (Dec 1975). But by 1976-77 the company's growth and branding changes are impossible to ignore.

On the creative side, Dave Arneson, Mike Carr, [1] and David Sutherland are brought into the official TSR stable during the spring of 1976 -- though Arneson, continually more frustrated, is already gone by the end of that year. James Ward solidifies his position within the company, coauthoring Supplement IV: Gods, Demi-gods & Heroes (Jul 1976) with Robert Kuntz and designing Metamorphosis Alpha (late 1976). [2] Tom Wham joins the crew as a staff artist and board-game designer in May 1977.

By mid-1976, Kask has overseen the transition of house-organ Strategic Review from newsletter to magazine before further transforming it into a bonafide gaming publication (The Dragon) with outside content. [3] Articles in both reveal a continuing emphasis on retrofitting and otherwise tinkering with the 1974 OD&D rules.

Generic materials like hex sheets and polyhedral dice had been early additions to the TSR catalog, but its first branded D&D accessories are released in 1977 in the form of Character Record Sheets and Dungeon Geomorphs, Set 1 -- the latter is an idea teased as early as Strategic Review #5 (Dec 1975, p. 7). If nothing else, those products suggest that TSR sees play aids as a supplemental revenue stream, with game content (especially adventure and setting details) being something customers could and would create for themselves.

OD&D's final two supplements as well as its miniatures rules have slick two-tone or color covers -- in contrast to Greyhawk and Blackmoor's rough tan card stock.

And the cardstock gaming booklets of 1974-76 soon become the monochrome and color rulebooks of 1976-77.

The company's stylized GK (Gygax-Kaye) monogram is replaced by a D&D-style lizard man in Sep 1975. [4] Thus, even the smallest details make it clear that TSR sees itself as an increasingly important player in the gaming market, one whose brand is as important as its content.

TO BE CONTINUED . . .

Notes

[1] Carr's popular Fight in the Skies (AKA Dawn Patrol) was acquired from Guidon Games, with the fifth edition appearing under TSR's imprint in 1975. Carr would go on, among other things, to author the first Basic D&D adventure module B1: In Search of the Unknown (Nov 1978), which was eventually bundled with J. Eric Holmes' D&D rules revision (Jul 1977) in later printings of the "Basic Set" box.

[2] Gary Gygax and Brian Blume's Warriors of Mars predates Metamorphosis Alpha by two-plus years, but given the former's emphasis on miniatures, most commentators consider the latter the first true science-fiction roleplaying game.

[3] Strategic Review had a seven-issue run between Spr 1975 and Apr 1976, the last three issues being clear (i.e. magazine-format) precursors to The Dragon, the first issue of which is cover dated Jun 1976.

[4]  The lizard-man logo was itself replaced in late 1978 by a wand-wielding wizard. "Wizard" was the title for an 11th-level OD&D Magic-User and, later, incorporated into TSR's catchphrase "The Game Wizards."