Regarding the first D&D class, the Thief

Before Dungeons & Dragons (1974) there was Chainmail, Gary Gygax's miniatures wargame released by TSR in 1971. As a wargame it had various types of fighter units, and its fantasy supplement included many spells that would make a reappearance in D&D three years later. It was on this foundation that Dave Arneson built his world changing Blackmoor campaign.

The Blackmoor campaign would be world changing, but in 1974 that was hardly a foregone conclusion. What was already established though in 1974 was that Arneson's house rules fundamentally changed a Chainmail player's viewpoint from "omniscient general" to a limited first-person viewpoint in the form a single player character, while simultaneously expanding the possibilities of the game's milieu from fixed set battles to everything imaginably achievable by a fantasy hero within a fantasy world. Combat between player characters and their fantastic foes then became a sub-game within a much larger game.

Combat would not be the only sub-game in D&D however. Dave Arneson's other great contribution to the game was the idea of the dungeon delve itself. Exploring the dungeon became "the other subgame", and rules such as movement rates (which were in Chainmail, but adapted to dungeon environments), range of vision, equipment and encumbrance, surprise and wandering monster tables, etc. etc. were developed to faciliate a rules-based interraction between the players and their environment.

What is so interesting (to me) about the dungeon delve experience however is what rules were missing. In fact most interractions between the players and their environment was not mediated by rules but solely through the DM by means of open ended questions, answers and player actions.

PC: "What do I see?"

DM: "The hallway proceeds in front of you beyond the range of your Light spell. A large flagstone about 10' in front of you is obviously about 1" lower than the rest of the floor."

PC: "Can I poke it with my 10' pole?"

And so on. It is free form, open ended, and subjective. If the players prodded locked doors or booby-trapped idols it resided solely with the DM's discretion as to whether or not the task was performed with the level of skill and care necessary to avoid nasty blowback. Many a PC died due to their player not having demonstrated sufficient attention to whether the floor the PC was walking on contained a pit trap.

But then came Supplement I: Greyhawk, and a class not existing in the Chainmail rules but made specifically for D&D - the Thief. In fact, I would say that the Thief was the first D&D class, as the others were really Chainmail classes ported over to D&D but only half "converted" to the D&D game. Unlike the Fighter, Magic-User and Cleric the Thief not only had HD, to-hit advancement saving throws compatible with the combat rules (even if he sucked at combat), but he also had codified non-combat skills directly applicable to a game of dungeon exploration. Unlike the 10' pole users the Thief's player interrfaced with the dungeon through rules:

Thief: "What do I see?"

DM: "The hallway proceeds in front of you beyond the range of your Light spell. A large flagstone about 10' in front of you is obviously about 1" lower than the rest of the floor."

PC: "Ok, I'm going to roll for Find Traps."

And I think this is why many old school gamers have a problem with the Thief. The Chainmail classes were designed for wargaming, and so the only D&D sub-game where their players could interface with the world using codified, more or less complete rules was combat. When it came to D&D's dungeon exploration sub-game they were required to interract with the world solely through role playing, but the Thief wasn't. The Thief class was interracting with the dungeon exploration sub-game in a new way, and, more importantly, in a manner that the other class's players could not match or meanigfully participate in.

Was this a good change? Obviously the answer to that is subjective, but I think the enduring popularity of the Thief class as one of "the Big Four" classes through all editions of D&D rules after Supplement I is strong evidence that the majority of players want to interface with the dungeon exploration sub-game (particularly its sundry traps, deep pits and locked doors) through a ruleset that's at least semi-objective and condified. So from a "wisdom of crowds" point of view I feel confident saying it was a good change.

But it could have been better. In my next post I will argue that Supplement I should have presented not just the Thief, but also a unified Skill System and rules for "converting" the Fighter, Magic-User and Cleric to being fully integrated D&D classes.