Spells Through the Ages

Unsurprisingly, I'm a big fan of looking carefully at the text of D&D's various editions in order to mine them for meaning. Several years ago, before I'd fully returned to old school D&D, I spent some time examining the presentation of spells and monsters in every edition from OD&D to 3e in order to see what had changed and what remained the same over the decades. I was actually quite surprised to see just how many elements were constant across the editions, even as the context of those elements changed greatly.

When it comes to analyzing texts across editions to tease out obscure meanings, there are few better than Dan "Delta" Collins. His Book of Spells is a superb distillation of the magic-user spells of OD&D, restoring them to pristine clarity free from later glosses and accretions. Together with his friend Paul, Dan is kicking off a new series of posts called "Spells Through the Ages," which will thoroughly examine the spells of OD&D with an eye toward what's stayed the same, what's changed, and what this means for how the spell is used in the game.

It's something I'm very much looking forward to reading, since the series has already turned its gaze upon a particular spell -- silence -- that's proven very troublesome to me over the years and in recent sessions of the Dwimmermount campaign. I imagine others will find the series equally useful. Even when I disagree with the conclusions Dan comes to, I nevertheless derive much food for thought from his reasons for drawing them.