Within orthodox Christianity, there’s a concept called “progressive revelation,” which means that God did not reveal everything about Himself at once to humankind.  Otherwise, who knows what would’ve happened?  Maybe our heads would have exploded, a lá Dogma.

Regardless, the Christian God chose to reveal Himself in baby steps.  And I like to think that Gary Gygax did the same.

As I have mentioned before, AD&D was released in this order:

Monster Manual (December 1977)
Players Handbook (June 1978)
Dungeon Masters Guide (August 1979)
[These dates come from this unbelievably helpful site]

As a result, the ruleset was somewhat incomplete until all three books were released.  Nowhere is this more apparent than in combat and character creation.  Since I wrote at length about combat and initiative order last week, let’s focus on character creation this week. Continue reading →