Newtonian alchemy

This entry has nothing to do with Isaac's occult dabblings - I just like the sound of "Newtonian alchemy".

In fact, today's bit o' randomness concerns Gygaxian appraisal.

I've been happily trawling through the many extensive interviews done by the "Grogtalk Podcast" (www.grogcon.com/podcast), and more than one person has mentioned that Gary would sometimes have potential hires take a written test of their gaming knowledge.

Funnily enough, we briefly did similar - except ours was a quick oral exam - prior to admitting peeps into our "D&D" group.

I think it was to stop kids pretending they wanted to join our weird little circle seated on the concrete pitch of the vacant cricket net, then trying to derail the adventure or make a joke out of everything.

We also used to test each other. An example that springs to mind is the XP value of a gold dragon: 2700.

That tells me it *wasn't* in 1982, when we first fell under the spell of "D&D" via WD's old brother, and only had a borrowed copy of the Basic Rulebook printed in '81. That incarnation of the rules required you to calculate the experience gained from monsters.

It musta been 1983, when the red box arrived. Of course, the wyrms it contained turned out to be baby versions of what appeared in "AD&D" and later sets.

And why would you *want* to slay a lawful gold dragon???