Unearthed Arcana
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 cover of Unearthed Arcana |
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| Author | Andy Collins, Jesse Decker, David Noonan, and Rich Redman |
|---|---|
| Genre(s) | Role-playing game |
| Publisher | Wizards of the Coast |
| Released | February 2004 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback) |
| Pages | 224 |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-7869-3131-0 |
Unearthed Arcana is the title shared by two hardback books published for different versions of the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game. Neither version of Unearthed Arcana should be confused with Monte Cook's Arcana Unearthed.
[edit] 1st edition rules
The original Unearthed Arcana (ISBN 0-88038-084-5) was written by Gary Gygax and published by TSR, Inc. in 1985. Announced by its author as "an interim volume to expand the Dungeon Masters Guide and Players Handbook" (Gygax 1985a), it was written for use with the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (a.k.a "1st Edition") rules. Divided into two sections (one for players and one for Dungeon Masters), the 128-page book provided new races, character classes, and other expansion material.
Although much of the material in Unearthed Arcana had previously appeared in Dragon magazine (e.g. Gygax 1983), and was therefore familiar to many D&D players, TSR (and the RPGA) considered publication in a rulebook format necessary before the material could be used in tournament standard play (Mohan 1984). Unearthed Arcana, therefore, is the publication that made this material an official part of the AD&D game system.
The original Unearthed Arcana is noteworthy for the numbers of errors contained in its text. Even some positive reviews of the book pointed out the considerable number of mistakes (Farstad 1987). An errata article was published in Dragon magazine (Mohan 1985), but the errata was not incorporated into later printings of the manual. [1]
Gary Gygax intended to incorporate the material from Unearthed Arcana into revised versions of the Players Handbook and Dungeon Masters Guide (Gygax 1985b), but left TSR shortly after announcing the project (Gygax 1987). The new classes and character races were, in fact, left out of the next version of the Players Handbook, as they were considered unbalanced by the AD&D 2nd Edition's designers (Winter 1989).
[edit] 3rd edition rules
The second book called Unearthed Arcana (ISBN 0-7869-3131-0) was written by Andy Collins, Jesse Decker, David Noonan, and Rich Redman, and published in 2004 by Wizards of the Coast, for use with the 3rd Edition Dungeons & Dragon rules. Where the original Unearthed Arcana had simply expanded the rules and options of the core game, this 224-page supplement was aimed at providing an extensive list of variant rules and options to change the standard game's baseline. In fact, the volume of options added were intentionally excessive. A DM who reads the book must be prepared to, quoting the book itself "Drink from the fire hose", or only use a few of the numerous variants. [2]
[edit] References
- Farstad, Errol 1987. The Critical Hit. Polyhedron Newzine 38:8, 1987
- Gygax, Gary 1983. The chivalrous cavalier. Dragon 72:6, Apr 1983
- Gygax, Gary 1985a. Demi-humans get a lift. Dragon 95:8, Mar 1985
- Gygax, Gary 1985b. The future of the game. Dragon 103:8, Nov 1985
- Gygax, Gary 1987. From the Sorcerer's Scroll. Dragon 122:40, Oct 1987
- Mohan, Kim 1984. Out on a limb. Dragon 88:3, Aug 1984:8
- Mohan, Kim 1985. Arcana update, part 1. Dragon 103:12, Nov 1985
- Ryan, Michael 2004. Product Spotlight: Unearthed Arcana, retrieved June 1, 2006
- Winter, Steve 1989. Cure Light Wounds. Polyhedron Newszine 49:24, Sep 1997
- The Acaeum: Later AD&D Manuals, retrieved June 1, 2006
