The original rules of the D&D game, the "White Box" was named so
because the three core books - "Men & Magic", "Monsters & Treasures"
and "Underworld & Wilderness" - were bundled together in, well, a
white-colored box (for all their imagination, D&D players have some
fairly mundane descriptions of their rules). These books are often
also referred to as "Original D&D" or "OD&D". Incredibly rough around
the edges - and in parts little more than enhancements to the
Chainmail rules published earlier by Gygax for miniature wargaming -
these books became the basic rules that went on to not only found a
publishing empire but created an entirely new hobby.
Released in 1974, Gygax followed up the White Box rules with several
stand-alone supplements and adventures, and in 1978 with the Player's
Handbook, the first book of his new "Advanced" Dungeons & Dragons
game. However, during the time it took to get the core rulebooks for
AD&D written and published, TSR also released an interim product: a
revised and streamlined rulebook written by J.Eric Holmes that later
became known as "the Blue Book" and was the foundation of the "Basic
D&D" product line...
I'd always seen these books released as seperate PDFs; I just bundled
them together into one big file and slapped on a box cover scan. OCR
and bookmarks added too, of course.
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