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Saturday, May 8, 2010

John Eric Holmes 1930 - 2010

By now many of you have heard about the death of Dr. John Eric Holmes, known better to us in game circles as Eric Holmes.  Holmes was the editor of the first "Basic" set of D&D, often called "the Blue Book Basic" where I grew up. The cover of that book pretty much tells you everything you need to know about D&D.



Holmes gave us a new edition of D&D and opened the doors to many people to play the game.  You didn't the "Little Brown Books" anymore.  Holmes D&D was set up to run in parallel to Gygax's own AD&D released at the same time.

Myself, like many in the OSR and RPG community, have fond memories of this book.
Dr. Holmes will certainly be missed.  March it seems is turning into a terrible month for gamers.

You can read more about the man and his work in these links.  They say everything I would have said.

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5 comments:

  1. Charisma KellerMay 9, 2010 at 7:50 AM

    Wow that brings back memories (even though I'm just a baby).

    ReplyDelete
  2. Tim KnightMay 9, 2010 at 9:15 AM

    That cover was gateway into the hobby back in the late 70s and I haven't looked back.

    Another legend passes :(

    ReplyDelete
  3. MattMay 9, 2010 at 11:15 PM

    Another great thing about JEH was the Boinger the Halfling and Zereth the Elf stories: The Adventure of the Lost City (Alarums & Excursions, no. 17 Dec. 1976 and no. 19 Feb. 1977), Trollshead (The Dragon, no. 31 Nov. 1979), The Sorcerer's Jewel (The Dragon, no. 46 Feb. 1981), In the Bag (The Dragon, no. 58 Feb. 1982) and The Maze of Peril (ISBN 0-917053-05-2 Nov. 1986). I have all of them but all the appearances in Alarums & Excursions.

    I love these stories and think the characters are awesome. I remember reading them when I was first collecting The Dragon and have always wanted them to show up in a game, either by playing one of them or as NPCs.

    You can find more info on JEH's Boinger and Zereth series (as well as JEH's other writings) at http://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=16989 and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Eric_Holmes and http://www.acaeum.com/forum/about3318.html and http://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=38933&start=0

    ReplyDelete
  4. Timothy S. BrannanMay 10, 2010 at 9:37 AM

    Matt: I will have to check those stories out.

    Tim: Yes, like Jason Vey said "We are loosing all of our allies".

    Charisma: Welcome to the blog. And yes, that book changed everything really.

    ReplyDelete
  5. AnonymousApril 4, 2011 at 7:11 PM

    Thanks for this post, it is great

    ReplyDelete

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