Quads Inititialism

BACKSTORY

When D&D (1974 White Box) moved through AD&D 1st Edition (1978) into 2nd Edition (1989), it took the ethos of the 70s DIY experimental era and converted it into 80s glossy corporate machinery.

A lot of die-hard 'original D&D generation' people hated on it. "If it's not broke, don't mend it," was a more polite comment made about it. "It's a different game" was a common explanation by DMs who had read the new rulebook. It no longer felt hand-crafted. It was pre-packaged.

The focus was on streamlining it 'for the next generation'. At the time the debate was invoked around whose responsibility it actually is to introduce the next generation of players to the game? The players who had loved it from the start and the near-start, or the corporation adapting to the demands of the modern world and who can afford glossy advertising ("whether they will or not is another matter...") said corporation which legally owns the franchise and have done something with it the original supporters consider unnecessary. Player-groups years deep into custom campaigns had already resolved any issues about rule mechanics, both technically and with the generally accepted accord of using customisable 'house rules'; which very much was a feature of D&D since the beginning.

I happened to like it. I like both Basic and Advanced (especially 2nd). What I don’t like so much is 3rd edition (2000ad WoTC) onwards and the a gradual descent and degradation into Wokism. At the time I could never put my finger on why 3E felt like being sick and not being able to breathe fully. I'm diagnosed as high functioning autism; that description is literally what happens when I sense something is toxic. It feels like lisetria from eating raw chicken.

WoTC (Wizards of The Coast) were later sued several times for capitalising on components they had assumed to own, which it turned out through the legal court system they did not, and were using without consent of the legal copyright owners, the original creators, most of whom had no interest in pursuing legal battles for a drawing they made or a world they helped develop twenty years ago for fun. The infraction of the corporate world onto the game took away a lot of the magic of it, something early D&D players had said about AD&D. Gradually the first generation pioneers recognised the value of not allowing a corporation who had nothing at all to do with inventing it except for they now happen own the copyright to some of the material, should not be financially exploiting anybody for their own gain at the same time as making public statements about how the people they were exploiting were assholes (cf).

That early 70s DIY community vibe of collectively making it better by chipping in, building a world and a community from what the individual can bring to the table. It is after all 'our' game. Finally, after decades, the original creators got one up on the capitalist bastards who tried to ruin it while arrogantly claiming 'everything and everyone which came before is wrong and toxic' (cf.)

But that is all backstory.

CLASSES

What I want to explore in this blog is something I have noticed about the shift from Basic to 2nd Advanced which ain’t nobody else talking about.

A decision was made.

In basic D&D there are 4 character archetypes:

D&D TYPES: Fighter, Thief, Magic-User, Cleric.

Quotes Of The Day: “Kill it, Steal It, Cast it, Pray for it.”

Tools Of The Trades: Sword, Lock-picks, Scroll, Holy Symbol.

Everything else was treated as a specialisation or hybrid of those four. Knight is a sort of fighter. Pit-Gladiator is a sort of Fighter. Assassin is a sort of Thief. Minstrel is a sort of Thief. Witch is a sort of Mage. Shaman is a sort of Mage. Kung-Fu Monk is a sort of Cleric.*

The names were changed in AD&D. It was streamlined for cohesion.

2nd Advanced TYPES: Warrior. Wizard. Priest. Rogue.

MULTICLASS

Multi-classing was present in limited, somewhat clumsy form from the very beginning (especially for elves), expanded significantly in Greyhawk (1975), and then properly formalised and made official core rules in AD&D 1st Edition (1978). 2nd Edition kept the same basic system, cleaned the presentation up and made the whole thing feel more polished and packaged.

For most, creating multi-class Characters was not so much described as ‘Shaolin monk, happens to be fighter-cleric to squish it into the clunky and mechanical rules system.” It was simply a new breed of heroes defined by the Class. A fighter-thief. A warrior-wizard. The hybrids were sufficient, no real-world applications were necessary. The world became one of technicality over definition. A Shaolin Monk is simply a multi class Warrior-Priest. Madmartigan is simply a Fighter-Rogue. The flavour of culture is stripped out. The system dictates the language of the day. The language dictates the thoughts which get thinked. Thunked. Thonk. Clunky mechanics dictate the flavour of the world. The bias shifts from historic culture to corporate colonialism. A (heroic) Freedom Fighter is Rebel is a (evil scary) Terrorist.

QUADS

The observation is about the use of the Quad, not only in D&D but in the wider cultural context.

Since the 60s, before D&D, emerged a subculture called S&M which covered the basics of a scene and attracted a certain type of people. It was clandestine, it was taboo, it struck out against the white-picket-fence of the 1950s suburban dream. By the 1990s S&M had evolved and had been rebranded and repackaged by 1980s corporate consumerism. It was now called BDSM which is the title it still goes by in the 2020s where it is more openly acceptable and known about.

Another shift involving the Quad happened during the 1990s where the “gay and lesbian scenes” overlapping thanks to Alt Clubs, were similarly rebranded and repackaged as “the LGBT community” bundling all of that into one box, despite its components having their own unique cultures. It was deemed necessary as a pushback against ‘the hetero-normative mainstream’. Somehow “the LGBT community” was encouraged to perceive heteronormativity as a threat to the people involved. The language was censored that we could no longer call it “straight folk” because that descriptor implied non-straight folks were “bent”, which previously was a word adopted by “gay and lesbian scenes” from the criminal underworld to describe gays and lesbians. “Bent” suggested something is wrong with it. The original term, ‘bent as a butchers hook’, was applied to those who did not ‘go by the book’ or conform to conventional social normalities. Its most famous assigned use was originally ‘bent copper’ to describe someone who was both simultaneouly a policeman and a criminal. Where that fits specifically into D&D Character Alignment is an open question.

Here we see how phraseology and Character Class are being squished into boxes in the Quad. Here we also are observing how the space occupied by Characters who cross the line are 'multi-class' rather than the invention of a massive fifth class to describe them all ("others"); because there would necessarily have to be more ‘fifth classes’ than we have space on a page. We saw that problem with people attempting to turn LGBT into LGBTQ+ where the string of letters gets so ridiculously large to provide every individual their own special unique categorisation in the scene of things.

The frames of reference have to be simpler than that for navigation.

North East South West (Compass directions)

Spades Hearts Clubs Diamonds (Playing Card suits)

Air Water Earth Fire (Cardinal Elements)

Swords Cups Staffs Coins (Tarot suits)

Sanguine, Choleric, Melancholic, Phlegmatic (The Four Humours)

Dominant Submissive Switch Brat (BDSM culture)

The precedent for Quads is ancient in Western / European history.

Is it all we need?

Yes, if we are willing to conform or if it is acceptable to multi-class. Dungeons&Dragons attempted to resolve this in what at the time was a sensible way to go. How much an impact that had one the way we catalogue social movements which have evolved since, or how much of that is simply reflective of an innate human preference for comprehending things in terms of Quads, is open discussion content I will not diverge into here.  

Well that’s it, that’s my observation.

Footnotes

1. Class and Edition history

Original D&D (1974 “White Box”) started with three classes: Fighting-Man, Magic-User, Cleric. The Thief was added in Supplement I: Greyhawk (1975). That established the classic four archetypes that everything later built on.

AD&D 1st Edition (Player’s Handbook 1978) is where multi-classing and dual-classing became fully official and codified. Demi-humans could multi-class (advance in two or three classes simultaneously, splitting XP). Humans could dual-class (switch to a new class under strict ability-score requirements). This was not a later adaptation or something that only became official in 2e.

AD&D 2nd Edition (1989) reorganised the classes into the four explicit groups: Warrior, Wizard, Priest, Rogue. Within those groups sat the core classes (Fighter, Mage, Cleric, Thief) plus the optional specialised ones (Paladin, Ranger, Druid, Bard, etc.). The term “Rogue” as the group name first appears properly here; the individual class was still called Thief until 3rd Edition renamed it Rogue.

2. Multi-Class and Edition History

Original D&D (1974 White Box – Men & Magic): Only elves had anything resembling multi-classing. An elf could advance as a Fighting-Man or a Magic-User and switch between the two between adventures (with level caps). It was more like “you can be both, but not really at the same time in a clean way.”

Supplement I: Greyhawk (1975): This is the main place it expanded:

Demi-humans could now multi-class with the newly introduced Thief.

Elves could be Fighter/Magic-User, Fighter/Thief, Magic-User/Thief, or the triple Fighter/Magic-User/Thief.

Dwarves could be Fighter/Thief.

Half-elves were introduced and given several multi-class options.

Experience was divided between the classes.

Other early sources (Strategic Review articles, Blackmoor, fan house rules, and the general DIY culture of the mid-70s) also played with hybrid characters, but nothing was systematic or consistent across tables.

Basic D&D line (Holmes, Moldvay, Mentzer, etc.): largely abandoned multi-classing in favour of race-as-class, so that branch doesn’t count as continuing the development.

3. Kung-fu monk = Cleric: In the Blackmoor supplement the Monk was presented as a Cleric subclass; in 1e it became its own class. It was dropped from the core 2e PHB. Calling it “a sort of cleric” is understandable for archetype talk but not precise. The purpose here is that a Shaolin style 'Kung-Fu Monk' was identifiably a Priest more often than a Fighter in D&D. I want this to be the very debate which called for the evolution of 'multi-class' rules set but in all honesty it was probably the meddling Elves with their strange Elven ways.

4. The Four Humors. 

Ancient Greek and Roman physicians believed these core bodily fluids controlled health, physical traits, and moods. When the fluids were balanced, a person was healthy. An excess or shortage of any fluid caused sickness and shaped a person's unique temperament. 

Blood (Sanguine): Linked to air and a warm, wet nature. People with dominant blood were thought to be joyful, active, and outgoing.

Yellow Bile (Choleric): Linked to fire and a warm, dry nature. Excess yellow bile caused a passionate, sharp, and easily angered personality.

Black Bile (Melancholic): Linked to earth and a cold, dry nature. Too much black bile led to sadness, quietness, and depression.

Phlegm (Phlegmatic): Linked to water and a cold, wet nature. Extra phlegm created a calm, slow, and relaxed disposition. 

5. (cf)

(cf) means 'confer' or 'compare'. It is used in academic writing to indicate a thing is not a direct quote, for which use; (sic). My use of it here is as a summary. My own personal opinions apply. It is in reference to the alleged misogyny and racism of depicting scantily clad elf maidens, chainmail bikini warrior maidens and buxom tavern wenches, also the claim made by WoTC that presenting cannibalistic, rapist Orcs as monsters is somehow an insult to black people. That did happen. Wokism is a religion for people who are mentally unwell.

 

Gamifying Before The Codex Changed Layer Two

Gamifying : Before the Codex Changed : Layer Two :  

Words as Spells, Cognition as Circuitry

Words are not labels.  

Words are spells.  

Every description a person accepts into their mind builds or rewires the circuits of comprehension they use to perceive reality. Speak (or think) in one framework long enough and the world itself begins to answer in that register. This is the foundation of the magic system.

Two great magical paradigms exist in tension.

The Flow (Old Codex Magic)

Organic. Wild. Predatory. Terrifying.  

When held in balance it is holistic. A living expression of something close to James Lovelock’s Gaia: the world as a single self-regulating organism which speaks through those who still know how to listen.  

Flow magic is intuitive shape-crafting. The practitioner does not force a rigid formula; they feel the living edges of a thing and speak the word that fits its actual contour. The old behavioural descriptors, the crude precise slang, the “smoke-dam” codices were never merely social. They were diagnostic true-names for patterns of behaviour, spirit, and predation. Spoken correctly they could reveal, bind, feed, or starve those patterns.

Flow is dangerous because it is alive. It can turn on the speaker. It can call things that prefer to remain unnamed. It grows like language itself; messy, adaptive, regional, sometimes vicious. In harmony it nurtures. Out of harmony it is raw and hungry.

The Path (New Speech / Harmonic Register Magic)

Systematic. Ordered. Ritual.  

The Path rejects intuitive shape-crafting in favour of formal logic, approved grammars, and rigidly codified invocations. It is safer, more repeatable, and far easier to teach at scale. Its great power is cognitive standardisation: by controlling which descriptive circuits are allowed to form in a population, the Path reshapes what that population is even capable of perceiving.

The Keepers of the Concord did not merely censor rude words. They performed a paradigm replacement. They starved the Flow by making its most precise diagnostic terms socially and magically radioactive, then flooded the vacated mental space with Path structures. Acolytes of the Path are not simply polite; their minds are being trained into narrower, more obedient circuits. The Path is mind-enslavement through formality. It is the new era deliberately overwriting the old.

Setting Reframed: Motley under the Two Magics

Motley is a world, city or region, mid-conquest. Not by armies, but by lexicon.

Old Codex / Flow holdouts still exist in the lower city, the docks, the older free companies, and among certain independent Wordwrights. Their magic feels like weather or animals: unpredictable, potent, sometimes symbiotic, sometimes predatory. When they speak the old terms correctly, patterns that the Path has rendered foggy suddenly stand out in sharp relief. Monsters, social predators, and certain spirits become visible and nameable again.

The Keepers of the Concord and their Register Wardens enforce the Path. Public use of Flow terminology is treated as both social disruption and magical contamination. Repeated offences can trigger ritual “clarifications”; mild compulsion, memory softening, or forced re-education into Harmonic Register thought-forms. The Keepers believe they are bringing order and reducing cruelty. In practice they are collapsing the world’s capacity to perceive certain truths.

The Unnamed thrive in the gap. Entities and human roles that were once kept in check by precise Flow descriptors now move more freely because the culture has been taught not to see them clearly. Some of these things actively encourage the Path, because fog is their hunting ground.

Magic has mechanical teeth at the table:

- Speaking a true Flow descriptor in the presence of the thing it names can grant advantage, pierce illusions, or force a reaction.

- Prolonged immersion in pure Path ritual can grant reliability and social protection while slowly imposing disadvantage on attempts to notice or describe anything outside the approved circuits.

- Hybrid practitioners are possible but unstable; the two paradigms do not sit comfortably in the same mind.

Adventure: “The Ember-Stick Affair” (Revised)

The same basic structure as before, now fully magical.

Hook

A contact is charged with “disruptive resonance” after using several Old Codex terms during a public inquiry into disappearances. The official Path record has flattened the specific pattern into vague “social friction.” The disappearances continue. The contact asks the party to recover an unredacted Flow ledger and determine whether the old diagnostic words still point at something real and active.

Key Magical Escalations

1. Upper City (Path Territory)

   Using Flow terms here is not merely rude; it creates audible or visible magical dissonance that Register Wardens can detect. Players feel the Path pressing on their own cognition; descriptions come out flatter, certain intuitive leaps become harder.

2. Dockside Glossaries & Wordwright Circles (Flow Pockets)

   Here the old words still carry weight. Learning a genuine Flow descriptor is itself a minor magical act: the character’s perceptual circuits shift. They begin to notice the pattern the Path had hidden. This knowledge is both power and contamination; Path agents can sense it on them afterward.

3. The Pattern Made Visible  

   Once the correct Flow terms are restored to the investigation, the disappearances resolve into a clear predatory or spiritual cycle that the Path lexicon had rendered almost unthinkable. The party now faces a choice that is simultaneously practical and metaphysical:

   - Speak the true words publicly and risk magical as well as social retaliation.

   - Keep the Flow knowledge private and act in the shadows.

   - Surrender the old ledger to the Keepers and allow the fog to reassert itself.

   - Attempt a dangerous hybrid working that tries to force Path structures to acknowledge a Flow truth.

Climax Options 

A Concord scriptorium where scribes are not merely rewriting texts but ritually overwriting the residual Flow resonance in older documents.  

A living “smoking room” (the in-world descendant of the smoke-and-dam codex spaces) that still functions as a weak Flow node.  

The original disappearance sites, now overlaid with Path euphemisms that actively dampen perception.

Campaign-Level Play

The Path vs Flow conflict can sit beneath any urban, political, or investigative campaign. Every time the party needs to understand a complex social or supernatural pattern, they must decide how much Flow language they are willing to risk. Characters who lean fully into the Path become increasingly reliable within the system and increasingly blind outside it. Characters who keep speaking the old words remain dangerous, clear-eyed, and hunted.

The original blog’s thesis survives intact and is now literal:  

When a culture (or a magical order) decides that certain accurate descriptors are too dangerous to keep, it does not eliminate the things those words pointed at. It only makes the things harder to see and therefore harder to fight. The Path offers safety and order at the price of narrowed cognition. The Flow offers clarity and power at the price of danger and wildness.

That is the engine.  

Words are spells.  

Choose your lexicon carefully.

Original Blog : Before The Codex Changed

Gamifying Before The Codex Changed Layer One

Gamifying : Before the Codex Changed : Layer One

The core engine of the piece is the conflict between precise language as a tool for seeing reality and language as a controlled resource. Organic culture produces working shorthand. Manufactured culture replaces it with fog so that certain patterns become unsayable, and therefore harder to resist. That is pure gameable material.

Core Setting Concept: The Codex Wars

In the world, city-state, or region of Motley, two competing linguistic regimes exist side by side.

The Old Codex: 

An organic, living vocabulary that grew among adventurers, dockworkers, courtesans, thieves, and guilds over centuries. It contains sharp, slightly crude, highly specific terms for behavioural patterns, social roles, and certain supernatural or social threats. Though often slang, these words are not insults first; they are diagnostic tools. People who still speak the Old Codex can name things accurately and therefore respond to them accurately. 

The New Speech (or “Harmonic Register”): 

A top-down lexicon imposed over the last generation by the Keepers of the Concord. The Keepers treat many Old Codex terms as “disruptive” or “harm-speech.” Using them in public is a social and sometimes legal offence. The official justification is compassion and social cohesion. The practical effect is that certain patterns of behaviour, certain predatory roles, and even certain creatures become almost impossible to discuss clearly in polite or official company. They become socially and culturally invisible. Maps, bestiaries, and legal records have been quietly revised.

The Keepers did not begin as cartoon villains. Many genuinely believed they were reducing cruelty. The machinery they built, however, now serves control. Subcultures that once policed themselves with precise internal language were the first laboratories for the new rules.

Players who grew up under the New Speech often cannot even recognise what the forbidden words used to point at. Players or NPCs who remember the Old Codex can still see the patterns the new language has made foggy.

Key Factions

Keepers of the Concord

Bureaucrats, certain temple hierarchies, reformist nobles, and professional mediators. They control the official dictionaries, the licensing of scribes, and public speech in the upper city. Their agents (the “Register Wardens”) note and correct improper language. Escalation can mean social blacklisting, loss of guild membership, or, in extreme cases, memory-editing magic or exile.

Codex Holders / Wordwrights

A loose, semi-underground network of older adventurers, dockside linguists, certain bards, and a few stubborn academics. They maintain private glossaries, coded songs, and “smoke-and-dam” style slang that still functions. Some are pure preservationists. Others actively use the old terms as weapons of clarity against the fog.

The Unnamed

Creatures, spirits, or social predators that benefit from not being precisely nameable. When the culture loses the words that once identified them, these things move more freely. Some are literal monsters. Others are human (or humanoid) roles that thrived under the old, frank vocabulary and now hide behind the new vagueness. The once-useful descriptor 'Creeps' is no longer openly permissible. 

Adventure Scenario: “The Ember-Stick Affair”

Hook

A mid-level contact (or the party’s patron) has been accused of “disruptive speech” after using several Old Codex terms in a public hearing about a series of disappearances in the lower city. The official record has been cleaned: the specific behavioural pattern the contact tried to describe is now recorded only as “unspecified social friction.” The disappearances continue. The contact asks the party to recover an unredacted copy of an old district ledger that still uses the forbidden terminology, and to determine whether the pattern the old words pointed at is still operating.

Structure (3–5 sessions)

1. The Polite City

   Players must navigate upper-city spaces where New Speech is enforced. Using Old Codex terms in front of the wrong people triggers social or mechanical consequences (loss of advantage on social rolls, attention from Register Wardens, temporary bans from establishments). This teaches the cost of precision.

2. The Lower Archives & the Dockside Glossaries

   The party seeks surviving Old Codex materials. They encounter Codex Holders who will only speak plainly if the party proves it will not immediately report them. Here the players learn the actual meanings of the contested terms (including the local equivalents of the “smoke and dams” codices; specific social or supernatural roles that the New Speech has rendered vague).

3. The Pattern Revealed 

   Once the old descriptors are available, a clear predatory or supernatural pattern becomes visible in the disappearances. The New Speech version of events had made the same data look like random misfortune or mutual misunderstanding.

4. Confrontation & Choice 

   The party must decide how to act on the newly clear information. Options include:

  - Presenting the Old Codex evidence in a public forum (high risk of being labelled disruptors themselves).

   - Using the precise language privately to organise a targeted response.

   - Destroying or further suppressing the old records to keep the peace.

   - Leveraging the knowledge for personal advantage.

Climax locations

- A Concord scriptorium where scribes are actively rewriting older texts.  

- A dockside “smoking room” that still functions as an informal Codex salon.  

- The site of the original disappearances, now overlaid with New Speech euphemisms that actively hinder investigation.

World-Building Levers You Can Turn

Language as magic: In some tables the Old Codex terms are residual true names or have minor mechanical weight (advantage when describing a threat precisely, or the ability to temporarily pierce illusions that rely on vagueness). The New Speech can include mild compulsion or memory-softening effects.

Generational split: Younger NPCs often cannot parse the old terms even when they hear them. Older NPCs light up with recognition and relief (or fear).

Echoes of the D&D cultural shift: The Adventurers’ Guild itself has an internal version of the same conflict. Older free-company traditions used blunt operational language. The newer chartered companies prefer carefully managed public language and have begun rewriting their own after-action reports.

Long-term campaign use: The Codex conflict can sit in the background of any urban or political campaign. Every time the party needs accurate information about a social or monstrous pattern, they must decide whether to risk the old words.

Running It Cleanly

Do not require the players to use real-world contested slang at the table. Create in-world equivalents that carry the same structural weight: words that are precise, slightly rough, behaviourally descriptive, and now policed. The theme is the function of the language and the cost of losing it, not the specific real-world vocabulary.

The philosophical payload of the original piece survives intact: when a culture decides that certain accurate descriptors are too dangerous to keep, it does not eliminate the things those words pointed at. It only makes the things harder to see and therefore harder to fight. That is an excellent engine for investigation, faction play, moral tension, and player agency.

You now have both a persistent setting conflict and a ready-to-run adventure that directly converts the blog’s ideas into playable structure.

Original Blog : Before The Codex Changed