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.
Well that’s it, that’s my observation.
Footnotes
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.”
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.
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.
(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.