Someone got ahead of me... let me introduce mr Sandy Eisen!

I think I have already written more than once that I was almost sure that my idea was not original and it was nearly impossible that no one had already come to my conlcusion!

What is surprising is that this happened nearly 50 years ago, more exactly in April 1975! The fundamental concept underlying the KUP model has already been discussed by Sandy Eisen with Gygax himself! That is absolutely outstanding!

Ok, let's explain this with more details and order.

On the RPGGeek boards, Chris B (kudos to Chris!) pointed me out that this is not the first time someone has though about a game 'veiled' to the players. He kindly provided me with the post of a fellow who is working on a game with rules completely hidden to the players (if I understood correctly). I have left him a request to get in touch with me and exchange our opinions about this 'model'. Mine is definitely a less radical view than his one (at least from what I got reading his post...) but I believe we have the same starting point.

What is interesting in that post is the quotation of the 'Eisen vow'! Being a quotation from the book The Elusive Shift by Jon Peterson, I immediately reached Jon and asked him more details on this quotation. Jon, who is a great author, but even more a great fellow, helped me and pointed me out the original piece of information about the 'Eisen vow' (kudos to Jon!). The original document is the zine Europa... hopefully I found a neat reference on James' blog Grognardia! James uses the ref I was looking for to stress out another article by Gygax in the same issue and doing this, makes the full zine available! While James is discussing about Gygax's article at page 20 (btw, it is worth to read it!), I found my grail at page 22!

I will report both excerpts, the first is Gygax's comment to the first Eisen's letter (not fully reported, but duly quoted by EGG):


Based on Gygax's reply, mr Eisen wrote this clarification to better explain his thoughts:

That is the pillar I used to build the KUP model, neither more nor less! 
Maybe I am not a good communicator, or better, (without the 'maybe') I am not able to explain this but I found that Sandy Eisen, nearly 50 years ago came to the same outcomes I got! ...and let me say, he could not express his thought better!

Therefore, I will borrow his explanation and undoubtedly try to express myself in these terms! I am very happy with this finding!

A final word, I am happy not to be the first person on Earth to think this way, this makes me feel I am not an alien... the real point that impress me is that this happened nearly one year after the publication of the very first edition of D&D... 

PS I'm eager to know whether or not a second reply by Gygax appeared in the following issue of that zine... 

PPS For the sake of completeness, I leave here the link to a podcast on 'Eisen's vow' from the first post I mentioned!


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