OSR Commentary - OD&D volume 3: The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures (Jan 1974) By Gygax & Arneson

 

  So I was looking through the OSR Grimoire blog's entry on OD&D volume 3: The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures (Jan 1974). Original Dungeons & Dragons hits me square within the guts of my love for this hobby. And OD&D volume 3: The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures (Jan 1974) By Gygax & Arneson hits the wilderness & dungeon crawling bug right between the eyes. 
Back in 1974 I'd have been four years old but three years later I'm imagining my PC crawling through some slime covered moster infested  dungeon. Volume three covers;"The third volume of the original D&D rules is divided into three main sections.  The Underworld (covering dungeons), the Wilderness (including rules for establishing a domain), and rules for mass combat (land, aerial, and naval)."
This volume was especially important because it's literal DNA was in later editions; "Much of "The Underworld" section was incorporated into the Basic Rulebook edited by J. Eric Holmes (1977), and again in revisions edited by Tom Moldvay (1981), and Frank Mentzer (1983), creating an association between "Basic" D&D and the dungeon adventure."

In order to know where your going in this hobby, you have to know where we've been as players.  This is something I've observed about rpg's & wargaming as a matter of course. OD&D volume 3: The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures (Jan 1974) By Gygax & Arneson has the roots of expansion for the  DM to take thier original Dungeons & Dragons game to the next phase of campaign expansion. This of course is the Wilderness section;"

"The Wilderness" section involves overland exploration, castles/jousting, wandering monster tables, construction of castles/strongholds, specialists, men-at-arms, player/character support and upkeep, and baronies/domain management." OD&D volume 3: The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures gets into the heart of the wargaming/campaign aspects of OD&D; "
The final section of The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures provides rules for mass combat (Chainmail), aerial combat ("Battle in the Skies" or BITS, based on Mike Carr's "Fight in the Skies"), and naval combat (including special suggestions for monsters in naval adventures" Sure these rules were revisited and revised in "Swords & Spells" (1976). But the basics were there already and this  gets into my point there is a clear and defined linage of original Dungeons & Dragons running through Dungeons & Dragons right down into Mentzer Dungeons & Dragons.  This also includes the arerial combat rules;"Rules for aerial combat were derived from Arneson's "Battle in the Skies", demonstrated at Gary Con XI, this past March. " And having reread these rules they are nuanced. 
Basically,I'm still learning about and from the games that I love. And this is at least to me part of it's own reward.