

Dragon editor Kim Mohan, with ideas from Gygax, Frank Mentzer, and Jeff Grubb, addressed the many errors found in the book. Even some positive reviews of the book pointed out the considerable number of mistakes. The original Unearthed Arcana contains errors in its text, which readers discovered and reported to Dragon magazine.

According to British writer Paul Cockburn, some of the material in Unearthed Arcana had been previously published in Imagine magazine. The book would also contain previously unpublished material, some of it written by other contributors to Dragon. Unearthed Arcana was to include material previously published in Dragon, written by Gygax and updated and revised for the book. He proposed the book as "an interim volume to expand the Dungeon Masters Guide and Players Handbook", as the information was spread out in several places and difficult to keep track of. He announced in the March 1985 issue of Dragon magazine that Unearthed Arcana would be released in the summer of that year. : 128 Gygax reportedly produced the book to raise money as TSR was deeply in debt at the time. The original Unearthed Arcana was written by Gary Gygax with design and editing contributions by Jeff Grubb and Kim Mohan, respectively, and published by TSR in 1985.

Both were designed as supplements to the core rulebooks, containing material that expanded upon other rules. Once it’s out there, you can expect us to check in with you to see how it’s working out and what we can do to improve it.Unearthed Arcana (abbreviated UA) is the title shared by two hardback books published for different editions of the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game. The material presented in Unearthed Arcana will range from mechanics that we expect one day to publish in a supplement to house rules from our home campaigns that we want to share, from core system options to setting-specific material.
