The incredible austerity of D&D in 1980

These are all from here: http://jgrimbert.free.fr/add2/advice/?order=id&debut=0 - an amazing compendium of the DM-advice column from early Dragon magazine

‎"Although the Players Handbook does not include them in the description of the Raise Dead spell, may elves and half-orcs be raised from the dead?"

"No, they cannot. They do not have souls, and therefore a wish must be used to bring them back."

"For the paladin to have tortured the orc was an evil act, and therefore he has given up the right to be a paladin. I suggest that he not be allowed to regain it, either, but if you decide to let him, make sure the quest is long, hard, and nearly impossible to accomplish."

(emphasis mine)

‎"May thieves use bows?"

"No."

Q. Are player characters allowed to be drawn from Grey Elf stock or Drow stock?

A. Each DM must decide whether such unusual player-character types will be allowed in his/her campaign. In the case of unusual elf types, there should be a possibility for a player character to become any of the elf subspecies, including aquatic elves and wood elves. However, it should be apparent that life as a player character under such conditions would be hard — for the character, the player, and most of all the DM, who must be prepared to cope with the added responsibility of trying to incorporate such a “rare” character into the campaign without sacrificing its balance and flexibility.

Love is too short to tell your players they can't be freaking Grey Elves or Drows if they want to. You've got what? A few years of playing with your friends before the DM starts dating and the warrior needs to study for AP History? Just enjoy the time you had together!

Life*!

great thread idea btw

Why are elven thieves always children?

Do real barbarians eat quiche?

Real barbarians would hack and slay anyone who offered them quiche to eat, and would then stomp the quiche until it was totally flat. Barbarians are like that.

Barbarians are like that!

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51JCJAD4S2L._SL500_AA300_.jpg

If PCs can become mystics, can they also become thugs or headsmen?

There are no rules for PC thugs or headsmen. You are free to develop your own, but we don’t recommend it.

I love this lukewarm vaudevillian snark. "We don't recommend it."

What's kind of delightful to me is that all the actual *questions* are of the form "My level 45 elven fighter/mage/paladin just killed Asmodeus - how can I kill him again?" - there's a sort of good faith attempt at communication between the divided tribes of 15 and 35y/o geeks that'd be impossible to summon now I think!

How many hit points does a character regain when he eats his rations?

None. Characters have to eat to stay alive. Food provides sustenance but does not heal wounds.

OMG

Can a character turned to stone by a medusa ever be turned back?

A wish from an item or powerful spellcaster will restore a “stoned” character. Generally, however, petrification is removed by the sixth-level magic-user spell stone to flesh. It takes a magic-user of at least 12th level to cast this spell (see the Expert Set).

What an excellently formed weed joekz!

ah, that brings back some great memories. I'd love a disc of quality scans of the first 150 Dragon magazines.

How many eggs do dragons lay in a single clutch? How much time passes between the laying of clutches?

This is not difficult to determine from information given on page 30 of the Monster Manual. Since any group of two or more dragons is a mated pair with young, the maximum number of eggs in a clutch is the maximum number of dragons appearing, minus two. Since most dragons appear in groups of one to four, most dragons lay one or two eggs. Faerie dragons, which appear in groups of up to six, lay up to four eggs. The minimum number of eggs laid is one. If one assumes that young dragons stay with their parents at least until they reach the subadult stage at 16 years, each clutch must be at least 16 years apart, since dragons would be found in larger groups if they laid eggs while rearing young.

This is not difficult to determine.

A question that needed to be asked...

How can you handle pregnancy in AD&D games?

This is one of those aspects of AD&D gaming that is left up to the DM’s decisions; all campaigns are different, and the elves (for example) within one campaign could legitimately have longer gestation periods than those in another campaign. As a general rule of thumb, it can probably be asserted that elves have the longest pregnancy times (possibly as much as 2 years); dwarves, gnomes, humans, halflings, and half-elves are all about the same, between 8 and 12 months, and orcs and humanoids would have shorter gestation periods, possible ranging down to 6 months. These are only suggestions, however; what the DM decides for his campaign is the final answer.

How does one make or acquire “elfin chainmail”?

Elfin chainmail is a special type of chainmail armor that is much lighter and stronger than normal, and allows greater freedom of movement. It is made exclusively by elven armorsmiths of above average ability, who keep certain aspects of its manufacture secret for a number of reasons. Even were its manufacturing process better known, duplicating elfin armor would prove very difficult for most armorers. What little is known about making elfin chainmail is that the links of the chainmail are much thinner and smaller in diameter than usual. The metal from which elfin chainmail is made is apparently an alloy of high-quality steel and mithral, a rare and valuable metal of bright silvery color. In the process of making the alloy, the elven smiths add a special substance to the molten mixture to cause the metal to be harder; the nature of this substance has never been identified, since it is either completely absorbed into the metal in the smelting process, or somehow destroyed. Not even magical devices appear to be able to determine the nature of this substance. At any rate, the presence or after-effects of this substance also make the alloy impervious to enchantment, no matter how powerful the spell. Elfin chainmail is linked together in an exceptionally intricate fashion; the pattern of the interconnections of links changes from place to place across the armor, so that certain general designs may appear. One suit might seem to have a tree-like design on the chest, another might have an abstract pattern of criss-crossed lines, another might have sunburst designs on front and back. The intricacy of the links is another reason (aside from the nature of the alloy itself) for the armor’s strength. It appears that only elves, because of their passion for complexity and appreciation of artistic beauty, are able to properly fashion the armor in this way. It takes twice as long as normal to make a suit of elfin chainmail (90 days instead of 45), and may take even longer than that if the maker desires a particularly complex design for linking it together. Only 25% of all elven smiths are able to fashion elfin chainmail, the rest being occupied with making other sorts of armor (ring mail, scale mail, etc.) or being of lesser ability. Making elfin chainmail requires the full involvement of the smith and many years of study as well; player character elves, even those with exceptional characteristics and backgrounds as smiths or armorers, are not able to make elfin chainmail though they could make some minor repairs on it if necessary. Player character elves could, however, obtain such armor as a gift for extraordinary services rendered for the elven people; it is considered a great honor to have a suit of mail made, and some elves who own magical but human-made chainmail will prefer to use elfin chainmail instead. Dungeon Masters who like to start out characters with some minor magical item could offer elven characters an elfin chainmail suit instead, though evil elves would not be able to receive this benefit. Non-elves are not given elfin chainmail by longestablished tradition, and it is never sold. Elves regard it as an artistic treasure as well as an expression of appreciation and distinction; selling it would cheapen its social and cultural value. Most non-elves are not able to wear elfin chainmail anyway, since they do not have the proper build and size to fit an already made suit, though some thin and light humans and a few large tallfellow halflings might possibly be able to fit into it. Elves would not appreciate seeing a non-elf wearing elfin chainmail, however, and might believe the wearer got it by killing or robbing the previous owner. Elfin chainmail weighs about 15 pounds, allows movement at normal speed (up to 12”), and is regarded as non-bulky; its weight is very evenly distributed over the body and limbs. A thin layer of underpadding is required, usually made of tough but soft materials carefully woven to permit free movement and good ventilation. Special small helms are usually worn with it, and these take about a week each to make properly (including decorations, engravings, and so forth).

I love this one because all there is to base this on is a short, mostly numerical description in the book, & yet the writer is trying to build this into a full-out description. Yet he doesn't end up saying anything that goes beyond the short description.

this thread is so useful & awesome to me you have no idea.

Oh the flashbacks this all causes...

from last night?

currently playing Baldur's Gate (2.5 or somesuch of the AD&D rules) so timely thread

also I was a Dungeon Master back then and well, it always ended in arguments and recrimininations

xpost -- :-D

so many flashbacks

I have mentioned this on Noize Board but from 1980-84 I worked for & played with the crew from Iron Crown Enterprises, RPGs were my life back then. Went to Origins, Gencon, all that stuff. Chivalry & Sorcery TOURNAMENTS!

I think I remember that pregnancy letter.

great thread

When an offensive spell’s range is “touch,” does the touch have to be with a hand?

Yes.

"For the paladin to have tortured the orc was an evil act"
this answer really needs the question, which I very much want someone to send to dan savage:

'In our town of Terre Haute, there is an eighthlevel paladin that has a favorite saying, “Repent or Die.” On one occasion he pulled back the arm of a captured orc, placed a Ring of regeneration on his finger and then ripped his face off. When the orc’s face healed, he would do it again. He says he has a valid right to do this, because torture was very much a part of the inquisition and he is saving the orc’s soul.'

#52 What happens when a Resurrection or a Raise Dead is cast on an undead?

Hmmm. It stands to reason that undead can be resurrected, as long as their living bodies had souls. But according to the spell description for Resurrection, a cleric can resurrect the “bones” of a dead body — that is, there must be some part of the body available for the cleric to touch for the process of resurrection to take place. Any undead which is encountered in an immaterial, gaseous or ethereal form could not be resurrected, because there’s nothing for the cleric to lay his hands on — even if he dared to touch one. An undead creature which is corporeal, and especially one which has retained at least a vestige of the appearance it had in life, could conceivably be resurrected with a touch — again, if the cleric is willing and able to withstand the effects of that touch. It’s worth noting here that a cleric who casts Resurrection is incapacitated for at least one day afterward, during which time the cleric cannot engage in combat or spell-casting. Unless some means is at hand to control the resurrected creature and save the cleric’s skin, he’s going to be in a lot of trouble after the spell is cast. A further guideline on the subject is found in the Monster Manual in the description for ghouls. A human who is killed by a ghoul will himself become a ghoul., unless a Bless spell is cast upon the corpse (in which case the victim is simply dead). The corpse could then be resurrected — after being blessed. Logically, the same procedure — bless first, raise later — could be required for an attempt to resurrect any undead creature. Depending on the DM’s interpretation of “touch,” it might be possible for a cleric to lay hands on, for instance, the immobilized body of a vampire without suffering the loss of 2 life energy levels which accompanies a vampire’s hit on a victim. (Since the vampire isn’t doing the “hitting” or “touching,” he can’t do any damage.) But what about the mummy? Its touch “inflicts a rotting disease on any hit,” but it’s logical to assume that anyone who initiates contact with a mummy would also be subject to the disease. Since each type of undead is at least slightly different from each other type, there are no general rules which can apply. Whether or not to require a Bless spell, whether or not to assess damage upon a “touch,” and any other particular questions are left to the DM’s discretion. Raise Dead is a different matter entirely. The spell description pretty well covers it: The vital parts of the body must be present, which rules out skeletons and any non-corporeal undead, and the undead creature must have been in a non-alive state for a length of time which does not exceed the limit of the spell’s power. The Monster Manual gives specifics for some cases: spectres, wights and wraiths will be destroyed by a Raise Dead spell (unless they make a save vs. magic), and a mummy can be resurrected by casting Cure Disease followed by Raise Dead. If a Bless is required before a Resurrection attempt can be successful, the blessing need not also be required for a Raise Dead attempt, because the soul hasn’t been away from the body as long and the newly created undead hasn’t fallen entirely into the clutches of eviltry.

but what about the mummy?

there are no general rules which can apply.

This thread = best thing about today

this thread kind of confirms every suspicion i had about those d&d playing dudes in the school cafeteria.

Usual Sunday Catan group is getting burned out on the same game over and over (esp. because six player games aren't as fun as the smaller board somehow) so we bought the basic D&D rules box set - but no one will volunteer to read them and figure out WTF to do.

I wish I had my old Battletech figures. Wargaming with giant robots and lasers - that's the right way to nerd out.

Reading these D&D Q&As gives me the same deep satisfaction that simply paging through the Dungeon Master's Guide does, the pleasure of a calm, unrelenting delineation of the fantastic.

god, i spent a good two or three years of my life puzzling over questions like this. still have pages of elaborate notes somewhere.

and f. OTM (and so nicely said). love fantastical guidebooks of any sort for the same reason. barlowe's guide to extraterrestrials, etc.

f. hazel OTM, that was meant to say...

A further guideline on the subject is found in the Monster Manual in the description for ghouls.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/28/Talmud.jpg

oh man, Barlowe's Guide To Extraterrestrials was the best!

still waiting on thype...

I have mentioned this on Noize Board but from 1980-84 I worked for & played with the crew from Iron Crown Enterprises, RPGs were my life back then. Went to Origins, Gencon, all that stuff. Chivalry & Sorcery TOURNAMENTS!

oh man I would LOVE to know more about this!

Reading these D&D Q&As gives me the same deep satisfaction that simply paging through the Dungeon Master's Guide does, the pleasure of a calm, unrelenting delineation of the fantastic.

― the girl from spirea x (f. hazel), Wednesday, October 13, 2010 5:01 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark

Yes! When I used to roleplay I pretty much preferred reading the sourcebooks to actually playing.

Each of these questions betrays so clearly the bickering that prompted it.

xp it's the stress free memorisation of knowledge that ha no real life purpose. Completely opposite to the high stress of having to memorise stuff from a math/CS textbook for an exam.

the pleasure of a calm, unrelenting delineation of the fantastic.

It reminds me a little of Christian extremists' long logistical extrapolations about the science behind the flood

In ADVANCED DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS, how much damage do bows do?

None. Bows do not do damage, arrows do. However, if you hit someone with a bow, I’d say it would probably do 1-4 points of damage and thereafter render the bow completely useless for firing arrows. What the bows do is allow a greater variety of ranges; all the damage done by arrows is the same

lol @ bows dont kill ppl, arrows do.

all the damage done by arrows is the same

This is a bit bullshitty really, pretty sure a longbow has greater penetration than a short bow irl

also a p big lapse to ignore the increased damage done by magic arrows

Surprised nobody's gone in on the o_O that is "elves have no souls" yet. Sounds like some kind of segregationist propaganda to me.

That's a standard fantasy trope isn't it?

If you caught a newly hatched silver dragon and raised it, would it have your alignment or its mother’s alignment?

It would retain the alignment of its parents, since that is what its natural tendencies

nature vs nurture debate now closed

played ad&d loads when i was younger, it always ended in fights and arguments. the dms in my experience would always end up picking on whoever was messing and not taking it seriously. then in time magic: the gathering just utterly murdered our will to ever play role playing games (or do anything else) ever again.

also played call of cthulu rpg which was brilliant, though v difficult, and i think a warhammer rpg too, which was cool. naming the characters etc was always the best.

CoC was my favourite. I also really liked Ars Magica.

And yeah, Warhammer was better than D&D in many ways. A grittier and scarier world, and a much more elegant gaming system (no fucking alignments for a start).

there was one i played once at a convention (after getting knocked out of magic: the gathering obviously!) called, i think, Mage. it was pretty cool, the essential concept of it was you could do anything, like bend reality etc, but at a cost of your character's sanity/morality/health. so you sort of mutated yourself. it was quite cool though as the weirder the thing you tried to do the more likely even weirder shit happened as a rebound. I remember delighting a table full of ultra nerds by turning some dickish bartender's head into a cabbage, and his entire body then began turning into vegetables.

x-post yeah the warhammer scenarios were much more urban and just better really. don't know if it was our DM but it felt like it was just endless fucking kobolds. we used to joke about this behind his back then we played the next week and sure enough as we went through some field "a large pack of kobolds surrounds you"

Games Workshop always got really good artists for the books as well.

That's a standard fantasy trope isn't it?

No, I don't think so. Or at least I can't think of any examples of fantasy books where elves wouldn't have souls.

Maybe it's something to do with their super-long lives but I don't remember ever hearing this "fuck an elf, soulless bastard" stuff before.

They were always kind of sinister and inscrutable in Warhammer.

Which begs the question as to why the Paladin was trying to save that Orc's non-existent soul, also.

This is a bit bullshitty really, pretty sure a longbow has greater penetration than a short bow irl

Yeah, this changed in second edition iirc.

Ronan, you were a serious M:TG player?

yeah from about age i guess....11 or so on till 15 or 16? i sold all my cards for about 300 quid aged 16ish...or maybe earlier, can't exactly remember.

No interest in http://www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?boardid=77&threadid=82583 ?

My first ever AD&D character was a half-elf, I was about 6 or 7, I looked at the picture in the 1st edition player's handbook and he looked the least threatening.

Then I had a dwarf called 'Bashy'.

that link just takes me to the generic board list?

It's a 77 thread.

haha...awkward.

the link still won't work!!!

why won't it work????

Works for me. If you're not a member of 77, it doesn't work for you.

Hang on, I don't understand??

77 is a secret board on ILX. You have to be added as a member to see the board or threads over there.

You can ask to join 77 over here:

Request Access to 77 Borad

yo Gravel, allow me to free associate some memories here...

I think I was in 5th grade when my 1-year-older friend Tony (who ended up designing Age Of Empires) came over with a copy of Tunnels & Trolls, which was a simpler version (maybe the 1st) of the D&D template. We moved on the regular D&D pretty fast. I played with those original three books in the box, remember being all excited when Greyhawk (1st expansion book) came out.

in 1979 I hooked up with this great bunch of game nerds who played at the University of Virginia, they were called the Historical Simulation Society cuz they had come out of the miniatures scene (they are still active today, some of the same peeps even!) However, it ended up being all wargames and this crazy guy who was running a mutated RPG system that he had designed himself. This guy was Pete F3nl0n, whe became prez and CEO of the nasscent Iron Crown Enterprises in 1980.

I think for the first few years I just played in the monstrous campaign that he was running, ostensibly to "playtest" the system but it was really about geeking out. I remember the first copies of "Arms Law" arriving, they also started out with another wargame called Gettysburg which sank w/o a trace.

Can't remember if I went to the 1979 Origins but from 80 on I would go with the ICE crew and help run the merch table. Gencon was usually out near Lake Geneva (we all know where that is, right?) but at least one year they had it on the East Coast. By the time I was 16 I was working in the warehouse running the shrinkwrap machine. I also did a lot of proofreading and some editing. They only ran an official Rolemaster tournament one year, the prize was a lifetime subscription to all ICE products (!!!). I remember it got down to two dudes and when the last guy finally won the loser was in tears. People loved it.

I worked for them the summer after 1st year college, which woulda been 1985. They expanded a lot during the rest of the decade but I mostly wasn't around. in '89 I wrote a NPC character compendium for the Cyberpunk RPG called Cyber Rogues, my crowning achievement of RPG geekiness. By this time they had gotten the rights to the Tolkien stuff and times were good. Then the card games came in and just killed them financially, after that they lost the Tolkien rights again. I think they went under in the late 90's.

I always really liked the Rolemaster system but obv I am biased to a degree. My high school crew and I played on our own, mostly D&D at first but some Runemaster as well (another good system). I was pretty into the ridiculous Chivalry & Sorcery game but I could never find anyone who wanted to spend the time it needed, so I was really excited when there was a C&S tournament at Origins one year - I was probably 15. I got knocked out in the first round but then somone else couldn't make round 2 so I was reinstated. We played that round until 4 A.M. on the last night of the convention. I think it started at 8? Good times.

my last D&D character was named "Anaujiram".. i think you can see why it was the last

By our last few sessions the PCs just wanted to go to taverns and rut with wenches rather than slay things.

Amazing post sleeve, thanks!

I'd really love to know so much more about this period: what kinds of people were the guys running the companies? What kind of adults were into the hobby? My dad always spoke with awe (this is a bit UK-centric) of the way that a shared love of killing goblins allowed him to meet people he never would have otherwise, and the way he described it always made it sound like such a cool powerful shared secret to be in on? How did the high school games you played in at that time differ from the grown up games?

(Ronan check your webmail)

I don't really want to do a phd but if I had the time & money I'd want to write about RPG culture in this period, it's the most fascinating subject to me!

By our last few sessions the PCs just wanted to go to taverns and rut with wenches rather than slay things.

The end of MANY campaigns.

i have fond memories of stopping by renaissance books (in milwaukee) before family trips and getting a bunch of old Dragon magazines for cheap

My Dragon subscription was my prized possession as a kid. My friends and I would hunt for back issues whenever we went on vacations to somewhere new. I still have a few issues and the odd article I cut out in a box somewhere. The two issues with big sections about the Nine Hells are tattooed on my brain. And, "you haven't lived until you've done... the Assassin's Run." Oooh.

yeah someone should really write a book about all of that history! xp lol that was written before your post, Gravel

Like I said, a lot of this stuff came out of the 70's miniatures scene, which was really insanely elaborate and probably drew some of the same people who would have been in model railroad clubs in previous decades. The folks running ICE at least were all around grad student age (some of them WERE grad students). They had a computer science guy who did a lot of the system design, an accountant, and I think the prez had a law degree?

I don't think the high school games really expanded my social circles very much, I mean we were social misfits to begin with. But one thing about RPGs is that you do get an age range sometimes, and it was hugely influential on me to have a group of friends in their late 20s/early 30s at ICE to ask for girlfriend advice etc. Pete's campaigns were always so meticulously crafted that they were far and above anything else I've ever played, no real comparison there. When I played tournaments at the conventions it always seemed a lot more competitive than any of the games I played in on the regular.

Also when I was a senior in high school I ran a MERP game and the only people who wanted to play were a bunch of 8th graders, so we ran a game for a few months. Another good example of age range. I think my experience with the older folks really served me well when I got into the college midwest punk rock scene, I wasn't as intimidated by older & more experienced people.

i've never understood how competitive roleplaying worked.

man, the maps have gotten alot better looking than when I was young halfling

http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4map/20090930/h1

the big games back then at the club were Rail Baron, the SPI version of War Of The Ring (now there's a collectors item, all that SPI stuff sells for mad bucks), and later Titan (which was HUGE for some reason). They were also really into this more complex railroad game called 1829 I think? Squad Leader was also popular and I still have all of those original sets. The Rolemaster campaign eventually moved to the ICE office instead of at the club.

other club demographics - librarians, CIA spooks, later on a few other teens like me.

i've never understood how competitive roleplaying worked.

sometimes it was as simple as "last person standing wins", other times it was whoever got the most exp points in a session or something like that.

oh man, Squad Leader. I remember Cross of Iron fondly. After it morphed into Advanced Squad Leader I couldn't deal with it.

yeah competitive roleplay seems to run counter to the "plucky little band" template inherited from the Fellowship of the Ring. but even that had its Boromir i guess!

me neither! xp

Since most dragons appear in groups of one to four, most dragons lay one or two eggs. Faerie dragons, which appear in groups of up to six, lay up to four eggs. The minimum number of eggs laid is one. If one assumes that young dragons stay with their parents at least until they reach the subadult stage at 16 years, each clutch must be at least 16 years apart, since dragons would be found in larger groups if they laid eggs while rearing young.

the ridiculousness of the bolded section there is killing me

Doesn't this logic also just fall down? Assuming faerie dragons appear in groups no larger than six and a child-raising period of 16 years, you could also have a max clutch of 1 egg every 4 years or a max clutch of 2 every 8 years...

Via the FT archives Tom Ewing talks about the debut issue of the UK sort of equivalent White Dwarf (adding just now on Twitter that 'the rules lawyering in that ish im writing about would be out of fashion by the early 80s tho - Dragon seen as v childish')

yeah that i was a goblin series of TE's was just out of sight

i never really actually enjoyed playing RPGs themselves (besides making characters), but i always loved reading ABOUT them, i guess i still do

I take it you saw this at some point:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6AOd6r6Qi8

Damn me that this is the thing which finally makes me make an ilXor account, but the soul thing? I believe it's from Tolkein, so anything which directly draws from him tends to do a "Elves don't have souls" thing.

(The reason why orcs don't have souls is presumably because they're debased elves)

I'm going to stomp now and slink away.

Damn me that this is the thing which finally makes me make an ilXor account

Haha well it always has to be something! Welcome.

This is SUCH an interesting thread for me, because I spent a lot of the end of the 80s and very early part of the 90s wishing I could play these games. But, living in the middle of nowhere Illinois, I literally did not know anyone that played these or was willing to learn with me. So I spent hours upon hours upon hours reading the Monster Manual, rolling characters, and coming up with scenarios. But only ever played ONE session in my life that I conned friends into playing, but they didn't take it serious at all and quit after two hours of character creation. Had a long-running obsession with MERP and a shorter-lived one with Top Secret, neither of which I ever played. Of course, when I got to college there was more likely to be people to play with, but I had since replaced RPGs with my budding music obsession. Besides, all the dudes I saw only played Magic.

I did run a long-lasting Car Wars campaign in sixth grade though, two good friends were up for that.

hmm was tolkien explicit to that extent? i know that orcs were a mockery of elves, but hadn't remembered any further than that tbh.

Tolkien was explicit to EVERY extent; I'm surprised no one has unearthed notes on comparative genitalia sizes in Middle Earth.

Those are in the footnotes for the The Complete Silmarillion.

I did run a long-lasting Car Wars campaign in sixth grade though, two good friends were up for that.

― he's always been a bit of an anti-climb Max (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Wednesday, October 13, 2010 12:01 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

CAR WARS, not as an RPG, just as a shoot-em-up, is the best game ever invented, bar none. thank you steve jackson.

Haha well it always has to be something! Welcome.

― Ned Raggett, Wednesday, October 13, 2010 11:54 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

makes my day when Ned is there to welcome the delurked. <3

^^^ yep :)

One tries.

One succeeds.

count me in the 'read way more than played' camp.

speaking of steve jackson, i'm just going to bring up GURPS again like i do on all the nerd nostalgia threads we have. the fallout games were supposed to have a heavy gurps influence on the character design, to make a clean break away from D&D style rpgs. i dunno the nature of the dispute but the partnership tanked, and fallout is still very level-y

Damn me that this is the thing which finally makes me make an ilXor account

― BremXJones, Wednesday, October 13, 2010 6:45 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

... gillen?

I played D&D/AD&D for most of my childhood, & obv. since I post on ILM I'm inclined toward nerding out, but only once or twice in those years of playing did the play = satisfactory amount of nerding out. Usually it was "Apex quaffs potion of bone" & then sticking a pencil through my miniature's crotch. But one time, we played White Plume Mountain (best module ever imo) & mathed out---set up pulleys using rope in order to get across rooms, checking the physics, checking that we were carrying that much rope...that kind of thing. It was just for one evening/night, but it was glorious. We were all exhausted by the end, not just b/c we'd stayed up all night, but also because keeping track of all that was tiring. So that was the catch: to do it right, in a really satisfying way, required a lot of mental work, & I think none of us were willing to put in that kind of work, long-term. So we graduated to pr0n & pizza, the end.

This is SUCH an interesting thread for me, because I spent a lot of the end of the 80s and very early part of the 90s wishing I could play these games. But, living in the middle of nowhere Illinois, I literally did not know anyone that played these or was willing to learn with me. So I spent hours upon hours upon hours reading the Monster Manual, rolling characters, and coming up with scenarios. But only ever played ONE session in my life that I conned friends into playing, but they didn't take it serious at all and quit after two hours of character creation. Had a long-running obsession with MERP and a shorter-lived one with Top Secret, neither of which I ever played. Of course, when I got to college there was more likely to be people to play with, but I had since replaced RPGs with my budding music obsession.

this is me, basically. except i was way into SHADOWRUN and bought/read sourcebooks and created characters and w/e and didn't have a single friend who played. still have no idea how RPGs actually ~work~ in practice

ha i did play some shadowrun, actually. the answer is "badly"

there were a handful kids near me who were into this stuff but never for very long or sustained periods and never with enough agreement on system or style or much enthusiasm at all. even for a kid like me the crushing nerdiness of it started to be too much as i got older.

oh you said "RPGs" not "that RPG". though i guess the rest of my post kind of answers what you did say in a way :/

Anyone into Rifts? It had a ludicrous system involving something called mega-damage, but the world was quite cool.

White Plume Mountain (best module ever White Plume Mountain (best module ever White Plume Mountain (best module ever White Plume Mountain (best module ever White Plume Mountain (best module ever White Plume Mountain (best module ever White Plume Mountain (best module ever White Plume Mountain (best module ever White Plume Mountain (best module ever White Plume Mountain (best module ever White Plume Mountain (best module ever White Plume Mountain (best module ever White Plume Mountain (best module ever White Plume Mountain (best module ever White Plume Mountain (best module ever White Plume Mountain (best module ever White Plume Mountain (best module ever White Plume Mountain (best module ever White Plume Mountain (best module ever White Plume Mountain (best module ever White Plume Mountain (best module ever White Plume Mountain (best module ever White Plume Mountain (best module ever White Plume Mountain (best module ever White Plume Mountain (best module ever White Plume Mountain (best module ever White Plume Mountain (best module ever White Plume Mountain (best module ever White Plume Mountain (best module ever White Plume Mountain (best module ever

:))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))

weirdly enough, one of my childhood best friend's dad was an ancient gamer of the avalon hill/railroad baron/SSI wargamer/hippie/computer programmer type. and he had a room in his basement with shelves of basically every game printed in the 70s. 90% of the space was taken up by war sim board games but there was plenty of crazy roleplay stuff, mostly runequest, some call of cthulu. very early D&D but none of the 80s stuff, and he did have a copy of the proto-d&d "chainmail" rules which was pretty cool to look at, tho it was treated like a holy relic and i didn't get to touch it more than once, ha

Shadowrun IIRC had the most impossibly complicated and protracted gameplay system ever. It would take ten minutes to resolve a single gunshot.

and there was no detail to show for it! weren't there like four competing dice rolls of unlimited number of dice each just to tell you "moderate wound"

Honestly I can remember exactly what the outcomes were just that I was like "wow this seems like an interesting setting/concept such pity it's basically unplayable."

I totally winged it as a DM for my lone summer playing D&D. I had no idea what was going on. Eventually the bickering between the players got so bad I was like "Um, you are attracting attention to yourselves" ::bickering continues:: "Every Orc in the caverns knows of your presence" ::bickering continues:: "You see 50 Orcs charging at you down the hallway"

game over, the DM is off to watch college football

Wait, has this seriously not been posted on the thread yet?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHdXG2gV01k

(There are a million video riffs and parodies of the original audio recording, the above being just one. But the audio is the original audio.)

^lol

I do remember the first time I bought graph paper to make my own dungeon. ::wistful +1::

....I always really liked the Rolemaster system but obv I am biased to a degree....

― sleeve, Wednesday, 13 October 2010 14:47 (7 hours ago)

I remember buying Rolemaster! It must have been the very early eighties, I was still at school I think. It had a rep as the elitest RPG there was, I paid shitloads for it, as it was an American import. I sat up for night after night sussing out how it worked, then I found that no-one else locally had a copy, maybe I should have done my research beforehand, I could have spent my money on Eloy or Klaus Schulze albums instead. I still have the Rolemaster as well asAD&D and a bunch of the scenarios in the attic, haven't looked at them in many, many years. I remember this amazing AD&D scenario set in sopme kind of Transylvanian Dracula castle, a hugely detailed map of this place which I wish actually existed, it was amazing. I never really got deep into playing any RPG, it was a real tiny cult thing back then, and very few people even knew what it was. Also, I found I was more into painting the little figures, I got really good at it, I still have a bunch of them in boxes in the attic somewhere too. I didn't like Warhammer too much when it came out because I really liked the Ral Partha figures that Tom Meier* designed, that chunky style the Warhammer figures all had was & is kind of ugly to me

*a great american artist of the late 20th century.

I remember this amazing AD&D scenario set in sopme kind of Transylvanian Dracula castle, a hugely detailed map of this place which I wish actually existed, it was amazing.

ravenloft?

...I was more into painting the little figures, I got really good at it, I still have a bunch of them in boxes in the attic somewhere too. I didn't like Warhammer too much when it came out because I really liked the Ral Partha figures that Tom Meier* designed...

never knew who designed the ral partha figures, but yeah, they were great. had a bunch at one time, as they were what originally attracted me to RPGs (couldn't afford the giant pewter dragon clutching crystal gazing orb in the hobby shoppe window). only painted a few, cuz they never came out like i'd hoped, and i lacked the patience to acquire the skill. better a silvery gray guy than a gunked-up greenish brown.

just wanted to say...

dragonlance

Revive the thread Remy. You know you want to.

Ravenloft, yeah that was it. I still have that somewhere as well, I'll dig it out and see if anyhting in it makes any sense to me after all these years.

Tom Meier's site is here: http://www.thunderboltmountain.com/ everytime I look at it I want to buy something :-/

Ravenloft was a fun world, as was Dark Sun.

I remember Rifts! Megadamage was the thing that they used so that you couldn't, technically, knock a house down by punching it with normal human fists, right?

I torrented a whole bunch of 1980s Dragon and White Dwarf mags last year and spent many happy hours reading them.

I was always intrigued by D&Ds etc, but ultimately too lazy :(

Relevant short story here: http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2010/10/04/101004fi_fiction_lipsyte

never played one of these IRL but I remember playing star wars and final fantasy themed ones on IRC. it was just a way for the chatroom regulars to snark and neg each other in different ways than usual iirc.

Chainmail... Ral Partha... the flashbacks keep coming. Those miniatures were indeed very cool, Pash.

above when I said "Runemaster" I really meant "Runequest", duh.

Those Freaky Trigger articles are wonderful.

did anyone ever play with encumbrance? or, like, you have to return your gold pieces to a bank to count them as experience? in my experience every character basically had an unspoken bag of holding.

wow i said bag of holding

things got a little crazy when someone got hold of deities & demigods, because that shit looked too fun not to play with, yet you had to cheat pretty hard to make your characters even remotely capable of such interaction. you can't really play a third-level cleric in a dungeon that has asmodeus in the final chamber.

Pedantic nerd moment in keeping with the thread: Asmodeus is in the Monster Manual, not in Deities & Demigods.

haha true and i should have known someone would mention it

I just remember all my friends wanted to worship Blibdoolpoolp, Bast, or the "Maiden of Pain" herself, Loviatar. Drawings of boobs for pre-teens have magical powers.

And in case anyone wonders, I did have to look up the spelling of the Kuo-Toa goddess.

did anyone ever play with encumbrance? or, like, you have to return your gold pieces to a bank to count them as experience? in my experience every character basically had an unspoken bag of holding.

wow i said bag of holding

^ real talk

except i really did make them fuckers shed what they could not carry

I remember borrowing Monster Manual 2(?) (the one with all the monsters that are shaped like various prisms on some astral plane) and photocopying in the local library it just so I could read it. I didn't even play AD&D, I just liked reading the manuals. And I know I've got a stash of old GM and GMI magazines in the garage somewhere--they were the UK mags that tried to fill the void when White Dwarf just became about Games Workshop stuff.

Modrons, I think? I was the only one in my group with Monster Manual 2. We tried to share the burdon of buying the new books amongst us, but we all owned the Player's Guide.

Modrons! That's it!

My mom was the GM of a chain of comic book/game shops when I was a kid, so I grew up bigoted toward roleplaying (particularly LARPers - those cockfarmers did something stupid at every game convention - pull the hotel fire alarm, etc) and later Magic: The Gathering. No matter what I see now I instinctively associate D&D with proto-Juggalos with hygiene issues.

My dad was a Napoleonics and American Civil War miniatures gamer - this seemed totally acceptable and not at all horribly nerdy, because those dudes bathed and had real jobs. Looking back, I suspect even the LARPers got laid more than people who could pull out $10k worth of minis to stage Pickett's Charge.

I don't know how it is in the USA, but in here the LARPing is a much less of a male-centric hobby than paper-and-pen RPGs, in fact I think there are more female LARPers than male ones. So yeah, I think LARPers get laid more often than other gamers. (It probably helps you have to be more of an extrovert than an introvert to get into LARPing.) From what I've heard there have even been occasions where people have had sex in-game, in-character. Sounds kinda weird to me, but if it's okay with them, who am I to judge?

In general the LARPers I knew tended to be kinda arrogant and judgemental of everyone who's not a LARPer, so I never got into it despite trying it a couple of times.

I don't even have a clue how LARPing works beyond dressing up and randomly hitting each other over the head with plastic swords.

Going back to the thread title - I guess if I had to put a finger on what I find so fascinating it'd run something like:

I'm familiar with two types of DnD -

1) the type I played in school with other 12 year olds and egregious bending of the rules in favour of the PCs - the type you can see a lot of in those letters about drow PCs etc.
2) the type I played alone, in my head, with only a DMG and a box of dice, picking with excitement from the random treasure table and imagining, imagining.

but almost mythically there was at the time a third incredibly austere world - that of dnd played by actual adults, wise and serious, who played by the rules, all the rules - I can see now, at 27, that much of my idea of that world was totally made up and wrong. But I'm interested in what of it was actually true!

xp judging from the remnants of a recent cosplay convention I saw over here, cosplay seems to be more popular with the fairer sex. humminahummina

great stuff

lol @ bows dont kill ppl, arrows do.

lolling at this

I was gifted my neighbor's hardback collection of early 80s AD&D tomes, which I then lent to my friend and never saw them again.

Also, I feel quite fortunate that I was a froshling away in Ann Arbor that fall when M:TG hit Michigan. I remember seeing guys playing it on the floor whilst we waited for the MST3K: Fresh Cheese Tour in 1994 and thinking, "damn, and I thought _I_ was geeky"

my biggest memory of Dragon Magazine is the review of Spawn of Fashan

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4151/5081221166_dedcdc4a89_z.jpg

also it is funny to think back on one of those early versions of d&d and how it used cardboard chits instead of dice

lol the comics section in Dragon

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4126/5080640569_6840391b30_z.jpg

Oh man, Phil Foglio...his porn comics are actually really good.

omg this reminds me I still own a copy of The Finieous Fingers Treasury!!!

I own Finieous Fingers too! I'd love a full What's New? collection to sit beside it.

By the way, that particular strip ends with them summoning Cthulhu. It was in the first Dragon I bought and I read it over and over for two months until I got the first one in my subscription. Must have been around issue 60 or so.

exactly! #60

with goofy april fool's content

I actually played "Flight of the Boodles". I thought it was pretty good. Keep in mind I was 9.

awesome

there is probably a flight of the boodles campaign still going on in singapore or champaign or somewhere

it's funny how many ppl on this thread mention being really into reading the old hardcover books and rolling up characters while never having played actual games much...and the sort of austere rule-bound world that gravel mentions upthread by contrast which characterized actual play. like, people playing with encumbrance rules and stuff! or a dm penalizing characters for not acting in accordance with their alignments!

Count me in with the group of people who enjoyed reading the books, but had no real interest in actually playing. I also had a fascination with Traveller, Star Frontiers, and Car Wars, but never played any of these either. If I still had my Car Wars stuff, I'd probably try it out now with my son.

i was one of those too, actually; my brother played, in the 80s, but i was born in 1985, which meant missing waves of it, really. he DMed one session for me and some friends circa age 11 or 12, which let's not talk about. there wasn't any of it at my school or sixth form, i think i missed waves of it, and i didn't really feel like getting into it at university, by the time i got there.

also i missed waves of it

ditto about the reading everything, rather than playing - altho it was because i had nobody to play with so dunno if that counts.

particularly just like looking at maps, was obsessed. rememember buying d&d mags like white dwarf and Dungeon just to look at blueprints of orc towers blah blah

I played tons of games, from ages 8-12 and 16-25. Three different groups of players with just a couple of crossovers. Games I played more than once: D&D, AD&D, Star Frontiers, Boot Hill, Top Secret, James Bond RPG, Runequest, Toon, Twilight 2000, Cyberpunk, Shadowrun, Earthdawn, Vampire, Gamma World, GURPS (mainly wild west stuff), Marvel Super Heroes, DC Super Heroes, Champions, Castle Falkenstein and probably a few others. Out of those, I mainly AD&D, Marvel & DC Heroes, Vampire and Cyberpunk.

Games we played only once or not at all, but that I bought at least one book (and often several): Werewolf, Wraith, Mage, Changeling, Dark Ages Vampire, Dark Ages Mage, Hunter the Reckoning, Kindred of the East (I like the World of Darkness setting more than playing it), Nephilim, Adventure, Aberrant, Feng Shui, Legend of the Five Rings, 7th Sea, Immortal,Ars Magica, Kult, Deadlands, Underground, Bloodshadows, MERP, Dark Conspiracy, Höl. I still own something from every game on this list even though I haven't played any of them this century.

I think my favorite game and game system is still Falkenstein.

same here (wrt to reading the books without playing). loved reading the shadowrun sourcebooks too...that's where i first learned about mdma and all sorts of shit. and i'm pretty sure "ars magica" led to me taking four years of latin in high school/college.

http://www.waynesbooks.com/images/graphics/d3mono.jpg

this was my jam

and this... I ran both of these

http://www.waynesbooks.com/images/graphics/s1aa.jpg

G1-Q1 are the essence of AD&D.

loool tomb of horrors. kinda want to run the 4e version that wizards put out

i was born in 1985, which meant missing waves of it, really. he DMed one session for me and some friends circa age 11 or 12, which let's not talk about. there wasn't any of it at my school or sixth form, i think i missed waves of it, and i didn't really feel like getting into it at university, by the time i got there.

yah reading the stories itt is p amazing cuz i dont think id ever seen/heard of someone playing d&d or any of the other nerd games until college by which point i wasnt really interested anymore. all the nerdy kids my age played magic cards

loved this

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c4/B2ModuleCover.jpg

there's an old dungeon magazine module called 'vesicant' that i remember being head-and-shoulders more interesting and well thought out the rest

man, tomb of horrors is impossible

anybody else remember the near impossible module that had a sinister looking mirror in it which basically just whammo killed anybody who touched it? that was some bullshit when i was 13

also dungeonland and the land beyond the magic mirror (the lewis carroll ones) were the fucking shit

what was the superhero RPG where you had to balance your superhero strengths with Achilles Heels?

champions

Champions was more calculus than RPG.

just bought my 10 year old the basic set for his birthday! and dungeon tile kit!
Dar Feldo, half-elven magic user, lives on.

Champions was more calculus than RPG.

character building was super fun though

Yes it was. Playing it sucked balls though.

Speaking of super-hero games, I left Villains & Vigilantes off my list. That was the first supers game I really loved. And the creators just put out a new edition a few months ago.

gary gygax

RIP

also u forgot the "!"

yo is it true did gygax! get sonned by a nerd kid after a D&D beef?????

I remember Champions because someone talked me into giving it a whirl, we spent three hours building characters (which was fun) and then never played again. Sounds like I didn't miss a thing.

Was MechWarrior any good? My Battletech group tried to integrate it into a few campaigns, but that always quickly degenerated into skipping MW in order to blow shit up with giant robots armed with lasers.

I really liked Champions, but the most fun bit was designing the characters--with a bit of thought you could create a character who could do ANYTHING (except time travel). I ran a campaign for quite a while, but ignored all that hex-based nonsense. But I deigned about 1000 villains I never got a chance to use.

incredible thread btw.

jjjustin asked about the "near impossible module that had a sinister looking mirror in it which basically just whammo killed anybody who touched it," and i dunno. but the entirely fucking impossible tomb of horrors does have this:

http://i274.photobucket.com/albums/jj242/donaldparsley/TombofHorrorsSpheresmall.jpg

a giant wall-mounted thing, the blackness of whose mouth is a "(fixed) sphere of annihilation." and yeah, it just whammo kills anybody who touches it.

^ nice trampier-looking art tho

gygax! on TOH (S1):

It was a long time ago when the Tomb of Horrors first made its appearance. Before I put it into manuscript form for publication, i carried the scenario around with me in by briefcase, so as to be ready for those fans who boasted of having mighty PCs able to best any challenge offered by the AD&D game. After an hour or so of time spent within the weird labyrinth of Acererak’s final "resting place," the players whose characters were survivors typically remembered suddenly that they had pressing engagements elsewhere. Clutching their precious character sheets, they fled the table. Those who had already lost their vaunted PCs had previously departed, muttering darkly about "impossible death traps." Had I been mean and cruel, I would have required participants to hand over their character sheets upon the demise of a PC, torn them up, and then smiled wickedly as I asked for the name and address of their DMs so as to pass on the news of the sad loss. But I am very kind at heart.

To follow up with Tuomas' point about Scandinavian LARPing having a better gender balance than, say, North American, I present you with this classic of the Internet, Blue & Red Link:

http://www.hemmy.net/2008/03/07/female-link-cosplay/

http://www.geekologie.com/2008/12/love_a_zelda_cosplay_girls_gal.php

http://www.hemmy.net/images/games/linkcosplay04.jpg

True, it's more cosplay than larp, but shut the fuck up.

Er, I didn't say anything about gender balance in North American LARPing. If you bothered to read my post, it says:

"I don't know how it is in the USA, but in here the LARPing is a much less of a male-centric hobby than paper-and-pen RPGs, in fact I think there are more female LARPers than male ones. So yeah, I think LARPers get laid more often than other gamers."

Basically I was assuming it must be similar in the USA too, but I didn't want to make any definite statements because I know little about the North American LARPing scene.

hum·min·a

[huhm-in-a]
–interjection

1) yeah

Also, yeah.

XPOST!

is this an classic of the internet?

http://i274.photobucket.com/albums/jj242/donaldparsley/rikkusmall.jpg

should probably be.

great thread

love hearing about the earliest generation of gamers--that mid-70s 'moment' when geek/nerd culture was emerging, hippies reading tolkein, civil war gaming turning into fantasy ripoffs, phone phreaking. wild!

me personally i spent a lot of time reading the manuals and imagining what it would be like to play an ad&d campaign. i got really into magic though, next best thing i guess.

About tomb-of-horrors type stuff - I DMed my dad a couple of times as a kid and the way he'd prepare for missions, and do everything so carefully, was so unlike the modern style of play - like, the first thing he'd do every mission was to make a butterfly net - he and his gamer friends would touch nothing they hadn't identified, etc etc...

Kinda amazed how many ilx MTGers are crawling out of the woodwork but that's another thread!

oooof, i just remembered something super embarrassing:

how i tried to get my step-grandmother and mom to play a game of brand new AD&D with me because i didn't know anybody else who played, and they were usually pretty cool.

they both refused and i was reaally and so i went outside and hid in a tree.

i was 13 :(

they both refused and i was reaally and so i went outside and hid in a tree.

Funnily enough my little brother went outside and hid in a tree when I killed his PC once at about the same age.

A Separate Saving Throw

well played, +30 xp

I am so tempted to go to a bookstore tonight and snag some of this stuff again, just for the pure hell of it.

Even more tempted now that I've checked back in and saw that Wizards has brought back the red box!

A request: if anyone ever comes across any Space:1889 stuff for cheap let me know. I always wanted to check that out but I've never come across any of it.

There's a company putting out retro modules now, but I can't remember their name.

Using 180gm virgin vinyl was a bit much but still...

Haha. Hearing about the retro mods makes me want to buy some stuff even more!

I want a reissue of Empire Of The Petal Throne please!

red box is back???

They're calling it D&D Essentials or something. Stripped down version of the 4th edition ruleset.

Sadly, not the same as the D&D/AD&D split. I wonder if my friend stil lhas the Companion rules? I have the Basic and Expert rules kicking around here somewhere.

attn jjjusten: what was the name of that Gygax! (I think?) choose-yr-own-adventure-on-steroids book you had

A key skill.

Leave unmarked space for naming by roads, rivers, towns and anything else unmarked. The swamp witch moved to the coast, but characters can still seek her out and go tramping through bayous to get to her.

oooof, i just remembered something super embarrassing:

how i tried to get my step-grandmother and mom to play a game of brand new AD&D with me

O god, you've just reminded me that I actually did manage to get my grandmother to play in a Fighting Fantasy (the super-simple rpg, not the gamebooks) adventure once. She probably found it a refreshing change from the usual task of supervising my brother and me on a Sunday while we obsessively watched Transformers cartoons.

contenderizer, thats totally the one i was thinking of. infuriating. thx for helping dude, now that I know the name I found the version I played which was:

http://xenocorp.net/images/jpgs/s1_tomb_of_horrors.jpg

which instantly filled me with nerd rage when i saw it.

HI DERE i am trying to remember - there were two series like that, but the totally intense one had the companion spell book where you had to memorize three letter codes and shit. 4 books, all sequential parts of an adventure, and the last one was 800 some pages iirc. it was pretty fucking awesome, wonder if i still have them somewhere, will be pissed if i dont.

did everybody cover their hardbound d&d books with brown paper grocery bag dust jackets or was that just everybody i played with?

they were all Steve Jackson related - the kinda straighforward ones were the FIghting Fantasy ones, but the super hardcore ones were the Sorcery! series

so fucking dope

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorcery!

Wizard Books is making the Sorcery! series available for the iPhone and iPad, starting with Shamutanti Hills for a 2010Q2 release.

o_O :D

oh FUCK YES

between this and discovering Shining Force FOR IPHONE, this is like the awesomest year for iPhone games tailored directly to me

Sorcery! was so awesome! Man I loved the illustrations that series had. I had the spellbook and everything. An iPhone app version would be great, it would keep me from cheating again and again.

ha I cheated mercilessly just because I wanted to know more of what happened

I'd like to meet the kid who stopped all seven serpents without cheating.

Kerm: We all TOTALLY did that but it was because playing D&D at school could get you suspended! It DID get me suspended at one point cuz they said i was promoting devil worshiping.

This thread can only end with a bunch of us meeting up and heading back Under Illenfarn and I, for one, am down for that.

ok dudes, admission time:

speaking of "i still read the books sometimes", i did just buy this pdf and it's totally awesome.

not as awesome as gary gygax's monster manual (the one with all the ruling devils and demons and stuff) but still

I buy the old AD&D manuals at Half-Price books all the time. The perfect copies are the ones that still have a good binding and have the majority of the illustrations carefully colored in with colored pencils.

one of those was probably mine!

another cool system that I ran a campaign with was Thieves' Guild - I remember that more fondly than any of the other systems we tried.

So inspired by all this I have dug out the old World of Greyhawk/Forgotten Realms boxes I had around. I've concluded that I was always first and foremost about the maps.

oh man I remember buying that full color map, I think it was the World Of Greyhawk one, on summer vacation somewhere. I was probably 15.

Iron Crown always had great maps too, Fenlon was an obsessive illustrator.

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_laifdyu5Gw1qzpam5o1_500.jpg

hahahahaha

early christina hendricks sighting

http://www.dangerousminds.net/comments/60_minutes_on_dungeons_and_dragons_from_19851

Noted in comments: "Look, there’s the blowhard lady from Decline of Western Civilization 2!"

always knew there was a reason I hated this show

"20/20" also aired its own Satanic panic episode.

getting seriously angry at Bradley while watching this. sorta makes me want to put a hex on him.

there was a schlocky cash-in horror-type novel around the time of this "scare" called Mazes And Monsters.

Man, forget the novel, the TV movie version is the REAL winner:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6AOd6r6Qi8

Tom Hanks, desperate to make a call!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGY1_LMiV-g

in retrospect I am lucky my parents didn't swallow any of this bullshit (about either metal or D&D)

xp

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogrwfW1rsA4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfxXug5ZMdk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7TuKwI0rcM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzApFuM2s24

We still had this in Alabama as late as the mid-90s.

And if you just want to keep it simple:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U75gvnTX1qo

this thread title/concept is all time for me

enjoyed this wiki entry recently:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C3%A9kumel

my favourite 'huh, of course there's a wikipedia page for that' of late was the entry for 'self-hating Jew'

I feel sorry for the D&D crusader from the 60 minutes video, it's pretty obvious she just did not know how to process the death of her son and was scrambling for someone to blame. What angers me is Bradley giving her ideas any sort of credence.

in retrospect I am lucky my parents didn't swallow any of this bullshit (about either metal or D&D)

My parents didn't buy it wrt to metal, but they certainly did for D&D. I had to hide my Monster's Manual for years.

i may have mentioned it elsewhere on this thread but i was suspended from school for playing d&d

also
Can an Immortal PC opt to become a Hierarch of all the Spheres, since this is actually more difficult than becoming the Full Hierarch of just one Sphere?

Any Immortal who changes Spheres immediately loses all accumulated power (both temporary and permanent) and becomes a Novice Temporal in the new Sphere. The lost power can never be regained except through experience. While an Immortal character could become a Hierarch of each Sphere in this manner (except Entropy, which is offlimits to PCs), the character gets no special benefit from the effort. Full Hierarchs have the option of disbursing their life forces into their home planes and reincarnating themselves as mortals, thus restarting the struggle toward Immortality. This is not the same as simply changing Spheres, and only a Full Hierarch may do this.

That might be my favorite quotation yet. Wowwwwwwww this game sounds terrible.

Terribly amazing you mean.

I'm going to watch this 60 Mins thing but recently I saw "Mortal Kombat", a very one-sided documentary about videogame violence controversy, and just about everything in that film was 100% fearmongering horeshit.

I remember my parents being concerned about the glee with which we ran over pedestrians in 'Car Wars', using little cardboard counters of cars and little cardboard counters of people. Other than that they were pretty cool about it.

Only thing my parents ever banned was, bizarrely, the Smurfs, for being annoying and sexist.

Car Wars was great.

I tweeted this to Ned yesterday but I'll stick it here for posterity:

that movie [Mazes and Monsters] made my grandmother cancel my gift subscription to Dragon magazine. I've had a grudge against Hanks ever since.

haha awww

whenever dudes like kodwo eshun or k-punk write about joy division -- a kind of secret network among (mostly) young dudes, some kind of hidden community etc, i think of 80s d&d

Car Wars was great.

otm, by far my favorite of the many, many nerds-only games i played during my early adolescence. over the past couple years, i've often caught myself pining hard for a copy in the original plastic "pocket box".

http://i274.photobucket.com/albums/jj242/donaldparsley/SteveJacksonGames-CarWars.jpg

I would play that RIGHT NOW.

didn't Steve Jackson fight a court case related to this hysteria?

also he designed the immortal Melee, Wizard, OGRE and GEV games, which I think I still own some of.

It might be obvious but I had no idea Elder Scrolls owed so much to D&D

GURPS owned too

GURRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRPZ

okay, what was that mega obsessive role player that's heavily rapey? There were pdfs floating around for awhile of the 800 page player manual with gazillions of charts and stuff.

Rapey? I don't remember a rapey one.

oh god it was called FATAL

steve jackson games was involved in legal trouble, not for any satany business, but with the US secret service for a cyberpunk supplement. the feds thought it was teaching ppl how to hack irl

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jackson_Games,_Inc._v._United_States_Secret_Service

http://www.geeknative.com/1320/f-a-t-a-l/

i had never seed the cover of this, eugh

I've never heard of FATAL. After my gaming time I guess.

I think the last one I bought was Kult, or some White Wolf thing (I really liked their sci-fi superhero line - Adventure!, Aberrant and Aeon: Trinity, and bought them even though I wasn't gaming anymore).

Car Wars was THE SHIT. would totally play that right now.

IS there a way to play CAR WARS online? We have enough for a game.

Car Wars was amazingly awesome and I would play this very instant! Remember the Uncle Albert's Auto Stop and Gunnery Shop catalogs? Loved flipping through those during boring classes.

so damn good.

there appears to be some kind of multimplayer online car wars type came called dark wind (???), but i dunno anything about it. not a simulation of the original.

Apparently there is a Car Wars module for VASSAL.

LOL, FATAL, right.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osIuKf_RxRQ
^must watch

bear in mind that you need to jump around on that video, don't watch it straight through.

just every time you think it's getting too pedantic, jump around. it's a grand experience

here's how it plays
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zjOtXfXtEs
"why do they even have this? everyone's most attractive feature is their chest"

oh man, the discussion of vaginal circumference, this poor guy feels compelled to make the obvious commentary and it's clear that he's so sad with himself for doing it

omg this guy arguing the logistics of halfling penis circumference

'If successful for a female character, the skin between the vagina and the anus rips and the two orifices effectively become one'
"No... that's not how that works..."

guh

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TLlbVW-VA0
^the theme song

fatal is the best role-playing game that i have seen
fantasy adventure to adult lechery
fatal is the only game that lets you be obscene
fantasy adventure to adult lechery

vid is a bit nsfw-y

Review: F.A.T.A.L. Tabletop RPG Part 14 - Finale: Random Magical Effects P2

ok look who really has the problem here

real talk

oh, everyone involved is insane; myself included

I'm GMing our group's first session of The Burning Wheel tomorrow night!

(not related by any stretch of the vagina imagination to FATAL, just seemed like the right thread.

Btw discussion of FATAL and some other terrifying games (and some good ones) exists on SA. http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3421366

Can I just say

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_laifdyu5Gw1qzpam5o1_500.jpg

what the eff is up with her shoes

I appreciate attractive redheads used to sell genre products to me, but honestly, let's have some quality control.

Man, I've wasted almost an entire workday typing random RGB terms into Scribd ('Dragonlance' 'Palladium' 'Car Wars' 'dungeons dragons' 'gurps' 'white dwarf' etc etc) and reading nostalgically through PDF scans of old manuals and adventures

RGB should be RPG

cork heeled wedges that went out of style in the early 70s

http://htmlimg4.scribdassets.com/74oasjknswx8r30/images/1-18c46d7106.jpg

i have that book, it kinda sucks

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/project-eternity-live-stream

The guys at Obsidian Entertainment are drinking and live-streaming their d&d session to advertise their kickstarter

surprised obsidian studios needs a kickstarter to get a game made!

also find it hard to believe anyone would watch some random people play d&d over the internet, can't imagine a less boring thing to do

er more boring

maybe there was a sense in the industry that there wasn't an audience for an infinity engine rpg? this is kinda the perfect thing for kickstarter to be doing actually - projects w/ high chance of success that for whatever reason couldn't get funded in the traditional, industry way.

also all dnd games sound the same no matter who is playing them. everyone has that hesitancy in their voice like "ok i'm going to bow to the princess and then cast magic missile i feel really self-conscious as an adult playing dungeons and dragons"

one guy who talks with a "voice" and is really into it

Apparently they wanted to do an Infinity Engine-type isometric epic like the games of yore and no publisher would fund it, and they figured that both Double Fine and the Wasteland 2 guys did it, so fuggit.

here's their kickstarter:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/obsidian/project-eternity

last night of it, and they're less than $120K away from their max stretch goal at $3.5M

and the ILG thread: ILG Kickstarter Gaming HQ

i popped in and they all kinda had that look i get around 1950 in a not-spectacular civ4 game, like come on jason click next turrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrn i'm bored but i can't walk away

i play civ4 w a person named jason

http://www.dndclassics.com/

so many clicks to download that one free pdf

The incredible inaccessibility of PDF in 2012

a friend of mine had a super high level set of adventures where you travel into hell (or whatever it was called) and meet all those crazy demons and devils that got renamed, anyone know what i'm talking about?

I think it's this one:

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-B6cIjVfswjE/UOMRpx7k9MI/AAAAAAAAE5k/rTYOfhvC3p4/s200/inferno.jpg

that looks cool but i don't think that's it. unless it was re-covered in a later print.

ok lol, wiki'ing for "orcus" got me there

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mines_of_Bloodstone
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Throne_of_Bloodstone

Ia Jubilex Ia!

*spouts acid from innumerable trumpet-nozzles*

lol @ module

lolth in module

WTF

http://gygaxmagazine.com/

Well, I just signed up for their mailing list .We shall see what Gygax brings...

Have any of you guys been listening to Brian Posehn's D&D cast, "Nerd Poker"?

didn't know it existed, so no. Worth a try?

Yup!

Downloaded the first episode after I asked. So far it's pretty fun.

what's it like?

it's a bunch of people, mostly writers and comedians, playing D&D with a mic in the center of the table. So far, that's really it.

I've really been digging it. I haven't played D&D since high school but Nerd Poker makes me wish I knew enough funny people to get a game together. All the guys I knew who played in school were metalheads who took their frustrated theatrical tendencies out in super-serious D&D games where you had to act out your character.

my suggestion for people who played D&D back in high school and want to play tabletop RPGs again is to check out Dungeon World. I somehow haven't gotten a chance to actually play myself yet but it has been said of this game that it is "better at D&D than D&D".

I've got a bad feeling that if this thread stays active I might start posting a bunch of stuff about the weird RPGs I'm into in it, or else linking to terrible people who make D&D terrible. I should probably not drag that whole scene to ILX though.

at least not the "laughing at horrible people" part, gotta k.i.p.

Do we have a "talk about RPGs" thread? I haven't played in ages but still check them out. The next edition D&D beta stuff has been fun to read.

I might start posting a bunch of stuff about the weird RPGs I'm into in it

PLEASE do. I've been out of that world for a couple of decades but have always found it fascinating.

BTW recently I almost lost my mind trying to remember the name of this weird game that used to advertise in Dragon in the 80s, it had really extraordinary art with weird humanoid creatures in it. It turned out to be Skyrealms of Jorune.

I never saw Skyrealms in person. Ads were creepy and memorable though.

I'm pretty sure our local game/comics place never carried it or I would've bought it in a heartbeat. It's apparently not a very well written game, though.

Really? I thought it was supposed to be moderately well-thought of, if ridiculously obscure. Adverts always made me think it was a ERB/John Carter rip-off, which would have made me buy it had I ever seen it anywhere.

let's start a d&d thread, i want a place to laugh at stuff like this:

http://critical-hits.com/2009/08/07/4th-edition-dd-beyond-level-30/

This kinda IS the D&D thread.

this thread is as good as any!

Above level 30, for each level:
+1 retelling old stories, +1 joint sensitivity to weather, +1 incontinence, +2 get off my lawn

The quest to eradicate all evil, everywhere, that’s ever existed would be another kind of such lofty quest that it would need to be undertaken by the mightiest of heroes.

you don't say

they better bring a level 30 philosopher with them

yeah this seems like a good D&D thread

The internet's true home of collecting horrible people's bad D&D opinions is grognards.txt and it sequel on SA. Hours of fun!

why not go around eradicating evil thru charitable work rather than ethnic cleansing?

30th level soup kitchen worker

+4 ladling

"Advanced" d and D - as if its an acheivement

When rolling dice, they can knock over other things on the table such as miniatures or fall off the table. This creates a disruption that interrupts the flow of a game. Remembering an old board game that had an interesting way of rolling dice by keeping them inside a plastic chamber, I came up with a simple and entertaining solution to this potential problem.
I went to the little toy vending machines at my local supermarket. I purchased a number of toys, some of which I could use as miniatures for combat encounters. The toys come in small plastic capsules made up of two halves that are re-attachable after opening. One half is opaque and the other is relatively clear. One could place a die inside and shake the capsule to roll the die. The opaque half may have a flat end (which my capsules do) so the die lands on that end with the result showing from the clear end. No risk of knocking over minis and no falling off the table. It also prevents some of the methods players use to cheat with their dice rolls.

cutecelsior

sweet dicehack

So yeah, after not playing since high school (around 1986 if you must know), I took up DMing again 3 years ago because my wife was turning 35 and asked for a D&D campaign for her birthday. We've played a few times a year with since then with the same group of ppl. It's been really great. 2nd edition, but only because it was easier to find the 2e manuals for cheap than the 1e ones, and 2e is pretty much close enough.

I kind of want to blow 100 bucks on the reissues of the original three manuals though. The 'good art' in the 2e ones makes me sad.

My friend Chris brings his teenage son Pete with him, it kind of rules to have the group be all these cartoonists in their mid 30s to early 40s and this one bloodsthirsty kid.

Original 3 AD&D books is where it's at. I gave mine to my best friend for his 40th birthday so he can introduce the game to his kids.

i find the reissue market half-baffling -- after they finally sort out the rules to the point of more or less making sense and being fun they flood the market with reissues of 1e ad&d and of basic set d&d -- which must be $2 thrift shop specials all across america. but then i guess the benefit of having a distinct elder generation with actual jobs that you can sell stuff to is that they might go into the nerd store and drop the money on a whim, rather than trying to market texts ppl feel like they ~need~

i've still ever only played d&d, like, twice.

which must be $2 thrift shop specials all across america.

Are they? Not in the thrift shops I go to...

there must be a pretty wide divergence between people who play and ppl willing to put up a couple bucks for a download of a book they had as a teenager

i mean in the right mood i might even drop $3-5 on a monster manual or something and i'm never going to play D&D of any edition again

feel like I'm in the latter. those books bring a huge rush of nostalgia to me but playing again seems patently ridiculous

i find the reissue market half-baffling -- after they finally sort out the rules to the point of more or less making sense and being fun they flood the market with reissues of 1e ad&d and of basic set d&d -- which must be $2 thrift shop specials all across america. but then i guess the benefit of having a distinct elder generation with actual jobs that you can sell stuff to is that they might go into the nerd store and drop the money on a whim, rather than trying to market texts ppl feel like they ~need~

― attempt to look intentionally nerdy, awkward or (thomp), Thursday, January 24, 2013 3:00 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

There is a very vocal and terrible minority of D&D fans who have a violent hatred of change, and see anything new in the hobby as a direct attack on their self-worth. They are also frequently opposed to the idea that role playing games should be fun.

Reminds me I forgot to post this link the other day -- the psych/stoner/metal dudes in the Linus Pauling Quartet have a new 3 CD collection out:

http://www.worshipguitars.org/LP4/LP4_WordPress/?p=1645

This is the cover:

http://www.worshipguitars.org/LP4/LP4_WordPress/wp-content/uploads/AVABL.jpg

They went ahead and created a self-contained, totally playable 28-page module, with appropriate hand-drawn art in full eighties self-made module style. You can download the module here:

http://www.worshipguitars.org/LP4/AVABL/Linus_Pauling_Quartet-Druids_and_Demons-Module_9204.pdf

And did I mention the promotional video:

http://vimeo.com/55408737

That reminds me - I need to order that.

album of the year

which must be $2 thrift shop specials all across america

these are surprisingly hard to find tbh - i have a handful of 1e stuff ive found used for cheap but it doesnt tend to come up much

i thought 4e was a good system to play - i dont have any nostalgia except borrowed nostalgia for earlier d&d and i liked the focus on tactical comabt - but im surprised by just how popular pathfinder is an alternative to it

I read the 4th edition rules and was turned off by the combat focus. Killing stuff is fun and all, but was never what I thought most fun about rD&D or most pgs. I mean, it's not old school Champions or anything, but I found it a bit much.

reading thru wiki on the 4ed rules. some of it is kinda interesting and streamlined, and giving every class something to do in a fight is a good idea probably. a lot of it looks like a naked attempt to chase after WoW. and the insistence on including every year's rules supplements in the core as well as semi-regular version overhauls reeeally looks like fan abuse to me.

Good call on WoW. It's very MMO on paper.

I just started playing for the first time ever after a regular game night kinda morphed into a D&D night. I'm surprised by how much fun I'm having. But it is still mostly a bunch of comedy dudes sitting around smoking and drinking, so not that surprising. My character is basically a dragonborn version of Whoopi Goldberg named Jackflashica. I barely have any idea what I'm doing.

That's the best way to play. Glad you're enjoying yourself!

Apparently, Ernie Gygax (Gary's son and original D&D playtester (he was Tenser!), and one of the people behind the Gygax magazine that may or may not be happening) just lost everything in a fire. No details yet, but it looks like a fundraiser is going to be set up through Facebook.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Ernie-Gygax-Fire-Relief/188873261236363

Been listening to the Nerd Poker podcasts, really enjoying them.

I never knew that Brian co wrote the Deadpool comics either.

http://www.somethingawful.com/d/dungeons-and-dragons/classic-dungeons-dragons.php

http://www.lski.org/pictures/tabletopgaming/gw/wd%20magazine/

don't know if this is supposed to be secret or not but OMG

pdfs of White Dwarf going back to issue 1

nice find!

as much as anything it's the hand-drawn ads that bring the nostalgia for me

yeah heh looks like somebody dumped their torrent files on their webserver. The magic of websites.

nobody better tell Games Workshop about that, they're an exceedingly litigious bunch.

http://www.acaeum.com/index.html

I'm in the market for a copy of Dragon issue 51 that still has the cardstock Emperor's Treasure map intact. Glad to see that site values it at 12 bucks. Now I just have to find someone selling it.

D&D babes
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BzB2U4pCYAA0fqm.jpg

So not gonna happen

loool

ws preppy perm

"the dragon is over there, stupid"

Late great otm

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1430411066/50-shades-of-vorpal

i realized i revived the wrong thread the other day. anyway, i started my first campaign last night with some friends. it was fun! although i'm starting to seriously regret my decision to be a high elf wizard. within 10 minutes of starting, as i was humblebragging in character about how great and noble high elfs are compared to the rest of the party (a gnome, drow, half-elf, and half-orc) i was informed that my wizard was being a total racist

sounds like something an elf would do

i'm hi elf jared fogle

high elf more like a dick elf

speciesist surely

sounds like something an elf would do

see, that's what i thought

speciesist surely

you would think - but they are actually called races in D&D rulebooks

which is probably some holdover from Tolkien

is species based nationalism always frowned upon by benevolent lawful good societies bc of its suggestions of fascism? i'd think in most medieval era societies there's some sort of feudal / monarchy system which, by comparison, would make any populist nationalism seem practically democratic.

i do like the idea tho that all "adventurers" would have some kind of professional empathy with one another that transcended any species elements - a mutual recognition that both share the goblin-slaying trade

ZS u should play your elf like super haughty bc the elvish society is much more ethically advanced than other species and you love + tolerate all creatures not like the primitive heathens you're forced to work w/

lol

do people actually speak in character when playing D&D I don't recall this ever being a thing anybody I played D&D with would tolerate

like, speak in character to each other, that is

ime yes

social justice wizard

the average adventurer party is likely on the hook for a myriad of ethnic cleansings and genocides, particularly among the lowest species of society - the subaltern orcs, goblins + ogres that are already totally alienated from the contemporaneous urban cosmopolitan economy

hundreds of thousands of kobold massacres

well, i realize i kinda fucked up the way i was portraying the character, because he has the Urchin background (grew up on the mean streets with the help of a human) and i made this really generic story that he was abandoned/lost as a small child and didn't grow up in elvin (elvish? elf?) society. so i'd like to call a do-over on the prideful way i was playing him last night and make him more humble and eager to convince other elves he meets to stop being such assholes.

i was trying to defend myself against the accusations of elf racism when someone was like "...wait...aren't you a wizard, too?!"

i think at that point i busted out the mage hand cantrip out of nowhere and was like "hey look at this crazy hand drawing circles in the dust!"

When I dm I do character voices but I kind of don't dig the players doing so, it gets creepy

Inevitable q what edition did u play Karl

i think what i've mostly seen are players speaking in first person from the pov of their character in their normal voices, esp during NPC conversations

Inevitable q what edition did u play Karl

5e

i think what i've mostly seen are players speaking in first person from the pov of their character in their normal voices, esp during NPC conversations

that's pretty much what happened with us

speciesist surely

you would think - but they are actually called races in D&D rulebooks

Mega smh at the term "racial enemy" which they use in the early editions and I can only hope has been changed by now?

Rangers are required to choose one

Sorry young ranger u gotta hate SOMEBODY

When I dm I do character voices but I kind of don't dig the players doing so, it gets creepy

I haven't played since hs but yeah this is my memory of how things went

iirc rangers can pick like spiders tho or wolves which makes the mechanics kinda weirdly progressive in the way they suggest that all living creatures share a category w/ humanoids

That's why they shouldn't call it racial enemy it should be monster enemy or w/e

If species are breeding groups capable of producing fertile offspring then you should be able to test this by seeing whether your half-orc and half-elf are fertile. Make that your first campaign.

Fellowship of the Mule

Karl you should work some secret forbidden orc-love into your character's backstory/persona

Infertility or unexpected fertility could be a product of magic too - lots of species mythologies I think we are supposed to take seriously that involve mad wizards, ambitious gods, spontaneously generation from a pile of rocks, etc

i'd like to call a do-over on the prideful way i was playing him last night and make him more humble and eager to convince other elves he meets to stop being such assholes.

― who is dankey kang (Karl Malone)

no way

double down, make it an insecurity thing. overplays "high" elfishness b/c he knows he so totally isn't like a typical one. so his way of getting into the cool kid's club is by bullying all the uncool kids but the cool kids roll their eyes every time he shows up. and then he cries abt it every night.

"let me help you with your fantasy roleplaying problems" thread... an idea too beautiful to live

if some day an enterprising ilxor decides to GM an RPG campaign over the internet i would be very interested in participating

isn't that what ILM is

ILX the RPG

so his way of getting into the cool kid's club is by bullying all the uncool kids but the cool kids roll their eyes every time he shows up.

why do I hear Steely Dan's "Gaucho" playing in the background

^ stand by my awesome wall-o-text in that thread xp

this is kinda nice, it's free

http://basicfantasy.org/

i haven't used it but roll20.net + skype is supposed to be a good combo

My friend Jason, probably the most RPG-deep guy I know, is into Dungeon World and is actually creating material for it now. IDK much about the system yet,

http://www.tor.com/blogs/2015/03/ranking-all-of-1980s-fantasy

Fantasy films of the 80s

Weird that it omits Hong Kong films. Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain is great 80s fantasy.

It is great but maybe it didn't fit the type they wanted to overview. I'm more surprised Hawk The Slayer isn't there.

this is in the wrong thread but GTF no Hawk

It's not that I like it but that ranking includes a lot of poor films that sit comfortably with Hawk The Slayer.

we've moved on a bit but karl i am dming a 5e campaign and my friend playing an elf wizard has also been rp his character as a racist! maybe theres something in they way theyve written the players handbook that brings it out...

Lamp are u in nyc yet i would hella play in a campaign of yours

yeah, i wasn't trying to be a total elf racist, but i was just playing to the description of the high elf in the Player's Handbook, which reads:

"In many of the worlds of D&D, there are two kind of high elves. One type (which includes the gray elves and valley elves of Greyhawk, the Silvanesti of Dragonlance, and the sun elves of the Forgotten Realms) is haughty and reclusive, believing themselves to be superior to non-elves and even other elves."

but i should have read more closely, because just after it says:

"The other type (including the high elves of Greyhawk, the Qualinesti of Dragonlance, and the moon elves of the Forgotten Realms) are more common and more friendly, and often encountered among humans and other races."

I think our LVL 1 adventure takes place in the Forgotten Realms, so next time we play I'm going to pull a do-over and play moon elf style. the sad lol in this is that i don't think any of the other people playing (all of us are newbs) care at all about any of this. but hey, i'm maximizing my fun here.

you should be the third kind of high elf

https://ratemydoob.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/joint.jpg

i wanna play D&D :(

if some day an enterprising ilxor decides to GM an RPG campaign over the internet i would be very interested in participating

― Mordy, Thursday, March 12, 2015 3:34 PM (3 days ago)

i've tried this a few times and never quite been able to get it off the ground. people aren't "present" enough ime and the participation becomes very uneven.

still, would love to give it another shot!

have been desperately trying to figure out what i did with my copy of

http://scriiipt.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/jorune.jpg

ime the trick is to have a set session every week and enough players that some can be missing at any given session and you still have a party

Like you can't count on everyone ever being there at the same time

are you talking like over chat or over message board?

i've only ever tried to do online rpg by message board

I used to play on a dedicated piece of software that included a dice machine, a map rendering program, and chat software but I've heard about ppl playing face to face now over Google or Skype or whatever

i know people that have played via online tabletop and it seems to work well

Lamp are u in nyc yet i would hella play in a campaign of yours

it looks like it wont be until august but i would actually love to run a campaign when ive moved

Well I was totally serious so let's do that. We can make ian play.

Played a small group session today (with my friend being DM), first dnd of the year for me. There were only 4 of us including dm and it's nice how fast things move along with a group that size. Of course it's the smallest viable group, 2 players and a dm is just too few imo.

i've been reading the IDW forgotten realms series and i'm itching to get into a campaign. who can i bully into GMing one online?

can't find my copy of jorune, but found empire of the petal throne online!

So many old rpgs, wargames and magazines scanned into Scribd... Havevwasted a lot of work time reading old call of cthulhu manuals and white dwarfs from before it became a games workshop only publication and car wars expansions and 1980s d&d modules...

I just made a joke at work about how weird "races" in D&D were

and then I had to explain what D&D was

:(

it's ok man, youre safe here

(also why are like all of the player character races smaller than humans)

Two-part guest post at CRPG Addict, on "Why The Economy Sucks in the SSI Gold Box Games," has some very thread-worthy details imho. Part One, Part Two. A highlight:

In AD&D 1E it was fairly easy for magical items and treasure to get destroyed in the course of combat.

"Cone of Cold," for example, was developed specifically by Gary Gygax’s son Ernie, because he was sick of ruining all of the treasure they’d find when he’d cast a "Fireball" at a group of opponents.

Per the table on the 1E DMG page 80: "Metal, soft or Jewelry" saves against a Fireball on an 18-20 on a d20 roll. So, with RAW, anytime you’d cast a fireball you have an 85% chance of melting any gold or jewelry on the target. It only fails its save 5% of the time vs. "Cone of Cold" or "Ice Storm," though.

It should be noted that this applied to everything. A character caught in a "Fireball" had to roll for any money on his person, any jewelry, any armor or weapons.

Metal, Hard, saves 75% of the time, with a +5% bonus per +1 on a magical item, but that still means over time you’d lose a lot of treasure, and personal weapons and items, to fireballs. Even a +4 or +5 suit of armor would, statistically speaking, get blown to bits by the twentieth-ish fireball that hit you, since they would still fail a save on a 1 d20 (5% chance).

These rules were, it should be noted, generally not used in "standard" play. It’s pretty cumbersome to make 7+ die rolls, per character, per fireball. As a result, most people would not have expected them to exist, and their exclusion is understandable.

love the phrase "high gygaxian".

In the spirit of this other thing I did*, I may have started making a tiny little circa-1990 games shop:
https://s17.postimg.org/xs1tm0zu7/photo_2.jpg
Each rack is about an inch high.

*I made a little tiny record store and I'm boasting about it

love that <3

awesome

has anyone else read the Gygax bio?

https://www.amazon.com/Empire-Imagination-Gygax-Dungeons-Dragons/dp/1632862794

I was pretty fascinated with it, he reminded me of my dad in some ways (who also played RPGs with me back in the 70s)

Totally gonna read that.

has anyone read any Gygax books? I have a couple of them but just haven't been in the mood for a fantasy novel lately, they must be good though right?

well done @ that tiny games shop btw, the record store and bookshop too

I understand you probably aren't exactly making these for children but after purchasing similar things for my daughter recently I can say that she would absolutely flip out over something this size with so much incredible detail, and I would feel much better spending money on some actual craftsmanship and imagination

Holy shit, the tiny game shop is amazing.

sheesh, I still have the PDFs I created for all the bits of the music and bookshops somewhere: although there wouldn't be any instructions, I could email them to you for you and your daughter to figure out

tiny shop is awesome, bravo!

very, very cool. Where is this displayed?

...in my house

it deserves an audience, truly

Love the tiny shop's selection of Autoduel Quarterly.

:) There's a boxed Car Wars on the table, too.

Cheers, SMotion!

I'm imagining some leftover still-shrinkwrapped Steve Jackson pocket box game hanging on some disused part of the shop behind the metal miniatures. It's probably an Ogre supplement.

I really wish I still had my old copies of Melee, Wizard, Ogre, and GEV.

there was this text-based d&d game i played on my family's first PC in the late 80s and early 90s and i really wish i could find out what it was, it was just called "dungeons & dragons" and it was super weird and creepy, i would love to play it again. every time i see this thread come up i think of that game because it was incredibly austere

tiny shop v cool btw

marcos: one of these?

http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2013/12/game-125-dungeons-and-dragons-1980.html
http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2015/04/game-182-dungeons-dragons-and-other.html
http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2015/03/game-180-dnd-1984.html

hey it's the third one!!! thank you!!!

i played one of the versions before it was renamed "necromancer's domain"

i played either the 1984 original or v 1.2

the games all feature limited mechanics, rapid random encounters with both enemies and special objects, and death that is quick, frequent, and usually permanent.

haha yes "quick, frequent, and usually permanent" death was what i remember most, this game was hard!

Those look awesome has anyone ported them for modern deeevices

glad i could help! CRPGAddict delivers the goods once again. I believe he's said he won't, but I really hope he turns that project into a huge dense, fabulous book someday - it is ludicrously comprehensive while avoiding so many pitfalls of the genre.

Now with interrupted gaming session

https://s10.postimg.org/jpkpociq1/photo_1.jpg

aw mayne

regarding the gygax bio, i started it, found it painful, quickly put it down. i am currently enjoying 'playing at the world' which crpg addict guy cites a lot. there is a lot wrong with it though

i played D&D between 79-82 give or take

the austerity didn't really register

cool interview here with an old friend of mine who worked at ICE for the duration:

http://www.rolemasterblog.com/interview-terry-k-amthor-author-shadow-world-c-e-founder/

Ah, Rolemaster/MERP and those crazy critical hit tables

I'm playing my first ever D&D game next weekend. As a teenager, I briefly and badly DM'd a few games of Paranoia, but this is first ever go as a PC. Any advice? What's a good way to grit your teeth and not feel embarrassed? I want to enjoy it. Also I want the people I'm playing with to have a good time. My partner is joining us and used to play regularly as a teen. She says "figuring out how to play when you're not high" is her main challenge.

be at ease! be curious! keep in mind that your group is a crew! I think when you role-play you're always in part playing yourself so don't worry too much about really "taking on the role," it emerges through your own voice in my limited experience

d&d emphasizes mechanics + particularly combat mechanics but in all roleplaying games inc d&d the most memorable games are not the ones where you win the most but the ones where unexpected things happen. so be unexpected. don't feel limited by what is obvious that you can do. just don't tell the dm what results from your choices (that's his job) or tell the other players what their characters do.

i'd love to get into an rpg but i don't have any friends that want to gm a game and i don't feel up to gm'ing myself. :( i haven't played in one in prob over a decade now. :( :(

Thanks, that's good advice! Basically go with the flow and have fun with it. I'm looking forward to it.

lol i don't even know what some of these races are

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/is-your-dd-character-rare

i'm kinda shocked human fighter is the most popular! is always seemed like the most boring to me.

Tiefling? Genasi? Wtf is this crap

tiefling i know. they're demonkin. genasi i don't.

I thought Genasi was a racing team.

tiefling : devil = genasi : elemental.

i played an earth genasi fighter in forgotten realms a dog's age ago. i was basically The Thing with a giant hammer, it ruled.

also i am RUNNING a game for the first time in a really long time next weekend... i'm not your DM am i chuck? :P

no matter your role, be incredibly austere. people love when you go old school on them and demand that you follow a sub-sub-rule that prevents them from doing something they want to do

for example, if someone "miraculously" does something that leads to them avoiding certain death, double-check and make sure that every rule was followed. it is better to finish the game alone with integrity than finishing in a shroud of lies with all of your friends intact

strive for the classic 'okay, you're walking through the woods . . . now you're lying on the ground and you're dead'

I've started playing again... my wife and daughter, wife's cousin, two of my wife's tutoring students and a neighbor have been playing for a couple of years now and I joined in a few months ago. For the game DM'ed by my daughter, I created a 5L warlock who I attempt to channel William Burroughs to play. He plane-hops like crazy thanks to the Great Old One who owns his services and works him like a rented mule, so another iteration of him plays 2 years older and at 11th level for the games DM'ed by the neighbor. (The Great Old One is actually Mark Zuckerberg, who is checking out other worlds and other planes of existence with an eye toward invasion and conquest.)

After all that complicated stuff, for a different game I'm developing a simple 1st-level dragonborn monk who grew up in basically a hippie commune/monastery devoted to the proposition of racial diversity instead of racial purity. It turns out that half-dragonborn pregnancies are too dangerous for the mother, so he's leaving home, setting out in the world to preach diversity and anti-racism and punch the shit out of bad guys. He has a little of Geof Darrow's Shaolin Cowboy in him, I admit.

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-uncanny-resurrection-of-dungeons-and-dragons

im scared to read that

it's pretty good so far! not done yet.

wow, that is some lazy bullshit

does it venture any comparisons with vinyl records

haha sort of, one of the themes is that people now play D&D to escape from the internet, i.e. returning to an earlier analog era.

but I'll take a positive D&D article, even if it is lazy.

I had no idea the 2014 books were selling so well.

article is fine imo

I have been pondering how to get into D&D, possibly with my oldest (about to turn 10) for awhile now

or get back into, I guess I should say

So I had my first game this weekend and it was super fun, your advice above was appreciated.

My group are all late learners (even our DM) so I'm sure our game would've looked clumsy and spartan to a regular player, but we're getting there.

I'm very tempted to try DM-ing in the future, after a few campaigns. Not to tragically de-romanticize it, but it kind of reminded me of doing a work presentation - you have to make sure everyone gets equal time to speak, motivate a bunch of people with different learning styles, have the right handouts...

article was over-long but the part about autistic players was interesting

my books from the early 80s are at my dad's house but i can totally conjure up the way the pages smelled

kinda disappointed that the specific AD&D editions I used to have seem sort of hard to find these days

I think the fifth edition is supposed to be more-or-less compatible with the 2nd edition supplements... although if you play a very rules-lite version, I guess you could use any fantasy RPG and just rip off the story.

it appears that i have first editions of the monster manual, monster manual 2, player's handbook, dungeon master's guide and fiend folio. plus the 1981 version of deities & demigods, from which the moorcock and cthulhu characters of the 1980 version were removed

The first edition Monster Manual notably included topless portrayals of some of its female monsters, including the succubus, Type V demons, lamia, and sylph.

indeed

I def was familiar with and used earlier editions but the ones I actually owned and got the most use out of were these:
https://images.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F2warpstoneptune.files.wordpress.com%2F2012%2F11%2Fdm-guide-1983.jpg&f=1
https://images.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.lyberty.com%2Fencyc%2Farticles%2Fimages%2Fphb_v1_10th_s.jpg&f=1

it appears that i have first editions of the monster manual, monster manual 2, player's handbook, dungeon master's guide and fiend folio.

hello, sleeve from 1982!

I have some fantastic copies of the Monster Manuals that I found at used bookstores which had all the illustrations carefully colored in with colored pencils by the original owner.

it's not hard to find 1e ad&d stuff on ebay, and generally cheaper than the new books

i recently bought a bunch of 5e stuff and i have like 10 interested players but getting even half of the crew together at the same time is proving impossible ... sigh, adult life

mine were the ones with the cruder, better cover illos (DMG = big red devil, PH = big orange idol, MM = overground + underground tech pen ensemble. The ones I have now are the ones Shakey posted and lord I hate the graphics.

Even 2nd ed is a little rules heavy for me. When I DM there's no goddamn encumbrance and no morale checks and no running out of arrows.

i recently bought a bunch of 5e stuff and i have like 10 interested players but getting even half of the crew together at the same time is proving impossible ... sigh, adult life

OTM, I know about 20 ppl who would like to play but scheduling is fucking impossible

When I DM there's no goddamn encumbrance and no morale checks and no running out of arrows.

OTMFM

re: scheduling... yeah, see also "band practice" for us olds

it doesn't help that a play session tends to last about 8 hours (because we are adults and so tangential)

The ones I have now are the ones Shakey posted and lord I hate the graphic

I might be persuaded to take these off yr hands...

re: scheduling if I do get this going it will be primarily my family and maybe like one or two other people so that should simplify things

(I def have an in-law who is down for this at family events, so that's good)

When I DM there's no goddamn encumbrance

was always curious if *anyone* played with this, because what a nightmare

bags of holding all around

pack animals

but yeah encumbrance, morale fuck that shit

not so sure about the infinite arrows thing though

Arrows is just cause I'm lazy tbh

I suppose you can just assume everyone picks up all their spent/shot arrows afterwards - problem solved!

i have visited brooklyn strategist and it is almost always filled btw. wish i had that place when i was younger; they're doing the lord's work

I hate that "encumbrance" made it into video game RPGs and shooters. Trying to shoot your way out of an abandoned factory wearing power armor in Fallout 4 only to slow to a crawl because you picked up a fucking screwdriver is some baloney.

Yes, but what about the masochists and the survival modders (possibly the same people)?

make it an option for the survival mode of the game and just remove it from the regular mode

I think the problem with Fallout (with the caveat that I haven't played Fallout 4) is that they both added the baggage of first person shooters and doubled down on the amount of junk/crafting. I'd rather have crafting require fewer, more unique items rather than having to store up a myriad of currency/material substitutes

Let's just say that I have spent more than an hour at a time in Fallout 4 just looking for aluminum and ceramics.

Obsidian's Fallout: New Vegas was amazing, on par with the original two and in some ways even better, but I can't bring myself to play either 3 or 4 due to Bethesda's involvement.

This (longish) review sums it up rather nicely: http://www.rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=10267

whoops i confused brooklyn strategist with brooklyn gamelab... different thing!
https://brooklyngamelab.com/

compleat strategist on 33rd st is one of the most pleasant places in new york city imo

I broke down
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DNfp4SwU8AAXnDO.jpg:large

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DNfp4SwU8AAXnDO.jpg:large

After plowing through the mountains of rules I had forgotten I'm beginning to be a little skeptical that my wife and daughter's stated enthusiasm for it will not wane when confronted with just how fucking *long* everything takes

nice, hope it works out

personally i thought the campaign included in the box was really cool, though i wish i knew more about the forgotten realms.

for whatever reason i lasted about two weeks with the rules in the box, then broke down and picked up player and dm guides and monster manual

i still haven't bought any of the adventure books (especially interested in tales from yawning portal and curse of strahd) because we were still working on the starter set campaign when it just kind of petered out (did i mention the campaign is really cool?)

i did pick up voio's guide to monsters, which was great for fleshing out encounters

excited for xanathar's guide to everything, which i hope will get me up to speed on forgotten realms

the books are fucking *expensive* though. sorry independent game shop, i'm headed to amazon.

the adventure does look pretty cool, it just reminded me that "oh yeah this is not a game you pick up, read the rules, and then play for an hour", it's way more involved than that.

I went over the character sheets with my daughter (often stopping to look up stuff I didn't remember) and she seems interested, she v much likes the storytelling aspect of it - but idk about all the rules and dice-rolling and math and shit

keep on the borderlands or gtfo

(not really)

some of my students were asking if i knew what d&d was

they were like "it's a boardgame ... where the board ... is in your mind!"

it was strange

xp there is a company (goodman games) that claimed to be working on a reprint of keep on the borderlands (original art and text) with updated 5e stats

supposedly dec 2017

http://www.phdgames.com/borderlands-goodman-games/

i often don't really trust third-party expansion material but i think the reprint strategy is a good one

i like that they obviously love the cheesy colored-pencils-in-a-high-school-notebook aesthetic of early dungeons and dragons

http://goodman-games.com/store/product/dungeon-crawl-classics-role-playing-game-4th-printing-copy/

but some of their other stuff seems like just a ripoff

http://goodman-games.com/5e/

shakey you can cut out all the rules basically and just do cooperative storytelling on the fly. most DMs ime use the rules to help arbitrate results but aren't wedded to every nuance in the book and are even willing to throw results away if they make the game less fun.

we started a campaign last night - i haven't played in years but it seems like a really good group. all young (early 30s) dads. homebrew campaign tho hopefully w/ lots of plane hopping so many we'll make a stop in forgotten realms / ravenloft / etc.

Yeah the rules are there for tactical gygaxians - go arneson, make that shit up.

+ seriously unless you're planning on playing w/ figurines, grid boards and measuring tape you're going to be applying all the rules kinda arbitrarily anyway. also i've never played in a campaign that calculated encumbrance or forced characters to "eat." all that stuff should be immediately done away with in any campaign.

yeah it's called role-playing not roll-playing maaaaaaan

tbh I'm probably just encumbered by teenage experiences playing w aggro nerd guys that just wanted to flout rules so they could have characters that were all 30th Level Wizard Warriors with vorpal swords and unlimited psionic powers and shit

xp

I feel like there oughta be a comfortable middle ground where you just have to roll for attacks and damage and attempting to do various things

i admit i like to min/max a little but i roleplay sincerely and play my character w/ lots of limitations. i just like knowing i have some mechanical nuke in my back pocket if things get dicey.

i actually got more into using the rules than i used to be, possibly because i play more boardgames than i used to, i'm more into math than i used to be and i'm less good at making funny npc voices (our pcs are getting worse at speaking in character too)

i found it was really fun just to sit around a table and roll dice. i was playing w some dudes i used to roleplay with in high school and i remember we used to put a lot of pressure on ourselves to make everything *grand storytelling* but last time we played it was like three 2nd level characters trying to kill four goblins in a cave and we had a blast. the sort of back-to-basics roleplaying i hadn't done since i was in grade school.

Despite being into fantasy stuff for a long time, I never knew how table top RPGs worked, never knew anyone who played them (except the figurine versions) and got someone to explain it to me last year.

Hmm

Btw I read this on Sunday - it’s pretty good

https://www.wired.com/2017/05/rise-dungeon-master-gary-gygax-birth-dd/

(I mean I read the whole thing Sunday, not that excerpt)

cool

eyo late great dungeon crawl classics is fun but has a couple of things which acknowledge and require a degree of meta-gaming. also they want you to use zocchi dice. probably not ideal for outis's campaign ~~

there are other OSR ( = 'old school renaissance') -aligned products which have a lot less kipple than playing 5e -- if you want the same feel, and to get rid of a lot of the crud, but you're not comfortable doing it on the fly, you can use whitehack (which is 2e-compatible, though you need to adjust for THAC0) which is basically all the d&d rules you need in like thirty pages. it's pretty understandable by anyone who's played d&d of any vintage before without being such an offputting set of tomes for new players.

dungeon world is even simpler, everything is on d6, but a different paradigm -- it's a little more narrativist, a little less simulationist or gamist. i am tempted to give it a go later this year -- i have a handful of people who might crystalise into a group, most of whom want something like the standard d&d experience, and i want to move sideways from that at least a little.

one might also say a word for the mouse guard rpg, or the (unrelated) rpg-lite board game-ish mice and mystics, but this depends on your tolerance for mice and shit

also i wrote a thing about d&d and rpgs a few months ago which is ... better than most things i have read written about d&d and rpgs (low bar):

http://www.oxonianreview.org/wp/the-players-handbook/

i highly recommend shakey does not use a system that includes THAC0

oh, that was poorly phrased -- whitehack doesn't use thac0, but the earlier stuff he posted that he's familiar with does. if you want to use whitehack with earlier material, you need to adjust to whitehack's slightly off-kilter ascending AC system.

i really enjoyed yr essay

ty!

I think i understood 25% of the words in thomp's posts

seconding Mordy, that was a very enjoyable read.

thirded, now I want to track down some of those other books

fourthed, and me too

fifthed!!

6thed. I remember being a kid and checking out books like Gygax's 'Role Playing Mastery' from the library, even though I had never actually played D&D with other humans. It was super serious and dry and really felt like I was reading some dense philosophical tome.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-PnPLB5jcOCo/UhqHCX2kpRI/AAAAAAAAPGc/yVxof4eZfFQ/w1200-h630-p-k-no-nu/IMG_1030.jpg

seventhed. :) i just emailed it to a few of my non-gaming friends (non-video, non tabletop) with anthropological/social sciences academic backgrounds because i'm always trying to subtly show them how games can be interesting in surprising ways

thomp, thank you for writing that great piece which has now led me to Playing at the World, which I started this morning.

Wasn't feeling the graphic novel excerpt at all. The scripting is awful and the visual choices pure autopilot.

did you guys ever play those choose your own adventure style books as a kid that required you to roll dice and track your inventory etc?

yeah i did one of those in the early 80s somewhere. I think it was a Steve Jackson joint?

Sorcery! is on PC, not played it.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/411000/Sorcery_Parts_1_and_2/

i'm not sure! i was hoping you'd tell me. :p xp

i'm really excited bc tnite is our new group's first real dnd sesh.

my best guess is it was Sorcery! (which I think exists on ios now too xposts)

http://www.fightingfantasy.com/

played these a lot

Sorcery! was an offshoot of them

IIRC, CRPGAddict's series on Tunnels and Trolls, and the one-and-done posts on Citadel of Chaos and The Forest of Doom had some good material on "gamebooks," both in the entries and the comments. (Obviously he's evaluating them from the POV of a computer game player.)

All the Sorcery!s are on IoS now - you can buy them as a bundle and save

https://itunes.apple.com/us/developer/inkle/id576695514

Oh man, the illustrations in the Sorcery! books by John Blanche were so amazing, I remember those fondly:

https://www.pinterest.com/MVPPinterest/sorcery-illustrations/

I feel like there oughta be a comfortable middle ground where you just have to roll for attacks and damage and attempting to do various things

― Οὖτις, Tuesday, October 31, 2017 10:26 PM (six days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i have said this before but the most fun i ever had playing d&d was with a very mellow, run-n-gun DM who used percentile dice for pretty much everything. any time you wanted to do something, or something attacked you, he'd do a quick probability on success/failure, taking lots of things into account very fluidly, and tell you what you needed to roll

that was my best experience too

disclaimer: I was the DM

My DMing has gotten super slouchy these days. I make a loose map and basically don't even prepare other than that. I'm trying to let things the players do or say guide me in what to make up on the fly. This does result in some serious mistakes and spillouts but it's fun.
Also almost every player has a fuckin pet or animal companion or familiar, nothing makes them more happy and engaged.

thx all for saying nice things about the thing what i wrote

jordan i picked up a copy of that one as an adult. as an adult, i'm afraid, i've been unable to find it anything but charmless.

jon how are you finding 'playing at the world'?

I’m in the prehistory section still. It’s totally fascinating stuff.

I am gonna go out on a limb here and see if you guys can help me remember something. There was this D&Dish boardgame that my friends and I played a bunch in the late 80s that I can never remember the name of, much less find. I don't think it was a TSR product. It had a basic "move your pieces down the path" board layout, and you could choose between playing various D&Dish characters (a halfling, a wizard, etc.). You rolled dice to advance spaces, lots of cards were involved both for you to "play" during your turn and that you had to pick up if you landed on certain spaces, etc. I realize this is kind of vague as I don't recall a lot of specifics but maybe if this rings a bell or people start throwing names out I'll be able to figure it out...

Was it Talisman?

https://tarmor21.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/2015-04-14-talisman-1.jpg

heroquest?

OH SHIT IT WAS TOTALLY TALISMAN!!!

I used to love that as a kid, to the extent that I persuaded my mum to keep it in the cupboard while she gave the rest of my childhood boardgames to charity... Dug it out and played it as an adult and it actually sucks as a game. But I can see why young me liked it so much, the art and design are cool and immersive.

there's also Magic Realm

https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic1379702_md.jpg

thx chap - yeah reading about it it seems like I probably wouldn't enjoy it much as an adult but I do remember being super-into all of the illustrations and the weird tangent adventures that the cards would turn up.

I remember Magic Realm! iirc kind of a precursor to Catan with the tiles that get flipped over

We briefly had a copy of Dungeon! from an early 90s yard sale, but as it was missing pieces and I had no one who'd play it with me I don't believe it ever got a test run.

i have the reissue of dungeon! but i haven't played it yet. The art is a bit cute but i prefer that to larry elmoreisms.

my best friend and i tried to play Magic Realm soon after we got into D&D and found it ridiculous and impenetrable. We were 11 though. I'd try it again.

tile flipping exploration is for me always embodied in Kings & Things (Dragon Mag version: King of the Tabletop) by Tom Wham and Dave Trampier.

my favorite board game tbh

I had the original version of Dungeon! when I was a kid and played it a lot. My son got the new version and we played it once. It's not very good.

talisman is available on ios/android for tablets btw

http://playingattheworld.blogspot.com/2018/01/war-of-empires-1969-gygaxs-space.html (via john d.)

love the mimeograph paper

In ADVANCED DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS, how much damage do bows do?

None. Bows do not do damage, arrows do. However, if you hit someone with a bow, I’d say it would probably do 1-4 points of damage and thereafter render the bow completely useless for firing arrows. What the bows do is allow a greater variety of ranges; all the damage done by arrows is the same

lol @ bows dont kill ppl, arrows do.

From a recent Kotaku article on the women who made D&D:

Years after she’d gotten the job off an ad in Dragon, (Jean) Wells became the titular “Sage” for the magazine’s “Sage Advice” column. She used the column to exercise her ferocious, sometimes cutting, wit. The strangest and most off-base questions were most likely to garner Wells’ “advice.” In one column, a player wrote in, “How much damage do bows do?” Wells responded, “Answer: None. Bows do not do damage, arrows do. However, if you hit someone with a bow, I’d say it would probably do 1-4 points of damage and thereafter render the bow completely useless for firing arrows.”

“I adopted this approach because this is who I am,” Wells said of the column in 2010. “I felt the youngsters under the age of sixteen were spending far too much time being far too serious about a game when they needed to focus some of that attention back on their families and schools. I’d hoped the kids would see the humor in the situation and not take the game so seriously that every breath they took, every word they said was about D&D.”

Applause for the sage Jean Wells!

oh yes, link to article:

https://kotaku.com/d-d-wouldn-t-be-what-it-is-today-without-these-women-1796426183

thanks!

excellent

yeah that article was awesome. the original "orange edition" of Jean Wells' banned adventure module is available here: http://pandius.com/b3_orig.pdf

fantastic!

heyo

https://boingboing.net/2018/10/23/e-gum-gary-gygax.html

https://i2.wp.com/media.boingboing.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/91-yvF2mpCL-1-2-1-1.jpg?w=970&ssl=1
https://i2.wp.com/media.boingboing.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/81SrRTTvTIL-1-2-1-1.jpg?w=970&ssl=1