Topic: Best "Judges Guild" D&D Products (Read 2,261 times)
Finarvyn Administrator Dungeon Master member is offline
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Best "Judges Guild" D&D Products « Thread Started on Aug 1, 2007, 1:27pm »
For the purposes of this discussion, I'm going to ignore the fact that some of the Judges' Guild materials were OD&D and others were AD&D. They're all "old school" in my book.
Here are my five favorites, not ranked in any way:
City State of the Invincible Overlord My first city, and still my favorite.
Tegel Manor A gigantic haunted house. What fun!
Ready Ref Sheets All of the info together in a spiffy little purple book!
Thieves of Fortress Badabaskor Really a fun module and one of my favorites of all time.
Dark Tower A while back in Dungeon magazine, WOTC ranked the 30 best modules of all time, and this one was the only JG mod on the list!
This was a quick list, so maybe I forgot something, but those are some of my favorites. Anyone else?
Joined: Jun 2007 Gender: Male Posts: 432 Karma: 13
Re: Best "Judges Guild" D&D Products « Reply #2 on Aug 1, 2007, 2:53pm »
Wilderlands of High Fantasy (etc.). Beautiful maps. Though to be honest, I think the setting is actually over large.
First Fantasy Campaign. Same beautiful maps for a much more manageably sized setting, oh, and as a bonus, some insight on the early days of D&D.
Modron. Cool town with an underwater adventure.
Tarantis. Another city, but what most interested me about it was the poster map of the Wilderlands in two versions, one without the hex overlay (looks real nice) and the other with the hex overlays (looks busy, but, at least back in college when my eyesight was really good, you could still read the hex numbers [on the like 3mm hexes]).
Sea Steeds and Wave Riders. Cool plans for ships.
Judges Guild Journal, Dungeoneer, and Pegasus. Nice magazines with insightful material.
Village Books, Castle Book, Temple Book. Nice collections of lots of town and castle plans.
The Maltese Clue. An interesting adventure using a real castle map.
Treasury of Archaic Names. Sure, there are newer books of names, but this was the first collection (outside of a few magazine articles).
Ravens Crag. A really cool castle with dungeon underneath.
I wonder if it would be easier to list the bombs...
Joined: Jun 2007 Gender: Male Posts: 432 Karma: 13
Re: Best "Judges Guild" D&D Products « Reply #4 on Aug 1, 2007, 3:49pm »
Something I should add. The Wilderlands of High Fantasy maps are STILL my benchmark for wilderness maps. Sure, color is nice (but it was loads of fun back in the day coloring my Wilderlands maps). I like the fact that things don't conform to hexes (a complaint I've had with the Greyhawk and Mystara maps). I like the hexgrid. I like that there are patches of small woods, small lakes, small patches of hills, a lone mountain, etc. (a complaint I've had with most other maps).
CSIO is also still a good benchmark for a city. I like that I can tell what the individual buildings are (I had fun coloring this map also, with different colors for different types of buildings). CSIO has had much more competition (the Midkemia Press cities, Thieve's World from Chaosium [with participation from the Midkemia Press folks], Lanhkmar [close], and more), but it was the first big RPG city, and it still holds its own.
Re: Best "Judges Guild" D&D Products « Reply #6 on Aug 2, 2007, 9:35am »
CSIO and Caverns of Thracia are my favorites.
I recently got ahold of the Dungeoneer compilation, that has the contents of the first 6 of the fanzines. It's fantastic for the Realm of Slime God Adventure alone, not to mention everything else in there.
The Ready Ref Sheets is an amazing compilation of cooky charts and tables. It's worth the price for just the compiled monster index.
In Search of Kelandar's Gold is a later adventure that no one ever brings up, that I think is really, really good. (It's the one with "Luke Skywalker" on the cover.)
Verbosh, the Book of Treasure Maps, WHF, and the FFC are at the top of my "to get" list.
Joined: Jul 2007 Gender: Male Posts: 294 Location: Civitas Quinqueecclesiensis Karma: 19
Re: Best "Judges Guild" D&D Products « Reply #9 on Aug 3, 2007, 2:24am »
First things first, there are the obvious candidates: Wilderlands of High Fantasy - the setting that does almost everything right. The Campaign Hexagon System is a stroke of genius, and I wonder why it didn't become the industry standard. Pretty much the optimal (and when you think about it, blatantly obvious) method of organising wilderness expeditions. Then there is the sword&sorcery aspect, mixed with the high tech / weirdness element. Again, way too cool. The "isolated city states in a wilderness" is again very D&D-appropriate. And I could go on, from more emphasis on the seas and islands to the flexibility it offers. If I wanted to find a fault, it would be the fact that there is too little continuous mountainous terrain, and the hex size. Both very easy to fix.
City State of the Invincible Overlord: may not be the most realistic (although it doesn't fare badly when we stack it against other RPG cities - those, being designed by modern Americans, often tend to be too systematic, too organised, whereas real old cities are all about organic growth and confusion), but certainly very fun. Highlights include the encounter tables and the fact that like the Wilderlands, adventures write themselves.
Ready Ref Sheets: an invaluable resource for OD&D, not just for collecting JG's contributions (tables, guidelines and such), but also for reprinting a lot of OD&D rules in an organised manner. I only wish it had character generation - if that was the case, I could run a game straight out of this little booklet!
Tegel Manor: as far as I know, the only published example of a larger OD&D dungeon (FFC's Castle Blackmoor is rather sketchy, and I suspects it is actually an early prototype of DA's full castle... although I might be wrong). And what dungeon it is! Initially when I saw it, I wasn't quite that enthusiastic, but the more I study it, the better it becomes. Not only are the maps flawless, but the contents are fantastic and imaginative as well. One flaw the module has that it is almost all combat or colour, meaning the module may feel a shade too "light". Still, there is enough material for the Judge to expand upon.
The Paul Jaquays corpus: this is a separate entity within JG's output, since as far as I know, JG only acted as a publisher to Paul's creations. Dark Tower and Caverns of Thracia are relatively well-known and rightfully well-regarded, but there is a lot to be said for the much more obscure, yet cheaply available Dungeoneer's Compendium, even for the excellent Realm of the Slime God alone (although Borshak's Lair and F'Chelrak's Tomb are certainly not bad either).
Village Book I-II., Temple Book, Castle Book I-II. and Island Book are good utility products, the last being the best of the lot. In addition to a lot of appealing maps (and some not so appealing ones), their charts are great for ideas and flavour.
There were of course a lot more, although I believe that the earlier run where Bob Bledsaw was involved, and Paul Jaquays' stuff, is the portion that deserves special recognition, while the followups are a mixed bag, with a lot of chaff and not much of the initial genius. Strange how that seems to plague companies where the innovators get promoted to / have to dedicate their resources to "management" (see the story of TSR, and to a much lesser but more modern example, Necromancer Games).
"D&D is the ultimate right wing wet dream. A bunch of guys who are better than your average joe set out into the middle of nowhere where they murder and kill everything they come across in order to stockpile gold and elaborate magical bling. There are no taxes, no state and any poor people that get in your way get their village burned to the ground. It's like Ayn Rand on PCP." - Mr. Analytical
Re: Best "Judges Guild" D&D Products « Reply #10 on Sept 10, 2007, 8:36pm »
Quote:
Ready Ref Sheets: an invaluable resource for OD&D
I bougt these in PDF, and printed them out using a black-and-white filter to clean up the scan. They're great.
Quote:
...there is a lot to be said for the much more obscure, yet cheaply available Dungeoneer's Compendium, even for the excellent Realm of the Slime God alone (although Borshak's Lair and F'Chelrak's Tomb are certainly not bad either).
I just received a copy I ordered from Noble Knight (mint, in shrinkwrap), and I've been reading through it. I'll second this as a great resource that's oozes (ha!) old-school atmosphere. I got it for the adventures (especially the Walking Wet/Slime God adventure), but I've been enjoying the articles, too. (I got a chuckle out of a reference to the Greyhawk supplement as "almost canon.")
Re: Best "Judges Guild" D&D Products « Reply #11 on Sept 20, 2007, 3:40pm »
Well I just found a Judges Guild module that I had forgotten about ~ a solo dungeon crawl called Survival of the Fittest! Hmm, this might be a good way to really get myself going into the OD&D rules again.
Joined: Oct 2007 Gender: Male Posts: 116 Location: San Francisco, CA Karma: 5
Re: Best "Judges Guild" D&D Products « Reply #12 on Oct 29, 2007, 6:44pm »
As far as original JG products go, my favorites are the Ready Ref Sheets (I love the social tables), Dungeoneer's Compendium (The Walking Wet/Realm of the Slime God is an awesome adventure), and the Book of Treasure Maps.
Joined: Nov 2007 Gender: Male Posts: 470 Location: London, Canada Karma: 12
Re: Best "Judges Guild" D&D Products « Reply #14 on Nov 27, 2007, 7:36pm »
City State is clearly my favourite. I have the original small brown book edition before they censored it. I also have the slightly later one in large book format. I have set Dragonquest, AD&D and Rolemaster in that city. Wilderlands of High Fantasy is a great add on. I also like teh books of ruins and treasure maps
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