Post by doc on Jun 21, 2011 18:23:10 GMT -6
It’s been awhile since I’ve been to this board. Over the past year I’ve moved, gone through pointless marital strife, ended a very exciting Dragons at Dawn campaign, switched occupations, and generally became burnt out on gaming. Again.
But lo, what do I see on the horizon but yet another retro old-school game by the creators of Dungeon Crawl Classics. Creatively named Dungeon Crawl Classic RPG. Flipping through the beta, I found a lot of promise.
Slowly I began to rise from my RPG torpor, not unlike Great C’thulhu rising from Dread R’lyeh. A possible new campaign. But what setting did I want to use? My OD&D setting had pretty much run it’s course following the epic battle between the ancient balrog X’aal and the surviving heroes of Khanokh. I didn’t want to revisit the Empire of Dagon since Dragons at Dawn was still fairly recent in my memory.
Then it hit me (nat 20): I could go back to the beginning. MY beginning. I started playing D&D around 1982 at age ten. By the time I was 12 I was running my own campaign, using the modules I would buy at the local Waldenbooks (game stores still too new of an idea in my area). I loved running, especially playing all of the NPC’s and monsters that the players would interact with. The problem was, I had no real frame of reference in terms of a game world. The setting for my game would be whatever setting the latest module happened to take place in. The campaign world consisted of towns and cities with names like Grayhawk, Restenfortd Rhoona, Inverness, Garrotten, Saltmarsh, Hommlet, etc. Between these pockets of civilization would be pretty much nothing but an indistinct haze. There was no cohesiveness between the areas. No encompassing history of the world. No idea of how all these different regions interacted with each other outside of Player Character action.
Over time we built up a rudimentary idea of what was going on. Greyhawk was the Big Dog, possessing a large army and many colleges of magic. They kept the peace between the other cities, even though they weren’t literally sovereign over them in any political way. Greyhawk was the center of power in the Lands of Men. Restenford existed on the shores of a great ocean, many of the buildings built on stilts or even on boats. Garrotten was the not-so-secret home of the Assassin’s Guild. Rhoona was a desert Dukedom built by war refugees. Inverness was a center of secret and often dire knowledge, not unlike Lovecraft’s town of Arkham. They were loosely connected at best, the full background of the world still remaining very nebulous. As time went on I included a Nordic civilization that existed far to the North of the Lands of Men, and the very vague Asian-influenced culture of Katur that existed “far across the ocean,” but allowed for the odd samurai or ninja character to be inserted into the campaign with little fuss. I knew that between the Lands of Men and the Dark Lands were the Borderlands, patrolled by rangers and bands of hired adventurers to keep the hordes of orcs, trolls, and worse away from civilization.
It was all very simplistic, but without guides like The World of Greyhawk, it was all I had. I ran this semi-setting from 1984 to about 1990. All told I ran 13 official TSR modules starting with In Search of Adventure and ending up with the chilling Tomb of Horrors. When I left for college I finally started to build my own fantasy world from the ground up, complete with cosmology, ancient history, the creation of the world, gods, ancient civilizations, etc. I put in so much detail that even the esteemed Professor Tolkien would have said “Dude, chill.” I created an entirely immersive experience for my players, existing in at least sixteen notebooks over the next four years.
And yet, it never seemed to match the pulpy, seat-of-your-pants feel of my earlier and far less defined world. My favorite days of gaming are still those days when I was first starting out and stretching my creative muscle. Details didn’t matter. Consistency didn’t matter. Continuity didn’t matter. Realism didn’t matter. All that mattered were the characters and the fun; living in the moment with a stolen treasure beneath your arm and the Bleak Legion of Orcus hot on your heels.
So, anyway, here’s what I’m getting to. What was it like for the rest of us in those heady early days of gaming? Did you closely follow the setting and trappings of Greyhawk, Blackmoor, the Lendore Isles, etc., or did you just take each module as it came and try to piece together a game world based on the hints and snippets of backstory in the adventures? Or, did you simple create your own game world from Day One? What did these early experiences teach you about what you wanted your game world to be, or not to be? Looking back now, what do you think of your first attempt? Are you proud? Embarrassed? Nostalgic? What were your early games like, and how did they shape you as a creator of worlds?
Doc
But lo, what do I see on the horizon but yet another retro old-school game by the creators of Dungeon Crawl Classics. Creatively named Dungeon Crawl Classic RPG. Flipping through the beta, I found a lot of promise.
Slowly I began to rise from my RPG torpor, not unlike Great C’thulhu rising from Dread R’lyeh. A possible new campaign. But what setting did I want to use? My OD&D setting had pretty much run it’s course following the epic battle between the ancient balrog X’aal and the surviving heroes of Khanokh. I didn’t want to revisit the Empire of Dagon since Dragons at Dawn was still fairly recent in my memory.
Then it hit me (nat 20): I could go back to the beginning. MY beginning. I started playing D&D around 1982 at age ten. By the time I was 12 I was running my own campaign, using the modules I would buy at the local Waldenbooks (game stores still too new of an idea in my area). I loved running, especially playing all of the NPC’s and monsters that the players would interact with. The problem was, I had no real frame of reference in terms of a game world. The setting for my game would be whatever setting the latest module happened to take place in. The campaign world consisted of towns and cities with names like Grayhawk, Restenfortd Rhoona, Inverness, Garrotten, Saltmarsh, Hommlet, etc. Between these pockets of civilization would be pretty much nothing but an indistinct haze. There was no cohesiveness between the areas. No encompassing history of the world. No idea of how all these different regions interacted with each other outside of Player Character action.
Over time we built up a rudimentary idea of what was going on. Greyhawk was the Big Dog, possessing a large army and many colleges of magic. They kept the peace between the other cities, even though they weren’t literally sovereign over them in any political way. Greyhawk was the center of power in the Lands of Men. Restenford existed on the shores of a great ocean, many of the buildings built on stilts or even on boats. Garrotten was the not-so-secret home of the Assassin’s Guild. Rhoona was a desert Dukedom built by war refugees. Inverness was a center of secret and often dire knowledge, not unlike Lovecraft’s town of Arkham. They were loosely connected at best, the full background of the world still remaining very nebulous. As time went on I included a Nordic civilization that existed far to the North of the Lands of Men, and the very vague Asian-influenced culture of Katur that existed “far across the ocean,” but allowed for the odd samurai or ninja character to be inserted into the campaign with little fuss. I knew that between the Lands of Men and the Dark Lands were the Borderlands, patrolled by rangers and bands of hired adventurers to keep the hordes of orcs, trolls, and worse away from civilization.
It was all very simplistic, but without guides like The World of Greyhawk, it was all I had. I ran this semi-setting from 1984 to about 1990. All told I ran 13 official TSR modules starting with In Search of Adventure and ending up with the chilling Tomb of Horrors. When I left for college I finally started to build my own fantasy world from the ground up, complete with cosmology, ancient history, the creation of the world, gods, ancient civilizations, etc. I put in so much detail that even the esteemed Professor Tolkien would have said “Dude, chill.” I created an entirely immersive experience for my players, existing in at least sixteen notebooks over the next four years.
And yet, it never seemed to match the pulpy, seat-of-your-pants feel of my earlier and far less defined world. My favorite days of gaming are still those days when I was first starting out and stretching my creative muscle. Details didn’t matter. Consistency didn’t matter. Continuity didn’t matter. Realism didn’t matter. All that mattered were the characters and the fun; living in the moment with a stolen treasure beneath your arm and the Bleak Legion of Orcus hot on your heels.
So, anyway, here’s what I’m getting to. What was it like for the rest of us in those heady early days of gaming? Did you closely follow the setting and trappings of Greyhawk, Blackmoor, the Lendore Isles, etc., or did you just take each module as it came and try to piece together a game world based on the hints and snippets of backstory in the adventures? Or, did you simple create your own game world from Day One? What did these early experiences teach you about what you wanted your game world to be, or not to be? Looking back now, what do you think of your first attempt? Are you proud? Embarrassed? Nostalgic? What were your early games like, and how did they shape you as a creator of worlds?
Doc
