|
|
Post by badger2305 on Jul 20, 2011 14:26:04 GMT -6
I've been putting together a set of materials to share with some friends about how to set up a campaign, most of it articles from The Dragon, The Strategic Review, White Dwarf and Different Worlds. My operating principle has been to choose stuff I wish I had read before I started refereeing. With that in mind, some of what I've picked includes: What articles or material would YOU include? |
|
|
|
Post by scalydemon on Jul 20, 2011 16:36:22 GMT -6
“Hints for D & D Judges Part 1: Towns, Part 2: Wilderness, Part 3: Dungeons” by Joe Fischer, The Strategic Review and The Dragon
-
I'd love to read these over. Do you have a scanned copy by chance of these? If not can you tell me which SR or Dragon they are from?
Thanks
|
|
|
|
Post by coffee on Jul 20, 2011 17:08:38 GMT -6
"Hints for D&D Judges" was published in The Strategic Review #7 and The Dragon #s 1 & 2.
Or you can get all three back to back in Best of The Dragon volume 1.
|
|
|
|
Post by scalydemon on Jul 20, 2011 17:16:53 GMT -6
"Hints for D&D Judges" was published in The Strategic Review #7 and The Dragon #s 1 & 2. Or you can get all three back to back in Best of The Dragon volume 1. Thanks coffee. The Best of option sounds easiest (and less expensive I'm sure  ) |
|
|
|
Post by coffee on Jul 21, 2011 13:27:13 GMT -6
Yeah, that's why I included it. It's a veritable treasure trove of great stuff from the early days.
|
|
|
|
Post by badger2305 on Jul 21, 2011 19:03:11 GMT -6
Yeah, that's why I included it. It's a veritable treasure trove of great stuff from the early days. Good point! |
|
|
|
Post by coffee on Jul 22, 2011 13:30:54 GMT -6
I already owned B/X and the 3 core books of AD&D. The reason I bought OD&D was because I'd gotten Best of The Dragon v. 1 and didn't understand a bunch of the stuff in there.
Once I had OD&D, it made a lot more sense.
|
|
|
|
Post by kesher on Jul 22, 2011 13:43:31 GMT -6
I've been putting together a set of materials to share with some friends about how to set up a campaign, most of it articles from The Dragon, The Strategic Review, White Dwarf and Different Worlds. My operating principle has been to choose stuff I wish I had read before I started refereeing. With that in mind, some of what I've picked includes: What articles or material would YOU include? As always, great stuff, Victor! That Europa compilation is such intriguing reading, above and beyond just the Gygax article... |
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Jul 22, 2011 18:56:01 GMT -6
Oh, Cram and Mirthless... Victor, WHERE did you find that old article?
THAT, ya young punks, is what "web pages" looked like before we had computers! Now git offa my castle green!
Gronan
|
|
|
|
Post by badger2305 on Jul 23, 2011 12:48:43 GMT -6
Oh, Cram and Mirthless... Victor, WHERE did you find that old article? THAT, ya young punks, is what "web pages" looked like before we had computers! Now git offa my castle green! Gronan We have the Diplomacy players archives to thank for that little gem. Mind you, Gary's article confirmed for me a rather solid amount of my suspicions about how he thought about starting things off. |
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Jul 23, 2011 17:38:29 GMT -6
my suspicions about how he thought about starting things off. "Make up some s*** you think will be fun." |
|
|
|
Post by coffee on Jul 24, 2011 13:03:52 GMT -6
Now that I've actually read the Gygax piece from Europa, I'm wondering if anybody has parts I and III of that same article? There is surely some very good stuff to go along with the part Victor was kind enough to bring to our attention.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Jul 24, 2011 13:16:38 GMT -6
Now that I've actually read the Gygax piece from Europa, I'm wondering if anybody has parts I and III of that same article? There is surely some very good stuff to go along with the part Victor was kind enough to bring to our attention. Agreed. |
|
|
|
Post by murquhart72 on Jul 24, 2011 15:55:39 GMT -6
Same here. I'd LOVE to read parts one and three!
|
|
|
|
Post by Melan on Jul 25, 2011 8:06:12 GMT -6
What articles or material would YOU include? - The 1st edition AD&D DMG
- City State of the Invincible Overlord
- Wilderlands of High Fantasy (or anything discussing how to set up a hex-crawl campaign)
- and Ready Ref Sheets.
These four products give you a complete overview and guidelines for running great adventure fantasy games in different environments. |
|
|
|
Post by badger2305 on Jul 25, 2011 10:25:31 GMT -6
What articles or material would YOU include? - The 1st edition AD&D DMG
- City State of the Invincible Overlord
- Wilderlands of High Fantasy (or anything discussing how to set up a hex-crawl campaign)
- and Ready Ref Sheets.
These four products give you a complete overview and guidelines for running great adventure fantasy games in different environments. This is a very decent list, but I was thinking more in terms of short(er) articles and the like. Don't want to overwhelm people (but might end up doing that anyway). Thanks for the suggestions, though! One question - would you think of OSRIC as an acceptable substitute for the 1st Ed. DMG? |
|
|
|
Post by kesher on Jul 25, 2011 11:58:02 GMT -6
Don't know if you were asking this specifically of Melan or not, but personally I'd say yes for content, but man, I miss that Gygaxian prose... (which of course might well turn off people new to the old school)
|
|
|
|
Post by Falconer on Jul 25, 2011 12:26:32 GMT -6
I sometimes wish I had less material when I first started DMing. I basically cut my teeth on the AD&D three cores plus ToEE. I don’t regret the fun I had with that, but I would rather have had no modules and so been forced to create my own sandbox. The less I had to read, the more I would have mastered that small assortment of material. My ideal starter set would probably have looked more like this:
1. Original Dungeons & Dragons
2. City State of the Invincible Overlord (for many reasons, but definitely for those unstocked maps)
3. Monster & Treasure Assortment (original individual sets, not compilation edition) (for stocking those maps in the style of B1)
4. Supplement I (for many reasons, but definitely for the unique rooms/encounters/traps ideas)
5. Supplement IV
6. OD&D FAQ from TSR #2 (to figure out how combat works)
|
|
|
|
Post by Melan on Jul 25, 2011 13:51:37 GMT -6
This is a very decent list, but I was thinking more in terms of short(er) articles and the like. Don't want to overwhelm people (but might end up doing that anyway). Thanks for the suggestions, though! One question - would you think of OSRIC as an acceptable substitute for the 1st Ed. DMG? Well, I don't know about shorter articles that cover the same ground. Parts of the 1e DMG are kind of mini-essays, but I think there is no comprehensive mini-guide to setting up and managing a hexcrawl, for example (although Rob Conley's various essays and his Points of Light supplement give you a lot of good advice). I cannot compare OSRIC to the 1e DMG - just never read it in the depth to make a good comparison. My hunch would be "it is not an acceptable substitute, and it doesn't even want to be one", but what do I know. |
|
|
|
Post by badger2305 on Jul 26, 2011 8:17:46 GMT -6
I sometimes wish I had less material when I first started DMing. I basically cut my teeth on the AD&D three cores plus ToEE. I don’t regret the fun I had with that, but I would rather have had no modules and so been forced to create my own sandbox. All of this makes good sense. That having been said, though, you have to admit that the original material can be obtuse at times, even AD&D 1st Edition. What I was thinking of was the follow-on articles and essays that could help someone understand that original material to make it easier to tackle. In some ways, Best of the Dragon, Vol. I is exactly what I'm talking about - and not because it includes several of the articles I originally listed. |
|
sd
Level 1 Medium
Invincible Overlord
Posts: 23 
|
Post by sd on Jul 26, 2011 9:27:21 GMT -6
I wish I'd had less stuff when I started ... I acquired extra books and modules as quickly as I could, and in retrospect, I'd rather my head hadn't been filled with other people's takes on D&D quite so soon.
|
|
nezach
Level 3 Conjurer
Posts: 87
|
Post by nezach on Jul 27, 2011 13:36:09 GMT -6
When I was starting I would have loved a fantasy procedural generation kit, like LBB Traveller did for planets and creatures. Plenty of useful data generation, but no particular setting so you can skin it to your liking. I'm thinking something like a cut down version of the Random Esoteric Creature Generator, the 1e DMG appendices and articles on random generation, and all of the various and sundry Wilderlands tables and info to have been complied into one book. To get to the main point of the question, the recent article "Champions of ZED" in FO! 12, and the generation stuff from the fan made fantasy version of Traveller - Adventurer: Book 3 docgrognard.blogspot.com/ would be near the top of the pile if I were running a fantasy procedural generation, emergent adventure, sandbox, type thingy for D&D right now. |
|
|
|
Post by blackbarn on Aug 2, 2011 8:14:08 GMT -6
I wish I'd had less stuff when I started ... I acquired extra books and modules as quickly as I could, and in retrospect, I'd rather my head hadn't been filled with other people's takes on D&D quite so soon. Agreed 100%. I kind of wish I still didn't have all those "other" ideas in my head. Nothing against them, but it would be nice to have developed the game around my own interests and influences instead of those of Arneson, Gygax, etc. |
|
|
|
Post by badger2305 on Aug 2, 2011 10:47:32 GMT -6
I hear you, Blackbarn and SD. I must admit, I did not buy modules when they first appeared. Frankly, it seemed a little weird to me to buy an adventure when you could make them up yourself. The closest I got was buying City-State of the Invincible Overlord, which was a sandbox waiting for things to be done with it. Even then, I found a lot of what was there to be a little weird.
Having said that, isn't there ANY material that appeared in The Strategic Review or The Dragon or White Dwarf (in its pre-GW "house organ" days) that you might have found useful? Think about Best of The Dragon Vol. I or II - would you have picked either of those up?
|
|
|
|
Post by geoffrey on Aug 2, 2011 17:04:55 GMT -6
something like a cut down version of the Random Esoteric Creature Generator... How about Paul Montgomery Crabaugh's 2-page article, "Random Monsters" in The Dragon #10 (Oct. 1977)? It's also reprinted in the first volume of The Best of The Dragon.  |
|
|
|
Post by coffee on Aug 3, 2011 15:54:13 GMT -6
something like a cut down version of the Random Esoteric Creature Generator... How about Paul Montgomery Crabaugh's 2-page article, "Random Monsters" in The Dragon #10 (Oct. 1977)? It's also reprinted in the first volume of The Best of The Dragon. Hear, hear! That was a great article! (My favorite was the chance for an undead monster to be able to turn Clerics...) |
|
|
|
Post by kent on Aug 4, 2011 14:13:23 GMT -6
Paul Vernon's three part article The Town Planner [White Dwarf 31,32,33] is the best gaming advice Ive read for embedding mediaeval villages, towns and cities in a campaign. He really knows his material - 'What does a Reeve do exactly?' and so on.
He also specifically addresses the economic inconsistencies between weapons and armour and the craftsmen's wages in AD&D.
You might know him as the author of Trouble at Embertrees [White Dwarf adventure] and the campaign supplement Starstone which is very hard to get hold of but truly great.
|
|
sd
Level 1 Medium
Invincible Overlord
Posts: 23
|
Post by sd on Aug 5, 2011 22:18:27 GMT -6
Having said that, isn't there ANY material that appeared in The Strategic Review or The Dragon or White Dwarf (in its pre-GW "house organ" days) that you might have found useful? Think about Best of The Dragon Vol. I or II - would you have picked either of those up? I started with Moldvay, so much of the Strategic Review material aimed at clarifying OD&D (or detailing some weird-ass thing called "Tekumel" ) would have flown right over my head, as would (and did) much of the material in Best I & II. I actually think the earliest "mature" Dragon articles, even the good ones, are harmful to a nascent DM's imaginative faculties - endless subclasses, rules additions, appeals to authority, and pronouncements from officialdom rather than just saying "figure it out yourself, dude, you can read, and you can read things OTHER THAN D&D." (Which, granted, is probably the least lucrative approach to a generally non-lucrative field.) Now that I think about it, I can think of exactly what I wish I'd had, because I'm still actively acquiring it - I wish I'd had every book listed in the Moldvay and DMG "inspirational reading" appendices. I've got more mileage out of classic fantasy lit (and capital-L "Literature") than any game product ever published. (I think every flea market book vendor and used bookstore within 100 miles of wherever I was living got sick of seeing me prowling around when I was a kid.) EDIT: The early White Dwarf articles about starting a campaign milieu - Lew Pulsipher maybe? - are probably the best early articles of that sort I can remember. Those might be nice. |
|
nezach
Level 3 Conjurer
Posts: 87
|
Post by nezach on Aug 6, 2011 13:48:46 GMT -6
How about Paul Montgomery Crabaugh's 2-page article, "Random Monsters" in The Dragon #10 (Oct. 1977)? It's also reprinted in the first volume of The Best of The Dragon. Yes! Something like that would have been great. I didn't have access to that article back in the day (or the gumption to whip up a similar chart), so I just used Gamma World as a starting point for our goofball "out there" monsters. |
|
|
|
Post by sulldawga on Aug 7, 2011 13:40:06 GMT -6
Paul Vernon's three part article The Town Planner [White Dwarf 31,32,33] is the best gaming advice Ive read for embedding mediaeval villages, towns and cities in a campaign. He really knows his material - 'What does a Reeve do exactly?' and so on. He also specifically addresses the economic inconsistencies between weapons and armour and the craftsmen's wages in AD&D. I also enjoyed the Fief and Town publications from Cumberland Games. Not specifically written for OD&D games but definitely written with gamers in mind. Lots of great historical nuggets of information, including prices on all sorts of items that a GM might want. www222.pair.com/sjohn/fief.htm |
|
)
