rjkuntz
Level 5 Thaumaturgist
Pioneer of OD&D
Posts: 345
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Post by rjkuntz on Dec 4, 2012 19:13:43 GMT -6
Gary Gygax' quote from OD&D, Volume 3, page 24
"OTHER WORLDS
"There should be no natural laws which are certain. Space could be passable because it is filled with breathable air. On the other hand the stars could be tiny lights only a few hundred miles away. Some area of land could be gates into other worlds, dimensions, times, or whatever. Mars is given in these rules, but some other fantastic world or setting could be equally as possible. This function is up to the referee, and what he wishes to do with it is necessarily limited by his other campaign work. However, this factor can be gradually added, so that no sudden burden will be placed upon the referee."
So. How many of us here, now 38 years after this was introduced, have adventured in, "other worlds, dimensions, times, or whatever,"as Gary suggested we could?
I am really interested in this, not trying to be funny, just intent on the historicity of it all.
Thanks in advance!
Rob
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Post by mgtremaine on Dec 4, 2012 20:14:10 GMT -6
I have Let's see as player I remember 20th Century Land where the party brought back Uzi's, Boom Boxes, Batteries and Flashlights. As I recalled you can buy a lot of stuff at Tower Records with Gold Coins! [That game was in 1984.] I also remember other "off-world" adventures, one where magic was different and they found the fact that I could teleport with out accompany noise very strange and sort of unsporting. [In that world teleport sounded like a bus traveling at 100 mph at you....] Another to a planet that was basically sentient to retrieve some metal from it for an intelligent sword. There was many more, in the mid to high levels it was pretty common to go world hopping in a couple DM's games. In my current game world the outer planes are the other worlds with pocket planes and basically infinite possibilities. Here is blurb from my notes about the stars since you quoted EGG. The Stars which are visible in the night sky are perhaps less mysterious yet more complex in their nature. The exact number is unknown but many sages place it above 10,000 classified stars. The problem is that Stars seem to come and go and while many are stationary others are transitory. The main stars that are used for navigation are the handful of stationary stars, these fixed points in the sky are known to be celestial palaces and keeps of divine beings. Although the Elves who's memory is the longest claim that these have moved at times in the past it is generally accepted that they are unmoving and eternal. The transitory stars are more perplexing to the mortal observer. Many seem in orbit of the stationary stars, yet others follow their own journey through the sky, which can be precise or wandering. Could these be ships, divine beings, artifacts of great power, or all the above? Without direct observation of each of the thousands and thousands it is unknowable. Attached is a star map.. -Mike Attachments:
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rjkuntz
Level 5 Thaumaturgist
Pioneer of OD&D
Posts: 345
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Post by rjkuntz on Dec 4, 2012 21:22:54 GMT -6
Hey, Great map, btw! Ordium is a good name. Summons some interesting images mixed with SF. I like your play style! And you are so matter-of-fact, so it's obvious that such a level of play is just an extension of, well, PLAY. Thanks for chiming in Mike. Oh, btw, do you still maintain a game at HLP? Cheers! Rob
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Post by mgtremaine on Dec 4, 2012 22:24:33 GMT -6
Hey, thank you for posting here! Your posts are always thought provoking, I am interested in see some more answers on this one. Actually in remembering some these games it reminded me I should do an "off-world" adventure for my son. He running a solo wizard right now outside of the main group game and there will a perfect opportunity to hit him with a plane shift/gate and send him somewhere weird , I've put on my thinking cap. [He's only 4th level but he's been lucky, and clever, I love seeing him think up uses for spells.] With regards to HLP, not currently. The original high level game with multiple DM's and world hopping ground to slow halt in 1994/5. I was holding the DM chair at the time ... Wedding, jobs, children and for one our gang military service called. They starting playing Magic more often as a quick and easy game night and then even that stopped. They played WOW online, but I resisted that, just not my thing. I waited for my chance and watch as my son grow older..... In the summer of 2009 it was time to try again, my son was 8 and I put out feelers and managed to cobble together a group of old guys and a few kids. Fast forward to now and the group is ranging between 7th and 9th level . The more committed players have gathered a few retainers and small freeholds have cropped up. My son's knight is eyeing the ruined castle they have been adventuring in for awhile and making noises about rebuilding it. Now if they can get rid of the Dragon beneath it... [We've got two games, one on 12/16 and then again on 1/6, lined up that should resolve the current arc. Hopefully they will all survive.]
So the game is dead, long live the game! I do think that eventually some of the real old characters will get a chance to play again. Once the new crop is higher level it will be fun to draw in at least one old Wizard King who has been at peace for far too long. [Plus as I recall the demon lord who he last tangled with was only banished for 100 years that sounds like a loose thread right there.]
-Mike
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Post by chrisj on Dec 5, 2012 8:04:01 GMT -6
One of my games featured an old west city inside a bottle called "Bottle City." The adventurers found the bottle on a shelf in a wizard's study inside a megadungeon and were transported to Bottle City when they touched the bottle. Bottle City was a movie lot style western town. The characters encountered a grizzly old prospector/wizard who promised to get them out of Bottle City in exchange for recovering a magical tome from a gang of outlaws. Bottle City had a railroad line that would take the characters to a sinister-sounding "back east" if they so chose. They did not because it sounded too scary.
I used straight OD&D rules with the price list from Boot Hill. There was much sneaking, stealing, threatening, and negotiating, but no gunplay. I believe the players were under the impression that guns would be deadly. In reality they would have done a standard d6.
Definitely a very fun time.
I'm not sure if I stole the name Bottle City from you, Rob, as I wasn't consciously aware of that product until recently.
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rjkuntz
Level 5 Thaumaturgist
Pioneer of OD&D
Posts: 345
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Post by rjkuntz on Dec 5, 2012 12:49:40 GMT -6
Hi Chris-- Well-it seems as if you and your group were playing a version of "Deadlands" way in advance of same. I love it! Railroad back east. "Scary?" You must have been a DM that built in mood. heh? Yep. Straight OD&D. Proving once again my contention that's it's--as Gary said in the intro and as we experienced in the play-tests--it's "Fantasy"; it may have been sold as S&S Fantasy, but that wasn't where the concepts of "using imagination" in concert with "RP" ended by any means. Stole BC.? Heh. I lifted it from the Kandor storyline & combined from the "Incredible Shrinking Man." The latter really put it in perspective. In fact, your Bottle City sounds like a lot of fun. I want to take that railroad line east, now. Seriously. Find Fu Man Chu or something. I hope you still have the notes and maps, if any, and also hope to hear some more about it sometime. Here's a link to an old blog entry (2 years ago) of mine describing what influenced OD&D (media wise). lordofthegreendragons.blogspot.com/2010/10/taking-d-back-to-its-future-level-part.htmlThanks for posting! Rob
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benoist
Level 5 Thaumaturgist
OD&D, AD&D, AS&SH
Posts: 346
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Post by benoist on Dec 5, 2012 13:13:40 GMT -6
I'm afraid of revealing too much on these boards because I know some of my players are watching, Rob, but I do very much like that aspect of the underworld exploration: teleporting into different dimensions, times and places, other universes, stars and planets. It's all on the table for me and I like the opportunities that presents to keep things fresh in the game.
Not to go too much on spoiler tags, I always wanted to have the opportunity to fight the good old Indiana Jones nazi scum of pulp fiction as fantasy characters. So one of the multi-world spanning conspiracies of my multiverse, the Enrill, is a cabal of mages who basically came into contact with things (entities or anti-gods) that were not meant to be, and basically want to make them pierce into the realms of existence, and amongst them you'll find some of those nazi scum of the Ahnenerbe, the Society of the Vril, the Thule Gesellschaft and all these nasty guys...
In fact, all my campaigns take place in the multiverse of the Enrill. The players might not know it, but whether we are playing D&D, Call of Cthulhu, Vampire, Mythus, what-have-you... we're basically playing in the same multiverse inspired by a variety of sources, like Monte Cook's Praemal, the alternate Earths of EGG and the like. Now the players might never know, but there are some motifs and connections between all my campaigns and settings. Some NPC might be a reincarnation of another NPC from another game and setting. Or there might be gates between the worlds. Or some specific item or character that made it through from one world to the next. It's something that helps me imagine the multiverse and make sense of all it is that we play. But that's not something that's come to the forefront of any of my different games yet. Maybe soon.
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rjkuntz
Level 5 Thaumaturgist
Pioneer of OD&D
Posts: 345
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Post by rjkuntz on Dec 5, 2012 13:29:41 GMT -6
Sounds very cool, Ben. Multiverse is definitely what our Original campaign was becoming due to me working in ties through dimensions WoG<>WoK, and later as I fleshed out the TIME deal via the Maure as had been occurring on a few nuanced levels beforehand (Cosmodius was a time traveller Jim Ward ran into 1975 as Bombadil). Probably less "dimensional" in the sense of portability in all directions as you have conceived, but very away from static concepts of One World View only, way away. Go for killing the Nazi Scum! Thanks for posting and I hope to see more insights from your quarter, as I know you have 'em. Rob
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benoist
Level 5 Thaumaturgist
OD&D, AD&D, AS&SH
Posts: 346
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Post by benoist on Dec 5, 2012 13:52:17 GMT -6
My pleasure Rob. I'm glad to see you post here these days. Very cool. When I read this thread I can't help but think about how D&D's gotten formulaic with the years. I mean. At the beginning, and it's visible to me via your input, Michael's and so on, there was this enthusiasm for the cheer possibilities the game offered and anything, any possibility to just get something cool out of the game was on the table. Whether that was Alice in Wonderland, or pulling some plastic toy and going "here's the rust monster!", I feel like there was an embrace of just how open the possibilities were with the game. I like that, and like to conceive my games and levels and what-have-you with that in mind. All the time. I guess many people would think of it as "thinking outside the box", outside of convention or tradition, but isn't that actually playing very much within the original box, and what it was intended to accomplish for people that grabbed its contents and just ran with them? Maybe D&D's victim of its own success in that regard. Like it's become a "genre" of its own and there's all sorts of implications of "canon" or what "feels like D&D" and what doesn't. I'm myself very much like this when it comes to some aspects of the game, as I look at the recent efforts to publish yet-another-iteration-of-the-game and don't find there much I'd like to call "D&D". I always liked the TSR phrase of the "worlds of our imaginations" because that's what the game represents to me. A framework or structure that helps enthusiasts use their imagination and come up with something that's coherent to them and feels like other times and places and worlds really. Ah. Maybe I'm way off topic here. But I always liked this passage you just quoted in your OP. It seems to encapsulate perfectly that spirit of "going where no man has gone before" that makes the prospect of playing the game so endearing to me.
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Post by chrisj on Dec 5, 2012 13:59:08 GMT -6
Hi Rob,
The game was actually only a couple of years ago. The whole thing was pretty much off the cuff and inspired by a nicely drawn stylized map of a western town I found on the Internet. I've got some ideas about "back east", but kind of prefer to leave it a mystery even to me for now. It's definitely a concept I want to revisit at some point.
Chris
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rjkuntz
Level 5 Thaumaturgist
Pioneer of OD&D
Posts: 345
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Post by rjkuntz on Dec 5, 2012 14:11:26 GMT -6
My pleasure Rob. I'm glad to see you post here these days. Very cool. When I read this thread I can't help but think about how D&D's gotten formulaic with the years. I mean. At the beginning, and it's visible to me via your input, Michael's and so on, there was this enthusiasm for the cheer possibilities the game offered and anything, any possibility to just get something cool out of the game was on the table. Whether that was Alice in Wonderland, or pulling some plastic toy and going "here's the rust monster!", I feel like there was an embrace of just how open the possibilities were with the game. I like that, and like to conceive my games and levels and what-have-you with that in mind. All the time. I guess many people would think of it as "thinking outside the box", outside of convention or tradition, but isn't that actually playing very much within the original box, and what it was intended to accomplish for people that grabbed its contents and just ran with them? Maybe D&D's victim of its own success in that regard. Like it's become a "genre" of its own and there's all sorts of implications of "canon" or what "feels like D&D" and what doesn't. I'm myself very much like this when it comes to some aspects of the game, as I look at the recent efforts to publish yet-another-iteration-of-the-game and don't find there much I'd like to call "D&D". I always liked the TSR phrase of the "worlds of our imaginations" because that's what the game represents to me. A framework or structure that helps enthusiasts use their imagination and come up with something that's coherent to them and feels like other times and places and worlds really. Ah. Maybe I'm way off topic here. But I always liked this passage you just quoted in your OP. It seems to encapsulate perfectly that spirit of "going where no man has gone before" that makes the prospect of playing the game so endearing to me. "Maybe D&D's victim of its own success in that regard."You win the Magic Cookie as awarded by the Great God Rickles! The enchantment became mass marketed, homogenized, done for you rather than by oneself ("game as consumer" rather than "game as creator"). This has perforce (as I indicated in my interview at Hill Cantons about a year ago) essentially built receivers/disposers of premade content and pushed the creation side from at first (1974) 100% to an inverted (late 80's onward) of less than 10% I am sure. This type of mind shift of what an RPG concept is (as opposed to the templates laid atop it) has now reached a generational level of departure and its consequences have been showing for many years previous to this. I have more on this in a book I'm writing, "Form and Formula in RPGs" You always push the boundaries, Ben, which I find refreshing; I've read some of your stuff on the RPGSite (and have also read some not too nice things there, too, not from you, just to clarify). It's great to be back to creating full time and to exchanging creative commentary. My health was very nip-n-tuck over 1 1/2 years but has finally squared. Rob
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benoist
Level 5 Thaumaturgist
OD&D, AD&D, AS&SH
Posts: 346
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Post by benoist on Dec 5, 2012 18:34:19 GMT -6
"Maybe D&D's victim of its own success in that regard."You win the Magic Cookie as awarded by the Great God Rickles! The enchantment became mass marketed, homogenized, done for you rather than by oneself ("game as consumer" rather than "game as creator"). This has perforce (as I indicated in my interview at Hill Cantons about a year ago) essentially built receivers/disposers of premade content and pushed the creation side from at first (1974) 100% to an inverted (late 80's onward) of less than 10% I am sure. This type of mind shift of what an RPG concept is (as opposed to the templates laid atop them) has now reached a generational level of departure and its consequences have been showing for many years previous to this. I have more on this in a book I'm writing, "Form and Formula in RPGs" Is it possible to close Pandora's box, though, at this point? I seems to me that the D&D "brand", since now that's what it is for the guys behind it, is screwed. It's something that whoever owns it will want to shield against infringement and milk for the dollars it represents. It's almost like kryptonite, as far as actual creativity's concerned. In that sense the hobbyists are really the guys that matter and will continue to really matter for the game, I think. Maybe that's what we're seeing with the clones and this place and all that: the schism between the brand, and the creative outlet finally consumed. So ... there would be no way back for D&D(tm). It's done. You always push the boundaries, Ben, which I find refreshing; I've read some of your stuff on the RPGSite (and have also read some not too nice things there, too, not from you, just to clarify). Thanks Rob. You know I feel the same about you. Ahhh now, The RPG Site. The hive of scum and villainy of the gaming internet. ;D I have to say I really like the place. Perhaps for the very reason so many seem to have a problem with it. It's like being in the Cantina, you know. You are drinking at the bar some ale from some obscure star system, and you never know when the old bearded weirdo is going to show up with a kid and pull a lightsaber from under his robes. It's great to be back to creating full time and to exchanging creative commentary. My health was very nip-n-tuck over 1 1/2 years but has finally squared. Rob I am really glad to read it! I'm bursting with ideas too, lately. Too... much... going on! But it's good. Makes me feel alive. We will need to catch up and chat a bit you and I at some point.
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rjkuntz
Level 5 Thaumaturgist
Pioneer of OD&D
Posts: 345
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Post by rjkuntz on Dec 5, 2012 19:42:29 GMT -6
Pretty much. They vested in the nicklel-up-yur-arse-at-a-time route, milking it for all it was worth and keeping it dumbed down and complicated to shy folks away from "the man behind the curtain" who has the answer: just create. In doing so they stripped the game of its non-competitive feature (open creation and play) and became equal with other industry-entertainment players through competitive features. Thus they became "just another entertainment vehicle" and are being squashed because of that by the thousands of entertainment alternatives one has to compete with under that model, the big one being online/computer games.
However, the current "creative foray" best understand that past; and I have now seen similarities in it <> WotC it for years now. The why of this is because by going back to the past they are adopting the same model (TSR 1978 forward) that WotC actually perfected later on. This cycle of disposability of creativity did not start with WotC, it was only taken to its limits by them.
It's a conundrum, I'll admit to that. The best thing to do is to create. But if we find our creations being limited by the market demand, this is where you'll note that the model is still working and that the people engendering it, no matter WotC or other (small or large), don't want to remove the sides of the illusion box, either. That's what you get when "you are what you consume, so you always gravitate to what you are."
Yes, we should chat. You have my number; or I could set up another Skype account (lost the old one when the older Mac finally quit).
Best,
Rob
PS--I am quite partial to your posts there (RPGSite), Pundits (who you go around with, I see), Settimbrini and the other German fellow from the Prussian Blog/Site, Abyssal Maw and a few others I cannot now recall. There's some interesting perspectives there if you weed out all the longish posts and diatribes. Same as anywhere, I suppose.
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aramis
Level 4 Theurgist
Posts: 170
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Post by aramis on Dec 8, 2012 2:34:45 GMT -6
So. How many of us here, now 38 years after this was introduced, have adventured in, "other worlds, dimensions, times, or whatever,"as Gary suggested we could? Not often, but I have run an AD&D 2E game with Spelljammer in use, and a couple of 1E games that dabbled in planar travels. I found that planar difference games really got to be too much work. Spell Jammer, given that it's much more consistent, was less work, but still too much for my tastes. As for "whole campaigns in other worlds" using D&D rules - no, not really. Other games, sure... but none where the basic physics were obviously divergent save for FTL and gravitics.
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Post by Sean Michael Kelly on Dec 8, 2012 6:42:28 GMT -6
I've run campaigns that have dropped the players into Boot Hill, Star Frontiers (once), but my favorite was dropping them magic-less and weaponless into an abandoned warehouse in "Lakefront City" only to have crashed a bathtub gin operation...
Of course, I also have some of my players currently in a mystical cavern system that has legends of doors to other worlds. They've been seeking this portal or portals by following strange symbols resembling a red star in the midst of other stars... Once, they stumbled upon an abandoned temple with crude statues of 4-armed humanoids. Could those be tusks or just the remnants of what was once the helm of a warrior on that crumbling statue?
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Post by Vile Traveller on Dec 8, 2012 7:04:04 GMT -6
For a long time in the 80s I ran a campaign where modern(ish)-day characters were somehow dropped into Middle Earth. PC mortality was very high for some reason, so I had to come up with all kinds of different eras and entry means for new characters. One of my favourites was when I took a bunch of 1920's adventurers who thought they were going on a trip with an eccentric explorer uncle, (think Cthulhu Green and Pleasant Land meets Biggles) and sent them through Mythago Wood - ending up in a near-abandoned 4th Age Rivendell. Those were some fun games, hunting orcs with Webley revolvers and SMLEs ...
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Post by Zenopus on Dec 8, 2012 9:22:22 GMT -6
Awesome! That's one of my favorite fantasy novels, up there with The Hobbit as a timeless classic.
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rjkuntz
Level 5 Thaumaturgist
Pioneer of OD&D
Posts: 345
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Post by rjkuntz on Dec 8, 2012 11:55:15 GMT -6
For a long time in the 80s I ran a campaign where modern(ish)-day characters were somehow dropped into Middle Earth. PC mortality was very high for some reason, so I had to come up with all kinds of different eras and entry means for new characters. One of my favourites was when I took a bunch of 1920's adventurers who thought they were going on a trip with an eccentric explorer uncle, (think Cthulhu Green and Pleasant Land meets Biggles) and sent them through Mythago Wood - ending up in a near-abandoned 4th Age Rivendell. Those were some fun games, hunting orcs with Webley revolvers and SMLEs ... Precious... Holdstock has quite an imagination. I will have to read him. Thanks! PS--They did intimate in LotR that there would be a mopping up process in the North for those hold-out orcs, etc. However, no one knew that it would be your group doing so! Rob
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Post by grodog on Dec 11, 2012 0:53:27 GMT -6
Over in the High Level Play thread I mentioned that in college at Penn State, I played in a fun, planes-travelling "team" of world-savers united in common cause, but otherwise at each others throats throughout most of the adventures our DM crafted: we had paladins and good clerics rubbing shoulders with assassins, witches, and demonologists. I'll post some summary details in the Other Worlds thread after I dig up my PC notes about our planar explorations/adventures. So, here's the promised planar/adventures summary. But first, some context: our play group was consistently large (usually 8-12 people + 1 DM), and we often played 2-4 times per week whenever our scheduled permitted it, usually for 4-12 hours at a pop (longer on weekends, shorter during the week when we could do so); our DM created his own adventures (but sometimes used published scenarios for ideas, some of which you might recognize below), and often mixed media into the games to help set the sensory experience of the PCs (mood music for critical battle/action scenes, background music, candles/Christmas lights, incense for temples, etc.; we were a fairly immersive group of role-players, although we didn't quite verge into LARPing IMO ); he didn't use racial restrictions or level limits, but also didn't allow any multi- or dual-classing (except for exceptional NPCs!); I started play as a level 7 MU, in medias res 2 levels below the average party level, and 3 levels below the highest level PCs already in the party, and I was attacked by the strongest player in the party during my first night (he was playing a 10th level fantra wielding an intelligent, evil sword of wounding)! So, here's the planar component to our game. The previous (I think two-year?) campaign had concluded the spring semester before I arrived at PSU, and was an extended campaign against the forces of a singular creature of personal, corrosive evil, who tried to turn the PCs against one another, threw moral quandries at them left and right, and otherwise pushed the boundaries of role-playing wherever possible. The players and DM were ready for a change of pace, so the DM picked up the new year's campaign with fallout from the previous one: recovering a magical artifact known as the Octagon had been part of the previous villain's plans (IIRC), so the PCs decided to recover this artifact "on their own." However, each PC was in fact directly or indirectly sponsored by one or more organizations, cults, gods, demons, organizations, guilds, or whatever (varying according to each PC's inclinations/personality/background; I was serving Fraz'Urb-luu, in opposition to Lolth, who was represented by an assassin played by one of the women in the group). The adventures revolved around the quests to find and locate the pieces of the Octagon (which IIRC pointed toward one another a la The Rod of Seven Parts, which helped somewhat less that it sounds like it should, since we were often many planes removed from where we needed to go to find the next piece, and spent quite a bit of time and effort trying to figure out where/how to go where we needed to be via consultation with sages, oracles, etc.). The Octagon itself was the key to reality (reality as an octahedron, of sorts), and would allow whoever wielded it (at the time of its re-assembly) to rewrite reality in his/her/its own image (to some degree, in theory). (Some of this may have also been inspired by the Stormbringer/Eternal Champion adventure The Octagon of Chaos, from Theatre of the Mind [TOME], but I'm not sure, since I haven't read that module). The campaign's planar setting was a non-scientific, pure fantasy one: the main Prime plane was divided into several layers, a la Farmer's World of Tiers (although I don't think it was inspired by Farmer's works specifically; lots of Moorcock, Hawkwind, Tangerine Dream, Roger Dean Yes art, etc.), and included Ilryhael (sp?? = pronounced "ihll RYE uhll") which was the campagin proper's main stage/setting, Hypolithia (perhaps predictably the level located below Ilryhael ), and various others too. The adventures we played over the next 3+ years included at least these planar settings (I'm quite sure that I'm forgetting some, atm): - The Sea of Dreams: this is where I entered the campaign, and the plane itself was a waterworld, with the immediate environs being a huge seaweed spiral filled with aquatic (or aerial) encounters; wrecked ships of various kinds (nautical, space, etc.) to find, explore, and loot; and a gigantic oriental dragon that ruled the place. The PCs were travelling around in sort sort of airship zeppelin (a cross between Nemo's Nautilus and Roger Dean's Yes ship on Fragile and Close to the Edge), and discovered my PC encased in a block of Astral Ice (for 500 years, at it turned out!) on a wrecked ship. This was inspired by whatever old "sargasso sea" film inspired the similar idea from the World of Greyhawk boxed set - Aegypt 1918: the next planar "leg" was an Egyptian themed adventure set in a fantasy version of Egypt in which the British still "ruled" it (or was that Nephren Ka!). We had a lot of NPC foes in this one (and in most adventures---we would fight large monster like dragons, sea monsters, etc. from time to time, but our primary foes were each other, our patron organizations, and a huge cast of NPCs we mowed our way through over the course of the game) = Taharka (torturer?), Sharu (high priest of Anubis), Suskit-Ray (Phararoh), Fr. Blackwood (EHP of Nyarlathotep), Osorcon (court mage), Nectineebo (EHP of Set), and others I'm sure I didn't make specific note of. IIRC, this is why my demonologist PC acquired a copy of Al Azif!.... - an adventure in Illrhael (and elsewhere), against Dr. LeFortex (enemy, member of the Clockwork League, possible weretiger?) and Ambrose (high-level MU who tried to poison us all); I don't remember or have many notes on this one, offhand. LeFortex and Ambrose survived the adventure and became a thorn in our side for quite awhile, IIRC, though. - Don Donalbain, a Welsh/Celtic environs adventure: we were chased around by the Wild Hunt, as well as a big nasty nuklevee (sp?), and it scared the bejeezus out of us IRL; NPCs = Maderiodigrayne (leper), Mhrryndell Willowane (all-around bastard screwing us over again), Etainiddawc (not a very nice person regent who was going to betray us later in the adventure---we recognized him for what he would become and preemptively destroyed his keep and political powerbase within a few turns of meeting him for the first time ;D ), Adalady Hecubah ("good" witch), Banton (?); this was very much a CoC-style D&D adventure---we learned more than we wanted to about the role of the Great Old Ones and the Outer Gods in the campaign.... - Limbo: this was, perhaps, the finale adventure for The Octagon, in which the PCs all vied to , and the "final" mysteries of the creation cycles of Ilryhael were revealed. We fought slaad, and various other long-term villains of the campaign, while racing across the planes to locate the Last Phrain (or however it was spelled)---which were a race of proto-elves Melinibonean-like in their potency. Then the final race to the last piece of the Octagon itself, which resulted in a multi-tiered showdown between the PCs, NPCs, patrons, and the forces guarding/controlling the Octagon, too. By the time the game ended, as a 17th level MU I was one of the top 2-3 most powerful PCs in the group, and our cabal was able to lord it over lower-level good PCs with some relative impunity most of the time (which was good for my 19-20 year old ego, I'm sure ). I'm hoping to get together with some of our group while back home over the holidays, if only to review some of our old war stories together, since I doubt it's likely we'd be able to gather sufficient critical mass to actually play a game with the original cast of PCs.
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rjkuntz
Level 5 Thaumaturgist
Pioneer of OD&D
Posts: 345
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Post by rjkuntz on Dec 11, 2012 13:07:35 GMT -6
Not much to say for this recounting beyond, wow, what a great ongoing foray into imaginative extrapolation! Your group would have made neighboring kids jealous and wanting to join in.
I am of course pretty convinced that kids have more imaginative flair than adults, the latter being forced to fight to retain as much as they can in reaction to pressures and stigmatism prevalent in society. Kids take chances, they include so much matter in their fantasies, seemingly like your group was doing.
A really splendid recounting, Grodog. Thanks for taking time out of your usual hectic schedule to post this!
RJK
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Alex
Level 3 Conjurer
Posts: 92
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Post by Alex on Dec 12, 2012 11:34:56 GMT -6
All of my games have each been in a unique world/universe of their own. I recall from my youth one that had a great wall that resembled the much later Game of Thrones great northern wall, complete with the undead. I created a Ring World where the world was on the /outside/ of the Ring and the sun traveled around it so slowly a single diurnal cycle lasted 100 years (i.e., when night falls, it stays for 50 years) and most of the world's inhabitants were nomadic trying to avoid the fall of night (since the really BAD stuff hates sunlight and migrates with the long night). Another was an infinite world of endless ocean and the lands of every published and made up setting I knew of existed within it so it was possible to pass from one setting to another by sailing for a few months (or teleporting, provided you were aware of your destination). My friend Jimm is having me share his campaign world for our OD&D games. They take place on Planet Eris, which is the fantastical (ala Barsoom) envisioning of the so-called 10th planet, a dwarf planet about the size of Pluto but with a more distant orbit. He's included Space Wizards from Pluto and I've included the Greys of UFOlogy as well as some great stuff from David Cook and Frank Mentzer that come from the Dimension of Nightmares.
I haven't had a single campaign that world-hops, but I've definitely done plenty of Not-Just-Another-Medieval-Europe Tolkien-Clone settings.
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rjkuntz
Level 5 Thaumaturgist
Pioneer of OD&D
Posts: 345
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Post by rjkuntz on Dec 12, 2012 12:52:15 GMT -6
Great post Alex. "I haven't had a single campaign that world-hops, but I've definitely done plenty of Not-Just-Another-Medieval-Europe Tolkien-Clone settings." Well, that's the point, eh? And well said. It's not about going to the weird, but bringing it to us. Some DMs feel more comfortable with having excursions, as most I assume plan their game about the all too recurrent Medieval vs. and the good and bad trope. I'd wager a good 75% at this point. But that's not at all needed if you start out assuming the Weird is just part of it all. I added so many Lovercraftan and Smithian elements to the Original Campaign that it started to take on this aspect, much to al the players' joy, then. Speaking of which I started a new blog with that slant: lakegenevaoriginalrpg.blogspot.com/that will also cover A LOT on the Lake Geneva Games and Gamers, too. 1968 to roughly 1984. Thanks! Eob
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Alex
Level 3 Conjurer
Posts: 92
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Post by Alex on Dec 19, 2012 10:00:18 GMT -6
Allan, you were at PSU? State College or elsewhere? And when? I was there fall 1998 through summer 2000 and I found it nearly impossible to game. There was nobody playing or looking for a game. I was very frustrated and I didn't get to game more until 2004 when I joined a 3E group that, similar to your story, was 8-10 players and started new characters at 8th level. Boy was that a high mortality rate group! Sadly, though it was mostly high level, it was played in the 3E style that "high level is more of the same, but BIGGER!"
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Post by grodog on Dec 21, 2012 0:23:12 GMT -6
Hi Alex---
Yes, I attended PSU from 1987 to 1991, all in State College. I haven't been back there since ~1993 or so, though, so I don't have any real visibility to gaming there after I left. I lived in North halls my first three years, and in an apartment in my final year.
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Post by GRWelsh on Apr 7, 2013 18:54:00 GMT -6
I've been in games where we've gone to the Astral Plane, the Ethereal Plane, the Elemental Plane of Earth, a layer of the Abyss, and numerous alternate Prime Material Planes. The longest running game I was ever in went from 1983 to 2009, a world named Alaria that I share with a friend of mine. He's a great DM. In the early days, when players would "pop back and forth" from one game world to another, it usually wasn't a big deal, but he came with an in-game explanation for it and a means for such travel by way of the Eye of Infinity and the Doorway to Infinity. The Eye was a magical object that served as the 'key' to unlock the Doorway which looked to us like a 'book' -- but once activated, it created a magical doorway-gate into an endless hallway with an endless number of doors. They were doors to alternate Prime Material planes (i.e., other campaign worlds run by different DMs).
He had notes on having the D&D party interact with other alternate dimensions on his own terms, as well, like the 1980's Marvel Universe, Pellucidar/Savage Land, a Mayan temple, the starship Nostromo from ALIEN, a Western shoot-out, haunted graveyard of ships, etc. At one point he did have a group of players -- that I wasn't in -- interact with Gamma World. And some of those ideas did make it into later games that I was in such as "Ghost of the Headless Norseman," and an entire sub-campaign set in the hollow core of the planet.
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rjkuntz
Level 5 Thaumaturgist
Pioneer of OD&D
Posts: 345
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Post by rjkuntz on Apr 7, 2013 19:16:06 GMT -6
Great stuff, Gary! The haunted graveyard of ships sounds intriguing. Those who adventure in strange places reap even stranger rewards and experiences. In our shared campaign it wasn't accumulation of power so much that predominated at such levels, but information and its correct and timely use. This is what I love about Other Worlds/High level play, is that the paradigm shifts dramatically. Folks found that out in my recent Lost City of the Elders adventures at Garycon V. Know when to flee, collect the tidbits of information that are presented, and assess it all in real time. Such things that have survived this long to be challenged at high levels must have had good reasons for their surviving to date. HLP on Other Worlds just adds another dynamic to the "thinking man's" component, one that I find very exciting.
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Post by scottenkainen on Apr 8, 2013 8:18:48 GMT -6
Welcome, Gary Welsh! Canonfire not keeping you busy enough?
~Scott "-enkainen" Casper
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Post by GRWelsh on Apr 8, 2013 9:31:19 GMT -6
Welcome, Gary Welsh! Canonfire not keeping you busy enough? Hi Scott, I've never really had a presence on Canonfire, although I did participate a lot on its predecessor, the GREYtalk Mailing List -- but that was way back in the late 90's. I wonder what ever became of the searchable archive? I remember you from that mailing list, and I noticed you have become somewhat of the de facto archivist for at least some of its posts with your blog. Thanks for that, and also for the welcome! In the past ten years or so, I've posted moreso on boards like Rob's Pied Piper and my friend Scott's Doomsday board. I'm a pre-"From the Ashes" Greyhawk fan in contrast to the more holistic (reconciliationist?) outlook at Canonfire. But I have a lot of fond memories from the GREYtalk List. It was exhilarating when I first got online in late 1996 and discovered the websites of Erik Mona, the Codex, the Australian "The Assassins" campaign, etc. And that was how I discovered the GREYtalk List -- I sent a request off to Gary Holian, and then I was subscribed! What a fine thing to be able to talk to people all over the world about very specific hobbies and interests... I'm sure I take it for granted now, but it really is a wonderful thing.
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Post by GRWelsh on Apr 8, 2013 12:44:50 GMT -6
Those who adventure in strange places reap even stranger rewards and experiences. In our shared campaign it wasn't accumulation of power so much that predominated at such levels, but information and its correct and timely use. This is what I love about Other Worlds/High level play, is that the paradigm shifts dramatically. Folks found that out in my recent Lost City of the Elders adventures at Garycon V. Know when to flee, collect the tidbits of information that are presented, and assess it all in real time. Such things that have survived this long to be challenged at high levels must have had good reasons for their surviving to date. HLP on Other Worlds just adds another dynamic to the "thinking man's" component, one that I find very exciting. Yep, you always make good points about how we should push ourselves and our imaginations... and I completely agree. I have been very fortunate over the years to be in campaigns with success reliant more on the inventiveness and creativity of the players rather than what stats are on the character sheet sitting before them. When players are taken out of the comfortable "good versus evil" tactical fighting genre, that is when it becomes much more challenging but also more memorable. Although I am a player who enjoys purely tactical play, I enjoy the intellectually challenging and 'weird' scenarios too.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
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Post by Deleted on Jun 26, 2013 21:39:27 GMT -6
Gary Gygax' quote from OD&D, Volume 3, page 24"OTHER WORLDS"There should be no natural laws which are certain. Space could be passable because it is filled with breathable air. On the other hand the stars could be tiny lights only a few hundred miles away. Some area of land could be gates into other worlds, dimensions, times, or whatever. Mars is given in these rules, but some other fantastic world or setting could be equally as possible. This function is up to the referee, and what he wishes to do with it is necessarily limited by his other campaign work. However, this factor can be gradually added, so that no sudden burden will be placed upon the referee." So. How many of us here, now 38 years after this was introduced, have adventured in, "other worlds, dimensions, times, or whatever,"as Gary suggested we could? I am really interested in this, not trying to be funny, just intent on the historicity of it all. Thanks in advance! Rob Bitd I liked to send the characters into other worlds from time to time. Once they obtained a map which led them two weeks out into a very hot, very dry desert to some desolate old ruins. After digging in the sand for a couple of days they descended into the dungeons beneath. They went through a doorway, which turned out to be a portal, and came out into a natural cavern where they spent the next several weeks of game time traveling from one alternate world to another. The previous week before the game I assembled a number of unrelated quotes (the list may survive someplace in a box), I don't recall the exact number and in the unnamed intermediary places between worlds they would encounter a quote carved into the rock and when they crossed over the world and the encounters would all be created on the fly inspired in some way by each quote. In each radically different world, the players had to go back to the quote as best they remembered it and learn/grow/figure something out in order to be able to continue and, on several occasions, to avoid a TPK. I got great feedback on that game which included agreement by all the players that they were glad there was no treasure in terms of gold or magic or whatever at the end because “that would have spoiled it.” In my current campaign world, The Ruins of Murkhill, the characters have been into two other worlds (so far) and had to find there way back to the original world. The highest level and longest running character is from one of those other worlds. Another character that is only played now and then is also from one of those other worlds. I like multiple dimensions and alternate realities. The megadungeon beneath The Ruins of Murkhill has many portals. Portals come in different colors and types. The types are as follows: fixed portals which are always found in the same place, moving portals which are found in a specific area of the dungeon but vary in their location within that area, and random portals which can appear any place throughout the dungeons at any time. Every so often in addition to a wandering monster roll, there is a wandering portal roll. The portals show up as a faint shimmer in the air and if players are running/fleeing something they can pass through a portal before they realize that they are. That faint shimmer in the air can be black, brown, red, orange, green, yellow, blue, purple, violet, gray, white, silver, and gold. The color tells you specially or generally where you might be transported modified by the type. I will not detail that information here because the players, one of which is a member of this forum, have so far only limited information.
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