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Post by foster1941 on Feb 20, 2008 23:53:53 GMT -6
To me, Gary's more de Camp/Pratt, Burroughs, and Zelazny than Rob. The two were equally Leiber, Howard, Vance, and Tolkien, IMO. There's also a ton of A. Merritt in Gygax's work; something I don't detect much of in Rob's.
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Post by foster1941 on Feb 20, 2008 19:44:34 GMT -6
Eldritch Wizardry, as Foster put it on K&K I think, was as far as 'official' D&D ever went in the direction of Arduin. Not as good at Arduin at it either. (I'd say that high level 3e also goes in this direction, FWIW, and Tweet and Cook were both big Arduin fans.) Rogueattorney is actually the one who originally said that (though I agree with it and may have also repeated it somewhere...). Supplement II is a mess because it's essentially bits and pieces of three different things all stitched together -- Arneson's "weird science" vibe, Steve Marsh's elemental plane of water (which was edited into general underwater adventuring), and miscellaneous bits and pieces from Gygax that were probably originally intended as Strategic Review articles (the assassin and monk classes and the articles on sages and disease). This makes the supplement harder to pin down (and, IMO, less satisfying) than Supps I or III -- an "all Arneson" supplement containing more of the stuff from FFC, or an "all Marsh" supplement containing more of his planar stuff would've been much better.
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Post by foster1941 on Feb 20, 2008 18:39:17 GMT -6
I'd never read anything by CAS until a couple months ago, and this comparison/contrast was something that really stood out to me when I finally did get around to doing so. Note also that on the one hand RJK is very open in his admiration for CAS, whereas on the other he was one of several high-profile authors conspicuously missing from Gygax's famous Inspirational Reading list (others including C.S. Lewis, Mervyn Peake, E.R. Eddison, James Branch Cabell, George Macdonald, William Morris, etc. -- pretty much the entirety of the literary so-called "adult fantasy" tradition outside of Tolkien and Lord Dunsany).
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Post by foster1941 on Feb 15, 2008 16:43:45 GMT -6
I normally use referee because it's what's in the OD&D boxed set, it's what Traveller has always used, and "dungeonmaster" and "gamemaster" are both just lame and silly (that said, I'll often use the abbreviated versions, DM and GM). Judge is cool because it's (apparently) the term they used in Lake Geneva, and of course Judges Guild, but I can't recall ever using it.
An intriguing (to me) old-school-name-for-guy-who-runs-the-game is "ghod" -- I've seen it listed in synonyms for ref/judge/DM/GM/whatever, but never knew anybody or any game that actually used it. Was this something from 70s amateur-press culture or what?
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Post by foster1941 on Nov 19, 2007 18:29:20 GMT -6
No argument there, but I do like Poul Anderson's work so I'm still going to look for the book. If you're willing to purchase from Amazon's marketplace you can get a copy for $1-2 + shipping (which is usually ~$4). My local used-bookstore-of-choice also usually has a copy or two in-stock.
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Post by foster1941 on Nov 8, 2007 0:28:35 GMT -6
P.S. I'd be interested in seeing the original thread you're referring to here, on the other board. If your sense of propriety prevents you from posting a link in this thread, please PM it to me.
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Post by foster1941 on Nov 8, 2007 0:20:38 GMT -6
While I fully support the notion of what you're talking about (and it's pretty much the only way I'm interested in playing anymore) the "How We Did It As Kids" label is problematic because, as 5 minutes at ENWorld will tell you, people played a lot of different ways as kids, and a lot of people (apparently) had a lot of really terrible experiences playing D&D as kids -- rules-lawyering munchkin players insistent on breaking the game, sadistic powertripping calvinballing killer DMs, completely random-table-generated dungeons without even the barest attempt to add anything unique or interesting, and so on. In fact, it's curious to me why so many people who had such terrible experiences playing the game early on are still playing it...
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Post by foster1941 on Nov 6, 2007 11:19:04 GMT -6
I've got no problem at all with the OD&D boxed set's de facto race-classes (dwarfs and hobbits can only be fighters, all elves are both fighters and mages) but once you add in the thief class the idea goes out the window for me -- I just can't buy the idea of the thief as human-only (especially since, at least in supplement I, humans make, on average, the worst thieves). If the thief class is allowed in one of my games (which is by no means a given) then it's going to be open to all 4 races.
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Post by foster1941 on Dec 4, 2007 15:41:30 GMT -6
You can exalt (or smite...) anyone other than yourself by clicking the appropriate word under their karma count. You can only do it every so often (once an hour? once a day? I don't know) so once you've exalted/smitten somebody the icons will disappear for awhile. Each exalt increases karma by 1, each smite decreases it by 1. It's possible to have negative karma, and I don't believe there's a positive or negative limit. Karma is completely meaningless except as a way for posters to pat each other on the back (or, alternatively, flip the bird).
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Post by foster1941 on Oct 4, 2007 10:51:47 GMT -6
The trend of female gamers being more interested in their character's role within the world/story and less with the technical details and numbers on the sheet matches my experience* (and, FWIW, is the approach that I prefer players, male or female, to have), but I've seen plenty of exceptions to the "women prefer high fantasy to swords & sorcery" and "women prefer fantasy to sf" memes.
*and more broadly, outside of rpgs, women (at least in my experience) tend to be more content-focused and men more form- or technique-focused when approaching art -- be it movies, novels, painting, music, etc. I could probably make all sorts of generalizations on this basis, but instead I'll just leave it standing as a general trend I've observed.
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Post by foster1941 on Aug 30, 2007 11:14:49 GMT -6
That's a really fantastic system, but it, umm, has nothing whatsoever to do with Gary's OD&D house rules from GenCon 2007...
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Post by foster1941 on Aug 23, 2007 12:56:00 GMT -6
That "+1 to move silently" is curious; I wonder what it means -- surely not +1% to a thief's chance to move silently; perhaps +1 to surprise opponents (i.e. surprise on 3 in 6 instead of 2 in 6) but only if you're being quiet (i.e. not in plate armor, not dragging along a mule or dungeon-cart)?
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Post by foster1941 on Sept 4, 2007 20:51:56 GMT -6
Trimmed list, per Fin's instructions: - Gary Gygax (D&D books and modules -- as a "second generation" D&Der (i.e. started playing in the 80s), Gygax's D&D books and modules themselves were my primary influence, at least in the early years, and I discovered fantasy and swords & sorcery literature through them, rather than the other way around)
- A. Merritt (everything, but if you want some specific titles: The Moon Pool, The Face in the Abyss, The Ship of Ishtar, Seven Footprints to Satan, Dwellers in the Mirage)
- Philip Jose Farmer ("World of Tiers" series)
- Gardner F. Fox (Kothar series -- these Howard-pastiche/ripoff stories feel more "like D&D" to me than Howard's actual stories (and are better than the pastiches by de Camp, Carter, et al.))
- Joseph Campbell (The Hero With a Thousand Faces)
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Post by foster1941 on Aug 16, 2007 16:48:23 GMT -6
Have you read The Blue Star by Fletcher Pratt (sans de Camp)? Good stuff!
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Post by foster1941 on Aug 16, 2007 1:07:07 GMT -6
In the 80s (as a kid/teenager): Gary Gygax (D&D books/modules, Gord novels) Michael Moorcock (Elric series) L. Sprague de Camp (edited Conan series w/ REH & Lin Carter, Harold Shea series w/ Fletcher Pratt, Lest Darkness Fall) J.R.R. Tolkien (Hobbit, LotR) Terry Brooks (Elfstones of Shanarra) Fritz Leiber (Fafhrd & Gray Mouser series) Roger Zelazny (Amber series) Poul Anderson (Three Hearts & Three Lions, The High Crusade) H.P. Lovecraft (Cthulhu Mythos stories) T.H. White (The Once & Future King) movies (Star Wars, Excalibur, Conan the Barbarian, Conan the Destroyer, Monty Python & the Holy Grail, etc.) music (The Clash, The d**ned, Iron Maiden, Jethro Tull; Beethoven, Berlioz, Dvorak, Elgar, Mahler, Mussorgsky, Orff, Rimsky-Korsakov, R. Strauss, Tchaikovsky, Wagner, etc.)
nowadays (as an adult (at least ostensibly)): A. Merritt (everything) Philip Jose Farmer (World of Tiers series) Robert Howard (original Conan series, Soloman Kane series) Edgar Rice Burroughs (Barsoom series) Gardner Fox (Kothar series) Poul Anderson (The Broken Sword) Jack Vance (Dying Earth series) Roger Zelazny (Jack of Shadows) Lord Dunsany (stories, The King of Elfland's Daughter) Gene Wolfe (Book of the New Sun) Fletcher Pratt (The Blue Star) John Bellairs (The Face in the Frost) Margaret St. Clair (Shadow People, Sign of the Labrys) Fred Saberhagen (Empire of the East series) Andre Norton (Witch World series) Joseph Campbell (Hero with a Thousand Faces) real-world mythology, history, folklore "legit" fiction (Balzac, Borges, Carroll, Conrad, Dickens, Diderot, Dumas, Faulkner, Garcia-Marquez, Greene, Hardy, Hesse, Hemingway, Hugo, Kafka, Melville, Pynchon, Steinbeck, Stendhal, Twain, Voltaire, Zola, etc.) movies (Harryhausen, Disney, King Kong, The Wizard of Oz; Bava, Bergman, Bresson, Bunuel, Cronenberg, De Palma, Eastwood, Fassbinder, Fellini, Ford, Hawks, Herzog, Hitchcock, Kubrick, Kurosawa, Lang, Leone, Lynch, Malick, Milius, Mizoguchi, Pasolini, Rivette, Rohmer, Rossellini, Tarkovsky, Verhoeven, Welles, Wenders, etc.) music (Aphex Twin, David Bowie, Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Fairport Convention, Genesis, King Crimson, Roxy Music, Stereolab, Richard Thompson, T-Rex, The Who; Adams, Bach, Brahms, Britten, Charpentier, Glass, Handel, Lully, Mozart, Nyman, Part, Pergolesi, Prokofiev, Rameau, Shostakovich, Stravinsky, Vaughn-Williams, etc.) nature humanity life
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Post by foster1941 on Nov 25, 2007 11:47:28 GMT -6
If we can think of AD&D as "Gary Gygax's D&D House Rules" (which, apparently, isn't actually true and the AD&D rules-as-published are closer to being Lawrence Schick's D&D House Rules, but nevertheless Gygax provided the guiding vision and was the final authority on AD&D) then Greyhawk is the first draft of those rules. Greyhawk adds to D&D many of the elements which were distinctive about AD&D both ruleswise (percentile exceptional strength for fighters, the "chance to know" table for magic-users, the weapon vs AC adjustment chart, etc.) and flavor-wise (most of the "unique" Gygax-created D&D monsters -- beholders, carrion crawlers, rust monsters, umber hulks, blink dogs, owl bears, etc. -- and a lot of the more colorful and distinctive magic items -- the Deck of Many Things, the various magical books and tomes (Manual of Gainful Exercise, Book of Vile Darkness, etc.), and tons of other miscellaneous magic items (including lots of cursed items like the Bag of Devouring, Ring of Contrariness, Scarab of Death, Bowl of Watery Death, Eyes of Petrification, etc.) -- were introduced in this supplement). D&D provides a broad and generic baseline drawn mostly from mythology and Tolkien, which each individual DM can add to and customize to suit his individual tastes. Supplement I is an example of how Gary Gygax and Rob Kuntz went about doing that.
There's lots of good stuff in Greyhawk, and it's a great example of what can be done with the game, and a great source of new ideas to pilfer from, but if you use all of its material in your game then you will have gone a long way towards making your D&D game feel like Gygax's D&D game, and like AD&D, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but isn't necessarily where OD&D shines brightest (i.e. if you're going to play a game that feels like AD&D, you're probably just as well off playining actual AD&D and ignoring all the fiddly rule-bits; one of the biggest advantages of OD&D is that it facilitates playing games that don't feel like AD&D).
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Post by foster1941 on Jul 7, 2007 14:03:23 GMT -6
It all ties together. I've been trying to forumlate my thoughts together for another long post following up on my previous post and a lot of your (all of you) great responses. I'm not ready for that yet, but I do have some thoughts on playing vs. socializing:
I absolutely think players should socialize during the game -- they should engage with the other players, crack jokes, talk to each other out-of-character, and generally be sociable. This aspect is, IMO, one of the main things that sets tabletop games apart from computer games and makes them worth playing. However, ideally, in order for this socializing to reinforce, rather than distract from, the game, the topic of conversation should be what's going on in the game -- the characters, the situation, and the plot. This is accomplished not by dictatorial fiat but rather by making the game interesting to the players, so that it engages their imaginations and keeps them focused. If someone has a desire to start talking about something outside of the game (their job, something they saw on tv, something that happened in another game, etc.) that's a sign that their attention is wandering because their imagination is not engaged in the current game (which means that, to put it bluntly, the GM isn't doing his job well enough). The players are there to have fun, and if the game isn't providing enough fun they'll provide their own through out-of-game chatter. Some tips and suggestions fo keeping players engaged in the game and minimizing boredom:
1. Don't try to enforce a code of behavior (i.e. banning out-of-game talk at the table) because that doesn't fix the problem, it just hides it and creates another problem -- a player who isn't talking out-of-game only because there's a rule prohibiting it still isn't engaged in the game, only now in addition to not being engaged he's also bored and not having fun. A player stacking dice or doodling on his character sheet is less disruptive than a player chatting about out-of-game stuff, but he's still a symptom of a problem
2. Take lots of breaks -- most people's attention spans aren't all that long, and asking someone to go an hour or two (or more) in immersive high-gear is asking a lot. Plan to set aside around 5 or 10 minutes out of every hour as downtime - to use the bathroom, smoke, refill drinks and snacks, and chat about out-of-game stuff. Don't plan these breaks arbitrarily, let them flow organically -- after a major encounter is usually a good spot, or whenever you notice players getting fidgety or their attention starting to fade (or the out-of-game chatter starting to pick up), or even when one player simply stands up from the table and heads for the bathroom. Stand up from the table, stretch, walk around, chit-chat for a few minutes. And then sit back down and pick up the action where you left off.
3. Plan pre- and post-game social time -- in a lot of adult groups, many of the players probably don't see each other very often (if ever) outside of the game, so they'll naturally want to chat and catch-up about out-of-game stuff. To faciliate this occuring outside, rather than during, the game, set aside a block of time before the game (a half-hour or so) and make it clear up front -- if the "game is starting" at 4:00 let the other players know whether this means the game is actually starting at 4:30 and before that we're socializing, or that the game actually is starting at 4:00 and if you want to socialize beforehand you should show up at 3:30 (note also that many players (men especially) will scoff at the idea of a declared "social time" so it could perhaps be disguised a bit as lunch/dinner potluck, prep-time (for players to catch up and make adjustments to their characters, consult with the GM about off-stage stuff, etc.), or something else, but the idea is the same -- a "warm-up" period before actual play starts in which the players are free to socialize about non-game stuff). The same applies after the game as well -- actual play should end about a half-hour before the scheduled 'end-time' so that everybody doesn't have to immediatelly run off home as soon as play ends and can "cool off" and reflect on the game, make plans for the next one, finish up any out-of-game chat, and so on.
4. Don't be strict about attendance -- sometimes people just not in the mood to play -- you're tired, you're distracted by other stuff, you're in a bad mood, or you just don't feel like it. Players in those situations should never feel that they're obligated to show up at a session anyway, because even if they do they're 1) not likely to have much fun, and 2) are likely to spoil everyone else's fun. Better to just stay home. This means that the GM has to be flexible -- ready on a moment's notice to handle 1 player or 9 -- which means not making elaborate plots that hinge on particular players/characters involvement, and also avoiding whenever possible stopping 'mid-adventure' (with the party camped out inside the dungeon, or equivalent) since you don't know who's going to be there next time.
5. Keep all of the players involved -- one or two players interacting with the GM while everyone else watches isn't much fun. The GM needs to not get caught up in the positive feedback from the active players and take affirmative steps to engage the more passive players -- the quiet player down at the other end of the table probably needs the attention and encouragement of the GM to get involved with the game; don't let him fade into the background because your attention is focused on the active players sitting right next to you. Also, be sure not to mistake character involvement for player involvement -- it's entirely possible that a character will be involved in lots of activity (fighters fighting, thieves checking for traps etc.) but if the player isn't necessarily making the decisions for his character and is just following some other player's instructions and rolling dice he still might not feel engaged in the game; likewise, a player can be thoroughly engaged in the game even if his character isn't doing much of anything (this is true of me -- my character, Malo, is a total loser whose main tactic in combat is to stay as far away from the action as possible, but I remain vicariously involved in what the other players are doing -- making comments and suggestions, heckling/encouraging, and so forth -- and am if anything more engaged in the game than the player who's fighter is always in the thick of the action but whose only real contribution is to roll a d20 to hit each round when his turn comes up). Be sure to recognize the difference, and to focus on the players rather than their characters. Regardless of what the characters are doing, you want all of the players as engaged and involved as possible.
6. Keep the game moving -- this is almost a tautology, but it's true. The faster-moving the game is, the more it will keep the players interested and engaged; the slower-moving the game the more the players will drift out of the game into out-of-game talk or just plain boredom (stacking dice, doodling on their character sheet, etc.) which slows the game down even more and makes it even less engaging. It's a self-reinforcing loop in both directions. Therefore it's up to the GM to try to keep the game fast-moving (in ways I'll get to later) to get things on the right track from the start and keep them there.
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Post by foster1941 on Jun 27, 2007 11:01:10 GMT -6
I didn't mean to imply the debates were rules arguments (our group is actually pretty good about avoiding those, deferring to whoever's in the DM seat) but rather about courses of action -- we spend a lot of time trying to think through the ramifications of decisions and exploring all our options before deciding on anything -- "do we want to open this door? what is likely to happen if we do? what if we don't? what else could we do besides opening this door? assuming we're going to have to open this door eventually, are we likely to be better off doing so now, or coming back and doing so later?" etc. I've begun to suspect a lot of this comes from playing computer strategy games where there's no time-limit and the player is encouraged to be very methodical like this (and some of it is just plain paranoia -- we've all read/played "Tomb of Horrors" and know that wrong decisions can get your character killed, and those of us who've been playing the same characters for 2 years and finally reached 4th level don't want to see our characters die).
I don't want to discourage this sort of methodical thought too much, because I think it is good and appropriate to consider the risks, rewards, and alternatives before acting rashly -- if we were playing "Tomb of Horrors," for instance, we wouldn't finish it in a single session (like it was designed for) but I suspect we'd get through with fewer casualties than a lot of other groups who are less careful. I just think a better balance needs to be struck between being careful and methodical on the one hand and keeping the game moving on the other...
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Post by foster1941 on Jun 26, 2007 21:37:44 GMT -6
The thing that really bugs me most about the AD&D campaign I'm currently a part of is that the game is mind-crushingly slow moving. In a typical 4 hour session we're lucky to explore about 4 new rooms, get into 1 or 2 fights, and that's it. Combine that with the fact that we only play every other week and miss sessions pretty frequently (average probably about 1 out of 3) and the end result is that we've been playing for right around 2 years (discounting a reboot and a TPK that wiped out ~15 months of prior play) and we're only on our second adventure and the highest level characters are at 4th (my character is multiclassed, so he's at 3/3).
I'm not sure what specifically causes the game to be so slow (and I suspect it's a combination of factors) -- the rules we're using (not only overcomplicated AD&D, but with even more complicated minis-based combat rules), the adventures that are being run, or simply the player-group (I'm coming to suspect the latter, since around last Xmas I ran a one-off adventure with simplified rules (no battlemat, group initiative) and a simple adventure (The Abduction of Good King Despot -- straightforward old-school tournament-style dungeoncrawl) and the game still moved at a snail's pace -- after 10+ hours of play they completed about a third of the module, when I was counting on them finishing it!
One of my biggest goals as a GM, therefore, is to speed the game up as much as possible. That's one of the big attractions OD&D currently holds for me -- the fact that it at least has the potential to be lightning-fast, since there are almost no rules to get in the way and slow things down (though, as would surely be pointed out if I were posting this at ENWorld, combining no rules with contentious players can backfire and slow the game down even further as they argue about and second-guess every ruling). I'd like to be able to have a game like those we had as kids back in the 80s -- you can explore a dozen rooms (including tricks, traps, fights, and even a bit of roleplaying) in a 2-hour session, and a marathon session can finish an entire 32pp module in a single sitting (we did most of the classic TSR modules this way -- in fact, it's hard to think of any modules (aside from T1-4) that we didn't play completely through in a single session (with, admittedly, those sessions sometimes being 10-12 hours long...).
I'd like, if anybody else is interested, to brainstorm and muse about ways to make the game flow quicker, to avoid the "20 minutes of fun in 4 hours" syndrome that plagues 3E. I think part of what might be necessary is to train the players to be less methodical and risk-averse and makes decisions more quickly -- the famous "Tomb of Horrors" traps where Gygax instructs the DM to count to 10 and whoever hasn't acted by that time is dead come to mind. The players in our group (and, I admit I'm as guilty of this as any of them, maybe even moreso) seem to debate everything to death; I think perhaps we need to return to the classic model of a single "caller" who speaks on behalf of the group (and increased wandering monster checks, or at least inability to gain surprise, if the group spends too much time debating out in the open -- though again that could backfire, since if the group spends a bunch of time fighting wandering monsters and uses up all their resources that way the game will move even slower!).
Anybody have any suggestions, observations, or just plain anecdotes on the subject they'd like to share?
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Post by foster1941 on Apr 6, 2008 15:05:16 GMT -6
Supplement I retains its hobbit, balrog, and ent references through all printings. Early printings of Supplement III reportedly have parenthetical notes indicating that Type VI demons = balrogs; mine is a 5th printing (March 1978) and doesn't, except on p. 12. The encounter tables on pp. 56 & 58 include treants, which I'm assuming in the earlier printings would've been ents. I don't believe there are any hobbit, ent, or balrog references in Supplements II or IV. My copy of Swords & Spells (2nd printing, April 1977) includes assorted references to hobbits, ents, and wargs; I don't know if these were changed in later printings or not.
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Post by foster1941 on Apr 6, 2008 2:42:00 GMT -6
p. 23 (Hold Portal spell description): "a strong anti-magical creature will shatter it (i.e. a Balrog)."
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Post by foster1941 on Apr 5, 2008 11:16:58 GMT -6
This is actually one of the reasons that I enjoy reading the revisions, as well as the originals: Moorcock is a much better writer even by the time he's writing The Warhound and the World's Pain in the early '80s (likely my favorite MM fantasy novel), much less what he's writing now. Sure, he's evolved the storylines substantially, and added lots of material between the original Elric books (and those may not appeal to you if you prefer the original, rawest forms of Elric), but his writing has certainly matured (in a good way) with each passing decade. IMO of course Indeed, Moorcock is much better as a writer and has a much different style in his later works than in the 60s, to the point where I almost think of him as two separate writers -- one who wrote the pulpy Elric, Hawkmoon, and Kane of Mars stories, and another who wrote Gloriana, Mother London, and the Von Bek series. The problem is when they mix, when they're juxtaposed, and when the latter guy tries to rework and revise the former guy's work. The early stuff is sloppily written and a lot of potential ideas aren't fully explored, but they're fun and they move along. The later stuff is more carefully crafted and artfully written but also tends to be slow and more difficult to grasp. I appreciate the later guy, I'm glad he's around and writing, but after a long day at work when I'm looking for some enjoyable reading I'm much more likely to turn to the former guy.
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Post by foster1941 on Apr 4, 2008 18:11:59 GMT -6
As far as I know, the only place it is published is in the paperback Elric at the End of Time. It is a very short story (perhaps 15 pages). It's probably my least favorite of the original six Elric stories. Ah, that would explain it. Never had that book. As a kid I dismissed it as cheesy because Moorcock was bringing Elric back post- Stormbringer, not realizing at the time that 2/3 of the 6-volume "canonical" Elric series was written that same way; by the time I figured out the truth I was enough past my Elric phase that I just never bothered to go back and pick it up. Perhaps I will now, since I believe it's fairly common in used bookstores...
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Post by foster1941 on Apr 4, 2008 17:17:14 GMT -6
I don't believe I've read "The Last Enchantment," unless it was under another name (such as "The Caravan of Forgotten Dreams," which I read under the title "The Flamebringers"). Where can it be found?
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Post by foster1941 on Apr 4, 2008 14:16:08 GMT -6
I recently re-read The Stealer of Souls and Stormbringer in their original Lancer Books editions from the 60s, before they were revised and reorganized with later-written material interspersed. I greatly enjoyed every story in the first volume every bit as much as when I first read them as a kid, if not moreso. Stormbringer didn't hold up as well -- the tonal shift between the end of "The Flamebringers" (cautiously optimistic, but with the weight of impending doom) and the beginning of Stormbringer (OMG the world is ending Right Now! Blood! Guts everywhere!) was too sudden and drastic, and what comes after goes increasingly over the top in a way which screams "awesome!" when you're 13 years old and have never read anything like it before ("ZOMG he's killing all the main characters!") but from an adult perspective comes off more as adolescent melodrama and posing (no wonder White Wolf games named themselves after his work ). While I think The Stealer of Souls is a book I could continue to come back to, I can't really say the same for Stormbringer. And I have no desire at all to re-read any of the later stuff ( The Sailor on the Seas of Fate, The Vanishing Tower, The Revenge of the Rose, etc.) which even at the time felt ponderous, over-written, and burdened by the intrusion of the Eternal Champion business. My current sweeping judgment on the Elric saga is that it's at its best when it's closest to being a copy of Poul Anderson's The Broken Sword (which was, by Moorcock's own admission, his biggest influence) and the further afield it goes from that the less good it is.
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Post by foster1941 on Apr 2, 2008 9:22:56 GMT -6
Vol. I revised took out the ads and added a bunch of extra artwork (which is a trifle jarring because the vintage of the new artwork (c. 1986) doesn't match the articles (c. 1975-78)), cut the "Search for the Forbidden Chamber" story (Interview with a Rust Monster is still there), and printed the whole thing on thinner, glossier paper-stock. I believe they also cut the original intro by Tim Kask and replaced it with a new one by Kim Mohan (or perhaps Roger Moore -- whoever was the current editor at the time). The original vol. I (published in 1980, IIRC) is more of an artifact (the ads themselves carry some nostalgia value) but if your interest is primarily in the content itself, either version should do (the Forbidden Chamber story is slightly funny (and is one of several articles featuring pot-smoking references that wouldn't have made it past the censors in the "angry mothers" era) and has some fun art by David Sutherland, but isn't a major loss by any means).
I don't think vol. II had ads in it originally so I'm guessing the only changes in vol. II revised are the paper-stock, cover-price, and addition of a bar-code to the cover.
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Post by foster1941 on Mar 30, 2008 20:01:17 GMT -6
Dave Wesley and Dave Arneson must have had play test copies of Chainmail. That isn't surprising since they were all close friends at the time. I didn't realize until now that Chainmail did not get published until 1971. Chainmail was first published commercially as a stand-alone product in 1971, but a version of its rules had been published 2 years earlier in, I believe, the newsletter of the Castle & Crusade Society ("Domesday Book").
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Post by foster1941 on Mar 17, 2008 17:27:25 GMT -6
Nice article, especially all the vintage pictures of Gary. Of course, as with almost any general-interest article on a specialized subject there are various minor errors that those of us with specialized knowledge will catch ("The Advanced D&D Handbook," Lorraine Williams as mother rather than sister to Gary's friend, etc.). It's also a bit curious (and presumably this was Gary's doing, not the article author's) to see Rob Kuntz's role in the history of D&D reduced to that of "a kid from up the street."
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Post by foster1941 on Mar 17, 2008 11:06:38 GMT -6
Don't the same guys who own Troll Lord Games also run a book-publishing company (Chenault & Gray)? Surely with all the Gygax titles they publish (many of them with seemingly minimal commercial potential) they could find room to add his autobiography to their schedule as well...
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Post by foster1941 on Mar 24, 2008 13:17:05 GMT -6
It's a fundamental, and actually kind of sad, irony that a lot of people who find the idea of D&D/rpgs appealing in theory aren't temperamentally suited to actually being good at playing them and vice versa. Actually playing an rpg is a social activity and doing so well requires good social and verbal skills, things that a lot of would-be gamers simply don't have (and not purely by coincidence -- the idea of taking on an alter-ego and exploring an alternate world that conforms to our dreams and desires and can be precisely modeled and understood through "rules" is understandably appealing to people who are uncomfortable in their real world circumstances). While in the best cases (and we heard a lot of these sorts of testimonials after Gary's passing) playing rpgs helps socially-awkward players to improve their social skills, teaches them self-confidence and effective verbal communication and dispute resolution skills, etc., more often I think the lack of social skills leads to dissatisfying play experiences and frustration, and spending more time thinking about the game than actually playing it.
However, these folks aren't willing to give up on the game just because they've had disappointing experiences playing it (especially since they've likely spent a lot of time and money on it), rather, they'll simply seek new people to play it with, which means hanging out at game stores, going to game-clubs and conventions, and posting and answering "players wanted" ads. Thus, the worst representatives of the hobby become disproportionately its public face.
"Functional" gamers aren't much seen in public -- they only go to game stores to buy stuff rather than hanging out there, and they don't much go to clubs or cons or post or answer want ads because they've got a group of fellow-players that they're satisfied with and don't feel the need to look outside that for additional opportunities to play (with some exceptions, like moving to a new town, which are becoming more common as the player-base ages and exacerbates the perception problem as these functional players go looking for new people to play with, find nothing but dysfunctional cat-piss men, and conclude that those must be the only people still playing rpgs).
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