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Post by foster1941 on Jun 29, 2007 11:34:06 GMT -6
Chainmail (PDF from RPGNow) - I'm beginning to think more and more I want this, as much to understand OD&D better even if I don't use it. You absolutely want this, for the reason you stated. Even if you never play it as a game (I never have) it's a piece of history -- the roots of D&D. I already addressed this a bit in another thread. The entire thing is pretty much a big book of charts -- in S&S combat isn't resolved by dice rolls, but rather by statistical comparisons on charts -- HD/level and damage compared against AC. The other rules (movement, morale, etc.) are pretty much a rehash of Chainmail with the historical info removed and the fantasy stuff expanded and integrated into the main rules. Except just to say you have it there's no real compelling reason to get this. Even if I were to run D&D minis battles I think I'd rather use Chainmail+fantasy supplement and fudge the stuff that's not covered there than use this. Oh yeah, there's a chart listing the range/duration/area of effect of every spell from vol. I + supps. I & III which might be convenient to have. This is convenient because it packs a ton of info into a single book, rather than 4 boxed sets + GAZ1. However, I have no real use for it because I don't like most of the stuff from the Companion & Master sets and GAZ1 (the General Skills system) and wouldn't want to use it anyway -- if I were going to play a Classic D&D game I think I'd just stick with the Basic & Expert sets (either Moldvay/Cook/Marsh or Mentzer). Also, if the fans at DF are to be believed, it's got a ton of errata. And the interior art is extremely bland. By the time this book was released the Classic D&D line was already dying of neglect; I don't think TSR put much care into this release, and it shows. I'm glad I have it because it's cool to have the complete game in a single book, but I don't particularly recommend it beyond that. Don't have this, but the fact that it's an AD&D 2E product means I can pretty reliably predict that it's got a lot of fluff, filler, and restatements of the obvious and surprisingly little useful content and advice. Don't have these but my impression is that Arduin grew further and further from D&D as it went on, so if you're looking to these as D&D supplements rather than a whole separate game I'd assume they're not as useful as the first 3. Just bought these myself. As actual collections of monsters for use in games they're pretty mediocre -- the descriptions are minimal, the layout is primitive in the extreme (looks like it was done on a typewriter), and most of the monsters are either too lame or too bizarre for actual use -- but as an artifact of 1970s D&D/rpg fan-culture it's absolutely fantastic and a must-have if that's something you're interested in (I am). As a bonus, vol. II contains "The Perrin Conventions," Steve Perrin's set of house rules for OD&D combat, that are sort of a missing-link between D&D and what would eventually become RuneQuest.
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Post by foster1941 on Jan 3, 2008 19:42:21 GMT -6
That box is totally cool and not dissimilar to what I was (unsuccessfully) lobbying for WotC to release back in 2004 (30th anniversary). Remember a few years back when Hasbro released a bunch of their classic Parker Bros and Milton Bradley boardgames in "collector's editions" -- replicas of original (or at least old) artwork and components in a wooden box? I thought they should do the same thing for D&D -- reprint/facsimiles of OCE vol. 1-3 (and perhaps Chainmail and/or Supplement I), a fluff booklet on the history of the game, and a set of polyhedral dice in a wooden box. If they wanted to get really crazy they could've included a CD or DVD-ROM with pdfs of the other supplements, Swords & Spells, the Monster & Treasure Assortments and Dungeon & Outdoor Geomorphs, and the early issues of The Strategic Review and The Dragon (up to issue 20 or so). Call it a collector's edition, stick a hefty pricetag on it (the Parker Bros & MB games went for $25 IIRC, so make this $40 or $50 -- still about the same as what you'd pay for a new rpg, and less than those leatherette "deluxe edition" books some companies sell) and sell it to the nostalgia set. WotC wouldn't have made a ton of money on this, but I doubt they would've lost money on it either (especially since, at the time, legal pdfs of the original rules weren't available). Oh well, maybe they'll decide to do this in 2009 for the 35th anniversary...
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Post by foster1941 on Jul 11, 2007 0:15:29 GMT -6
That's a tough call. Probably the lot of six levels of Greyhawk Castle sold by Rob Kuntz a couple of years ago. Heh, yeah I'd agree that's a pretty good one!
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Post by foster1941 on Jun 29, 2007 10:43:05 GMT -6
I've got a very late printing (with a paper instead of cardstock cover) copy of Greyhawk which I bought from the TSR Mail Order Hobby Shop c. 1987 and got autographed by Gary Gygax while playing with him at a con game in 1988. This was the first OD&D item I owned (other than Best of The Dragon vol. I, I suppose) and, being young and foolish and not recognizing the idea of collectability, I used and abused the heck out of this booklet and made a ton of notes in it -- before I had a copy of the OD&D set I used this, BoTDv1, and the Holmes Basic Set to reverse-engineer my own OD&D rules. It's got lots of sentimental value, but I don't use it anymore because the paper cover is too flimsy and I'm afraid it's going to fall off -- I've got another copy with a cardstock cover and zero sentimental value that I picked up a couple years later and use as my reference/play copy.
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Dice
Nov 30, 2007 15:28:11 GMT -6
Post by foster1941 on Nov 30, 2007 15:28:11 GMT -6
My first set of dice came from the D&D Basic Set (Mentzer/Elmore version) -- 6 blue plastic dice and a white crayon. One of the dice (the d4, I think) disappeared somewhere along the line. I still have the other 5, in my Mentzer box, but they're in pretty ragged shape and I doubt I'd ever use them again.
The Holmes box I bought at GenCon sometime in the late 80s or early 90s had an incomplete set of the OG dice you describe (the d4, d12, and d20 but no d6 or d8), and for a long time I was on a fruitless quest to find a complete set. I finally succeeded a couple years ago when Noble Knight Games discovered a lost cache of them (or, rather, I suppose, someone discovered a long lost cache and sold them to NKG). I bought 3 or 4 sets, all but one of which I've left sealed in their plastic bags. For awhile these (plus some extra six-siders I picked up at a liquor store) were the only dice I was using, and if I were to run an OD&D campaign I imagine these are what I'd use. Anything else just wouldn't feel right to me...
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Post by foster1941 on Dec 1, 2007 11:08:14 GMT -6
I wouldn't call morale in Chainmail "insanely complicated" -- at least the rules under that heading; perhaps I've forgotten more "comprehensive" factors scattered through the book. You're describing the "Instability Due to Excess Casualties" rules on pp. 17-18, which are fairly straightforward. What I had in mind (and, admittedly, calling it "insanely compilicated" was an exaggeration) was the "Post Melee Morale" procedure on pp. 15-16, which is both more complicated (lots of in-game addition, subtraction, and multiplication of numbers that change from round to round so they can't be pre-figured) and more pervasive -- the way I read these rules, this procedure should be followed for each unit after every single round of melee.
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Post by foster1941 on Nov 27, 2007 19:36:50 GMT -6
I think morale (the notion that everybody won't always do exactly as they're told or fight to the death) is an important concept, and drastically changes the shape of the game -- if the party's fighting a dozen orcs it makes a big differenceif they'll only have to kill 3 or 4 of them (or maybe just the leader) vs. having to kill all 12 of them. The problem is that morale is hard to model in rules -- in order to take into account all of the factors it should, you end up with something way too complex to use in a real-time context (the morale rules in Chainmail are a perfect example: they're very comprehensive and seemingly quite realistic, but they're also insanely complicated). The best solution is probably to "free kriegspiel" it -- the referee applies his judgment to decide if troops' morale holds or breaks at key junctures -- but even that's an imperfect solution since it requires the DM to make a lot of snap judgments and also tends to minimize the various morale-effecting rules effects (charisma, certain humanoids in daylight or when their tribal standard is present, etc.). While a veteran referee can probably handle all this with no problem, a newbie might be overwhelmed...
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Post by foster1941 on Feb 13, 2008 23:36:42 GMT -6
Back in 1988, I discovered TSR's Mail Order Hobby Shop catalog, which still offered the collector's reprint of the original boxed set. At least, the catalog listed it. I dutifully placed my order and waited. And waited. And waited. And waited. After two months, I finally heard back from TSR. The didn't have the OD&D set in stock anymore. All that waiting for nothing! OMG, me too! Same year, same catalog, same result. Did you mitigate the disappointment by ordering the Supplements (which turned out to have b/w paper instead of cardstock covers) like I did? For me, at least, everything turned out well in the end because that year at GenCon (my first time there) I was able to pick up a well-used copy in the auction, for less than what a new copy would've cost, plus it was a 5th printing with Tolkien references intact. P.S. The last WotC employee who was a member at this board got the OCE set released on pdf for us, so you've got big shoes to fill in that regard
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Post by foster1941 on Jul 12, 2007 0:06:47 GMT -6
Grew up in Evansville, Indiana, which unbeknownst to me at the time was something of a hotbed of rpging back in the 70s & 80s. Made a new friend in 3rd grade whose older brother played D&D, heard from him (the friend, not the brother) about how cool it was (imagine!) so I asked for and got a D&D Basic Set (Frank Mentzer-edit) from my grandma (!) as a present for Easter (!!) in 1984. Played with that, a Cook/Marsh Expert rulebook (my friend had the exact opposite - a Moldvay Basic rulebook and Mentzer Expert Set), and a Companion Set when it was released that summer for about 6 months, "graduated" to AD&D that fall. Attended my first con (ConTact, which was actually a SF con, but had some gaming also) in fall of '86, with my dad; played in a game of TSR's "Top Secret" with Frank Mentzer's then-wife (who was also head of the RPGA at the time, IIRC) as GM. Attended Glathricon (Evansville's other local con) that next spring with my arm in a cast, played in my first AD&D tournament (Dwarven Quest for the Rod of Seven Parts, Part II), and got my cast signed by con GOH Gary Gygax.
Around that time came across a weird blue-covered D&D Basic rulebook at a local toy-store, bought it, and became fascinated by the early history of the game (TSR also re-released the first Best of (The) Dragon volume around this time, which was an even bigger eye-opener). Also around this time joined the RPGA, got a copy of the TSR Mail Order Hobby Shop catalog with my orientation kit, and became fascinated by the fact that they had copies of the original D&D supplements from the 70s for sale (but, alas, not the actual rules). Saved up my money and ordered these (they were all very late printings with paper instead of cardstock covers) and used them, the Holmes book, and BoTDv1 to 'reverse-engineer' my own set of the original rules, 'cause I figured I'd never be able to get a real copy.
Went to Glathricon '88 and was lucky enough to play AD&D with Gary Gygax (a playtest of his "Necropolis" module, which was at the time supposed to have been released as part of the generic/AD&D-compatible "Fantasy Master" line, before that compnay (New Infinities) folded and the module was later re-worked for the Dangerous Journeys: Mythus system). I've told this story often enough at other sites that there's no need to repeat it here, except to say that I got EGG to autograph my paper-covered copy of Supplement I.
Somehow, later that summer I convinced my mom to drive me up to Milwaukee so I could go to GenCon (we had relatives there that she used to visit, plus it was right before the school-year started so she liked to use the free-time to plan all her classes). By some miracle of fate (in retrospect it might have been all the "pros" deliberately taking it easy on a kid (age 13) who was clearly excited for something that wasn't in collectible condition anyway) I managed to snag a battered copy of the OD&D white box (5th printing) at the GenCon Auction for a cool $8. There's a really cute picture taken by my mom of me standing outside MECCA holding up this set with a huge grin on my face. Kept making that trip every year through 1997, and managed to meet and/or play with most of the "rpg industry luminaries" at one point or another.
After that, there's not much more story to tell. OD&D remained my favorite version of the game, but we still played AD&D because that's what everyone else knew and I was the only one with an OD&D set (which is still true pretty much to this day). Shortly after 2E AD&D was released we all wrote off TSR and D&D and played other games (WFRP, RuneQuest, Mythus, non-fantasy games) through the 90s. When I graduated college and moved out to CA full-time in 1997 (I'd been in school here since '93 but spent breaks/summers in IN with the old crew) I stopped gaming altogether (and thus managed to completely miss out on 3E D&D -- though I do remember paging through the PH when it was first released and thinking "this doesn't look much like the game I used to play"). Stumbled across ENWorld c. 2002 (when a bunch of, umm, "3E fans" started showing up at the Traveller fan-sites upon the announcement of d20 Traveller and I wanted to find out what the hell they were talking about) and through the Gygax threads there found dragonsfoot later that year and for whatever reason found myself talking about not only rpgs, but specifically 1E AD&D again. Went through a phase of a couple years of being very hardcore doctrinaire 1E AD&D fan that seems very odd in retrospect (easily influenced by others?) but gradually found myself drifing back to my OD&D-love. By the time Jerry Mapes opened the first Knights & Knaves Alehouse (January 2005?) after the collapse of the Grognard's Tavern and the demise of various Gene Weigel's Dungeons I was definitely fully back in OD&D mode, and have been there ever since. Am currently playing in a 1E AD&D campaign (with a bunch of guys I met mostly at dragonsfoot back in 2004) but I feel about it more-or-less the same way as all those people who complain that they're stuck playing 3E when they really want to be playing 1E or 2E or C&C or RC D&D (only in my case, of course, it's OD&D) -- the game is too fiddly and complex and slow, and having all those rules for something that' supposed to be fun and simple seems silly.
Non-gaming intro? Why should you care? White, male, single, straight, no pets, graduated college with a valuable degree in English literature, have lived in Hollywood for the last 10 years, currently working in an office doing (more or less) paralegal work related to music licensing. Other interests/hobbies include movies (old and/or arty 'auteur' stuff) and music (classical and indie/alternative mostly, but with a healthy sprinkling of other stuff - it is my job, after all). Except for rpgs I have pretty much zero interest (or patience) for any sort of 'geek culture' - I don't know jack about computers (I've got an iMac that suits me fine), the last video-game console I owned was an Atari2600, it's been at least 10 years since I last bought or read a comic book, I can't understand what an adult would want with plastic action-figures, I didn't even bother to see the 2nd and 3rd "Lord of the Rings" movies because I thought the first one sucked, etc. This creates frequent awkward moments at the gaming table.
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