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Post by jeffb on Jun 13, 2020 6:51:11 GMT -6
Next up
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Post by jeffb on Jun 13, 2020 6:50:04 GMT -6
OK.. Found them on my camera! Can only add two per post. Some of this stuff I'm not sure why he did what he did. I probably should have asked, but I didn't want to seem like I just wanted these for my collection or I was a relic-hunter. As you can see he autogrpahed them for my son.. Edit- cant seem to delete these due to the server space issue? Attachments:
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Post by jeffb on Jun 13, 2020 6:35:22 GMT -6
I just really, really love that artwork. All of it. It's not a bad game either, I prefer to run it over most of the other editions. It's just really hard for me not to try to pop the missing/changed stuff from OD&D back into it. Didn't grow up with it though, I ended up buying it off eBay. Started with 2E in high school, shortly before 3E came out (and all of my friends clung onto it). I like some BECMI stuff, like Threshold, and all of the Mystara setting stuff (especially what Aaron Allston did), but other than that I think that edition is a little too hand-holdy for my tastes...and like others said, leveling up that high doesn't seem like that much fun. These days, I'm much more enamored of Frank's edits. In fact I own his play copies of the red and blue box booklets with his penciled in eratta. Any way you could share this eratta with us? Anything good? Or is there a list out there already? I'm sorry, I missed this previously. My set is packed away due to my Wife having to take over the spare bedroom as an office, so its tough for me to get scans right now. But let me see if I can find the pics I took last year for a MEWE group. Essentially there are a fair number of places where he is correcting tables/charts, etc. But there are some interesting bits- e.g. he wrote all over the dungeon maps in the DM book, keying them.
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Post by jeffb on Jun 10, 2020 7:57:52 GMT -6
Thanks for the details Jason. I'm looking forward to checking it out.
I get the "tables" aspect from sitting at the table and running a game. But that also is part of the OSR charm I guess for many.
I'm a firm believer in getting rid of ability scores. Having run D&D games for many young kids and a few adults who were completely unfamiliar with anything but boardgames (not even video gaming), having scores and the bonuses is just added confusion and baggage I've had to explain too many times for no useful reason and it's a waste of time *
Ken ST. Andre and Steve Perrin got it right- use the scores themselves in some way if you are going to have scores.
* unless you use "roll under" for ability checks on a d20 or somesuch, which I just don't care for.
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Post by jeffb on Jun 9, 2020 7:16:52 GMT -6
So essentially the 2nd edition of S&S is no longer operating under the "what if... Chainmail?" premise.....? This seems to be a pretty radical departure Jason (not that it's good or bad, just an observation)
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Post by jeffb on Jun 6, 2020 8:56:59 GMT -6
Vile Traveller Agreed- I think just "beefing up" the existing B/X books would make a better Companion than trying to make massive expansions in levels, rules for domain and planar play etc. That stuff sounds fun when you are a kid, but in practice high level D&D is pretty bad.
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Post by jeffb on Jun 5, 2020 8:01:16 GMT -6
I never purchased the one you mentioned, Jason. I ended up with a lulu softcover of The Companion Expansion- which is a similar work. And now Available for free on DriveThruI don't think I ever used it at the table. It's in a box somewhere. Reading some recent reviews, I think I need to re-visit it.
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Post by jeffb on Jun 5, 2020 7:45:08 GMT -6
I never understood, with the massive success of Star Wars (1977), why Traveller never got bigger than it did. I'm guessing because RPGs were still not in the boom phase yet, and Traveller perhaps leaned too far away from Sci-Fantasy. If at the time Lucasfilm had understood just how big the licensing aspect would become, they could have put D&D in the grave with a Star Wars RPG. Honestly, and keeping in mind that I never saw the ORIGINAL Traveller, so this might not apply, but what always turned me off about it was that it was too rules-heavy, and the lifepath character generation where you could DIE while making a character, I always just found stupid. I suspect those two factors, combined with the more "hard sci fi" approach, turned a lot of gamers off. I elaborated some in my edit why I found it hard to get jazzed for. As for character creation- For myself, that was the most fun part of the game. As I'm a military buff, watching characters go through the Marines/Navy and eventually mustering out had a certain appeal. Of course Books 4& 5 were my favorites
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Post by jeffb on Jun 5, 2020 7:37:14 GMT -6
Traveller ... the classic '77 TLBB (three little black books) non-3rd Imperium setting toolkit-in-a-box. I've always loved sci-fi more than fantasy. I bought the original '77 edition when it came out but I couldn't interest anyone in playing in [small town in Texas].
If I had my druthers, I would have Traveller come out before OD&D just to give it a chance to get a bigger toehold on the market.
I never understood, with the massive success of Star Wars (1977), why Traveller never got bigger than it did. I'm guessing because RPGs were still not in the boom phase yet, and Traveller perhaps leaned too far away from Sci-Fantasy. If at the time Lucasfilm had understood just how big the licensing aspect would become, they could have put D&D in the grave with a Star Wars RPG. EDIT- One of our group purchased Traveller around 1979. He never ran it. Not sure why not. I ended up buying copy in 1980 or 1981. I never ran it either. I think I didn't have the desire to generate entire star systems/adventures (homebrew) it seemed burdensome. I can't recall but I bought a couple JG Traveller adventures and they left me cold. I gave it all to the guy who bought the first set because he was moving away. It wasn't until I purchased Starter Traveller I'd actually run a game.
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Post by jeffb on Jun 4, 2020 21:08:28 GMT -6
4th edition D&D PHB. (ducks and runs) I'd be absolutely fine with that. No more trying to balance classes or deal with the headache of Vancian magic (which has always been an issue for many, myself included) Simple skill system that reinforces the character class but allows some dabbling. Easier to teach newcomers because everything operates the same way. Resources per Encounter focus instead of a daily resource focus. Scalable monster design to PC level like T&T. Just would need trimming back of the weirder classes/races and design around an TOTM abstract combat system (ala 13th Age), instead of the tight grid mechanics.
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Post by jeffb on Jun 4, 2020 15:49:43 GMT -6
Dungeon World
(not necc exactly by the book moves for everything, but the general gist and mechanics-absolutely)
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Post by jeffb on Jun 3, 2020 7:11:54 GMT -6
Multiclassing is something I still despise, and I didn't like OD&D take's on Elves. B/X's (and Holmes really, but it wasn't set up as clearly as B/X) Elves I thought were a great solution to bring the features of both classes into a single class without dealing with the headaches of OD&D (choose your class for each adventure), and AD&D mess of multiclassing rules that get rode hard and put away wet. (i.e. abused)
We opened Halflings and Dwarves up to thieving as I recall.
Also, 14th level works out fine in my book as well. I never gelled with the Companion Box (cemented my dislike for the entire BECMI range).
Later on in my collecting days, I picked up the MI sets, as well as The Classic D&D set, the Rules Cyclopedia, and other 2e era "Basic" products. The RC I think is a great book, though I dislike much of the additional rules content like the wonky specializations/skills system
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Post by jeffb on Jun 3, 2020 6:24:11 GMT -6
So Fin gave us a forum to talk about it- So lets get right to the very beginning..
B/X is my fave edition of the game. TSR or WOTC. Always has been.
But I started with OD&D. Once B/X showed up on shelves-literally the 1st week it showed up, that was it for me. I abandoned AD&D and went back, just adding in the bits from AD&D we liked (spells mostly, some classes like the Ranger)
Reasons:
Clear-Many rules were explained better (or explained period)
Concise and easy to find things in- not a jumble of rules strewn out over multiple booklets and Gary's wonderful, but often hard to follow Train of Thought trying to get to the point.
Visuals- Both in the presentation of the rules, and the aesthetic. Moldvay/Cook/Marsh had a Swords & Sorcery Comic book look to it that totally resonated with me and the types of D&D games I had been (trying to) present for the last few years. I wanted larger than life action heroes, not wimpy 1st level characters with 3 HP. Of course, the rules didn't match the visuals, but those visuals have driven my style of D&D gaming more than any other single product, with Holmes Basic being the secondary driver from the visual (Sutherland Orcs! oink)
By the end of 1982 I had moved on to RQ for my fantasy fix and had abandoned D&D for the most part. A year or so later I saw the Mentzer set on shelves. What? I didn't like the look. I hemmed an hawed for weeks. Finally I broke down. KIDDIE D&D! What is with this weird art? Who is this Elmore dude? Oh yeah, he did the cover to Star Frontiers- great cover. But D&D? IDK......And again we've got horrible layout and rules all over the place in two different books, and well..... I didn't get it. Later on I won a copy of the Mentzer Expert set at a Con, and that set I appreciated more- it was not a teaching tool, but a solid reference- still not into this Elmore guy though.
These days, I'm much more enamored of Frank's edits. In fact I own his play copies of the red and blue box booklets with his penciled in eratta. Years ago I was looking for "kiddie D&D" for my then young son- I realized how good it would be to teach him. Frank offered up his set for me over @ Dragonsfoot, for shipping costs only. I paypal'ed him a more fair amount once the books arrived. He autographed them for my son too. So a neat piece of history from a set I hated back in it's prime.
Sadly my Son just didn't gel with D&D at the time, and it would take 3 more giftings of "basic sets" (3.0,3.5, and 4E) before he got into D&D.
Anyone else have fond memories (or otherwise) of their intro to B/X and/or BECMI?
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Post by jeffb on Jun 3, 2020 5:58:23 GMT -6
I've ran it several times in the distant past and played it once here on this board. I haven't considered running it in a long time, but that's only because I now own too many modules I've never ran. My favorite part is that the module isn't railroad-y AT ALL. Much of it describes the abandoned monastery on the hill, but you have absolutely no reason to go there. A party could, in theory, explore the entire rest of the hill and skip the monastery altogether. Not so fave is that the geography around the hill always seemed confusing to me. Why is it only accessible in the direction from Guido's Fort? Thanks for the insight! Frankly, I think the "Guido's Fort" bit was what turned me off from ever using it. It doesn't sound like D&D, it sounds like Little Italy or Da Bronx. Of course I could have changed it, but... One of the positive things that I always got the impression of- There was ALOT of adventure material jammed into those 32 pages
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Post by jeffb on Jun 2, 2020 10:19:47 GMT -6
Interesting. Having started in the OD&D phase and beginnings of Basic (Holmes) and AD&D period we mostly ran home-made stuff to start, and ran the occasional modules we could find (G series, S1, etc).
Once modules started becoming commonplace in bookstores (80/81), those became the focus and homebrew waned (too much work).
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Post by jeffb on Jun 2, 2020 8:26:42 GMT -6
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Post by jeffb on Jun 2, 2020 6:21:59 GMT -6
23 views and nobody ran this thing?
I don't know if that's an indication of it's worth, or nobody else ever bought it.
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Post by jeffb on Jun 2, 2020 6:13:40 GMT -6
This is a necro, yikes.
But Monte left because he did not like the massive shift that occurred halfway through development. He had big issues with the business model and corporate branding of the game, where the actual game was going to be second fiddle to IP (like FR), Video/Computer Games, etc. The types of products and support. He wasn't into "Corporate D&D". At the same time WOTC went through and "cleaned house" - James Wyatt (IMO-the most talented creative person at WOTC over the last 20 years) left the D&D Team (for M:TG), the Art & Visuals Director (Schindhette...sp?) was "let go" as well as others. People Monte had worked with for years. According to post exit talk (which was very little, due to contractual reasons) he was actually looking to bring the game back to it's early roots- an Anti 3E if you will.
At the time I was glad to see him go, because I didn't know any of this or how it would turn out.
In retrospect, I'm sorry I felt that way, because I really can't get jazzed for 5E, the WOTC business model, the 5E "culture" or community and I would like to have seen what Monte did with it from a design standpoint.
He also had nothing to do with 4E, so I don't see why anyone would have criticized him for that?
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Post by jeffb on Jun 1, 2020 8:16:08 GMT -6
I have a complicated relationship with DCC for a lot of these reasons. All the things I love about it – the visual aesthetic and imaginative vibe, the community zine culture it supports, the fun modules – are also the things that feel like walls. The game's whole grass-roots, unabashedly old-school, DIY vibe is ultimately a veneer: really, the only way to get your stuff out there in the scene is to be a talented artist whose quality artwork and professional layout exudes the correct attitude. There was a recent Save for Half podcast, with Jon Peterson on board to talk about Alarums & Excursions, where they said something similar: Kickstarter had just completed a hugely successful Zine Quest with zines for just about every RPG currently on the market, but these offers really have nothing to do with actual zines, because they're all professional products. The real deal, the APA, is as dead as roadkill. I guess what I'm stabbing at is that the big difference, for me anyway, isn't that games like DCC are "too professional." It's that the driving force behind the community is too wrapped up in presentation and mediation. In a wacky uber-psychoanalytical sense, they really aren't about consuming games so much as they are about consuming attitudes (in other words, it's pop culture). Nice (and spot-on, IMO) observation about the DCC community. The culture that was groomed by Joe, et al, or simply built up around this game became a big turnoff for me, for reasons I have a hard time putting into words- There are game elements I love in DCC. The fictional elements of Appendix N I love, are there- but I feel, justified or not, that I don't belong in the DCC community. It's almost a "cool kids cult" vibe. There is an attitude and aesthetic one must prescribe to , to be sufficiently a DCC fan. Again, justified or not, that's the feel I got being part of the Goodman forums, Google + (especially those first few years), the BLOGosphere and elsewhere. As to the topic at hand. We are seeing the Disney-fication of D&D (proper), and the OSR has become a small fish in the big pond of RPGs. In the golden/silver age of RPGs, these were the second and third tier games behind D&D. OSR is simply a second or third tier now in comparison to WOTC D&D. The OSR has turned commercial in the last 10 years. Certainly there are many who are still plugging away along, sharing content with the community for free, and producing their own little zines or newsletters. But this is no longer the majority of the OSR- or perhaps, the OSR that is easily accessible. S&W jumped the Shark years ago, as FGG started churning out the hardcover big books on KS right along with their Pathfinder volumes. So disappointed Matt went that way, but I get it- $ Labyrinth Lord faded out because- no big push and amateur-ish looking product. It was not "cool" enough. Same for Basic Fantasy RPG. This game is still being contributed to, updated and has TONS of very good free content out there. So how come we never hear about it? Nobody ever discusses it here. I bought my copy from Lulu back in 2008? Yet- Old School Essentials- with it's big beautiful books, and big KS is now all the rage in OSR-dom and has even the 5e yootoobers and posters talking. Chris Gonnerman aka solomoriah the "creator" of BFRPG and Iron Falcon is still holding that original torch as to what the OSR is supposed to be about and keeps plugging away. Yet his efforts are largely ignored. :Charlie Brown Voice: OSR has gone commercial...….AUUUUUGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
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Post by jeffb on Jun 1, 2020 7:36:18 GMT -6
I owned this back in the day. It was (along with B6) the last ofthe D&D modules I ever purchased before leaving RPGS for about 10 years*
But I never used B5
Who has used it? Still use it? Fave elements? Not so fave? Discuss away.
*barring a whim purchase of DA1 Adventures in Blackmoor (and Unearthed Arcana) in 1986 while I was shopping in Toys R Us for a video game as a B-day present for someone.
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Post by jeffb on Jun 1, 2020 7:06:42 GMT -6
WOOT! Thank you Fin.
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Post by jeffb on May 31, 2020 7:52:14 GMT -6
Not sure why they get lumped here in the "other editions"? Certainly if Holmes is worthy of it's own and AD&D- Why wouldn't the biggest sellers/most popular of the OD&D family?*
And not to mention, they have become the most popular in the OSR market in recent years.
The reason I bring it up is I have a question about a B/X product, and I really don't know where to put it. This sub forum seems to be mostly about non- TSR games (DCC, 13th etc), and other things interspersed with some B/X and BECMI talk. Hardly seems fitting for such an influential game that is foundationally OD&D.
*I would say Biggest seller period- when talking all Basic sets combined, especially including Mentzer- but WOTC indicates 5E has surpassed the fad days of yore, so who knows.
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Post by jeffb on May 31, 2020 6:54:04 GMT -6
And "Palace" takes place on one of these islands, IIRC.
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Post by jeffb on May 16, 2020 6:24:56 GMT -6
Oil has no future, I'm afraid, and I'm very sorry to see your business fail. But fossil fuels are destroying our planet and environment and I hope this tragic loss serves as an opportunity to rethink where we place our services and manpower to hopefully make a more sustainable future. Renewables have been continuously on a major upswing, which is great, and I hope a deal passes that helps the fossil fuel industry sector re-equip themseves and the workforce for renewable energy development. Let's treat our beautiful world with care. Thanks for the heartless response! I'm so glad the loss of my livelyhood, and the livelyhood of the employees I provided jobs for could provide such an incredible soapbox for you! You handled that post far more maturely than I would have, I'm sorry to hear about your situation. One door closes. Another opens. Keep us in the loop.. MODS- are we going to start "kicking people when they are already down" around here?. This isn't in the spirit of this place
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Post by jeffb on May 10, 2020 16:12:03 GMT -6
^^^^^^^^
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Post by jeffb on May 5, 2020 8:08:22 GMT -6
I have to find me a copy of these books.
Thanks for the info- Hopefully the DCC version will be available soon.
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Post by jeffb on May 4, 2020 12:08:18 GMT -6
thegreyelf I'm not familiar with this fiction, but I saw this in an email from Goodman Games- can you dish any? Anyone else familiar with this Appendix N classic?
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Post by jeffb on May 4, 2020 5:23:45 GMT -6
Is Castles & Crusades compatible with AD&D? I've heard it was similar to 3e, but a bit simpler (no feats, for example). It is a D20 system designed in the spirit of AD&D, yes. Is it highly compatible? Adventures, yes- Easy to convert things on the fly for monster stats. But the game works off a D20 based "universal mechanic" known as The Siege Engine (itself, easily modded to taste). It is not an OSR "clone" game. Check it out while you can- for now, it's free (If you dig around, they also have a free quickstart with a short adventure and a very brief rules document going up to level 4 or so for the basic races/classes)) Players Handbook (All you need to play, along with the M&T book linked above by hamurai ) HERE
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Post by jeffb on May 3, 2020 6:15:26 GMT -6
3rd print. Which was the last B&W print IIRC. I picked it up as well to have a PDF. So between the free PHB and now the M&T, you have all you need to run C&C for free, forever. Pretty cool. Indeed! I've never really played C&C apart from the occasional one-shot, so I'm not usre how much the respective prints differ, if at all. Do you know?
Well, they should clean up typos and add some errata between printings, but The Trolls are not terribly good or consistent at that They are all 99.9% compatible rule wise. There have been very little changes in rules content over the past 15+ years, just a couple of additions ( like adding multiclassing rules, and some tweaks to the illusionist and encumbrance) over the print runs. It's mostly been layout changes, going to full color, some errata/cleanup. You can take a first print of M&T, and the 7th print of PHB and be fine and dandy. And I did the same as Fin at first- AD&D MM with the PHB. Played like that for about 2 or 3 years. EDIT-FIN NINJA'D ME!
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Post by jeffb on May 2, 2020 8:24:14 GMT -6
Castles & Crusades - Monsters & Treasure is free at the moment: HERE3rd print. Which was the last B&W print IIRC. I picked it up as well to have a PDF. So between the free PHB and now the M&T, you have all you need to run C&C for free, forever. Pretty cool.
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