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Post by tetramorph on Jun 5, 2020 10:54:17 GMT -6
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Post by peelseel2 on Jun 5, 2020 11:52:57 GMT -6
Basic Fantasy or Castles & Crusades. Choosing one, have to go with Castles & Crusades. To me it represents the best of Basic D&D, the best of 1e and the best of the OGL.
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Post by tdenmark on Jun 5, 2020 14:56:59 GMT -6
Honestly? Probably exactly what Gygax and Arneson did with D&D. We can play the "if I knew what I know now" game all day, but in truth, it was the letter perfect basis upon which to build an entire hobby. If it hadn't been done exactly as it was, we might not have built the wealth of approaches to tabletop gaming we now have. I wouldn't do anything differently given the gaming scene at the time. For all the complaints about D&D (and the original in particular) I actually consider them strengths. Disorganization? This led to wide rules interpretations which spread like seeds all across the gaming landscape and fertilized thousands of homebrews that eventually led to the plethora of systems and genres we have today. Classes and levels? In the 80's this was a hot button issue! Every new game was a reaction against classes and levels because they were so "unrealistic", but once computer RPG's came along we learned that Classes and Levels made for the ideal game system. It created the best goal system and narrowed the options to digestible archetypes. Toolkit RPGs that allow for anything are just too much for a wide audience, and in my experience not proportionally more fun for the increased complexity and work. Fiddly bits? All of those weird little systems, sub-systems, and fiddly little random modifiers scattered about the books allowed for gamers to argue. This arguing and debate engaged the intellect and contributed to the broad spectrum of mechanics we have today. Funny dice? I already mentioned why that was so great previously. Wargame roots? This tapped into an existing audience that was receptive to this new complex game. Without that fertile soil it might never have taken off. Kitchen Sink fantasy? A blending of every cool idea in every fantasy novel, comic book, mythology, and film into a delicious soup that became that unique flavor of D&D swords & sorcery lent greatly to its appeal. So, yes, I agree 100% the original was just right in its timing and ingredients. Still, it is a hellavu lot of fun to speculate what YOU'D do if dropped into 1970 with your favorite RPG book in hand!  |
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Post by tdenmark on Jun 5, 2020 15:06:02 GMT -6
Traveller ... the classic '77 TLBB (three little black books) non-3rd Imperium setting toolkit-in-a-box. Unfortunately I missed the Traveller boat, so I don't have any nostalgia for it. When I've tried to read it I couldn't get into it. I love sci-fi! (Heinlein ranks as my favorite author) But my problem with playing it, and in particular running it, is that it's too wide open. Drop a crew on a starship and they can go anywhere in the galaxy. Creating one make believe world is hard enough, much less a whole galaxy's worth! Dropping a party in a village with a local monster-and-treasure infested Dungeon is so much easier for everyone. Still, it would be very interesting to see what things would be like if the foundation of the RPG industry had been sci-fi instead of fantasy. |
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Post by tdenmark on Jun 5, 2020 15:10:10 GMT -6
Honestly, I think I would just sit back and let Dave and Gary do all the hard work ...maybe take a little field trip to Lake Geneva and run around Castle Greyhawk for a month or two... No doubt, in reality I'd probably invest in some stock I knew was going to explode, or put my energy into any number of other things far more lucrative. It would be incredible to sit down with Dave or Gary and visit Blackmoor or delve into Greyhawk Castle, maybe document a few things for posterity. |
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Post by tdenmark on Jun 5, 2020 15:17:23 GMT -6
That linked doesn't work. What is it? I'm very curious. |
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Post by tetramorph on Jun 5, 2020 15:41:13 GMT -6
That linked doesn't work. What is it? I'm very curious. Hmm. That's weird. I changed the link to that of the thread started by derv for his Scratch Build Campaign. Hopefully he can fix the link or offer it some other way. It is a great little document. |
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Post by derv on Jun 5, 2020 20:11:10 GMT -6
I just put these things together and offer them up for a short time. If I get some feedback or they encourage some discussion I may leave them up for a little longer. Typically, I pull links after 2-4 weeks. If someone's interested in something I previously posted they can message me and I'll usually give them a temporary link. There's a couple docs that I'm still working on, so they are truly unavailable.
Scratch Build is a supplement to The 18 Pages. It is meant to be a true grass roots approach where less is more. Pre-Blackmoor and the TC crowd is the thought behind it- to take the perspective of an original gamer and develop your campaign and all it's trappings and see where it takes you.
"As with any other set of miniature rules they are guidelines to follow in designing your own fantastic-medieval campaign. They provide the framework around which you will build a game of simplicity or tremendous complexity- your time and imagination are about the only limiting factors."-Gygax
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Post by Otto Harkaman on Jun 5, 2020 21:43:45 GMT -6
I would be a God to my worshipers, hit the ground running as computers develop.  |
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Post by tdenmark on Jun 5, 2020 23:15:37 GMT -6
I would be a God to my worshipers, hit the ground running as computers develop. Nice twist on the question! Alternatively: Pong was released in 1972. You arriving in 1970 would give you just enough of a head start to build those cabinets before Atari did. The only book you'd need to bring are the Pong technical specs. As for inventing RPGs, I'm sure any one of us here could do that from memory. |
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Post by Vile Traveller on Jun 6, 2020 1:02:30 GMT -6
I never understood, with the massive success of Star Wars (1977), why Traveller never got bigger than it did. As well as all the reasons you and other posters mentioned, I think a big problem was that Star Wars came out at the same time and totally overshadowed a lot of other SF - and I count Traveller as "other SF" in that sense. We tried to run what was basically Star Wars with it, but it was pretty poor at emulating that. Laser carbines with backpack power cells, vector space travel, no Force, no lightsabres, no rebellion ... I actually think Traveller would have done better without Star Wars, as it represented an earlier generation of SF. |
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Post by Deleted on Jun 6, 2020 7:19:23 GMT -6
Basic Fantasy or Castles & Crusades. Choosing one, have to go with Castles & Crusades. To me it represents the best of Basic D&D, the best of 1e and the best of the OGL. C&C has some really evocative setting books, too. I'm a big fan of Codex Germanica. I'd like to run a "Ring Cycle" flavored campaign at some point in the future. |
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Post by verhaden on Jun 6, 2020 9:02:55 GMT -6
Back to the Future it and bring a sports almanac. Make some money, and bring Gygax, Arneson, et. al. under my direction. Better editing, better artwork, and direction guided by decades of Monday-morning quarterbacking. Then, after ten years, release it into the public domain.
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Post by tdenmark on Jun 6, 2020 14:57:02 GMT -6
Back to the Future it and bring a sports almanac. Make some money, and bring Gygax, Arneson, et. al. under my direction. Better editing, better artwork, and direction guided by decades of Monday-morning quarterbacking. Then, after ten years, release it into the public domain. Keep Gygax in creative and away from business decisions. Keep non-gamers out of ruining the company. |
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Post by geoffrey on Jun 6, 2020 20:06:27 GMT -6
Knowing what you know now you are suddenly sent back to 1970 with a single mission: invent role playing games. You get to take 1 RPG book with you. What system do you use to build the foundation of the role playing game hobby? Does the 1974 D&D boxed set count as 1 RPG book? If so, that is what I'd bring. I'd then add in as much of Supplement I: GREYHAWK as I could remember, and I'd try to organize it like 1981 B/X D&D. |
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Post by Vile Traveller on Jun 6, 2020 22:50:37 GMT -6
Does the 1974 D&D boxed set count as 1 RPG book? If so, that is what I'd bring. I'd then add in as much of Supplement I: GREYHAWK as I could remember, and I'd try to organize it like 1981 B/X D&D. No it doesn't. You'll just have to bring Iron Falcon.  |
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Post by Deleted on Jun 7, 2020 1:48:29 GMT -6
...I give Dave Arneson 50% of the shares in my company, and hire Lester Del Rey and Lin Carter as creative consultants.
<3
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Post by tdenmark on Jun 7, 2020 3:53:07 GMT -6
Does the 1974 D&D boxed set count as 1 RPG book? If so, that is what I'd bring. I'd then add in as much of Supplement I: GREYHAWK as I could remember, and I'd try to organize it like 1981 B/X D&D. There is a fan made single volume edition that combines the 3 volumes nicely organized. (that might very well be my favorite RPG book ever!) |
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Post by tdenmark on Jun 7, 2020 4:02:39 GMT -6
You'll just have to bring Iron Falcon. I can't believe I just found out about Iron Falcon. What a sweet little retro-clone. |
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Post by Deleted on Jun 7, 2020 17:34:39 GMT -6
You'll just have to bring Iron Falcon. I can't believe I just found out about Iron Falcon. What a sweet little retro-clone. Dude, it's beautiful. I love Gonnerman's organization. My favorite part is there's a little checklist near the back letting you choose which level of complexity you're running. Like a handful of house rule sets and you pick one. One of them is called "The Full Gary" and is based on Gary's home OD&D campaign. |
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Post by tdenmark on Jun 8, 2020 14:06:29 GMT -6
Things I learned from this thread: Dungeon World is probably the one RPG book I'd bring back with me, but for reference only. I'd try to make the first RPG in the style, layout, and organization of B/X (Moldvay) D&D. tetramorph has a really good blog: campaigns-playable.blogspot.com/I prefer Classes & Levels to Toolkit RPGs (I already know that, my preferences were just reinforced) As @finarvyn suggested I should make a Warriors of the Red Planet special edition white box style: 3 little books in a box. (btw. that is one of the reasons I did that box test a few months back I posted about somewhere else on this forum) Gygax and Arneson pretty much got it right (I already knew that, my opinion was just reinforced), if I were to go back it would be best to just support their efforts. As thegreyelf put it so well. Honestly, it would just be exciting enough to get into a game of Blackmoor or Greyhawk with Dave or Gary, and take copious notes. Sci-fi is cool, but Dungeons are the best. derv has a brilliant supplement called Scratch Build Campaign that is inaccessible. It would be more lucrative to take a programming book back with you and be ahead of the curve on Video Games (duh) Iron Falcon is fantastic. Thanks everyone who posted, this has been really fun. |
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Post by derv on Jun 8, 2020 15:58:43 GMT -6
derv has a brilliant supplement called Scratch Build Campaign that is inaccessible. Scratch Build is accessible to anyone that's interested enough to message me  |
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Post by spellslingsellsword on Jun 9, 2020 19:37:04 GMT -6
It would be pretty cool to release the 1st edition of WEG's Star Wars when A New Hope came out and see what would happen.
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Post by Zakharan on Jun 17, 2020 21:53:10 GMT -6
Land of Og LOL
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Post by tdenmark on Jun 18, 2020 0:57:48 GMT -6
Is that the silly caveman game from Wingnut Games? You know, Land of Og has enough of OD&D that you could probably reconstruct OD&D from the Land of Og rulebook. |
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Post by DungeonDevil on Jun 19, 2020 6:55:14 GMT -6
I never understood, with the massive success of Star Wars (1977), why Traveller never got bigger than it did. As well as all the reasons you and other posters mentioned, I think a big problem was that Star Wars came out at the same time and totally overshadowed a lot of other SF - and I count Traveller as "other SF" in that sense. We tried to run what was basically Star Wars with it, but it was pretty poor at emulating that. Laser carbines with backpack power cells, vector space travel, no Force, no lightsabres, no rebellion ... I actually think Traveller would have done better without Star Wars, as it represented an earlier generation of SF. was VERY heavily inspired by the E.C. Tubb series "The Dumarest Saga" (beginning with The Winds of Gath, and continued for over 30 volumes). It's not sword-n-planet like Flash Gordon ---> Star Wars, but based on a grim, gritty, unforgiving universe where the protagonist is really a space-hobo who is not a superhero -- just a tough, wiry, resourceful, and sometimes lucky drifter who hops from planet to planet while looking for Earth and dodging evil cyborg baddies who want him. Kinda like Eastwood's iconic nameless cowboy. Great series well worth tracking down the books. The stories are very socially conscious (haves vs. have-nots; destitute and poor vs. ultra-wealthy and powerful) and Dumarest drifts between both strata with ease, surprisingly. Traveller was also inspired by Space Viking and a handful of other titles, but the main inspiration was Dumarest. The problem with CT is that it tries to look and feel too sciency with its hyper-gearheady starship build rules, extremely complicated starsystem generation rules, offputting chargen where death is a possibility, travel-distance-time equations which make a non-mathy person like myself faint, needlessly gearheady and dull robot construction rules, realistic vector-based spacetravel, the need for a substantial errata doc, and other things the sum of which are a strait-jacket on the imagination. |
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Post by Finarvyn on Jun 19, 2020 7:18:40 GMT -6
Classic Traveller was VERY heavily inspired by the E.C. Tubb series "The Dumarest Saga" (beginning with The Winds of Gath, and continued for over 30 volumes). Much truth here. I've read the first half dozen or so of these and wish I had owned them in the 70's when I first acquired the CT boxed set because I feel like I would have understood Traveller a lot more. The thing is, Dumarest books are very much like the old "Appendix N" fiction in many ways. If you read Conan or Fafhrd/Mouser or early Elric stuff, they are mostly short stories where the heroes appear in a given location and have an adventure before riding off into the sunset at the end. You could almost read those stories in any order, and in fact most of them weren't given an "official" order until well after publication. Dumarest is like that, only each adventure is a (short) novel length and each planet is unique. Same concept as Conan or Fafhrd/Mouser or early Elric stuff, but on a larger scale. I suspect that's why CT is so table-heavy, so that you can drop folks onto a planet and have some adventures and then next time be on a new planet. |
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Post by cadriel on Jun 19, 2020 8:28:06 GMT -6
I'm of two minds on this. On the one hand - I would have a lot of fun bringing back the Rules Cyclopedia and then creating a D&D that changed things around, like having a non-Vancian spellcasting system and critical hit charts and different attributes and other things that were heretical to Gary's D&D but popular in the '70s game scene. Given my druthers I'd even play using a hex map like the Outdoor Survival one, and put more of a hex-crawling element into the game from the start.
But the big, ambitious goal would be: bring back Greg Stafford's King Arthur Pendragon RPG. This could even start off as Arthurian Diplomacy, and grow into a complex multi-generational feudal saga of knights and chivalry. One advantage is that the "turn" system would make it ideal for play-by-mail games. I think this would encourage some historical elements of how the early RPG scene formed that wound up neglected, while steering it clear of the Tolkienesque fantasy that D&D wound up in. I actually think that D&D would still exist in a world that had a Pendragon-like game, and that it may actually take a little while before people realized that they're the same kind of game. I'd borrow heavily from Stafford's design, although it would start out in a stripped-down form. I think this would introduce a lot of positive things into the RPG industry from the start, and change the fundamental idea of what an RPG could and should be. And I think that it would translate well for electronic play as BBSes and email and the Internet develop, and really flourish there.
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Post by Vile Traveller on Jun 19, 2020 9:03:31 GMT -6
The problem with CT is [amongst others] offputting chargen where death is a possibility, I beg to differ! The CT chargen game is one of the funnest games in the game, you need the survival roll so you can end one character and move on to generating the next! And I made excellent use of the official(?) guidance that dead characters become NPCs - though I must admit my games had a preponderance of NPCs from the Imperial Scout Service ... |
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Post by DungeonDevil on Jun 19, 2020 16:39:04 GMT -6
The problem with CT is [amongst others] offputting chargen where death is a possibility, I beg to differ! The CT chargen game is one of the funnest games in the game, you need the survival roll so you can end one character and move on to generating the next! And I made excellent use of the official(?) guidance that dead characters become NPCs - though I must admit my games had a preponderance of NPCs from the Imperial Scout Service ... Not fun if you have a Ref who says "Welp, your guy died! Now, sit in the corner and watch the rest of us play! Bye, loser!" *eyeroll* (I've had a DM like that back in my early gaming years: if your PC died, you had to either sit it out, or just go home. Pretty harsh, frankly). The Dumarest books were the inspo, but it was sullied and buried by pseudo-scientific equations and an attempt at "hard science" that killed the potential for widespread marketing in the 80's. A game that had the promise of looking like Miss October, but instead droned on like Ben Stein on cough syrup. That's why I've been reading Tubb's books and taking ample notes: to reinvest "colour" and "spirit" back into a bloodless RPG. I'm at book 15 right now, and, once my own work-schedule clears I'd like to get back to the mission of completing the entire series and writing a book on my notes. |
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