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Post by Zenopus on Feb 22, 2016 21:06:33 GMT -6
FYI, you can currently play Adventure (aka Colossal Cave) on the AMC website; it's a tie-in to their series Halt and Catch Fire: www.amc.com/shows/halt-and-catch-fire/exclusives/colossal-cave-adventureThe play screen emulates a green monochrome monitor. I first played Adventure at my best friend's mom's workplace, after hours. Sometime in the early '80s. The computer we played on didn't have a monitor; every single line of text was outputted to a paper print out. * * * * * There's a neat blog, Renga in Blue, where the author is trying to play through every text adventure (aka interactive fiction) game from the '70s on. There were many more of these in the late '70s (after Adventure) than I had realized.
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Post by Zenopus on Feb 16, 2016 18:30:54 GMT -6
The Mentzer Basic Set is also already available, so the 1001 set has got to be Holmes. Chainmail and Swords & Spells are on the list of stuff they are looking for. Weirdly, so is Dwarven Glory, which was distributed by TSR but was published by Wee Warriors. A number of the old tournament modules are listed: Quest for the Fazzlewood, Tsojconth, Lost Tamoachan, Ghost Tower of Inverness Hopefully the solo modules have the Invisible Ink/Magic Viewer text added in...
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Post by Zenopus on Feb 9, 2016 13:12:35 GMT -6
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Post by Zenopus on Feb 9, 2016 8:43:29 GMT -6
Thanks for pointing this out, I've never noticed it before.
Entries #1 and #6 on the table both include #1 Treasure and #1 Magic, so there must be a difference.
* * * * *
These tables are also found in the DMG pg 120 in revised form. If you roll 91-100 on the Maps Table, you then go to the "Combined Hoard" table. This seems to be a revised version of the one on page 27 of OD&D Vol 2.
Note these two revised entries:
"Map to 1-2 & 3-5 Monetary Treasure, 20 Magic Treasure on Hand" "Map to 11-12 & 13-15 Monetary Treasure plus 15-18 Magic Treasure, 20 Magic Treasure on Hand"
* * * * *
Based on this, my interpretation of the OD&D table is that the initial Treasure includes a "Map to #1 Treasure" and "#1 Magic (already there)". A combined Map and Magic treasure.
So when you are rolling up the treasure, instead of just including a single Map to a combined hoard of #1 Treasure and #1 Magic, you instead find a Map to #1 Treasure plus the #1 Magic.
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Post by Zenopus on Feb 6, 2016 9:55:41 GMT -6
I recently took a look at the 1974 Thief compared to the one in Greyhawk, plus I extracted all of the 1974 rules into a single digest-sized reference sheet. See The d6 HD OD&D Thief
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Post by Zenopus on Jan 29, 2016 11:30:49 GMT -6
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Post by Zenopus on Jan 27, 2016 23:51:52 GMT -6
Very cool. For non-movie stuff, the pre-Empire Kenner toy line also had the Imperial Troop Transport, which also came with its own little illustrated storybook with lots of Kenner toy product placements ( link here, scroll down to 'KENNER TOYS: IMPERIAL TROOP TRANSPORT COMIC'). The storybook has a pretty good description of the vehicle, except for their literal interpretation of the silly 'troops strapped to the outside' thing. For a toy tie-in, that's a particularly grim little comic!
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Post by Zenopus on Jan 26, 2016 22:08:51 GMT -6
How about a "Kennerverse" for toys by Kenner that weren't in the movies? For pre-Empire Strikes Back, there's the Kenner Droid Factory (1979). This was the first Star Wars set that I owned, probably because my parents thought it was more educational than the others. Together, my sister and I had this set, plus Luke, Leia, R2 and Threepio. What's missing? A villain! So naturally one of the robots in the set ( Mechano Droid) became my villain until I was able to get a Vader. The rest of the set is long gone, but I still have Mechano Droid with my surviving figures. In addition to Mechano Droid, the set had instructions for building R2-D2 (with third leg), Tracto-Droid, Quad-Pod Droid, Rollarc Droid and Monster Droid, plus a bunch of other unnamed combinations. Attachments:
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Post by Zenopus on Jan 25, 2016 13:48:12 GMT -6
FWIW, the Kenner silver "Death Star Droid" (which I had as a kid) is actually shown in the Jawa Sandcrawler. The one on the death star is painted black. See here.
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Post by Zenopus on Jan 24, 2016 12:57:44 GMT -6
Nice catch. I just checked the expanded tables in Eldritch Wizardry rectify this by including Animals in the list of Swamp encounters.
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Post by Zenopus on Jan 20, 2016 16:00:30 GMT -6
The rules from the Chainmail Fantasy Supplement are from 1971, so that is pre-publication of D&D. I have no idea whether Dave was actually influenced by the "counter-spell" rules from Chainmail - which are a form of "wizard duelling" - but date-wise it is at least a possibility to consider.
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Post by Zenopus on Jan 20, 2016 13:53:00 GMT -6
Other threads worth mentioning in this context: Fantasy Film Survey: Several posts about the wizard duel in The Raven, and Mike says: "Gary loved The Raven". Counter-spell in OD&D: Some ideas for importing the Chainmail counter-spell rules to OD&D
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Post by Zenopus on Jan 20, 2016 13:34:43 GMT -6
Thanks, Jon! Good to know this concept goes all the way back to the "beginning".
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Post by Zenopus on Jan 20, 2016 0:19:11 GMT -6
Thorswulf (or anyone else): does the 1st edition Chainmail have the counter-spell rules for Wizards in the Fantasy Supplement? In the third edition these rules are on page 31 in the section titled "Spells", just before the spell list.
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Post by Zenopus on Jan 19, 2016 22:35:37 GMT -6
There's also the counterspell rules in the Fantasy Supplement to Chainmail (pg 31 in the 3rd edition). Perhaps Dave's wizard duels were inspired/adapted from these? Edit: Jon P. confirmed that these rules (in slightly different form) appeared in the 1st print of Chainmail, 1971.
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Post by Zenopus on Jan 13, 2016 18:06:35 GMT -6
If you've read Unfinished Tales, History of Middle-Earth is similar, but with more versions of drafts and less relatively polished yet unfinished material. Unfinished Tales was sort of his "first scoop" through the unpublished material. It was published first and its success led to the Lost Tales and then the rest of the HOME series. I posted a list of some of the "gems" I found in HOME here. Regarding the linguistic material (elvish language et al), I believe much of that has been published (with the permission of Christopher Tolkien) in journals such as Vinwar Tengwar: www.elvish.org/VT/
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Post by Zenopus on Jan 13, 2016 15:36:23 GMT -6
I came across those once before, thanks for the reminder.
Love the use of the Monster Cards format, the art (make me think graphic art + 1960s paparback sci-fi covers), and the use of Futura font. I only wish they had actually stats for a particular OSR ruleset rather than being system neutral.
We have a pair of Wrought Iron Hounds in our neighborhood.
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Post by Zenopus on Jan 8, 2016 23:23:34 GMT -6
There's actually a "young adult" version of the Sword the Shannara - just the original novel - that splits it into a trilogy of short books. I saw the first volume in a bookstore last year.
I read SoS in middle school & enjoyed it even after having read Lord of the Rings. I continued with the series for a while but now it's probably been over twenty years now since I read one of them.
Thanks for the heads up on the new series.
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Post by Zenopus on Jan 7, 2016 15:20:34 GMT -6
See this thread from last year: odd74.proboards.com/thread/10828/experience-required-continued-advancementParticularly the post by Gronan: This matches what mindcontrolsquid posted above. The tables for Thieves described in Greyhawk and the first two Strategic Review classes (Rangers and Illusionists) also match this pattern of requiring name level XP for each level afterwards.
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Post by Zenopus on Dec 13, 2015 11:11:04 GMT -6
Lets see... Yor, The Hunter From the FutureI saw Yor in the theater when it was released in 1983! I enjoyed it but don't remember it too well as I haven't seen it since. Also saw Hercules that year, the one with Lou Ferrigno in the title role. I mostly remember Herc throwing a tree trunk into outer space.
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Post by Zenopus on Dec 13, 2015 10:13:30 GMT -6
The description for Feeblemind (page 30 of Vol 1), says:
"Because of its specialized nature the Feeblemind spell has a 20% better chance of success, i.e. lowers the Magic-Users saving throw against magic by 4, so that if normally a 12 or better were required to save against magic, a 16 would be required against a Feeblemind."
The equivalence of -4 to -20% only works if the roll is on a d20.
Also, we have Prayer in Greyhawk: "It lowers the saving throws of those within the area by 5% (1 point) plus 5% for every ten levels the Cleric has gained, i.e. an 11th level Cleric lowers the saving throws by 10%, and at 21st level it would jump to 15%."
Here we have a direct statement of the equivalence between 5% and 1 point.
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Post by Zenopus on Dec 6, 2015 15:34:56 GMT -6
When I was a kid, The Wrath of Khan and The Last Starfighter were two other space movies that left me with the same feeling as Star Wars after leaving the theater.
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Post by Zenopus on Nov 28, 2015 9:55:00 GMT -6
Interesting, I didn't know about this. As far as I know the published Holmes rulebook in all printings has them at ½ and 2 as you indicated above.
However, in the draft Holmes has ½ for skeletons and zombies, and Gygax/TSR changed the Zombie HD to 2 for publication.
I had thought Holmes accidentally copied the "½" from "½/1" to each entry, but now I wonder if he actually interpreted the original "1/2" as being "½" for each of them.
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Post by Zenopus on Nov 23, 2015 11:09:24 GMT -6
It's an awesome pic, but actually by Kenneth Rahman aka Elladan Elrohir rather than Erol Otus. The tag here is an overlapping "EE" rather than "EO". I wrote about this recently here. "Above is an advertisement for Gen Con XII from the Dragon #25, May 1979, with fantastic artwork by Kenneth Rahman aka Elladan Elrohir aka Eymoth. His tag is not to be mistaken for the EO used by Erol Otus, and can also be seen on the covers of other TSR games including Boot Hill and Divine Right (which Rahman co-designed with his brother Glenn)." If you take a look at the cover of the Boot Hill boxed set here (click on the image on that page for a larger view) you'll see it has the same overlapping "EE" logo along the bottom edge (partially obscured by text).
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Post by Zenopus on Nov 20, 2015 20:33:34 GMT -6
In the comments to that blog post, Jon actually points out that the 3 LBBs refer to the other dice in places. The Monster Reference Table itself requires a d4, d6, d8, d10, d12 and d20 to generate all of the "Number Appearing" ranges.
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Post by Zenopus on Nov 18, 2015 12:09:59 GMT -6
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Post by Zenopus on Nov 14, 2015 9:22:04 GMT -6
I would look at the Monster & Treasure Assortments (which are an OD&D product) for guidance on what Gygax thought was appropriate to dungeon encounters, at least as of their publication (1976-1977). (I realize, of course, his thoughts may have changed from the time of the original booklets.) Following the sentence that aldarron quoted above that starts "The TREASURE TYPE TABLES...", the Holmes rulebook then says "A good guide to the amount of treasure any given monster should be guarding is given in the MONSTER & TREASURE ASSORTMENTS" which are included in the game. This entire paragraph is not in the Manuscript, so it gives a good insight into Gygax's thoughts on this topic circa 1977. I posted some analysis of the 1st level of the M&TA tables here, including the average amount of treasure per encounter (318 GP, if my math was correct).
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Post by Zenopus on Nov 10, 2015 23:22:17 GMT -6
All I can add is that Holmes wrote it that way in the manuscript and Gygax left it unchanged as published, indicating he didn't see any need to change what Holmes had written.
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Post by Zenopus on Nov 10, 2015 21:56:13 GMT -6
Holmes is just explaining there that you take the normal d6 damage from the hit (weapon or monster) and must also save versus poison. The combat examples show this in action. Bruno takes 2 points of damage from a spider bite - not enough to kill him - but then fails his save vs the poison and "dies a horrible death".
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Post by Zenopus on Nov 8, 2015 22:26:56 GMT -6
derv, see this post: Part 7: Something Has Come Strolling AlongThat entire paragraph is not in the Manuscript, so it was added by Gygax. Holmes had two short sentences covering this after the Reaction table, based on the info in OD&D Vol 3. So Gygax moved those two sentences and revised/expanded them to what you see in the published Holmes rulebook.
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