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Post by Zenopus on Oct 9, 2021 21:55:33 GMT -6
I looked at the Nature of Middle-Earth in person yesterday at B&N. It's nicely done, and I looked over some of the interesting bits. I'll put it on my Xmas list.
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Post by Zenopus on Oct 9, 2021 21:53:20 GMT -6
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Post by Zenopus on Oct 9, 2021 21:48:01 GMT -6
No table is complete without Chalcedony, Chrysoberyl, Peridot, Sardonyx and Tourmaline.
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Post by Zenopus on Oct 7, 2021 9:45:15 GMT -6
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Post by Zenopus on Oct 6, 2021 20:08:19 GMT -6
Congrats on an epic first blog post...!
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Post by Zenopus on Oct 6, 2021 20:04:31 GMT -6
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Post by Zenopus on Oct 5, 2021 7:15:47 GMT -6
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Post by Zenopus on Oct 2, 2021 18:53:21 GMT -6
FYI, Terry Amthor has passed away. He was one of the founders of ICE, and wrote Court of Ardor, and co-wrote Iron Wind, among many other later projects. I enjoyed A Spy In Isengard, his contribution to the Middle-Earth Quest Series, as a teen and still have a copy.
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Post by Zenopus on Oct 1, 2021 15:35:40 GMT -6
Glad to hear you made it! Your post reminds me that I have another post to make with some close-ups of parts of the painting. Edit: I had almost finished this before, so I was able to get it posted quickly. Sutherland Dragon Details
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Post by Zenopus on Sept 11, 2021 22:02:05 GMT -6
(are traps even still a big threat at that level?) Yes. If the DM is worth his salt. I'll reply next year.
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Post by Zenopus on Sept 8, 2021 12:47:34 GMT -6
I've always understood Philotomy Jurament's article (the one jeffb linked above) to be a rationalization for the rules for dungeons in OD&D as written, not a separate setting from the rules. A mindset to help modern-era players appreciate the rules of OD&D. I don't know of any published dungeons that lean into the "Mythic Underworld", but there aren't too many published OD&D dungeons in general. It does seem like an opportunity for someone. The one thing I wrote that would expand the concept beyond the OD&D rules is my " Fearsome Monster" - monsters generated by the dungeon in response to the characters entering. This was inspired by Robert Holdstock's Mythago Wood series (and named after some text by J. Eric Holmes), in which primordial forests recreate ancient, often-forgotten ancestral myths from the minds of intruders.
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Post by Zenopus on Sept 6, 2021 18:41:15 GMT -6
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Post by Zenopus on Sept 3, 2021 12:47:03 GMT -6
FYI, The Ruined Tower of Zenopus is currently on sale for $1.39 through September 7th, as part of DMsGuild's "September Starter Sale" of introductory adventures. The Ruined Tower of Zenopus on DMsGuildFor old-school enthusiasts, on the blog I also offer notes on retro-converting it (you can just use the original, but there is added material): Running It Retro, Part I Running It Retro, Part IIThe adventure went Platinum back in January (1,001 sales), and is now close to 1,500 sales. However, the next badge (Mithril) at DMs Guild doesn't come until 2,501 sales are hit. Click here to find links to reviews of the RTOZ on by various reviewers (bloggers, Youtubers etc)
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Post by Zenopus on Aug 28, 2021 22:14:18 GMT -6
The Tekumel Foundation is reprinting all of these novels. I believe Man of God is already out, and badger2305 has shown the cover for Flamesong on FB and indicated the others will eventually follow.
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Post by Zenopus on Aug 22, 2021 15:13:28 GMT -6
I've updated my blog post with some info on where the show will later travel to:
---May 20 to September 5, 2022: Hunter Museum of American Art in Chattanooga, TN
---September 23, 2022 to January 8, 2023: Flint Institute of Art in Flint, MI
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Post by Zenopus on Aug 20, 2021 8:48:12 GMT -6
This was post was in this thread, but I decided to move it to its own thread on the General Board, as the goal is to make people aware of the show in case they would like to visit while it is running. * * * * * David Sutherland's iconic painting for Holmes Basic is on exhibit for the first time at the Norman Rockwell Museum in MA! I visited two weeks ago, below is my best photo of it. I've also written a blog post for the Zenopus Archives about my visit: zenopusarchives.blogspot.com/2021/08/the-holmes-basic-set-cover-art-exhibited.html
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Post by Zenopus on Aug 13, 2021 7:37:26 GMT -6
Theoretically, if you actually wanted to play in early 1979, it was still OD&D, since it wasn’t until Gencon that year that the AD&D1e DMG was released…but that’s quibbling. That's true, although Dragon #22 in Feb 1979 had a DMG preview that included the Attack Matrices. I've heard a fair number of stories of folks using this to run "AD&D" prior to getting a hold of the DMG.
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Post by Zenopus on Aug 12, 2021 22:14:10 GMT -6
I should add that I also thought erring on the side of adding a potential "extra" year to the accounting was appropriate since, in my experience, previous edition product was still easy to find at retail for quite some time after the printing presses went silent and the next edition was announced. Of course, if we took that to the extreme, we might even be able to call OD&D as much as 4 or 5 years, since I believe the Greyhawk supplement was still in print until '78 or '79. I wasn't that committed, though, so rather than try to track down printing dates for all the individual books, I settled on using the publication date of the final new release for each edition, and then counting years the way that I did where it's basically automatically rounded upward. According to acaeum, the OD&D OCE (6th-7th print) boxed sets continued to be printed until the end of 1979. The OD&D supplements were also printed until November 1979. Then, as you say, the last stocks would have been on store shelves through 1980. So... OD&D's total print run was something like 1974 thru 1979. TSR was still hawking the Collector's Editions in the Gateway to Adventure catalogs circa 1981. There's a the whole page for them (OCE and supplements). They were still selling supplements in the 1988 catalog, but not the boxed set. I'd need to check further to see when exactly between those they stopped offering the OCE set in the catalog. Personally, I bought a new OCE set off a game store shelf in the later part of the '80s.
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Post by Zenopus on Aug 7, 2021 7:16:41 GMT -6
I see the buttons on the bottom on mobile view (Chrome/Android), but not on desktop view on the same device.
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Post by Zenopus on Jul 27, 2021 9:00:10 GMT -6
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Post by Zenopus on Jul 26, 2021 10:27:01 GMT -6
waysoftheearth, I think retrorob may be referring to what I posted upthread a few days ago about WoM having an explicit 1:1 scale with 10 sec turns comprising 2 rounds of combat: One item I'll post in support of the Donjon Lands argument is that Warriors of Mars, which includes systems clearly derived from Chainmail, has two separate scales that "are not mixed on the table": 1:50, in which "1 turn = 1 min" and "1" = 10 yards" 1:1, in which "1 turn = 10 sec" and "1" = 6 feet" The 1:1 scale is described on pages 16-17 and appears modified from Chainmail MTM, and "has two rounds of melee each turn", thus rounds are 5 sec each. Now, whether this type of split scale was ever used with Chainmail Mass Combat/MTM is up to interpretation, but it almost appears to be written in recognition of the ambiguity of Chainmail.
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Post by Zenopus on Jul 25, 2021 16:04:03 GMT -6
The question is, why is it *more likely* that Gygax intended 6 second rounds in OD&D (10 rounds/per 1 minute "combat turn"), than one minute rounds, with 10 equaling a ten-minute turn?
*We've got Chainmail saying that "One turn of play is roughly equivalent to one minute of time in battle", and Gygax's 1975 letter upthread, indicating but a single melee round per turn in Chainmail.
*We've got OD&D adding "Two moves constitute a turn" and "There are ten rounds of combat per turn", with no other stated distinction between turns.
*We've got Gygax saying in 1978 that the 1 minute melee round in OD&D was what was intended:
(Dragon #15, June 1978, "From the Sorcerer's Scroll: D&D GROUND AND SPELL AREA SCALE")
*We've got Gygax keeping the 1-minute round in AD&D, and defending it.
It's pretty easy from the above to draw a straight line from the Chainmail 1-minute turn through OD&D to the AD&D 1-minute round. It's possible to argue that shorter rounds were intended in OD&D Vol 3, but I think it requires a heavier burden to overcome the above than has been put forth so far. And it's harder now that there's evidence indicating that the Chainmail turn was not, by default, meant to include multiple rounds of combat.
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Post by Zenopus on Jul 24, 2021 14:52:06 GMT -6
~2 hours left. I was on the fence about it since I already have a nice copy of the hardcover 3rd edition, which includes the rulebook, 20s sourcebook and Companion all together. I mostly wanted the adventures, but wasn't sure about pdf or print. Then I read that the 2" size was chosen to replicate the size of the original 1981 box. Holmes reviewed the 1st edition back in 1983 for Gameplay magazine*, so the connection there was enough to put me over into the print column. * This review was reprinted in a zine in 2019, along with artwork by Chris Holmes: zenopusarchives.blogspot.com/2019/09/holmes-1983-review-of-call-of-cthulhu.html
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Post by Zenopus on Jul 24, 2021 14:08:50 GMT -6
ThrorIIThanks for your comment. Whether or not "Chainmail has an unlimited number of melee rounds in a 1-minute combat turn" is actually what this entire thread is about! I replied to you on Grognardia. Here's part of what I wrote: See the referenced article in my post upthread.
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Post by Zenopus on Jul 24, 2021 12:30:11 GMT -6
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Post by Zenopus on Jul 24, 2021 12:28:51 GMT -6
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Post by Zenopus on Jul 24, 2021 10:11:58 GMT -6
One item I'll post in support of the Donjon Lands argument is that Warriors of Mars, which includes systems clearly derived from Chainmail, has two separate scales that "are not mixed on the table":
1:50, in which "1 turn = 1 min" and "1" = 10 yards" 1:1, in which "1 turn = 10 sec" and "1" = 6 feet"
The 1:1 scale is described on pages 16-17 and appears modified from Chainmail MTM, and "has two rounds of melee each turn", thus rounds are 5 sec each.
Now, whether this type of split scale was ever used with Chainmail Mass Combat/MTM is up to interpretation, but it almost appears to be written in recognition of the ambiguity of Chainmail.
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Post by Zenopus on Jul 24, 2021 10:07:24 GMT -6
There is a new blog post over on DONJON LANDS that cites this thread as part of an argument that D&D rounds are meant to be less than one minute long. The thrust of the argument, which I am not sold on, is that Chainmail's Man-to-Man combat sequence *must* occur at a shorter scale than the 1 minute rounds of Mass Combat. www.donjonlands.com/2021/07/chainmail-odd-and-the-one-minute-combat-round.htmlThere's also a post about it on Grognardia today, with further discussion. grognardia.blogspot.com/2021/07/the-one-minute-combat-round.htmlAs I wrote there: But for purposes of this thread, where we've now found contemporaneous evidence (see my post above) that the "second round" of Mass Combat occurs in the "second turn", meaning there is typically one round of combat per turn, how do you feel about the argument that Man-to-Man combat differs in that the procedures assumes multiple rounds of combat per turn if both combatants survive the first round? The argument over there is long, so I won't repeat it all here, but a lot of hit hinges on the interpretation that the instructions for "2nd Round and thereafter" in Man-to-Man only makes sense if the rounds are all occurring in a single turn. Which, to me, remains debatable.
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Post by Zenopus on Jul 24, 2021 9:06:18 GMT -6
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Post by Zenopus on Jul 22, 2021 22:16:37 GMT -6
Thanks for the heads up! From the preview, it's a 3rd Edition (1975), 7th printing (April 1979), and scanned from an original rather than re-typeset like the OD&D booklets.
The print plus digital version costs the same as the print version alone, $6.99. I just ordered a copy, will report on quality when it arrives. The total with tax and media mail shipping was $11.91.
I haven't owned a print copy of Chainmail in quite a while. I used to have this same edition (including the coiled rings mentioned above), which I ordered from the TSR Mail Order Hobby Shop in the late '80s, but I sold it on Ebay at some point in the late '90s.
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