The incredible austerity of D&D in 1980

^ nice trampier-looking art tho

gygax! on TOH (S1):

It was a long time ago when the Tomb of Horrors first made its appearance. Before I put it into manuscript form for publication, i carried the scenario around with me in by briefcase, so as to be ready for those fans who boasted of having mighty PCs able to best any challenge offered by the AD&D game. After an hour or so of time spent within the weird labyrinth of Acererak’s final "resting place," the players whose characters were survivors typically remembered suddenly that they had pressing engagements elsewhere. Clutching their precious character sheets, they fled the table. Those who had already lost their vaunted PCs had previously departed, muttering darkly about "impossible death traps." Had I been mean and cruel, I would have required participants to hand over their character sheets upon the demise of a PC, torn them up, and then smiled wickedly as I asked for the name and address of their DMs so as to pass on the news of the sad loss. But I am very kind at heart.

To follow up with Tuomas' point about Scandinavian LARPing having a better gender balance than, say, North American, I present you with this classic of the Internet, Blue & Red Link:

http://www.hemmy.net/2008/03/07/female-link-cosplay/

http://www.geekologie.com/2008/12/love_a_zelda_cosplay_girls_gal.php

http://www.hemmy.net/images/games/linkcosplay04.jpg

True, it's more cosplay than larp, but shut the fuck up.

Er, I didn't say anything about gender balance in North American LARPing. If you bothered to read my post, it says:

"I don't know how it is in the USA, but in here the LARPing is a much less of a male-centric hobby than paper-and-pen RPGs, in fact I think there are more female LARPers than male ones. So yeah, I think LARPers get laid more often than other gamers."

Basically I was assuming it must be similar in the USA too, but I didn't want to make any definite statements because I know little about the North American LARPing scene.

hum·min·a

[huhm-in-a]
–interjection

1) yeah

Also, yeah.

XPOST!

is this an classic of the internet?

http://i274.photobucket.com/albums/jj242/donaldparsley/rikkusmall.jpg

should probably be.

great thread

love hearing about the earliest generation of gamers--that mid-70s 'moment' when geek/nerd culture was emerging, hippies reading tolkein, civil war gaming turning into fantasy ripoffs, phone phreaking. wild!

me personally i spent a lot of time reading the manuals and imagining what it would be like to play an ad&d campaign. i got really into magic though, next best thing i guess.

About tomb-of-horrors type stuff - I DMed my dad a couple of times as a kid and the way he'd prepare for missions, and do everything so carefully, was so unlike the modern style of play - like, the first thing he'd do every mission was to make a butterfly net - he and his gamer friends would touch nothing they hadn't identified, etc etc...

Kinda amazed how many ilx MTGers are crawling out of the woodwork but that's another thread!

oooof, i just remembered something super embarrassing:

how i tried to get my step-grandmother and mom to play a game of brand new AD&D with me because i didn't know anybody else who played, and they were usually pretty cool.

they both refused and i was reaally and so i went outside and hid in a tree.

i was 13 :(

they both refused and i was reaally and so i went outside and hid in a tree.

Funnily enough my little brother went outside and hid in a tree when I killed his PC once at about the same age.

A Separate Saving Throw

well played, +30 xp

I am so tempted to go to a bookstore tonight and snag some of this stuff again, just for the pure hell of it.

Even more tempted now that I've checked back in and saw that Wizards has brought back the red box!

A request: if anyone ever comes across any Space:1889 stuff for cheap let me know. I always wanted to check that out but I've never come across any of it.

There's a company putting out retro modules now, but I can't remember their name.

Using 180gm virgin vinyl was a bit much but still...

Haha. Hearing about the retro mods makes me want to buy some stuff even more!

I want a reissue of Empire Of The Petal Throne please!

red box is back???

They're calling it D&D Essentials or something. Stripped down version of the 4th edition ruleset.

Sadly, not the same as the D&D/AD&D split. I wonder if my friend stil lhas the Companion rules? I have the Basic and Expert rules kicking around here somewhere.

attn jjjusten: what was the name of that Gygax! (I think?) choose-yr-own-adventure-on-steroids book you had

A key skill.

Leave unmarked space for naming by roads, rivers, towns and anything else unmarked. The swamp witch moved to the coast, but characters can still seek her out and go tramping through bayous to get to her.

oooof, i just remembered something super embarrassing:

how i tried to get my step-grandmother and mom to play a game of brand new AD&D with me

O god, you've just reminded me that I actually did manage to get my grandmother to play in a Fighting Fantasy (the super-simple rpg, not the gamebooks) adventure once. She probably found it a refreshing change from the usual task of supervising my brother and me on a Sunday while we obsessively watched Transformers cartoons.

contenderizer, thats totally the one i was thinking of. infuriating. thx for helping dude, now that I know the name I found the version I played which was:

http://xenocorp.net/images/jpgs/s1_tomb_of_horrors.jpg

which instantly filled me with nerd rage when i saw it.

HI DERE i am trying to remember - there were two series like that, but the totally intense one had the companion spell book where you had to memorize three letter codes and shit. 4 books, all sequential parts of an adventure, and the last one was 800 some pages iirc. it was pretty fucking awesome, wonder if i still have them somewhere, will be pissed if i dont.

did everybody cover their hardbound d&d books with brown paper grocery bag dust jackets or was that just everybody i played with?

they were all Steve Jackson related - the kinda straighforward ones were the FIghting Fantasy ones, but the super hardcore ones were the Sorcery! series

so fucking dope

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorcery!

Wizard Books is making the Sorcery! series available for the iPhone and iPad, starting with Shamutanti Hills for a 2010Q2 release.

o_O :D

oh FUCK YES

between this and discovering Shining Force FOR IPHONE, this is like the awesomest year for iPhone games tailored directly to me

Sorcery! was so awesome! Man I loved the illustrations that series had. I had the spellbook and everything. An iPhone app version would be great, it would keep me from cheating again and again.

ha I cheated mercilessly just because I wanted to know more of what happened

I'd like to meet the kid who stopped all seven serpents without cheating.

Kerm: We all TOTALLY did that but it was because playing D&D at school could get you suspended! It DID get me suspended at one point cuz they said i was promoting devil worshiping.

This thread can only end with a bunch of us meeting up and heading back Under Illenfarn and I, for one, am down for that.

ok dudes, admission time:

speaking of "i still read the books sometimes", i did just buy this pdf and it's totally awesome.

not as awesome as gary gygax's monster manual (the one with all the ruling devils and demons and stuff) but still

I buy the old AD&D manuals at Half-Price books all the time. The perfect copies are the ones that still have a good binding and have the majority of the illustrations carefully colored in with colored pencils.

one of those was probably mine!

another cool system that I ran a campaign with was Thieves' Guild - I remember that more fondly than any of the other systems we tried.

So inspired by all this I have dug out the old World of Greyhawk/Forgotten Realms boxes I had around. I've concluded that I was always first and foremost about the maps.

oh man I remember buying that full color map, I think it was the World Of Greyhawk one, on summer vacation somewhere. I was probably 15.

Iron Crown always had great maps too, Fenlon was an obsessive illustrator.

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_laifdyu5Gw1qzpam5o1_500.jpg

hahahahaha

early christina hendricks sighting

http://www.dangerousminds.net/comments/60_minutes_on_dungeons_and_dragons_from_19851

Noted in comments: "Look, there’s the blowhard lady from Decline of Western Civilization 2!"

always knew there was a reason I hated this show

"20/20" also aired its own Satanic panic episode.

getting seriously angry at Bradley while watching this. sorta makes me want to put a hex on him.