The incredible austerity of D&D in 1980

so many flashbacks

I have mentioned this on Noize Board but from 1980-84 I worked for & played with the crew from Iron Crown Enterprises, RPGs were my life back then. Went to Origins, Gencon, all that stuff. Chivalry & Sorcery TOURNAMENTS!

I think I remember that pregnancy letter.

great thread

When an offensive spell’s range is “touch,” does the touch have to be with a hand?

Yes.

"For the paladin to have tortured the orc was an evil act"
this answer really needs the question, which I very much want someone to send to dan savage:

'In our town of Terre Haute, there is an eighthlevel paladin that has a favorite saying, “Repent or Die.” On one occasion he pulled back the arm of a captured orc, placed a Ring of regeneration on his finger and then ripped his face off. When the orc’s face healed, he would do it again. He says he has a valid right to do this, because torture was very much a part of the inquisition and he is saving the orc’s soul.'

#52 What happens when a Resurrection or a Raise Dead is cast on an undead?

Hmmm. It stands to reason that undead can be resurrected, as long as their living bodies had souls. But according to the spell description for Resurrection, a cleric can resurrect the “bones” of a dead body — that is, there must be some part of the body available for the cleric to touch for the process of resurrection to take place. Any undead which is encountered in an immaterial, gaseous or ethereal form could not be resurrected, because there’s nothing for the cleric to lay his hands on — even if he dared to touch one. An undead creature which is corporeal, and especially one which has retained at least a vestige of the appearance it had in life, could conceivably be resurrected with a touch — again, if the cleric is willing and able to withstand the effects of that touch. It’s worth noting here that a cleric who casts Resurrection is incapacitated for at least one day afterward, during which time the cleric cannot engage in combat or spell-casting. Unless some means is at hand to control the resurrected creature and save the cleric’s skin, he’s going to be in a lot of trouble after the spell is cast. A further guideline on the subject is found in the Monster Manual in the description for ghouls. A human who is killed by a ghoul will himself become a ghoul., unless a Bless spell is cast upon the corpse (in which case the victim is simply dead). The corpse could then be resurrected — after being blessed. Logically, the same procedure — bless first, raise later — could be required for an attempt to resurrect any undead creature. Depending on the DM’s interpretation of “touch,” it might be possible for a cleric to lay hands on, for instance, the immobilized body of a vampire without suffering the loss of 2 life energy levels which accompanies a vampire’s hit on a victim. (Since the vampire isn’t doing the “hitting” or “touching,” he can’t do any damage.) But what about the mummy? Its touch “inflicts a rotting disease on any hit,” but it’s logical to assume that anyone who initiates contact with a mummy would also be subject to the disease. Since each type of undead is at least slightly different from each other type, there are no general rules which can apply. Whether or not to require a Bless spell, whether or not to assess damage upon a “touch,” and any other particular questions are left to the DM’s discretion. Raise Dead is a different matter entirely. The spell description pretty well covers it: The vital parts of the body must be present, which rules out skeletons and any non-corporeal undead, and the undead creature must have been in a non-alive state for a length of time which does not exceed the limit of the spell’s power. The Monster Manual gives specifics for some cases: spectres, wights and wraiths will be destroyed by a Raise Dead spell (unless they make a save vs. magic), and a mummy can be resurrected by casting Cure Disease followed by Raise Dead. If a Bless is required before a Resurrection attempt can be successful, the blessing need not also be required for a Raise Dead attempt, because the soul hasn’t been away from the body as long and the newly created undead hasn’t fallen entirely into the clutches of eviltry.

but what about the mummy?

there are no general rules which can apply.

This thread = best thing about today

this thread kind of confirms every suspicion i had about those d&d playing dudes in the school cafeteria.

Usual Sunday Catan group is getting burned out on the same game over and over (esp. because six player games aren't as fun as the smaller board somehow) so we bought the basic D&D rules box set - but no one will volunteer to read them and figure out WTF to do.

I wish I had my old Battletech figures. Wargaming with giant robots and lasers - that's the right way to nerd out.

Reading these D&D Q&As gives me the same deep satisfaction that simply paging through the Dungeon Master's Guide does, the pleasure of a calm, unrelenting delineation of the fantastic.

god, i spent a good two or three years of my life puzzling over questions like this. still have pages of elaborate notes somewhere.

and f. OTM (and so nicely said). love fantastical guidebooks of any sort for the same reason. barlowe's guide to extraterrestrials, etc.

f. hazel OTM, that was meant to say...

A further guideline on the subject is found in the Monster Manual in the description for ghouls.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/28/Talmud.jpg

oh man, Barlowe's Guide To Extraterrestrials was the best!

still waiting on thype...

I have mentioned this on Noize Board but from 1980-84 I worked for & played with the crew from Iron Crown Enterprises, RPGs were my life back then. Went to Origins, Gencon, all that stuff. Chivalry & Sorcery TOURNAMENTS!

oh man I would LOVE to know more about this!

Reading these D&D Q&As gives me the same deep satisfaction that simply paging through the Dungeon Master's Guide does, the pleasure of a calm, unrelenting delineation of the fantastic.

― the girl from spirea x (f. hazel), Wednesday, October 13, 2010 5:01 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark

Yes! When I used to roleplay I pretty much preferred reading the sourcebooks to actually playing.

Each of these questions betrays so clearly the bickering that prompted it.

xp it's the stress free memorisation of knowledge that ha no real life purpose. Completely opposite to the high stress of having to memorise stuff from a math/CS textbook for an exam.

the pleasure of a calm, unrelenting delineation of the fantastic.

It reminds me a little of Christian extremists' long logistical extrapolations about the science behind the flood

In ADVANCED DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS, how much damage do bows do?

None. Bows do not do damage, arrows do. However, if you hit someone with a bow, I’d say it would probably do 1-4 points of damage and thereafter render the bow completely useless for firing arrows. What the bows do is allow a greater variety of ranges; all the damage done by arrows is the same

lol @ bows dont kill ppl, arrows do.

all the damage done by arrows is the same

This is a bit bullshitty really, pretty sure a longbow has greater penetration than a short bow irl

also a p big lapse to ignore the increased damage done by magic arrows

Surprised nobody's gone in on the o_O that is "elves have no souls" yet. Sounds like some kind of segregationist propaganda to me.

That's a standard fantasy trope isn't it?

If you caught a newly hatched silver dragon and raised it, would it have your alignment or its mother’s alignment?

It would retain the alignment of its parents, since that is what its natural tendencies

nature vs nurture debate now closed

played ad&d loads when i was younger, it always ended in fights and arguments. the dms in my experience would always end up picking on whoever was messing and not taking it seriously. then in time magic: the gathering just utterly murdered our will to ever play role playing games (or do anything else) ever again.

also played call of cthulu rpg which was brilliant, though v difficult, and i think a warhammer rpg too, which was cool. naming the characters etc was always the best.

CoC was my favourite. I also really liked Ars Magica.

And yeah, Warhammer was better than D&D in many ways. A grittier and scarier world, and a much more elegant gaming system (no fucking alignments for a start).

there was one i played once at a convention (after getting knocked out of magic: the gathering obviously!) called, i think, Mage. it was pretty cool, the essential concept of it was you could do anything, like bend reality etc, but at a cost of your character's sanity/morality/health. so you sort of mutated yourself. it was quite cool though as the weirder the thing you tried to do the more likely even weirder shit happened as a rebound. I remember delighting a table full of ultra nerds by turning some dickish bartender's head into a cabbage, and his entire body then began turning into vegetables.

x-post yeah the warhammer scenarios were much more urban and just better really. don't know if it was our DM but it felt like it was just endless fucking kobolds. we used to joke about this behind his back then we played the next week and sure enough as we went through some field "a large pack of kobolds surrounds you"

Games Workshop always got really good artists for the books as well.

That's a standard fantasy trope isn't it?

No, I don't think so. Or at least I can't think of any examples of fantasy books where elves wouldn't have souls.

Maybe it's something to do with their super-long lives but I don't remember ever hearing this "fuck an elf, soulless bastard" stuff before.

They were always kind of sinister and inscrutable in Warhammer.

Which begs the question as to why the Paladin was trying to save that Orc's non-existent soul, also.

This is a bit bullshitty really, pretty sure a longbow has greater penetration than a short bow irl

Yeah, this changed in second edition iirc.

Ronan, you were a serious M:TG player?

yeah from about age i guess....11 or so on till 15 or 16? i sold all my cards for about 300 quid aged 16ish...or maybe earlier, can't exactly remember.

No interest in http://www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?boardid=77&threadid=82583 ?

My first ever AD&D character was a half-elf, I was about 6 or 7, I looked at the picture in the 1st edition player's handbook and he looked the least threatening.

Then I had a dwarf called 'Bashy'.

that link just takes me to the generic board list?

It's a 77 thread.

haha...awkward.

the link still won't work!!!

why won't it work????

Works for me. If you're not a member of 77, it doesn't work for you.

Hang on, I don't understand??

77 is a secret board on ILX. You have to be added as a member to see the board or threads over there.

You can ask to join 77 over here:

Request Access to 77 Borad

yo Gravel, allow me to free associate some memories here...

I think I was in 5th grade when my 1-year-older friend Tony (who ended up designing Age Of Empires) came over with a copy of Tunnels & Trolls, which was a simpler version (maybe the 1st) of the D&D template. We moved on the regular D&D pretty fast. I played with those original three books in the box, remember being all excited when Greyhawk (1st expansion book) came out.

in 1979 I hooked up with this great bunch of game nerds who played at the University of Virginia, they were called the Historical Simulation Society cuz they had come out of the miniatures scene (they are still active today, some of the same peeps even!) However, it ended up being all wargames and this crazy guy who was running a mutated RPG system that he had designed himself. This guy was Pete F3nl0n, whe became prez and CEO of the nasscent Iron Crown Enterprises in 1980.

I think for the first few years I just played in the monstrous campaign that he was running, ostensibly to "playtest" the system but it was really about geeking out. I remember the first copies of "Arms Law" arriving, they also started out with another wargame called Gettysburg which sank w/o a trace.

Can't remember if I went to the 1979 Origins but from 80 on I would go with the ICE crew and help run the merch table. Gencon was usually out near Lake Geneva (we all know where that is, right?) but at least one year they had it on the East Coast. By the time I was 16 I was working in the warehouse running the shrinkwrap machine. I also did a lot of proofreading and some editing. They only ran an official Rolemaster tournament one year, the prize was a lifetime subscription to all ICE products (!!!). I remember it got down to two dudes and when the last guy finally won the loser was in tears. People loved it.

I worked for them the summer after 1st year college, which woulda been 1985. They expanded a lot during the rest of the decade but I mostly wasn't around. in '89 I wrote a NPC character compendium for the Cyberpunk RPG called Cyber Rogues, my crowning achievement of RPG geekiness. By this time they had gotten the rights to the Tolkien stuff and times were good. Then the card games came in and just killed them financially, after that they lost the Tolkien rights again. I think they went under in the late 90's.

I always really liked the Rolemaster system but obv I am biased to a degree. My high school crew and I played on our own, mostly D&D at first but some Runemaster as well (another good system). I was pretty into the ridiculous Chivalry & Sorcery game but I could never find anyone who wanted to spend the time it needed, so I was really excited when there was a C&S tournament at Origins one year - I was probably 15. I got knocked out in the first round but then somone else couldn't make round 2 so I was reinstated. We played that round until 4 A.M. on the last night of the convention. I think it started at 8? Good times.

my last D&D character was named "Anaujiram".. i think you can see why it was the last

By our last few sessions the PCs just wanted to go to taverns and rut with wenches rather than slay things.

Amazing post sleeve, thanks!

I'd really love to know so much more about this period: what kinds of people were the guys running the companies? What kind of adults were into the hobby? My dad always spoke with awe (this is a bit UK-centric) of the way that a shared love of killing goblins allowed him to meet people he never would have otherwise, and the way he described it always made it sound like such a cool powerful shared secret to be in on? How did the high school games you played in at that time differ from the grown up games?

yeah I have heard good things

Yeah the trailers go heavily for that Guardians of the Galaxy quippiness which to be sure the film does feature a healthy amount of but it's limited to the characters where it makes sense and there's just a very strong emotional arc, plus great setpieces and humour that isn't that, so it doesn't grate.

The film is great, albeit with potatoes making up more of a regular plot device than I expected.

I had forgotten about the potatoes until you mentioned them. Looking it up just now, it looks like there was some Lay's crossover advertising.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPF07lbRCZA

Took my son (who is into D&D at school) to see this at the weekend. It was pretty good, enjoyed the severe toning down of the usual wink-to-the-audience poochie bullshit.

This was a fun movie and modestly rich text! Bascially it did all the things Marvel movies are supposed to do (comedy, action, effects, emo bits) but better than Marvel have done it for a long time.

The actions scenes were good, too - lacking in suspense, as is sadly customary for blockbusters these days, but more inventive and well-directed than usual - for once it didn't look like it was directed in a parking lot against a green screen. I thought the final boss battle was gonna be some endless CGI shitfest - and the effects weren't great - but it was brisk and (suprisingly!) emotional.

If anything, a better comparison than Marvel might be Toy Story (achetypes band together and achieve semi-sentience, plus a sad bit). Plus I imagine it's quite rewatchable.

Tend to agree with Chuck Tatum: it's like a Marvel film, but better.

Haven't seen this but are the potatoes a Dragonlance reference

Some people, sure they stop the d&d-ing but still maybe never really get in touch with the other stuff.

― The Lubitsch Touchscreen (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, April 29, 2023

Do you have commentary or are we just gonna .....

*rolls for initiative*

pinefox, take your clueless shtick elsewhere plz

The "D&D" movie was shockingly well made. Funny, witty, entertaining, engaging, etc., with a couple of really clever action sequences and novel special effects. Of course it basically flopped. I could imagine it making the rounds as a beloved cult film.

Thread needs more gelatinous cube content

(Tbh I could never quite get into RPGs or games generally - I just lack the attention span. But I do find it anthropologically interesting that in 1980, the nerd-adjacent codes and signifiers and stereotypes had not quite been established yet.

So, like, yr middle-aged suburban mom could bring home a D&D box set thinking it was something like Scrabble or Monopoly. It had yet to acquire cultural baggage.)

I'll see your gelatinous cube and raise you a green slime, an ochre jelly, and a black pudding!

I just watched the movie with my son and it was pretty good! Gelatinous cubes for the whole family! Our attempts at doing tabletop RPGs at home have been thwarted by his older brother who can't sit still for them, but even our minimal experience was enough to notice plenty of little moments that felt as though they could have been rolled for

Loved the film.

Having a zoom call with a group of fellow beginners as a preliminary to our first ever session. We have a friend with a little DMing experience who has kindly volunteered to do the thing. Other than that, I really don't know what I'm in for

30-second encounters that take hours to play out

I never played much of the game, but I am pretty familiar with it (as a kid I used to read the arcana books a lot): in-jokes and little winks aside, was there anything about the movie that was particularly unique to D&D? I always thought a lot of the appeal of the game was that every campaign is different - personalized characters, unique stories, different enemies and encounters and obstacles - with the only constant being the gameplay, more or less: rolling dice, dungeon masters, maps, namely the things this movie totally (by necessity) lacked. I wonder if it would have done better if it was just called, like, "Heroes and Villains" or something more generic, and they played it up as a self-aware fantasy satire of sorts (which is kind of was) rather than an adaptation of something that is not, by design, adaptable.

pinefox, take your clueless shtick elsewhere plz

― Perverted By Linguiça (sleeve), Saturday, May 6, 2023 9:35 AM (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

maybe we could not have bullying on the D&D thread, lol

ok

Gelatinous Cube is the name of my Ice Cube tribute band

"The Wrong DM to Fuck With"

30 second encounters that take hours to play is a modern thing. I think we had three combats in our last 2 hour session, using the 1981 basic d&d rules.

^^ was gonna say

Half the time your first level magic user gets hit once and they’re dead, fight over.

i had my first game either late 79 or early 80, my 8th grade teacher brought me and a few friends for an overnight trip to some weird DM in suburban NJ, some sterotypical jersey name like Passaic or Parsippinay. tbh my parents thought it might be some pedo front and told me to be careful. anyway the dm was quite good and me and my pals were hooked for the next 3 years. many a trip to the compleat strategist in midtown ensued.

ha, seems i've been over this before

i played D&D between 79-82 give or take

the austerity didn't really register

― velko, Tuesday, October 25, 2016