Saturday, January 7, 2017

You had me at "White Plume Mountain"

Okay, I need another copy of White Plume Mountain like I need another hole in my head.*

But Wizards is coming out with a hardback that combines a number of adventures I don't own (Dead in Thay, Sunless Citadel, Forge of Fury) plus White Plume Mountain, converted to D&D5.

Okay, I'm in.

I've read mostly "meh" reactions and strongly negative ones . . . but hey, there is stuff I loved for 1st edition in there. I'm curious how it will read for 5th edition. I'd like to see the re-done maps and art. So yeah, sign me up for the Yawning Portal:



The price is a bit steep, but hey, White Plume Mountain.

I'm still not sure what I'll do with WPM. I'd like to run it for my group straight-up with S&W, or AD&D 1st edition, or something of that sort, just because I'd like to share the experience. It's a funhouse, with the emphasis on fun. But if a 5th edition version comes out and it's good, maybe I can run it with that. That would be new for all of us, and 5th runs pretty smoothly. I could convert it to GURPS, but part of the enjoyment for me is the nostalgia of the original unfiltered by my conversions.



We'll see.

* "That would have worked if you hadn't stopped me."

5 comments:

  1. I'd love to play that again. I was honestly waiting for it to be a level of Felltower.

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    1. It could be, but converted to GURPS, a lot of the challenges just aren't challenging at all. It assumes a very different spell system. I'd have to litter the place with magic-resistant construction, No Mana Zones, add spellcasting to most of the encounters so they aren't trivial, add minions to the bosses so they aren't hacked down by 6-7 attacks in one second, etc. I could do all of that, but it would really just be "some highlights of S2 plus its magic weapons" and not really the same challenge.

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  2. I find the WotC pricing model encouraging, frankly. If we posit that 5e is about 40% of a $25M per year market, that means that they're probably doing about $10M a year in RPGs, which is 200,000 books a year. Now, probably not all of that $10M is $50 hardbacks, but what else do they get revenue on these day?

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    Replies
    1. I'm not saying it's overpriced, I'm saying $50 for a hardback is a lot for me to spend to get another copy of White Plume Mountain to add to my monochrome Silver Anniversary version, original version (two copies), S1-4 collected version, and Return to White Plume Mountain pile.

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  3. The great part of titles like this is I know exactly what they mean by "Yawning Portal" but a more literal interpretation is just a great mental image. Like the doorknob in Disney's Alice In Wonderland being tired after a day's work being a knob.

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