What else did I get?
I purchased some Rob Kuntz stuff.
First of them, the one I went looking for, was El Raja Key's Arcane Treasury. I saw a mention of it over on The Blue Bard, and then looked and saw a review over on Grognardia. They intrigued me enough to take a look. It doesn't seem to be available in PDF, but it wasn't much on Noble Knight Games.
So now I have this:
While I was there, I figured I'd fill out my "Zayene" series of adventures.
I picked up the first of these, the D20 version of M1 Prisoners of the Maze, at a gaming store that was down the block from my martial arts school. That's the same place I purchased the Silver Anniversary set, too. I purchased the second either there or another game store. Now I've finally gotten the last two. I don't particularly mind that they're different editions.
I'm not sure I'll ever run them, although the first one especially has a lot going for it, especially as a one-shot and not a campaign drop-in. I'd need to basically re-write it for AD&D or GURPS, though, as I don't run 3rd edition-compatible D&D. It would be easier to re-write it for GURPS than for me to convert it to AD&D, though. I'd actually be better off getting the original versions if I intended to run them in AD&D. The other two that I just purchased, I'm not sure yet - I need to spend the time to read them all in a row.
I'm quite fond of the Maze of Zayene books, and if you decide that you like the a lot, you might want to dig into his unpublished materials in the El Raja Key Archive set: https://www.threelinestudio.com/store/el-raja-key-archive/, which includes quite a bit of Xaene/Zayene material that never saw print.
ReplyDeleteAllan.
I'm interested in that archive, but I'm not convinced yet. It seems like a pricey way to get access to someone's random collection of unpublished material . . . and I feel like if it's unpublished, it's probably not particularly well organized and presented. Otherwise, it would be published, right?
DeleteI could be wrong, but ~$50 or ~$100 is a lot to spend finding out. I'll have to see if someone did a thorough review and posted it.
Gabor did one at https://beyondfomalhaut.blogspot.com/2017/01/review-el-raja-key-archive.html and I thought Trent had too, but am not finding it on the blog, was probably on K&KA.
ReplyDeleteAllan.
Thanks, that was helpful. It pretty much confirms what I was concerned about - it's more incomplete file dump than it is finished archive of completed materials. Interesting, and probably inspirational, but not $50 worth of either to me.
DeleteGlad it was helpful. I tracked down the other I was thinking of, on K&KA at https://knights-n-knaves.com/phpbb3/viewtopic.php?f=40&t=14350.
DeleteAllan.
Thanks, Allan, that's very helpful.
DeleteThis quote exactly describes the advice in Garden of the Plantmaster, to my mind:
"The tone of the commentary (and, for that matter, the existence of the product at all) seems to posit the notion that Rob was a uniquely creative genius and that no one else can do what he did (at least without him showing us how [. . .]"