Friday stuff!
- Unfrozen Caveman Dicechucker has been writing about how to play AD&D for people coming to it new.
This post is Part IV
This particular line made me laugh out loud, so I commented on it as follows:
"But then there's a column labelled "Speed Factor." Nowhere is this explained but that's ok because if you use this information while playing a game called Advanced Dungeons & Dragons then you are, by definition, playing 2nd edition."
PVD: Heh. It's explained in the DMG, p. 66-67. But this made me laugh out loud.
- Akratic Wizardry has a bit on the OSR that I found interesting.
- Warren "Mook" Wilson passed away. He was, amongst other things, the author of How to Be a GURPS GM
- Want to be Legolas? Sean Punch and I made that easier with GURPS Martial Arts . . . and here is the breakdown on how to do it:
GURPS 101: A Complete and Illustrated Guide to Being Legolas
- I ran a GURPS campaign set in the Known Worlds, so this bit of history interests me:
Piazza Thread: Original Known World Campaign Documents
Fun stuff.
I've been getting into the Known Worlds/Mystara lately, and am quite enjoying it. I never experienced it in its heyday, which is a shame (I was fully into Car Wars by then).
ReplyDeleteThe only part of D&D I still like (love actually) is the GAZ series.
ReplyDeleteThose books are great. There are some face-palm dumb things in them, but so many more great ideas. I don't have them all, but I have a few. I based a good chunk of my previous GURPS game on bits of the Gazeteers. Princes of Glantri was excellent once I took out the boats with twin magic missile launchers. Heh.
DeleteInversely, being that I love stupid kitchensink D&D nonsense, I just use those "anachronistic" magic bullshit vehicles and such as "leftovers from the ancients", since I tend to run my Dungeon Fantasy as "the fallen world" or "post-apocalypse magical Gamma World".
DeleteThat reminds me I need to slot Barrier Peaks into my next campaign somehow...
Oh, I'm okay with that, it's more like:
Delete- the idea that magic exactly duplicates technology . . . magic missiles auto-hit, and are easily halfling-portable hand weapons, so why do you need rotating gun mounts for them?
- face-palm stuff like Darokinese soldiery fencing by parrying-and-retreating-and-feinting in formation . . . I can't even find a place to start explaining how nonsensical that is.
- the occasional veers into low humor as a basis of play . . . the Orcs of Thar had a bunch of that as I recall.
- weirdness like Alphatia, or, "Oh by the way there is a huge continent full of magical beings 1 hex off the side of the map to the right and it was there the whole time."
The kitchen sink mishmash of tech and magic and such is fine. It would have been served better by a little better overall cohesion and thoughtful presentation.
My players are clamoring for Barrier Peaks, but I'd rather run it with AD&D than GURPS. If I'm doing DF + Tech, I'll convert something else instead in all likelihood. Plus it's a hard adventure for me to describe, because of all of the open spaces. I'd really need a VTT module of it done for me to really be able to handle the mapping and movement and visuals.