2012/03/31

The dilemma of armoured wizards in AD&D

In AD&D i have always used this rule. Today i want to share it, it is rare stuff because it comes from "Australian Realms", issue 13 (here),one of the most elusive fantasy magazines around (good luck to find those issues on ebay).

But i don't want to store this treasure jealously, so here it is. To me, this is bible. The philosophical thought of Mr. Paul Mitting is the truth, concerning this topic.



Powers & Perils - by Richard Snider - a review


Why am i putting this bad review about P&P on my website? I am not doing Powers & Perils a favour, doing that.

Because i want to highlight the quite different reactions that the game aroused since its publication.
Maybe more than any other fantasy rpg's, Powers & Perils has always aroused tremendous enthusiasm OR tremendous despise. I find this is fascinating, and tells something about the game having something unique buried in it.

When you read and learn P&P, you need to have patience. If you read anything else while studying P&P, you are doomed to fail.

If you ever decide to learn P&P, you must devote weeks dedicated entirely to it, reading nothing else.

Never skip a page, and again, be patient. If you are in a hurry, you won't understand it and you won't like it.

Start from book I and absolutely never open book II until you finish the first one.
Never skip a page until you have fully understood the page you are in.

This is the only way to get a glimpse of this game and to appreciate the beauty that is hidden in it.






2012/03/27

Celebrating the death of AD&D



Yesterday evening it was incredible. I created at the same time 3 Powers & Perils characters. Not one at a time, but all at once. I don't know how i managed to do that, my head was about to explode.

But my players were, all in all, smart and they were collaborative. They had some problems in immediately grasping the Maximum ability concept, but then they immediately grasped the INITIAL INCREASE table

which made me very satisfied.
I was a bit scared that they could lose themselves among the immense list and names of attributes.
i remember when i computed for them the formula for the Damage tolerance value! it was the hardest part, but then i told each one of them what it was, as a value.
One of the players even noticed all the formulas contained at the bottom of he character sheet and he was looking by himself on them to help compute his own values.

I gave as a gift to each of my players one ORIGINAL character sheet taken from my P&P boxed set.

But i digress.

I was saying that i created at the same time 3 Powers & Perils characters. It took us two hours, but we had to skip some phases such as the skills selection, height and weight, etc..

All in all, my players were good at it as i said before and they collaborated a lot with me.
Such a game can be played only by experienced players. First of all, i made a presentation of the game to my players, telling them when the game was published for the first time, telling them about Richard Snider (rest in peace), who left us just three years ago- i forgot to mention them who was Snider, how he was a friend of Dave Arneson and one of his players in the Blackmoor campaign. I even forgot to tell them that Richard Snider wrote an old fantasy game with Arneson called "Adventures in fantasy" (which i own, though never played) before writing P&P, which still has an almost "legendary" status among fans

http://abroere.xs4all.nl/pnp/

First of all, i gave them an introductory booklet i myself created, consisting of the P&P original advertisement (this one), a photo of Richard Snider (here), and a photocopy with the explanations of the ten main abilities. Then i showed them the boxed set, from my hands to theirs )i deemed it important to enable them to experience the physicality of it), and after that i showed them the five booklets.

I then explained they could find all of them online in PDF form if they wanted to study them.

Just go to powersandperils dot org and you'll find the worldwide online community gathering all the remaining players and DM'S of this game scattered around the four corners of the globe (map is here) ,

I was thrilled while i was creating their personas. I can't explain why, but the profundity of it all startled me..i lift my head for a moment from the books and beheld my players immersed in their sheets..i couldn't tell for a moment if they were puzzled, but one thing i was sure: they forgot everything around during those two hours. Creating a character in P&P is something profound, as i said. The details are countless and you end up with a living persona which is so real that it scares you, in a sense.

I myself was engrossed in the process, and i felt a sense of joy because this game enables you literally everything, the booklets of P&P are a real interface to a fantasy environment. I would never advise anyone to try this game as a novice, but if you have been playing for several years and are longing for more, P&P exists.

...then i asked them: "Is there someone among you who has an even slight intention and who dares play a Magician?"
Playing a magician in P&P is complex
and magic is deadly.
No one wanted to do it. That's fine.

After character creation, we started the adventure.
We are going to play "Nine Doctrines of Darkness", a rare and amazing adventures written for AD&D 1st edition in 1980 and published by Dimension six. You can see it here. The plot of this adventure is incredibly enthralling!!
I have both the first and the second part, i bought the first part on ebay some time ago for 50 dollars, the second part is this one.

This is one of the most precious and cherished adventure i have. It is rare and it is hold in high esteem by collectors, and as i said the story is tantalizing. Buy it if you can. Or read here as the story goes on, because i have the intention of telling the story of our party as they play this adventure (and maybe scanning it in its entirety and put it here? Who knows).

And yes, AD&D is dead. Farewell.
"Powers & Perils", one of the greatest gems in the history of fantasy rpg's, await.

BEGINNING: The way the players meet.

Martin is suffering from an infection located on his right shoulder. This was due to a bad fighting he had recently. Possibly the blade with which he was hit was rusty or something. Martin goes to the little town of Glen, looking for an herbalist he heard of. He finds him and after a long conversation he manages to have the wound cured.

2012/03/19

Behold what i got in the mail today!





Melanda: Land of Mystery 1st ed by Lee McCormick, John Corradin (1980)

Now i have almost every old fantasy rpg ever published.

The only reason why i'm not going to scan it all and offer it to the world, is that Mr. Lee McCormick has the intention of re-publishing it, otherwise i would do immediately because old and out-of-print fantasy rpg shouldn't be kept in the strongbox as mad collectors are used to do.

Heroes 1.1


It seems to be official, today i received an e-mail from David Millward, sent to me and to other 13 guys, here it is:

People,

Well thank you all for your very positive and encouraging responses to the news that I am planning to re-issue Heroes. You have given me a great deal to think about and I will be investigation and mulling over all the ideas that you have come up with.

The general idea is to continue development of the tactical skirmish rules and continue play-testing both these and Heroes itself, with a view to publishing Heroes 1.1 around September 2012.



With this in mind, myself and a few friends are getting together in the Red Cow pub in Nantwich to play Heroes and the skirmishes that it generates over the weekend 12th to 15thApril. If any of you are able and would like to come along and join us, you would be most welcome. We have booked the function room from 10am to 6pm on Saturday and from 10am to 4pm on Sunday. If you would like to come for either or both sessions, or even part sessions then please let me know as soon as you are able. The pub does B&B and there are still a couple of rooms available.

David

2012/03/18

Crypt & Things and Adventurer Conqueror King System pirated

EDIT: both Crypt & Things and Adventurer Conqueror King System are on 7chan, you need to google this:

Crypt & Things dewatermarked 7chan

i'm just letting you know guys. don't say i am the devil.

What a shame

Comments will be disabled soon.

I deleted all the blogs, i don't have a blogroll now. It's the only way i can (maybe) blogging again.

That said, i beheld a shameful situation again. This blog is not part of the old-school renaissance, that phrase means Dungeons & dragons and nothing else, it's far too clear.
I almost never visit Dragonsfoot or other similar forums, and i deleted many blogs from my blogroll because most of the posts i read there are pointless to me and very boring.

Honestly, i should have kept several blogs because there are several blogs that i like and that i always read, you know who you are: Grognardia, Randall (my esteem for you who dared speak about Bifrost) , Dave from Aussieland, Hill cantons, Thoul's paradise, servitorludi, savevsdragon, Ramblings of a Great Khan, gothridgemanor, packofgnolls, daddygrognard, inplacesdeep, underworldcleaningservice, rathergamey, mikemonaco.wordpress.com (one of the best out there), just to cite a few. There are others, but my memory doesn't serve me well now, forgive me.

So i don't want to be part of this, because i can't STAND to be confined to the one many of you call "THE fantasy game". d&d is NOT the fantasy game, there is no such thing as THE fantasy game, each one is just an interpretation of what a fantasy game should be like. So please shut up D&d professors out there.

And it's a BIG shame and a sign of lack of mental awareness when we see that an announcement such as this one

http://theresdungeonsdownunder.blogspot.it/2012/03/fantastic-news-heroes-rpg-to-live-again.html

generated just 9 coments (counting my mockery).

Grognardia has 1212 members, so as a minimum there are more than one thousand fellow guys out there interested in the OSR, is it possible that most of them were aware of this news and just skipped Dave's post without commenting?
Yes.
Those one thousand persons are interested in Dungeons & dragons, the game that ate your brains.

So to sum it up: i would be offended to be considered part of the osr because the osr means nothing to me because it means d&d to you's.
Not for everyone, but for most of the bloggers out there.

This doesn't mean that i'm not going to post from time to time something d&dish, you can see for instance that i quoted in their entirety two rare articles from Different worlds recently because i deemed they were worthy of notice.

But all in all, i am not willing to be part of this big shame.

And, besides Heroes by Dave Millard, i have another paradisial news for those who care, that is Melanda rpg (of which i spoke here) might be resurrected from oblivion again.

For the majority of you zombies out there, my advice is to stay at homes playing Dungeons & dragons, while for the ones interested in such an happening, what follow here are the mails i exchanged with one of the authors of Melanda a few days ago.

Keep me exempted from the osr.
----------------------------------------

Hello, i am the guy who wrote this post
http://mesmerizedbysirens.blogspot.it/2011/12/i-will-uncover-melanda-to-world-once.html

i noticed your comment only today, thanks for that.
I have been interested in Melanda for quite some time, i recently bought a copy on ebay (Melanda 2nd edition) and it's about to arrive, so i will be perusing it soon.

I think there might be some interest among rpg players worldwide about this game, as you probably know Dave Millard is about to do the same for "Heroes" as you can see yourself here:

http://theresdungeonsdownunder.blogspot.it/2012/03/fantastic-news-heroes-rpg-to-live-again.html

Why don't you consider re-publishing Melanda, following these examples? It would be fantastic (provided it can be done, from a copyright viewpoint).

bye for now
-----------------

REPLY:

I will mention it to co-author. Copyright won't be an issue, but as you will see, it will need some quality control clean up and as, over the 30 years since, both he and I have made changes. But I will be interested in hearing what you and your group think. It's biggest knock at the time came from D&D'ers who were used to having MANY books with everything one could ever want to know in one of them at least. We were gearing for a mechanic that would allow the creative GM who is designing original material to build stats right into his adventure design based upon his/her view of each encounter and challenge within the game. This was missed by many readers.

For instance, we give sample monsters and a mechanic for designing your own, or assigning your own stats based upon the level of challenge you intended for the encounter. Also, using word descriptors rather than a high reliance on numbers meant you could simply describe each door as weak, average, exceptionally strong, remarkably well made, etc. and then you would know what the strength requirement would be to 'force' it open. If your hero has remarkable strength (above exceptional on our scale) and the door was of average or exceptional strength, the hero can force it. All that's left to the GM is to describe his or her efforts in words, not numbers or die rolls and the story continues. If there is no hero in the party strong enough to open a particular door, but you the GM want them to open it, either lower the strength of the door or find a way to suggest that perhaps they should try opening it with two or three of their number...then once again, the saga goes on. That was the goal behind the whole system, so read it with that in mind. Feel free to write me anytime.

Good gaming. And thanx for the references to the other games...

lee mccormick
-----------------------------------------
Thanks Lee for your quick reply.

it's really exciting to hear there actually exist the possibility of seeing a resurrection of Melanda!
Nowadays we are living in the so called "old school renaissance" so i'm sure there is a "market" for such a product, and you could easily publish it on rpgnow or on Lulu.com as a print on demand.
I'm looking forward to hearing from you when you have spoken to the other fellow author. I'll surely let you know what my impressions are about the game when i get my hands on it.

In the meantime, do i have permission to copy-paste the email you just sent me and publishing it on my blog? I'm tempted to do that, in order to make a sort of pre-announcement stating to the blogosphere the chance of seeing this game to live again. (i'm not even sure i'm going to do that because my blog is officially closed, but i'm just asking)
------------------

REPLY:
Yes, you have my permission.

lee

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