The incredible austerity of D&D in 1980

Count me in with the group of people who enjoyed reading the books, but had no real interest in actually playing. I also had a fascination with Traveller, Star Frontiers, and Car Wars, but never played any of these either. If I still had my Car Wars stuff, I'd probably try it out now with my son.

i was one of those too, actually; my brother played, in the 80s, but i was born in 1985, which meant missing waves of it, really. he DMed one session for me and some friends circa age 11 or 12, which let's not talk about. there wasn't any of it at my school or sixth form, i think i missed waves of it, and i didn't really feel like getting into it at university, by the time i got there.

also i missed waves of it

ditto about the reading everything, rather than playing - altho it was because i had nobody to play with so dunno if that counts.

particularly just like looking at maps, was obsessed. rememember buying d&d mags like white dwarf and Dungeon just to look at blueprints of orc towers blah blah

I played tons of games, from ages 8-12 and 16-25. Three different groups of players with just a couple of crossovers. Games I played more than once: D&D, AD&D, Star Frontiers, Boot Hill, Top Secret, James Bond RPG, Runequest, Toon, Twilight 2000, Cyberpunk, Shadowrun, Earthdawn, Vampire, Gamma World, GURPS (mainly wild west stuff), Marvel Super Heroes, DC Super Heroes, Champions, Castle Falkenstein and probably a few others. Out of those, I mainly AD&D, Marvel & DC Heroes, Vampire and Cyberpunk.

Games we played only once or not at all, but that I bought at least one book (and often several): Werewolf, Wraith, Mage, Changeling, Dark Ages Vampire, Dark Ages Mage, Hunter the Reckoning, Kindred of the East (I like the World of Darkness setting more than playing it), Nephilim, Adventure, Aberrant, Feng Shui, Legend of the Five Rings, 7th Sea, Immortal,Ars Magica, Kult, Deadlands, Underground, Bloodshadows, MERP, Dark Conspiracy, Höl. I still own something from every game on this list even though I haven't played any of them this century.

I think my favorite game and game system is still Falkenstein.

same here (wrt to reading the books without playing). loved reading the shadowrun sourcebooks too...that's where i first learned about mdma and all sorts of shit. and i'm pretty sure "ars magica" led to me taking four years of latin in high school/college.

http://www.waynesbooks.com/images/graphics/d3mono.jpg

this was my jam

and this... I ran both of these

http://www.waynesbooks.com/images/graphics/s1aa.jpg

G1-Q1 are the essence of AD&D.

loool tomb of horrors. kinda want to run the 4e version that wizards put out

i was born in 1985, which meant missing waves of it, really. he DMed one session for me and some friends circa age 11 or 12, which let's not talk about. there wasn't any of it at my school or sixth form, i think i missed waves of it, and i didn't really feel like getting into it at university, by the time i got there.

yah reading the stories itt is p amazing cuz i dont think id ever seen/heard of someone playing d&d or any of the other nerd games until college by which point i wasnt really interested anymore. all the nerdy kids my age played magic cards

loved this

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c4/B2ModuleCover.jpg

there's an old dungeon magazine module called 'vesicant' that i remember being head-and-shoulders more interesting and well thought out the rest

man, tomb of horrors is impossible

anybody else remember the near impossible module that had a sinister looking mirror in it which basically just whammo killed anybody who touched it? that was some bullshit when i was 13

also dungeonland and the land beyond the magic mirror (the lewis carroll ones) were the fucking shit

what was the superhero RPG where you had to balance your superhero strengths with Achilles Heels?

champions

Champions was more calculus than RPG.

just bought my 10 year old the basic set for his birthday! and dungeon tile kit!
Dar Feldo, half-elven magic user, lives on.

Champions was more calculus than RPG.

character building was super fun though

Yes it was. Playing it sucked balls though.

Speaking of super-hero games, I left Villains & Vigilantes off my list. That was the first supers game I really loved. And the creators just put out a new edition a few months ago.

gary gygax

RIP

also u forgot the "!"

yo is it true did gygax! get sonned by a nerd kid after a D&D beef?????

I remember Champions because someone talked me into giving it a whirl, we spent three hours building characters (which was fun) and then never played again. Sounds like I didn't miss a thing.

Was MechWarrior any good? My Battletech group tried to integrate it into a few campaigns, but that always quickly degenerated into skipping MW in order to blow shit up with giant robots armed with lasers.

I really liked Champions, but the most fun bit was designing the characters--with a bit of thought you could create a character who could do ANYTHING (except time travel). I ran a campaign for quite a while, but ignored all that hex-based nonsense. But I deigned about 1000 villains I never got a chance to use.

incredible thread btw.

jjjustin asked about the "near impossible module that had a sinister looking mirror in it which basically just whammo killed anybody who touched it," and i dunno. but the entirely fucking impossible tomb of horrors does have this:

http://i274.photobucket.com/albums/jj242/donaldparsley/TombofHorrorsSpheresmall.jpg

a giant wall-mounted thing, the blackness of whose mouth is a "(fixed) sphere of annihilation." and yeah, it just whammo kills anybody who touches it.

^ nice trampier-looking art tho

gygax! on TOH (S1):

It was a long time ago when the Tomb of Horrors first made its appearance. Before I put it into manuscript form for publication, i carried the scenario around with me in by briefcase, so as to be ready for those fans who boasted of having mighty PCs able to best any challenge offered by the AD&D game. After an hour or so of time spent within the weird labyrinth of Acererak’s final "resting place," the players whose characters were survivors typically remembered suddenly that they had pressing engagements elsewhere. Clutching their precious character sheets, they fled the table. Those who had already lost their vaunted PCs had previously departed, muttering darkly about "impossible death traps." Had I been mean and cruel, I would have required participants to hand over their character sheets upon the demise of a PC, torn them up, and then smiled wickedly as I asked for the name and address of their DMs so as to pass on the news of the sad loss. But I am very kind at heart.

To follow up with Tuomas' point about Scandinavian LARPing having a better gender balance than, say, North American, I present you with this classic of the Internet, Blue & Red Link:

http://www.hemmy.net/2008/03/07/female-link-cosplay/

http://www.geekologie.com/2008/12/love_a_zelda_cosplay_girls_gal.php

http://www.hemmy.net/images/games/linkcosplay04.jpg

True, it's more cosplay than larp, but shut the fuck up.

Er, I didn't say anything about gender balance in North American LARPing. If you bothered to read my post, it says:

"I don't know how it is in the USA, but in here the LARPing is a much less of a male-centric hobby than paper-and-pen RPGs, in fact I think there are more female LARPers than male ones. So yeah, I think LARPers get laid more often than other gamers."

Basically I was assuming it must be similar in the USA too, but I didn't want to make any definite statements because I know little about the North American LARPing scene.

hum·min·a

[huhm-in-a]
–interjection

1) yeah

Also, yeah.

XPOST!

is this an classic of the internet?

http://i274.photobucket.com/albums/jj242/donaldparsley/rikkusmall.jpg

should probably be.

great thread

love hearing about the earliest generation of gamers--that mid-70s 'moment' when geek/nerd culture was emerging, hippies reading tolkein, civil war gaming turning into fantasy ripoffs, phone phreaking. wild!

me personally i spent a lot of time reading the manuals and imagining what it would be like to play an ad&d campaign. i got really into magic though, next best thing i guess.

About tomb-of-horrors type stuff - I DMed my dad a couple of times as a kid and the way he'd prepare for missions, and do everything so carefully, was so unlike the modern style of play - like, the first thing he'd do every mission was to make a butterfly net - he and his gamer friends would touch nothing they hadn't identified, etc etc...

Kinda amazed how many ilx MTGers are crawling out of the woodwork but that's another thread!

oooof, i just remembered something super embarrassing:

how i tried to get my step-grandmother and mom to play a game of brand new AD&D with me because i didn't know anybody else who played, and they were usually pretty cool.

they both refused and i was reaally and so i went outside and hid in a tree.

i was 13 :(

they both refused and i was reaally and so i went outside and hid in a tree.

Funnily enough my little brother went outside and hid in a tree when I killed his PC once at about the same age.

A Separate Saving Throw

well played, +30 xp

I am so tempted to go to a bookstore tonight and snag some of this stuff again, just for the pure hell of it.

Even more tempted now that I've checked back in and saw that Wizards has brought back the red box!

A request: if anyone ever comes across any Space:1889 stuff for cheap let me know. I always wanted to check that out but I've never come across any of it.

There's a company putting out retro modules now, but I can't remember their name.

Using 180gm virgin vinyl was a bit much but still...

Haha. Hearing about the retro mods makes me want to buy some stuff even more!