Here's something I remember: bar fight/non-lethal combat was a total buzzkill for us. I loved playing Castle Amber, but the first time we got to the boxer - which was at least my first clue that this dungeoncrawl was going to get weird - was really exciting until the fight started. None of us could ever figure out how to do big brawls in a way that was fun (nearly a decade later, Rolemaster would solve this for us, but even before that TSR developed great brawling rules in Basic Marvel Superheroes that were tweaked in Advanced.)
Bad brawls never got solved (and the rules for subduing dragons made no sense either) and I think we might have had a lot more of them and a lot fewer "slaughter the borderline opponents" moments had we ever gotten comfortable with the putting up of dukes.
Having said that, we probably would have turned brawls into bloodbaths anyhow, as our immediate inspirations for them were not cowboy movies but Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Cantina.
That's how I originally found Grognardia shortly after you started posting- by Googling classic modules I played in the 80s and reading your Retrospectives. Back in 2015 or 2016 I actually read through all of your old posts. Great stuff.
"They are two sides of the same coin. One series reminds us of the broader cultural wellsprings from which the hobby drew, while the other examines the tangible expressions of those influences within the gaming world itself."
Wow. Powerful because it's true. Also, the passages about memory. Another great essay.
I think you undercut yourself by saying it is about memory. Now, this may sound like quibbling, but I don't believe it is. Memory is simply the ability to recall things. You are doing that, true, but I think you are doing so much more with your articles and this blog. I think what Grognardia does is really remembrance. Remembrance is more than just recalling information, it is an act of remembering that commemorates our love of old school gaming. Your articles serve as a means of honoring the past , something that remains important to those of us who have good memories of our gaming years. I for one hope you never stop posting.
I think it was stumbling upon a Retrospective all those years ago that brought me to your fine weblog. You've got the traffic numbers, but I'd be surprised if these weren't the busiest pages on the entire site. A search engine query of virtually any 1ed module I can think of (that you've covered) gives me your website in the first five hit or so. So many of us connected with these modules when we played 1ed - we all played them, but we all played them in our own ways, so they're a lingua franca for us.
Groggy 1: "Oh man, I remember when we played Tomb of Horrors, our DM had us do a whole quest to consult a sage just to find the place. He did plant some clues as to what to expect though."
Groggy 2: "Well, when we played it, we just started at the entrance, but no one made it past the first hallway. Two characters crawled into the devil's mouth, and the rest of us decided we should just leave."
Groggy 3: "Our group never even had to deal with the devil's mouth because one of us figured out that the painted door on the wall had to conceal a real one, so we chipped off the plaster and bypassed the whole thing. We had to fight that mutant gargoyle though. The devil mouth is famous, I feel like we missed out."
Groggy 2: "You didn't miss out, trust me."
Groggy 4: "Yeah, well, you guys at least played the thing. We never did because our DM said it was 'too stupid' or something."
#5: "Well, shoot we just hired a metric ton of henchmen and if we could recover their bodies from the spike pits, we got our money back. That worked for exactly one room, at which point the surviving henchmen rebelled against us and we ended up slaughtering them and losing the cleric. At least we got our money back. We actually had more dead party members from in-fighting than we did solving the rooms."
That's one thing I wish James would discuss more in these Retrospectives: what happened in his actual play. For instance, I've wondered whether in these modules of tournament origin the players actually had hirelings and henchmen. The sense I get with the pregens is, "No." Even B1, which provides pregens itself, only suggests having NPCs in the party to make up for a deficit in the number of PCs, and I've read that "Temple of the Frog" was handled by a small group who used stealth to infiltrate. So despite rules for hirelings and henchmen, I wonder if AD&D brought a cultural shift in the manner D&D was played.
While I don't remember what initially brought me to your blog (though I suspect it was Tékumel), I read all of your posts at my breakfast, but the Pulp Fantasy Library and Retrospectives are favorites which I don't think you've mined to completion yet. I appreciated your relatively recent revisit of the G1-3 series and would love to see an expansion of the Library to more Traveller influences. The influences on Runequest would be interesting too, but I think you've written that Runequest isn't quite as familiar to you as D&D and Traveller, so maybe you wouldn't be as comfortable covering its roots.
All I know is that we played most of the tournament modules as part of a (very eclectic) campaign ( or two, at most, but I'm pretty sure it was all one campaign). And henchmen were a huge part of Aerie of the Slave Lords, Tomb of Horrors, Hommlet (?), Expedition, Giants, Kuo-Toa and several others.
Hirelings (or specialists, or whatever they were called: cooks and torch bearers and horse holders) were used on occasion, but we handwaved them more often than not.
Thanks for relating that. I wonder how common your experience was. Another thing that occurred to me last night is how few illustrations for AD&D display more than a handful of major characters (presumably PCs).
Here's something I remember: bar fight/non-lethal combat was a total buzzkill for us. I loved playing Castle Amber, but the first time we got to the boxer - which was at least my first clue that this dungeoncrawl was going to get weird - was really exciting until the fight started. None of us could ever figure out how to do big brawls in a way that was fun (nearly a decade later, Rolemaster would solve this for us, but even before that TSR developed great brawling rules in Basic Marvel Superheroes that were tweaked in Advanced.)
ReplyDeleteBad brawls never got solved (and the rules for subduing dragons made no sense either) and I think we might have had a lot more of them and a lot fewer "slaughter the borderline opponents" moments had we ever gotten comfortable with the putting up of dukes.
Having said that, we probably would have turned brawls into bloodbaths anyhow, as our immediate inspirations for them were not cowboy movies but Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Cantina.
That's how I originally found Grognardia shortly after you started posting- by Googling classic modules I played in the 80s and reading your Retrospectives. Back in 2015 or 2016 I actually read through all of your old posts. Great stuff.
ReplyDelete"They are two sides of the same coin. One series reminds us of the broader cultural wellsprings from which the hobby drew, while the other examines the tangible expressions of those influences within the gaming world itself."
ReplyDeleteWow. Powerful because it's true. Also, the passages about memory. Another great essay.
I think you undercut yourself by saying it is about memory. Now, this may sound like quibbling, but I don't believe it is. Memory is simply the ability to recall things. You are doing that, true, but I think you are doing so much more with your articles and this blog. I think what Grognardia does is really remembrance. Remembrance is more than just recalling information, it is an act of remembering that commemorates our love of old school gaming. Your articles serve as a means of honoring the past , something that remains important to those of us who have good memories of our gaming years. I for one hope you never stop posting.
ReplyDeleteI think it was stumbling upon a Retrospective all those years ago that brought me to your fine weblog. You've got the traffic numbers, but I'd be surprised if these weren't the busiest pages on the entire site. A search engine query of virtually any 1ed module I can think of (that you've covered) gives me your website in the first five hit or so. So many of us connected with these modules when we played 1ed - we all played them, but we all played them in our own ways, so they're a lingua franca for us.
ReplyDeleteGroggy 1: "Oh man, I remember when we played Tomb of Horrors, our DM had us do a whole quest to consult a sage just to find the place. He did plant some clues as to what to expect though."
Groggy 2: "Well, when we played it, we just started at the entrance, but no one made it past the first hallway. Two characters crawled into the devil's mouth, and the rest of us decided we should just leave."
Groggy 3: "Our group never even had to deal with the devil's mouth because one of us figured out that the painted door on the wall had to conceal a real one, so we chipped off the plaster and bypassed the whole thing. We had to fight that mutant gargoyle though. The devil mouth is famous, I feel like we missed out."
Groggy 2: "You didn't miss out, trust me."
Groggy 4: "Yeah, well, you guys at least played the thing. We never did because our DM said it was 'too stupid' or something."
#5: "Well, shoot we just hired a metric ton of henchmen and if we could recover their bodies from the spike pits, we got our money back. That worked for exactly one room, at which point the surviving henchmen rebelled against us and we ended up slaughtering them and losing the cleric. At least we got our money back. We actually had more dead party members from in-fighting than we did solving the rooms."
DeleteThat's one thing I wish James would discuss more in these Retrospectives: what happened in his actual play. For instance, I've wondered whether in these modules of tournament origin the players actually had hirelings and henchmen. The sense I get with the pregens is, "No." Even B1, which provides pregens itself, only suggests having NPCs in the party to make up for a deficit in the number of PCs, and I've read that "Temple of the Frog" was handled by a small group who used stealth to infiltrate. So despite rules for hirelings and henchmen, I wonder if AD&D brought a cultural shift in the manner D&D was played.
DeleteWhile I don't remember what initially brought me to your blog (though I suspect it was Tékumel), I read all of your posts at my breakfast, but the Pulp Fantasy Library and Retrospectives are favorites which I don't think you've mined to completion yet. I appreciated your relatively recent revisit of the G1-3 series and would love to see an expansion of the Library to more Traveller influences. The influences on Runequest would be interesting too, but I think you've written that Runequest isn't quite as familiar to you as D&D and Traveller, so maybe you wouldn't be as comfortable covering its roots.
DeleteAll I know is that we played most of the tournament modules as part of a (very eclectic) campaign ( or two, at most, but I'm pretty sure it was all one campaign). And henchmen were a huge part of Aerie of the Slave Lords, Tomb of Horrors, Hommlet (?), Expedition, Giants, Kuo-Toa and several others.
DeleteHirelings (or specialists, or whatever they were called: cooks and torch bearers and horse holders) were used on occasion, but we handwaved them more often than not.
Thanks for relating that. I wonder how common your experience was. Another thing that occurred to me last night is how few illustrations for AD&D display more than a handful of major characters (presumably PCs).
DeleteI 2nd a request for retrospectives of what happened at your table James, and Traveller retrospectives.
ReplyDelete