Knights & Knaves Alehouse

AxeMental wrote:What product or moment (if you had to narrow it down) would you say started the first day of late 1E period?

To me it was the day I got UA home from the book store (so I suppose the day it was shipped to stores). Other products before had missed their mark, or had started the shift, but they could be ignored. But, this was a core rule book and every group had to accept it (if they wanted to be playing the latest version). For the very first time players felt alienated from the company and EGG (who had apparently gone mad...I mean, "thief acrobat", "cavilier" just the names were gay, barbarians taht destroyed magic, weapons specialization, the list went on). Not using it felt mutinous, and our group (after some experimentation with it) felt like mutineers when we tossed it, jumping ship on some deserted island and watching the game sail off. We had seperated from the rest of the body of players keeping up (we were already becoming dinosours). Only in hindsight can I see 1. we were not alone (who new what guys were doing across the country right?) and 2. it was minor compared to what was yet to come.

We treated everything in UA as purely optional. I remember using some of the new spells and weapon specialization, but otherwise ignoring everything else (especially the new classes...I still don't like them).

T. Foster wrote:There's a whole whole lot of epochal suck crammed into these 32 pages, and yet people loved it, they couldn't get enough of it -- it was one of TSR's all-time best-selling modules and still generally regarded as one of the very best.

THE COMPLEAT HANDBOOK OF EPOCHAL SUCK



What happened to D&D is proof that any fantasy no matter how great can easily be dispelled by a little distraction.

We too Fin, but pandora's box was already unlocked (and we all know who Epimetheus turned out to be).

Here is what I would consider a more-or-less “canonical” list of Gygaxian First Edition TSR rulebooks and modules:

1977
* Basic Game Book
* Monster Manual

1978
* Players Handbook
* G1 Steading of the Hill Giant Chief
* G2 The Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl
* G3 Hall of the Fire Giant King
* D1 Descent Into the Depths of the Earth
* D2 Shrine of the Kuo-Toa
* D3 Vault of the Drow
* S1 Tomb of Horrors

1979
* Dungeon Masters Guide
* B1 In Search of the Unknown
* T1 The Village of Hommlet
* S2 White Plume Mountain

1980
* Deities & Demigods
* The World of Greyhawk Folio
* The Rogues Gallery
* C1 The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan
* S3 Expedition to the Barrier Peaks
* B2 The Keep on the Borderlands
* Q1 Queen of the Demonweb Pits
* C2 The Ghost Tower of Inverness
* A1 Slave Pits of the Undercity

1981
* Fiend Folio
* A2 Secret of the Slavers Stockade
* A3 Assault of the Aerie of the Slave Lords
* A4 In the Dungeons of the Slave Lords
* L1 The Secret of Bone Hill
* I1 Dwellers of the Forbidden City
* G1-2-3 Against the Giants Compilation
* D1-2 Descent Into the Depths of the Earth Compilation
* U1 The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh

1982
* S4 The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth
* N1 Against the Cult of the Reptile God
* U2 Danger at Dunwater
* WG4 The Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun
* R1 To the Aid of Falx
* R2 The Investigation of Hydell
* R3 The Egg of the Phoenix
* R4 Doc’s Island

1983
* World of Greyhawk Boxed Set
* Monster Manual II
* L2 The Assassin’s Knot
* EX1 Dungeonland
* EX2 The Land Beyond the Magic Mirror
* U3 The Final Enemy

1984
* WG5 Mordenkainen’s Fantastic Adventure

1985
* Unearthed Arcana
* T1-4 The Temple of Elemental Evil
* WG6 Isle of the Ape

Anyone here might disagree on including or unincluding this or that on the list, but overall am I right? The 1983 World of Greyhawk Boxed Set had a list of modules that basically included all AD&D modules up through that point. After that, there were a few spots of nostalgia for a lost time, with UA and WG6 being the absolute last Gygaxian products, and UA questionable at that.

Anything from OA on is 2e, in my book.

I'd say the U series modules are a borderline case. Yeah, they're ostensibly located in the WoG (as are UK1-3, IIRC) but they don't feel much like Gygax's AD&D to me, no moreso than the later I, N, and UK series modules that just don't happen to have that single sentence in the intro stating what WoG map-hex they're located in.

T. Foster wrote:There would never have been Dragonlance without Ravenloft.

Don't forget "The Desert of Desolation" series of modules, which appeared the year before Ravenloft. While by no means as popular as I6, they all contain many of the same concepts and were, I have no doubt, "testing grounds" for a seismic shift in the way TSR conceived of and presented adventure modules from that point on.

Confession: I've never even bothered to read modules I4 and I5 (though I do have copies of both). I have read I3, and while its clearly a precursor to what we later saw in Ravenloft (and DL) it doesn't seem quite so heavy-handed -- yeah there's a lot of backstory and that railroaded intro, but the module still generally seems to be focused on the location -- exploration of the pyramid -- than the story and NPC interactions as was the case in Ravenloft. I'm willing to grant that I4 and I5 may well foreground the story elements more than I3, but I wouldn't know. Also, I suppose it's worth mentioning that the desert/Arabian Nights flavor of I3-5 doesn't offend my sensibilities nearly as much as the Gothic romance novel flavor of I6 -- the former I actually like, at least when done well; the latter feels like a conscious attempt to divorce AD&D of its swords & sorcery roots and appeal to girls (which, of course, Dragonlance took to the logical next level by not just copying the feel of romance novels, but actually producing the novels themselves!).

I've said it before and this thread proves it: Tracy Hickman probably has a blue turban.

- Wheggi

Well, having played AD&D from Dec. 1982 on, we never thought UA was that bad... there were a number of things that we commented "AT LAST!" about, and others that "were cool", and some that allowed us to file our photocopied stuff from The Dragon back into the box.

There was also stuff that we simply said "not a chance" and never looked at again after a play-test (Cadavaliers* Drow PCs, kleptomaniac gymnasts)... but overall it was a welcome resource and didn't change our games, but enhanced them.



OA, and MOP, however, got filed in the box with the redundant photocopies... and DSG & WSG got used only sporadically, for travel rates, weather, etc... and those were simplified & house-ruled to be useable.



The one copy of Ravenloft any of us purchased got "round-filed", and DL was universally banned.



The Forgotten Realms box set was never purchased, much less used... I hardly remember anyone ever running any printed module.



The 12+ DMs and 40+ players I gamed with in the 1980s (around several military bases & ships, as well as cons and so on) nearly universally created their own adventures/campaigns/worlds, and that was how we liked it!




So I would say OA/DL were where we broke with TSR and went our own way...

we used the books from before then, and The Dragon until 1989, and never used the modules.





*the name cavalier is a historic one... the anglicized version of the French Chevalier... which means "knight".

We had no problem with the name, but rather with the presentation of the concept.

When it first appeared in The Dragon, we had 2 reactions...
1) way overpowered!
2) this guy's gonna get himself killed real quick with that suicidal philosophy!

After reflection, we decided that the overpower was to allow it to survive the suicidal part... and that we didn't need a class that was "psychotic stuck-up"... hence the revised name.

When the UA came out we wondered if they had fixed either problem... but they hadn't. Bummer.