Play report 5a: 1st Edition AD&D, and 1st Edition Oriental Adventures. Summary: Stern Librarians and Smoking the Panda. Note 1: this one contains spoilers (to some degree) of specific encounters from Vornheim so, if you plan to play it, I recommend skipping this one. Note 2: this session is broken into two parts as there […]
Play report 4: 1st Edition AD&D, and 1st Edition Oriental Adventures. Summary: Three nights on the town So, our party has made landfall in the big city Okina Ringo. The ship is docked and entry fees paid. Now what? What is Okina Ringo like? Shozu and Yamagato are a faux Nippon (Fo-Nippon). Is the mainland […]
Play report 3b: 1st Edition AD&D, and 1st Edition Oriental Adventures. Anchors aweigh! Part 2 When we last saw our intrepid barbarians they had hit the town like a storm: punched out the town guard; kidnapped the headman and sold him into slavery to a southern pirate queen; signed on as crew to a large […]
Play report 3a: 1st Edition AD&D, and 1st Edition Oriental Adventures. Anchors aweigh! Part 1. After the first session total party kill, and the second session introduction of the barbarian übermensch this third session started to hit a stride. The session began with the two Barbarians and the Shugenja at loose ends in the village […]
Play report 2: 1st Edition AD&D, and 1st Edition Oriental Adventures. Summary: Kung Fu barbarians of the north. After last week’s TPK, I was all ahoo with what I would do this week. I considered allowing a reboot back to the Daimyo’s castle and have the characters discover a different threat to the north. But, […]
Play report: 1st Edition AD&D, and 1st Edition Oriental Adventures. Summary: It was a mixed bag ending in Total Party Kill. The party consisted of three first level characters: a Wu-jen/Ninja, a Shugenja, and a Samurai. All three characters had been ordered by their respective superiors (father for the Samurai, Abbot for the Shugenja, and […]
The most critical element of role-playing game design is the reduction of friction. If it is not addressed sufficiently, the game will not be played. Now, this is not an issue quite so much for people that treat rpg’s as a new form of literature or for whom the primary design goal is to sell […]
There’s a lot to like about the first edition Oriental Adventures hard back. The eastern variants of the classic D&D class archetypes all have a distinctive flavor. Each one has their own ki power to further differentiate them while simultaneously infusing the game the essence of great kung fu movies. And no gaming junkie can […]
“It’s your job to create events outside the standard sequence of ‘I roll to hit. They roll to hit. I roll to hit.’” — Matt Finch “Playing the game as written removes an astounding number of the problems people had with AD&D.” — -C It’s funny how things like this get started. A Dungeon Master […]
Publishing (Wasteland & Sky): We’re going back to that seminal year in 1939. This was back when Fandom were holding conventions and looking towards the glorious utopic future. Meanwhile, a set of writers were more concentrated on preserving a past in danger of being forgotten. This is the story of Arkham House! Fantasy (Echoes of […]
Publishing (Pulp Archivist): The market is contracting, without signs of stopping, from at least the mid-2000s generational handover. Digital and its different margins have likely kept some of these magazines in business far longer than print runs can justify. It’s almost to the point where the established science fiction “fandom” does not and should not […]
I’ve spent a lot of time over the past year contemplating what the followup to Appendix N should be. Before the Big Three: The Real Golden Age of Science Fiction? Appendix T: the Literary Antecedents of Traveller? A Survey of Contemporary Short SFF? What hadn’t crossed my mind until now was the fact that I may […]