February 2014 Blog Hop Day 10

First Gaming magazine I ever bought.  ANother easy question after my rummaging through the boxes in the basement.  SPI's Strategy & Tactics - a new board game in every issue.

Before you say that doesn't count, please keep in mind that in the late 70s there was very little separation between the military board gamers who were supporting Avalon Hill and SPI; and the RPG community.  Indeed, a high school friend, Brian Sorvik, and I had seen an ad for a war gamers group starting up at UMD (University of Minnesota Duluth) in 1977 and went and joined that.  That group played everything from Go to Empire of the Petal Throne.  I remember that one of the local TV stations did a quick piece on it, asking why we played war games in the face of all the "anti-war" sentiment of the time.

Domains at War Kickstarter Update

Received an email update from Autarch saying they're getting closer and the reason for going dark on the project for the last several months.  While the finished materials are accumulating in a warehouse, they still don't have a ship date, as not everything is ready.  Email is below the jump.

On the otherhand, I received an email late last week that the soft covers of Joe Bloch's Castle of the Mad Archmage have printed and shipped.

Kickstarter is a way for people passionate about what they're doing to get initial funding to produce professional results. I don't think that you can rely on that model to build a long term customer relationship.

February 2014 Blog Hop Day 9

First campaign setting I played in?  Easy, TSR's The World of Greyhawk, 1980.  Chris, our DM bought a copy, then we poor starving college students bootlegged it.

Prior to it's publication we were already playing a campaign, although we didn't use the term.  We were just going on adventures one after another, playing home brewed adventures intermixed with TSR modules.  Most f the group had gotten together before I moved south and joined them  I know they had done the Temple and the Giants, but I got there for Vaults of the Drow.  Of course, I may have my timeline confused over the decades.

Origin of Species - Manticore

Continuing the series on the origins of the classic monsters, we come to the Manticore. 

  From Volume 2 Monsters and Treasures:
MANTICORAS: Huge, lion-bodied monstrosities with men's face, horns, dragon
wings, and a tail full of iron spikes. There are 24 of these spikes in a Manticora's
tail, and they can be fired 6 at a time in any one direction with the range (18")
accuracy and effect of a crossbow. Their favorite prey is man.

The illustration is Trampier's fronts piece from the 1978 Monster and Treasure Assortment.  Note the head is fully human ad the wings just stick out of the body in an unnatural fashion.

Pliny Natural History Book 8, Chapter 30

Ctesias informs us, that among these same Æthiopians, there is an animal found, which he calls the mantichora; it has a triple row of teeth, which fit into each other like those of a comb, the face and ears of a man, and azure eyes, is of the colour of blood, has the body of the lion, and a tail ending in a sting, like that of the scorpion. Its voice resembles the union of the sound of the flute and the trumpet; it is of excessive swiftness, and is particularly fond of human flesh. 

The illustration is Sullivan's from the Monster Manual.   DCS has taken a lion's body, a spinal ridge, added somewhat more natural looking wings and given it the head of Rutherford B. Hayes.

This is one of the few subjects that both illustrated, and the real reason for the post.



Except for the tail, the manticore's description in the game marches with Pliny's from the time of the Apostles.  Making the tail a wyvern like stinger instead of the  spikes the players expect would be a nice surprise to them.  And the description of it having a body the color of blood, either in Theater of the Mind or in a painted mini would be quite unusual.
 

February 2014 Blog Hop Day 8

First set of polyhedral dice?  Got them right here still.  Well most of them.  The d12 seems to be MIA and I could have sworn I had another d20.  The old fashioned kind that was number 0-9 twice.  We used crayon to color in one set (you can see the red crayon on the brown die to the left) or else rolled a d6 to determine high - low.  The white d6 in the foreground is actually a d3, again 1-3 twice.  The red d6s are wooden dice I had salvaged from childhood game - Parcheesi maybe?  And converted them to 2-3-3-4-4-5's for Mercenary morale rolls in Chivalry and Sorcery.

The d4 is the only one that still sees regular rolls, but they're all out behind the screen when I'm the DM.

About That Box in the Basement

'It's in that box in the basement' is a running gag at our house; it's the answer to every question that starts 'Have you seen..?' or 'Where did we put...?'    It stems from our history of packing up and moving, as in we moved ten times in the twelve years I served.  With all the moves, some things just never got unpacked between moves, like a complete set of Depression Ware dishes or the books my father-in-law gave us when he cleaned off his bookshelves.  Now we've dropped anchor in the Twin Cities for going on fifteen years, yet we still haven't unpacked some of those boxes.

  I was looking to see if I could unearth the first D&D book I ever bought for the Day 7 Blog Hop.  I failed, but look what I did come across.

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Ogre - the original Microgame version from 1977.  I think the little cardboard pieces (this long predates the minis) are in the bottom of the bin.  There were a couple of other little booklet games too, more on the sword and sorcery side.  I'll have to look for them later.

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D&D Supplement IV.  Forgot I even had bought this.  From 1979, so I know I picked up about the same time I bought the AD&D Player's Handbook.  At Games by James, now a respectable little shop at the Mall of America.  Then it was a head shop in Stadium Village next to Stub & Herb's - by the University of Minnesota.  I bought some, ah, paraphernalia there too.   I'll have to redo my post on Deities & Demigods, adding this into the mix.

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The official D&D Monster and Treasure Assortment for Levels 7-9 in your dungeon   That Manticore on the front is a piece by Trampier, it's quite different from the Sullivan illustration in the Monster Manual.  The monsters run from 7-42 bugbears to a 10 headed hydra.  It has tables for random determination of treasure's container, guard and Hidden by.  These are the same as Tables V. H-J on page 171 of the 1e DMG.  Exactly the same for Containers and Hidden By entries.  Printed in 1978

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 Judges Guild, Judge's Guild, wherefore at thou Judges Guild? - My apologies to the Bard.  Second only to TSR for canonicalness [is that a word, it should be as it's quite cromulent] Judges Guild was a big influence on gaming in the late 70's & early 80's.  Here we have random tables for building types - by government type.  Odd in retrospect. Also random village name generator tables and no less than 47 villages laid out on hex grids.  Village Book 1 - 1978.

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Another entry from Judges Guild, the map for the City State of Tarantis.  I found the blank player's map too, but didn't see the book.  I picked up this one from a friend from college and fellow gamer, when we were both stationed in the Norfolk area  in the late '80s.  Published 1983.

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 And the only actual AD&D piece in the bunch.  T1, The Village of Hommlet.  Precursor to the Temple of Elemental Evil, this is the 1981 printing.  I must not have picked it up until fall of 1982 or early 1983.  I remember my roommate and I ran our characters through it after the rest of our original group had graduated and gotten their commissions.  This has the maps printed in the 'uncopyable' light blue of the era.

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So what treasures have you found while looking for something else?

February 2014 Blog Hop Day 7

My first D&D product I ever bought, was the Psionics rule book for 0e.  Even though I didn't own the other books, I had heard of the game.  As I recall I bought it in a store in Superior, Wisconsin.  The D&D books themselves were out of stock, so I picked up this one and then I saw a big soft cover book on the shelf.  It advertised itself as a unique role playing game with everything you ever needed in one volume, so I bought Chivalry & Sorcery too.

I know where my copy of C&S is, I think that the Psionics Handbook is in "a box in the basement".

Later - I didn't find that but what I DID find!!! Check back later for that post.