Okay, so who still has their first edition DMG, PHB and MM...I'll go you one better: I still have the old white box!The collector in me is definitely jealous.
But, does anyone have the woodgrain?
I promise not to send a team of Shadowrunners to your house to steal it.
I have the woodgrain. I'll keep a light on for you. ;)
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I have the woodgrain. I'll keep a light on for you. ;)Okay, so who still has their first edition DMG, PHB and MM...I'll go you one better: I still have the old white box!The collector in me is definitely jealous.
But, does anyone have the woodgrain?
I promise not to send a team of Shadowrunners to your house to steal it.
Doh! Seriously jealous!
*Gets on phone with a fixer, trying to set up a team*
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I got a AD&D MM2 from a yardsale for 50 cents, someone had colored every creature with color pencils and they were very good at it. I loved that touch, it was the envy of all Dm's,inside cover says colored by Frank S. Hesson. Thanks Frank...
One of the guys I gamed with in high school had coloured in all the pics in his second edition dragonlance MM - he wasn't Frank though.
My first campaign was Keep on the Borderlands, which was in the box I got for Christmas. Priceless. :)
-Lisa
Priceless indeed! Same here.
Within a month of getting it, I found graph paper and was churning out map after map after map too.
Favorite grognard moment. Finding out that there was a *magazine* for D&D. In Waldenbooks in Downtown Crossing, Boston no less. I skipped lunch for a week to scare up the money to buy it.
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My first character (2nd edition) was an elf wizard named Anarian Swiftfoot. In our first adventure we were in this massive city in a cave (I found out later the DM was using the Greyhawk map for the city – I’m not sure why he set it in a cave), and the final encounter was an evil wizard who polymorphed into a red dragon. Anarian survived a number of campaigns, made it to about 12th level, before getting trapped in Azalin’s castle in Ravenloft.
My first attempt at DMing (sans any books, as at the time my DM was the only one who had any) was for my two younger brothers, and was an adaptation of The Warlock of Firetop Mountain (I DID map the Maze of Zagor). The first proper adventure I wrote and DM’d (using books this time), I decided to make it hard for myself by setting it under-water…
During the super adventure GDQ1-7 There was a Frost giant(Big Johann) on a woolly mammoth that charges my players,one of the players had a 12th cavalier on a horse charge forward won int, rolled a Natural 20, rolled on our critical hit chart from the best of dragon vol.3 (not sure on that)
He rolled the dice and severed the woolly mammoth leg at the upper front and doing like 102 damage! with a longsword mounted! ah the good old days....
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Grognard since 81'.
First adventure: Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh
I loved that blue ink ship map.
Killing skeletons was new and exciting. That wore off.
Speaking of Palace of the Silver Princess, how about that very original monster-baddy the "Decapus"?
Basically a land dwelling (or was it arboreal?) octopus, with, get this...
TEN LEGS!
The Perils Of Grognard Decadence
If decadence be the fruit of grognard... play on.
Oh those Moldvay modules... yer takin' me back, boys. I was so very sorry to hear he passed away last year.
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Grognard since 81'.
First adventure: Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh
I loved that blue ink ship map.
Killing skeletons was new and exciting. That wore off.Speaking of Palace of the Silver Princess, how about that very original monster-baddy the "Decapus"?
Basically a land dwelling (or was it arboreal?) octopus, with, get this...
TEN LEGS!
The Book of Nuisances did a dig on the decapus...
If decadence be the fruit of grognard... play on.
Oh those Moldvay modules... yer takin' me back, boys. I was so very sorry to hear he passed away last year.
Jade you ever play Seren Ironhand? He wrote some cool adventures
That was when I realized there wasn't just some game called D&D, but an entire market of RPG's.
Ah, for me it was clear from the start, since I started playing with a different game (of which none of you have probably heard about), though started with D&D very soon afterwards (and then found a friend of a friend was playing yet another game...). So D&D has always been one game among many for me.
RuneQuest did change some of my perceptions of RPGs though...what, no levels or experience points? Characters have _skills_? If you play a duck, you start with Swim 60% (or was it 80%)?
Ah, memories.
From Steve Jackson Games website.... The Head Of Vecna
Many years ago (back when we all were still playing D & D), I ran a game where I pitted two groups against each other.
Several members of Group One came up with the idea of luring Group Two into a trap. You remember the Hand of Vecna and the Eye of Vecna that were artifacts in the old D&D world where if you cut off your hand (or your eye) and replaced it with the Hand of Vecna (or the Eye) you'd get new awesome powers? Well, Group One thought up The Head of Vecna.
Group One spread rumors all over the countryside (even paying Bards to spread the word about this artifact rumored to exist nearby). They even went so far as to get a real head and place it under some weak traps to help with the illusion. Unfortunately, they forgot to let ALL the members of their group in on the secret plan (I suspect it was because they didn't want the Druid to get caught and tell the enemy about this trap of theirs, or maybe because they didn't want him messing with things).
The Druid in group One heard about this new artifact and went off in search of it himself (I believe to help prove himself to the party members...) Well, after much trial and tribulation, he found it; deactivated (or set off) all the traps; and took his "prize" off into the woods for examination. He discovered that it did not radiate magic (a well known trait of artifacts) and smiled gleefully.
I wasn't really worried since he was alone and I knew that there was no way he could CUT HIS OWN HEAD OFF. Alas I was mistaken as the Druid promptly summoned some carnivorous apes and instructed them to use his own scimitar and cut his head off (and of course quickly replacing it with the Head of Vecna...)
Some time later, Group one decided to find the Druid and to check on the trap. They found the headless body (and the two heads) and realized that they had erred in their plan (besides laughing at the character who had played the Druid)...The Head of Vecna still had BOTH eyes! They corrected this mistake and reset their traps and the Head for it's real intended victims...
Group Two, by this time, had heard of the powerful artifact and decided that it bore investigating since, if true, they could use it to destroy Group One. After much trial and tribulation, they found the resting place of The Head of Vecna! The were particularly impressed with the cunning traps surrounding the site (one almost missed his save against the weakest poison known to man). They recovered the Head and made off to a safe area.
Group Two actually CAME TO BLOWS (several rounds of fighting) against each other argueing over WHO WOULD GET THEIR HEAD CUT OFF! Several greedy players had to be hurt and restrained before it was decided who would be the recipient of the great powers bestowed by the Head... The magician was selected and one of them promptly cut his head off. As the player was lifting The Head of Vecna to emplace it on it's new body, another argument broke out and they spent several minutes shouting and yelling. Then, finally, they put the Head onto the character.
Well, of course, the Head simply fell off the lifeless body. All members of Group Two began yelling and screaming at each other (and at me) and then, on their own, decided that they had let too much time pass between cutting off the head of a hopeful recipient and put the Head of Vecna onto the body.
SO THEY DID IT AGAIN!... [killing another PC]
In closing, it should be said that I never even cracked a smile as all this was going on. After the second PC was slaughtered, I had to give in (my side was hurting)...
And Group Two blamed ME for all of that...
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That was when I realized there wasn't just some game called D&D, but an entire market of RPG's.
Ah, for me it was clear from the start, since I started playing with a different game (of which none of you have probably heard about), though started with D&D very soon afterwards (and then found a friend of a friend was playing yet another game...). So D&D has always been one game among many for me.
RuneQuest did change some of my perceptions of RPGs though...what, no levels or experience points? Characters have _skills_? If you play a duck, you start with Swim 60% (or was it 80%)?
Ah, memories.
Some time after my discovery of Runequest, I also discovered MERP right around the time my parents started hearing the whole "D&D is the devil!" stuff. While they didn't tell me I couldn't play D&D, they were concerned with everything they were hearing at the time.
I was always a dutiful son, respectful of my parents' concern so to make them feel better I started picking up a lot of MERP stuff (No mom and dad, this is like the hobbit). I completely loved MERP and played a lot of that for a couple of years. I still played D&D during that time too, I used the MERP box to carry around my D&D books, heh.
So, MERP became a smokescreen for me that I totally enjoyed as well.
The Head of Vecna reminds me of Eric and the Dread Gazebo. (come on, you knew it would turn up)
Stefan
The Head of Vecna reminds me of Eric and the Dread Gazebo. (come on, you knew it would turn up)
Stefan
By your request
The Tale of Eric and the Dread Gazebo
by Richard Aronson
...In the early seventies, Ed Whitchurch ran "his game," and one of the participants was Eric Sorenson. Eric plays something like a computer. When he games he methodically considers each possibility before choosing his preferred option. If given time, he will invariably pick the optimal solution. It has been known to take weeks. He is otherwise, in all respects, a superior gamer.
Eric was playing a Neutral Paladin in Ed's game. He was on some lord's lands when the following exchange occurred:
ED: You see a well groomed garden. In the middle, on a small hill, you
see a gazebo.
ERIC: A gazebo? What color is it?
ED: (Pause) It's white, Eric.
ERIC: How far away is it?
ED: About 50 yards.
ERIC: How big is it?
ED: (Pause) It's about 30 ft across, 15 ft high, with a pointed top.
ERIC: I use my sword to detect good on it.
ED: It's not good, Eric. It's a gazebo.
ERIC: (Pause) I call out to it.
ED: It won't answer. It's a gazebo.
ERIC: (Pause) I sheathe my sword and draw my bow and arrows. Does it
respond in any way?
ED: No, Eric, it's a gazebo!
ERIC: I shoot it with my bow (roll to hit). What happened?
ED: There is now a gazebo with an arrow sticking out of it.
ERIC: (Pause) Wasn't it wounded?
ED: OF COURSE NOT, ERIC! IT'S A GAZEBO!
ERIC: (Whimper) But that was a +3 arrow!
ED: It's a gazebo, Eric, a GAZEBO! If you really want to try to
destroy it, you could try to chop it with an axe, I suppose, or you
could try to burn it, but I don't know why anybody would even try.
It's a @#$%!! gazebo!
ERIC: (Long pause. He has no axe or fire spells.) I run away.
ED: (Thoroughly frustrated) It's too late. You've awakened the gazebo.
It catches you and eats you.
ERIC: (Reaching for his dice) Maybe I'll roll up a fire-using mage so
I can avenge my Paladin.
At this point, the increasingly amused fellow party members restored a modicum of order by explaining to Eric what a gazebo is. Thus ends the tale of Eric and the Dread Gazebo. It could have been worse; at least the gazebo wasn't on a grassy gnoll.( He thought it was a Glabrezu demon...)
Jade, you ever play Seren Ironhand? He wrote some cool adventuresIf decadence be the fruit of grognard... play on.
Oh those Moldvay modules... yer takin' me back, boys. I was so very sorry to hear he passed away last year.
I never played it.
I just found it online... a 3rd party adventure. Supposed to be a Moldvay written trilogy but they only printed the second. Some say it was the best module ever written.
I must have it.
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Playing since: 1984
Editions: 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 3.5 (no intention to switch to 4E yet)
First module played: 'Keep on the Borderland' (DMed by my dad after serious begging. Killed my PC nearly on the spot because he didn't realize that the mod was designed for four characters instead of one. Neither did I...)
Favorite old-school module: Death's Ride
Am I in? :)
You're in.
I fear I do not qualify for grognard status...:(
I fear I do not qualify for grognard status...:(
Lilith, with Oerth Journal & DM Tools
these alone you are our Grognard Queen!!! now share us tale and salty one at that!!! Your Grognardness!!please,
I have a friend back in Canada with the woodgrain. I just e-mailed him about Seren, Tobus, I'm really getting curious about this book.
I have a friend back in Canada with the woodgrain. I just e-mailed him about Seren, Tobus, I'm really getting curious about this book.
me wantss itss ssso badss Kruelaid...It's not on e-bay...or I suck at searching..e-bay.
did you see the cover of it...
I started with the 1983 Mentzer Red Box...probably around 1984 or so. The first module I remember well was B5: Horror on the Hill. I loved that module! It had everything!
I also recall bits of B1: Into the Unknown, as well as Castle Amber. Good times.
I can't say that miss THAC0, though I was quite slow to come around. Every time there was an edition change I was slow to change. First Edition to Second Edition was tough, and just when I was beginning to feel comfortable with Third...sheesh.
I can't say that I minded THAC0 at the time. Back in those days that was how you played the game...and we liked it that way!
I'll never forget perhaps the first time I nearly got to play D&D. I was over at a friend's house and his older brother was going to be our DM. I rolled up my character (a Magic-User) and bought equipment and once I was ready to play...nothing. The guy's brother realized he had misplaced the THAC0 chart and therefore combat was impossible...according to him. (I didn't know any better at the time).
Yo B5 rocked one of my all time favorites...
Lilith I wanna a cookie!
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Started playing when I was 8 in 78' or 79', not sure exactly, with a couple friends in school. Didn't get my first set until a couple years later and it was THIS ONE. Erol Otis artwork, Keep on the Borderlands....I fell in love. I still remember those horrible dice that seemed to be attacked any canine and must've smelled of bacon or something.
I wish I still had that set, just for memory's sake.
I started in the Summer of '80. A friend of the family had the blue book and I came home from the visit and started a d6 game because those were the only dice I had. Christmas of that year I got the red boxed set and have been hooked ever since.
AD&D came a year later and I still remember first level fighter saves:
Poison:14 Petrification, Polymorph:15 Rod, Staff, Wand:16 Spells:17 Breath Weapon:17 why that has stuck with me I have no clue.
Morgan Ironwolf The she-devil lass of D&D! here you can find her history...
/2007/01/morgan-ironwolf-old-school-iconic.html
But can anyone remember how she dies in a example on a D&D product...
Morgan Ironwolf is listed on the example page and in the foot notes it says she has been slain by a Fire Giant. Am I right?
Does converting to 4e revoke grognard status?
No. Once a grognard always a grognard, because you will apply grognard wisdom to the 4e game, 4sure!
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No. Once a grognard always a grognard, because you will apply grognard wisdom to the 4e game, 4sure!Does converting to 4e revoke grognard status?
W00t! Grognard 4ever.
Though I am beginning to wonder when I'm going to have time to play 4e. My 2nd Edition and BECMI games are too fun to just lay down.
No. Once a grognard always a grognard, because you will apply grognard wisdom to the 4e game, 4sure!Does converting to 4e revoke grognard status?
That's good since I'm interested in seeing 4th edition too. :)
I started playing in 1986 at the age of 11. I remember my first character was a weak (str 6) cleric who couldn't fight well and only had access to one spell...light. But I blinded an "eye monster" with it and we were able to survive our encounter with the beholder, where otherwise we would have gone down in serious flames.
On grognardiness...I hated THAC0 when it came out. I believe my first experience with it was a Dragonlance module. I couldn't stand the rule. Then of course 2nd edition came out and I had to learn. I still dislike it though. 3rd edition's combat rules were much more user-friendly.
No*. Once a grognard always a grognard, because you will apply grognard wisdom to the 4e game, 4sure!
*However Gary Gygax, Monte Cook or Uncle (Robert J. Kuntz)could ban you from the Grognard Hall of Fame.
*sniffle*
No THAC0 love in the thread.
I'll see your thac0 and raise you the "to hit tables"
Thac0 was a godsend.
Oh.
1983, age 10, on the patio overlooking the Drakensburg "Dragon Mountains" with the basic, expert and advanced sets.
No modules.
Got into AD&D as soon as it came out.
Nobody complained about the edition shift.
Nobody complained about the edition shift.
Of course not you went from paper rule books to 4 tomes of information you felt important flippping through the Dmg, I kept chains and lock on my MM and DM guide-;)
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I started in '84 with the red box set. My cousin introduced me to 1e soon thereafter. I played both for quite a long time.
The first module I ever ran for anyone was Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh.
With 2e I converted even though my mother thought D&D was the debil. I had to hide my books all through high school and often ran into issues with my mom and my pastor.
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1984 6th grade, lunch time, saw some of my friends with these books...The rest is history and thousands of dollars, and dozens of game systems later...
THAC0...ugh
I had actually quit D&D for Earthdawn before 3e...Simply because I had house ruled so much that I had to give out a house rule manual to any one new...but 3E brought me back into the fold...
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I started in '84 with the red box set. My cousin introduced me to 1e soon thereafter. I played both for quite a long time.
The first module I ever ran for anyone was Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh.
With 2e I converted even though my mother thought D&D was the debil. I had to hide my books all through high school and often ran into issues with my mom and my pastor.
That is still one of my favorite modules...
it was so different at the time.
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I started in '84 with the red box set. My cousin introduced me to 1e soon thereafter. I played both for quite a long time.
The first module I ever ran for anyone was Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh.
With 2e I converted even though my mother thought D&D was the debil. I had to hide my books all through high school and often ran into issues with my mom and my pastor.
That is still one of my favorite modules...
it was so different at the time.
I still run variations on it every so often. I love that module.
I'll see your thac0 and raise you the "to hit tables"
Thac0 was a godsend.
Agreed, when we were playing D&D with those risible to-hit-tables and read about THAC0, we switched immediately because it was just so much better.
The 1st time I Dm'ed, The adventure I wrote(3rd level characters), the third chamber had a T-rex! The players ran out of my dungeon...and that was the end of that module..My friend Joe had failed to mention to me that you had to balance encounters..oh says I...It was months later before I was allowed to Dm again.
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I got one of the red boxes for my b-day in 1981. I had to convince my parents that it wasn't "satanic", because our church wasn't very fond of the game. The best thing is that I wanted the game because someone told me that you could drink beer, kill rats and have sex. I remember thinking "How is that possible with a game? You REALLY do these things?". It finally made sense after I opened the box and started to read the rules. I seriously thought some kind of Jumanji thing was going to happen haha!!
The best thing is that I wanted the game because someone told me that you could drink beer, kill rats and have sex. I remember thinking "How is that possible with a game? You REALLY do these things?".
rofl!;)