FATAL & Friends 2020: 61 billion casualties

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > FATAL & Friends 2020: 61 billion casualties

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

srhall79 posted:

The recent posts on TSR management has me wanting to take a look back earlier, to when some miniature wargamers suddenly found themselves with a product pulling in millions of dollars a year.

Matter of fact, nobody knew all the details, but it should've been perfect.
But in the end, they hosed it all up.
It should've been so sweet too.
But it turned out to be the last time that street guys like them were ever given anything that fuckin' valuable again.

No, wait, that's Casino.

The year is 1985. The mismanagement of the Brothers Blume�has driven TSR deep into debt. Heroically, Gary Gygax emerges from his California mansion where his fiscally responsible ways have kept his expenses to a modest $10k a month (somewhere north of $28,000 today). The company needs money, and a new hardcover bearing Gygax's name will make that money. Putting pen to paper he... well, he really�just makes a Best of Dragon out of materials he and others like Len Lakofa had previously published, spackled over and mildly revised, with some new bits and items tossed in.

Unearthed Arcana is the first player-facing expansion to the first edition of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. After the core three, there'd been Deities & Demigods (later Legends & Lore), statting up gods, heroes, and monsters of many real world mythologies. Slightly player-facing in that it expanded ability score charts to 25, so you knew what bonuses your 19 constitution dwarf had. Or you knew a little more about Thor if you were worshiping him... or decided to kill him; Fiend Folio, a monster book, largely built off of submissions by UK gamers to White Dwarf magazine. A lot of weird stuff in here, but also some memorable monsters, most notably the Death Knight, the Githyanki and Githzerai, and the Slaadi, all from Charles Stross. Gygax brought in the kua-toa and the drow and Lloth from adventures. This book is also the source of the flumph, the grick, and the grell; and the Monster Manual II, largely Gygax, a lot of monsters that had previously appeared in adventures or Dragon. There's definitely some that have become lodged into D&D canon, including the deva, solar, and the modrons. Basically, three books of things to stab. Now, players had new and better ways to stab the things.

And by better, the book isn't so much power creep as a brisk power jog. Some of it is worthwhile; I'll spend more time than I usually desire among the spells because a lot of what we consider iconic didn't exist in 1978. And with magic-user power expanding due to extra spells, the fighter probably needed a nudge (though maybe one that was playtested a few times). But I'm not sure thieves needed what was offered to them, and the druid stuff gets a little weird. Meanwhile, the cavalier and barbarian are so hilariously broken and also near impossible to play rules-as-written.

So come along as we venture into the book that saved TSR long enough for Lorraine Williams to conduct a hostile take-over (or, she purchased the shares of the Brothers Blume�after Gygax had stalled them for too long)

Unearthed Arcana: Part 1, history, cover art, and introductions

That's not the cover of my book (which, like all my AD&D 1st edition books, was my dad's, handed down). Long, long ago, like probably before 2nd edition dropped, the pages of my Unearthed Arcanca decided to try living without the cover. Now, my Dungeon Master's Guide was lost (or stolen), but another I acquired is in fine shape with the original cover. The Player's Handbook is doing fine. The Monster Manual lost its spine, but the book stayed together. I've long suspected that the crisis of cashflow contributed to the Unearthed Arcana getting a substandard binding.

For some reason, I always associated the dude on the cover with Gygax (not that I think I ever had seen a picture of Gary when I formed that connection. But I don't think I was entirely alone in that thought, going off of the cover of Michael Witwer's biography of Gygax.

The cover is by Jeff Easley, who had done the re-covers of the core books, of Legends & Lore, and would do the 2nd edition core covers.

Nearly 20 years later, Monte Cook, after departing Wizards of the Coast, published a variant Player's Handbook under the title Arcana Unearthed. I remember reading that he had initially wanted the title Unearthed Arcana, but WotC turned him down. He probably didn't expect WotC to release a 3rd edition Unearthed Arcana the following year, filled with variant rules for D&D. In 5th edition times, Unearthed Arcana would be used as the label for "we've got this stuff in the works, try it out and give us feedback."

There are three introductions to the book. Gygax leads off, talking about some of what went in to this book and crediting some of the creators. Jeff Grubb follows talking about his role and expanding my young vocabulary stating that he was

And Kim Mohan, editor, finishes off.

Next: We take a look at how you look.

Ha, fascinating. Here's a post from Malizewski about a roughly similar period, and this comment was also very interesting:

quote:

Good stuff as always. However, I think you probably overstate the case for realism as the cause for the dramatic changes in Dragon Magazine during the period in question. I don't think it was an increased interest in realism so much as it was an increased concern within TSR over "officialness."

During this period TSR -- particularly through Dragon magazine -- really developed, enforced, and ceaselessly promoted the reasonably new distinction between "official" versus "unofficial" material. "Official AD&D" material could only be issued by EGG himself or one of his appointed disciples (like Lakofka) in a manner akin to a papal bull. That meant that anything else was "unofficial" and therefore of suspect value. And could be potential heretical, to boot!

Now, there had certainly been earlier attempts to distinguish third party material. Judges Guild, for example, had the "Approved for Use With" designation. But the Dragon magazine had, from the beginning, been a safe haven for all sorts of wonderful little variant rules with little discussion of "officialness." The Dragon's Bestiary and the Bazaar of the Bizarre columns were regular sources for new monsters and magic items, for example. But all this changes at the dawn of the silver age. This is also the era, remember, that sees an increased obsession over capitalization and trademark and copyright symbols. A simple D&D book becomes an "Official AD&D (tm) Supplement."

Several reasons probably spurred the suddenly increased emphasis on the "officialness" of material. The most important was likely the desire to shut off third party material and drive all consumers to TSR.

But a couple of immediate and important consequences stem from this new distinction of official and unofficial. First, a whole series of beloved categories of articles -- new classes, races, monsters, spells, etc. -- suddenly become verboten for Dragon unless they stem from Gygax himself. Second, this leaves a gaping vacuum that can only be filled with two types of articles: either systemless historical research pieces (the "real barbarians," "true medieval coinage," "authentic cobbling styles from antiquity," etc.) or else fairly humble extensions or elaborations to the existing AD&D system. Instead of new monsters you get "ecologies." Instead of new magic items you get things like "new charts for generating magic items." Instead of a new magic system you get "random weather generators" or "More Accurate Falling Damage." And so on, and so forth. This is the decadence, the dinking around with fluff, that you single out in your original post.

Realism certainly was a very important and highly valued concept during this period, and I certainly think it informs much of the content that you discuss. But I also suspect that if you look at contemporaneous RPGs (say, RuneQuest), you will not find such a sudden shift in content like you do in Dragon Magazine during this period.

And in fact, after Gygax left TSR (taking Mohan with him) Roger Moore assumed the helm. And you almost immediately see a flowering of the exact sort of articles that had been banished from the magazine: Tom Moldvay, for examples, publishes the first in his excellent series of articles on new undead.

# ¿ Nov 15, 2023 03:51

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# ¿ May 21, 2024 13:43

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

srhall79 posted:

Quite interesting. Gygax penned some infamous editorials about the right way to play and the right rules to use. I think one placed D&D as the more immature, free-wheeling game, like house ruled poker, while serious gamers would go with AD&D, where strict adherence to the published rules was necessary, maybe so your character would be tournament-legal? (which I have to guess was only a small percentage of players).

I don't recall classes ever disappearing from Dragon, though the magazine runs together in my head. I remember classes almost always were presented as NPC classes, although with experience charts and everything you'd need to play one as a PC (the oddest in my memory was Len Lakofka's Death Master, a necromancer that he repeats must be an NPC, and if he found a PC death master at a con, well, he might turn evil himself. But the death master had things like, at 1st level, you got 1xp for every grave dug up and 2xp for every body stolen, and what DM is tracking this for an NPC? "Well, the players have been in this dungeon for two weeks, another day and Frank Stein will have dug up enough bodies to hit second level!")

Ad&d rules were so trash lol. My favorite is that monsters will attack someone's ac10 head on a 2/6, which implies rolling a d6 with every attack, as well as an entire locational armour system neither of which are found anywhere else in the game. This is tucked away in the armour crafting rules, naturally.

# ¿ Nov 15, 2023 20:39

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

Halloween Jack posted:

The thing about Gygax's editorials on The One True Way To Game is that Gygax was first and foremost a huckster who wanted to move product. Only Official AD&D^TM Miniatures are good enough for your game!

The idea of a "tournament standard" ruleset makes sense, but AD&D seems to have been an accumulation of house rules for D&D, which seem to have been made by a bunch of different people who were not necessarily playing or even talking to each other. And yeah, sometimes that resulted in important mechanics that were buried deep in the text, or different mechanics that didn't have clear interactions at all.

Definitely the first rather than the last. I don't think he gave a single poo poo about coherent mechanics, because his mechanics weren't coherent.

I mean in practice everyone just ignored the stuff that didn't work, which meant in practice ad&d was a collection of classes, spells and magic items and a couple of pages of combat tables

# ¿ Nov 15, 2023 21:16

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

Halloween Jack posted:

Well, this is one of the reasons that online conversation around the early OSR was so bitter--it's not like anybody has collected a lot of data about how people played in the 70s and 80s. But it seems like a lot of people playing AD&D were essentially using AD&D as a character creation module for Basic. Separating race and class, playing paladins and rangers, but probably not using initiative segments or weapon vs. armor tables.

Yeah, I'm an old and was playing at school in the late 70s. we ignored all that stuff. i'ma little retroactively bitter tbqh because BECMI is an objectively better system but there's no way we'd play something BASIC because we weren't BABIES.

if weapons v ac had actually been a little better thought out it would have been a neat addition, and when an american dude came along with rolemaster (which has weapon vs armour type, but separates that from things like dodging and shields) we jumped ship to that immediately and played D&D with RM combat and skills.

# ¿ Nov 15, 2023 21:34

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

sleepy.eyes posted:

How do you pronounce that? I just never say the name out loud because I have no damned clue.

Just like it's written

# ¿ Nov 17, 2023 21:13

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

MonsterEnvy posted:

The Serpent Folk are replacing the Drow in the lore as the scary underground threat.

# ¿ Nov 20, 2023 03:31

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

Yeah and it's a default Big campaign story that you can either use or ignore.

# ¿ Nov 20, 2023 20:41

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

https://djflanagan.blogspot.com/2016/08/hagakure-japans-strangest-book.html?m=1

# ¿ Dec 5, 2023 08:03

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

Nessus posted:

This is extremely cool, both concept and apparently the film

the film is a blast. it gets an additional layer from the samurai manual that gets quoted having been written by a goony shut-in clerk who was mythologising the age of the badass samurai

# ¿ Dec 17, 2023 23:00

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

quote:

I can't directly link as the site has some non-sexual nudity

As an admin on this forum I can assure you that linking to a website will not get you in trouble

# ¿ Jan 17, 2024 10:34

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

Yeah it's fantastic.

When we played strahd he invited us to dinner and we told him to gently caress off lol

# ¿ Jan 18, 2024 23:30

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

Libertad! posted:

I presume he didn't take it well! And if this is Curse of Strahd and not another adventure...

Did Ireena make it to the end of the campaign alive (or undead)? Also who was the party's Fated Ally if you did the Tarokka reading?

As I'm running Curse of Strahd right now and we're 30 sessions into it, I'm curious in hearing about other people's playthroughs.

Ireena made it through, and reunited with her lover at the pool iirc, and i think it was rictavio as ally. We had a great and intensely melodramatic scene trying to convince strahd to give up his hearts desire on the balcony to 'welcome to the black parade' then our monk cut him in half with the sunsword when that didn't work. We also swung into the sad town on the golden chariot we stole from the amber temple and converted them into party town over the course of 'bohemian rhapsody'. oh, and holden slipnsloe the halfling paladin challenged strahd to a bare chested duel/dance off on a bridge over a roaring mountain river then pulled him down into it when he lost it was p gonzo but a very good time.

holden subsequently came back as an ultra-goth vampire and we all cried brave single tears as we put him down.

# ¿ Jan 20, 2024 03:07

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

Libertad! posted:

Did your party have a Bard, or were they just that awesome?

The latter

# ¿ Jan 21, 2024 01:25

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# ¿ May 21, 2024 13:43

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

PoontifexMacksimus posted:

I always found instructive the etymology of the word "monster", sharing the same Latin root as "demonstrate" - with the original Roman Latin meaning of "a sign from the gods", to quote Etymonline: a derivative of monere "to remind, bring to (one's) recollection, tell (of); admonish, advise, warn, instruct, teach," from PIE *moneie- "to make think of, remind," suffixed (causative) form of root *men- (1) "to think."

https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=monster

The monster itself as inherently act of communication, a call to remember what perhaps we would like to forget.

Edit: is this the book the Cohen theses you mention are from?
https://books.google.se/books/about/Speaking_of_Monsters.html?id=YT1mAQAAQBAJ&redir_esc=y

Nice etymogising. Made me think of the Culture assassin/torture drone at the end of Banks' Look to Windward.

# ¿ Apr 16, 2024 00:56

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