TF Smith

I bought a stand-alone Holmes Basic rulebook new at a Toys R Us store in 1986 or 87. It must have been gathering dust in a warehouse for years - no idea why it wasn’t returned to TSR or pulped but I was thrilled to find it. I’d never even seen that version before (I started with the 1983 Basic set)

There are a few levels In Tonisborg & Blackmoor with so many angled halls & rooms that if you just tilt the page 45 degrees it becomes mostly cardinal direction lines. I wonder if any players ever did that while mapping & if so if Greg or Dave thought it was a clever hack or got annoyed

I don’t have either box but I have the rulebook from both. For the 1st the book was sold separately & I bought it that way. The 2nd book wasn’t sold separately so I’m not sure how I ended up with it. Probably a friend left it at my house one day after school & forgot about it?

Chainmail (man-to-man) also used a 2d6 system where bonuses to hit (for being a Veteran, making a flank attack, using a magic sword, etc) pretty quickly push rolls into the “almost never miss” range (chance of 6+ on 2d6 is 72%, 5+ is 83%, 4+ is 92%); D&D’s flat d20 makes bonuses count for a lot less

Of course part of that is players’ desire to keep gaining levels. I’m actually happy to stop advancing & stay permanently at about level
10 (“name” level in old D&D) but so many players want to keep going to get to level 20+ & “win” even though doing so doesn’t really get you that much in the game

I’m reminded of the award structure Marc Miller cited for Traveller - 1st you want money/stuff, then when you have that you want power & influence, then when you have that you want knowledge (to understand the great mysteries & secrets). XP for treasure in D&D only satisfies #1

I agree with this. Treasure-gathering is a great motivation & self-reinforcing gameplay loop for low-level (broke & desperate) PCs but once they’ve succeeded & become rich it falls apart (especially as the amounts of treasure needed to advance keep increasing - 1M+ GP for a name-level party)

I like how you stuck with the “detect meal” typo for the magic sword - “there’s a breakfast beyond this door!” 😆

I remember when I was in high school & realized, after having watched the movie dozens of times as a kid, that it was the story of Hamlet with Bob & Doug as Rosencrantz & Guildenstern. Which made it even funnier.

Agrippa (A Book of the Dead) - Wikipedia

Yes (but it was a poem, and from the early 90s): en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agrippa...

Fun seeing “juvenilia” from a pro game designer that feels similar to what I was doing at about the same age a decade later (though in my case more likely to be based on Iron Maiden songs…)

Three white IKEA bookshelves filled with about 800 mostly mass-market paperback books

New shelves for all of my SF, fantasy and horror books

Those mid-80s re-release versions of the AD&D hardbacks have my favorite D&D cover art and logos. As a kid I was jealous of older kids who had the versions with the original cover art but as adult it’s these that I feel the most nostalgic connection to

I changed to LEAST

My high school’s band room had one flugelhorn. It was a rite of passage for everybody in the trumpet line (me included) to check it out and learn to play all the smooth Chuck Mangione hits. R.I.P. Chuck!

The public didn’t even know about the extermination camps until they were liberated at the end of the war & the most infamous concentration camp before & during the war (Dachau) wasn’t an extermination camp. Concentration camps are still bad even if they aren’t extermination camps. Period.

You need to get an education. It absolutely is a concentration camp. The first Nazi concentration camps opened in March 1933. They didn’t start gassing prisoners until December 1941. You don’t have to be literally gassing people for it to be bad to put them in concentration camps.

And yet he went ahead and did it anyway. “Should” or “should not” clearly doesn’t enter the equation anymore and people need to come to grips with that and take it seriously.

Brink of Calamity by @tfsmith1091.bsky.social is DTRPG deal of the day for 60% off. Great old-school sandbox module, in the vein of L1 The Secret of Bone Hill, with a detailed town, two villages, 30ish wilderness locations, and five dungeons.

Get it at www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/5...

#OSR

Thanks for the shout-out!

Yep. When I saw the movie (before I’d read the book) & that thing showed up I was like “OMG, that’s totally the alzabo!”

Screen shot of the front page at DriveThruRPG.com showing Daggerheart Corebook at the #1 bestseller with a banner at the top showing my book Brink of Calamity as the Deal of the Day with a 60% discount ($14.99 reduced to $6.00)

Today my #DND #OSR adventure book Brink of Calamity is Deal of the Day at DriveThruRPG.com. It’s featured on the front page & discounted 60%. I spent 5 years working on it & am super proud of it so I hope you’ll check it out. If you like old-school 80s-style D&D I’m sure you’ll dig it.

Yevgeny Prigozhin probably thought he’d be around for another 40 years too…

That’s the thing people seem to be missing - he’s attacking the bill from the right, not the left. His objection is that it doesn’t go *far enough* in dismantling the government & cutting programs

And Paranoia!

Some favorites of mine missing from this list:

En Garde!
RuneQuest
James Bond 007
King Arthur Pendragon
Ghostbusters
Cyberpunk
Space:1889
Prince Valiant
Amber
Underground

We noticed! 😎

7 happy D&D players gathered around at table at the Game N Grounds store in Chatsworth CA all holding up copies of a game book titled Brink of Calamity

Today after 31 sessions (& 20 months) the #DND group finished up the playtest campaign for my adventure book with a well-earned victory. As thanks for helping me beat it into publishable shape I gifted them all copies of the book. Brink of Calamity - available now at DriveThruRPG!

Am I understanding correctly that the new books are going to be bound in landscape format? Curious choice.

Fun! Have you read the novels recently enough to remember them? If so unless the GM changes things up the first 2 modules might feel like you’re just re-enacting the books. After that they diverge & become more fun. My favorites are DL4, DL8 & DL12.