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30 Years of Adventure: A Celebration of D&D
The inside book jacket explains that "(t)his book is a celebration of that phenomenon (D&D, natch) and a tribute to the millions of players who brought the Dungeons & Dragons experience to life." When I think of tributes, I think of missing-man formations flying over stadiums, of 21-gun salutes, and Taps played on a lone bugle. As a tribute, this book is the equivalent of a handful of cellophane balloons released from the rooftop of a children's hospital just before noon on a Sunday, with Kool and the Gang playing on a cassette deck nearby.
OK, perhaps that's harsh. Or perhaps you really like Kool and the Gang. In either case, I'll do my best to lay out my case clearly, and in the end you can decide for yourself if you think my harshness is justified or not.
The CoverI walked by this book at Barnes & Noble five times before I noticed it, even though it was laying flat on a table, its cover clearly visible to me. As covers go, it's really not designed to catch the eye. It's a book designed for rogues, or wraiths, muted gold images wrapped within a translucent sheet of white plastic, making the whole thing look like it's being viewed through a heavy mist, or perhaps a Wall of Fog spell. The title, if you read it off as you notice the elements on the page, is something like "Years A Celebration of Dungeons & Dragons Of Adventure 30." The "30" in this case is represented by two 8-sided dice -- clever enough but very difficult to read. And why 8s? Why not 20s? Wouldn't that make more sense if we were trying to be clever? (Ed. It's been pointed out since I wrote this that it's actually a d8 and a d10, though my opinion stands.)
Front MatterThe book boasts on its cover that it features a Foreword by Vin Diesel. I guess this is high praise for the 16-year-old set who likes that movie where he drives around really fast, or maybe that one where he plays that criminal with the spooky eyes. I've got nothing against Vin Diesel, and I know he plays Dungeons & Dragons and all, but come on, folks. 30th Anniversary, and there's no place for Gary or Dave in your book? Throw 'em a bone. Hell, Steve Jackson could write a more appropriate Foreword.
For the young folk, "Gary" and "Dave" refer to Mr. Gygax and Mr. Arneson, respectively, two gentlemen who are peripherally involved in the role-playing industry. And yes, Gary Gygax does have a piece in the book -- but it was written in 1999. Somewhat tellingly, it includes the following statement by Mr. Gygax: "We were in a great hurry to get it done, and I was concerned about editing."
One wonders if the same could be said for this book.
At any rate, after Mr. Diesel's piece is an Introduction by the book's editor, Peter Archer, the brand manager for novels at Wizards of the Coast. His four-page intro is of particular interest for two reasons. First, it lays out the basic history of Dungeons and Dragons, from its roots to the release of Eberron. This history is important, because we're going to hear it retreaded and retold over and over and over again by different authors, and sometimes multiple times by the same author, on the pages that follow.
Second, and perhaps more importantly, his introduction is also some of the only text in the entire book which is grammatically correct, properly and cleanly laid out, and free of typos (at least insofar as I am aware). This book is positively awash in errors. If this were an OGL-released d20 product put on the market by a small publisher, said publisher would be lambasted for their sloppy work. I'm not about to pull any punches here because it's Wizards.
About the Graphic DesignBad, bad, bad, bad, bad.
Listen, I'm not the world's foremost expert on layout and design. Heck, I consider myself a writer by trade, though I do layout at my day job. But it doesn't take an expert to take one look at this book and go "Yeagh."
"Yeagh," here, interpreted as a vomiting sound.
All the basic rules of design are broken for no apparent reason other than to give the book a "hip" or "cool" layout. Instead of being presented with the text at a normal 90 degree angle to the page, every single page has the text skewed to the right or the left, so you have to constantly wiggle the book back and forth, back and forth to read it clearly. And the page numbers are no help. They're little 10-sided dice in the margin on right-hand pages, difficult to read (I didn't even notice they were there until I was halfway through the book) and serving no purpose other than to look cute.
The skewing of the pages left and right, left and right, means that the text is forced to flow in unnatural ways across pages, leading to awkward widows and orphans (when single words or sentences are left abandoned at the top or bottom of columns) and horrible breaks between pages and even within sentences:
"And the best part is that as you defeat more
monsters and gather
more treasure your character's chances to fight
and survive improve."
Flowing text between pages is simple in today's desktop publishing applications. You set up text boxes on each page and then you just paste all your text into the first block. Magically, it flows through the entire document, filling the boxes. Then you just save the document and send it off to the printer. Well, you're not supposed to do that. But that's evidently what happened here. Just a wee tiny little itty bit of nudging could have made this book a billion times more readable. Consider:
"TSR tackled the task of translating the game" (next page) "into the French language."
Why not adjust the leading or spacing a fraction of an inch to bump this back so the entire sentence fits on the first page, avoiding the awkward break? It's easy, really. I do it every day.
"Every staple of fantasy/swords & sorcery fiction could" (next page) "find a comfortable home in the Known World."
This one is even more egregious. At the bottom of that first page, there's a full two inches of space. You could have fit an entire new paragraph there, much less eight words. Come on, guys.
All this comes to a head in the latter pages of the book, when numerous smaller sub-articles by the likes of Ed Stark and Ryan Dancey are interspersed with the main narrative in a confusing jumble, both the sub-article and the main article continuing on across two, three or more pages. This causes the reader to have to flip back and forth numerous times to try and follow the separate threads, with amusing consequences. I think at one point Peter Adkison interrupted himself.
Moving on, there's much to be said of the overall graphic design, and none of it is good. Artwork, lifted from 30 years of Dungeons & Dragons products, is sprinkled willy-nilly with little regard for the subject matter. Some dramatic pieces have their most interesting bits cropped off seemingly at random. Other pieces are just reversed out and pasted on black or dropped behind a red mask, presumably for a "dramatic effect" akin to passing around a bowl of spaghetti when your players discover a pit full of snakes. In a chapter on AD&D 2nd Edition, several 1st Edition AD&D books are pictured. In a chapter on the 2nd Edition Historical Sourcebooks, several cover images are used over and over again on successive pages. And so on.
Color schemes shift from page to page, with any notion of good contrast tossed out the window. Here we have black type on white, then black type on brown, then black type on brown with a gradient from light brown to dark brown, then white on red. Page 189 is one of my favorites. Heck, even the notion of simple reversed text is thrown to the wolves here: compare 208 to 211; same white on purple scheme, different degrees of brightness. No doubt some of the pages even feature black text on a black background, though not having elven blood in me I lack the Darkvision necessary to perceive this strange and cryptic Moon writing.
Even simple things like two-page splashes are handled poorly. Check out pages 196-197 (or rather, try and find them, since they're not numbered) and try and decipher the subtitle mashed into the gutter of the book.
About The Editing (or lack thereof)I have no way of knowing exactly who's to blame here. As Editor, I could be quick to point a finger at Mr. Archer, but perhaps here "Editor" means that he pulled the material together and strung it out so it made sense, in which case he did a good job. Whoever was responsible for copyediting and layout, however, should have to do this book all over again from scratch, on their own time. Some of the mistakes made here are positively amateurish, others so obvious that it's incredible that they weren't caught before this went to press.
Some examples of typos, poorly-phrased sentences and other gaffes that absolutely should have been fixed by an editor, chosen randomly from about the book:
"My second greatest love however, next to acting was gaming."
"My own campaign world grew out of that original map that I took a half hour to draw. z" (sic)
"...we saw a merchant caravans crossing the desert..."
"I may remembering wrong..."
"1976 was a year of beginnings as the Ral Partha miniatures company appears on the scene."
"using your time in a ways that's entertaining but also enriching."
"Until TSR published that Gary Gygax's home campaign setting back in 1975..."
"We start in town and buy your stuff."
"poured over books" (referring to reading them, not dumping water on them)
"dire straights"
"silly to support two separately game lines"
"hen we released the third edition of Dungeons & Dragons..."
and the best, on page 253,
"Advance Dungeons & Dragons"
Lest you think me harsh, let me point out that these were all things I caught on my first read through the book. I'm not a professional copy editor by any stretch of the imagination, and I make mistakes all the time. But for a product which is made out to be this huge 30th Anniversary Celebration, you'd think someone would actually read through the thing one last time before it went out the door to try and fix stupid errors and clean up grammar. Sometimes Dungeons & Dragons is all caps, sometimes not. Sometimes Dungeon Master is capitalized, sometimes not. This is something a spell-checker could fix automatically had anyone taken fifteen seconds to run it.
Part of the problem (and no doubt, one of the arguments used to defend it) is the fact that a number of the typos and grammatical errors appear in one-page "celebrations" written by various people in the entertainment industry, some well known and others of more dubious fame. "We didn't make the errors," this mythical copy editor might say, "those people made the errors." To which I reply, any editor worth his salt knows that it's preferable to correct typos, fix punctuation and even slightly massage quotes to make them sound correct. No one wants to go down in print sounding like a goober, even if they typed the sentence out that way. They'd be happy you fixed it. We all would. Some of these little one-pagers read as if they were copied out of Outlook and pasted into InDesign without a second glance.
And speaking of stupid editing mistakes and one-pagers, take note of Nik Davidson's contribution on page 98. You'll be seeing it all over again on page 194. How this page got replicated, paragraph break error and all, is beyond me. It smacks of sloppiness, however, as does the whole book.
Which I will now discuss.
Chapter 1. The Adventure BeginsBy Harold Johnson with Gary Gygax
As first chapters go, this is one of the worst. In fact, as all chapters ever written go, it's one of the worst, on countless levels.
To start with, the predominant color scheme in this chapter is red and black, which makes everything look as if the layout artist slit his wrists over his work in despair. Turning everything blood red does not make it more dramatic, guys. It makes it more muted and hard to see.
Then there are the stupid typographical errors. The introductory "adventure" is written across a two-page spread entirely in italics, for no other reason than to be in italics. Though the fact that it's difficult to read is certainly in its favor, as it's hardly stellar work, featuring numerous examples of the aforementioned bad spelling, run-on sentences, bad grammar and godawful writing:
"Two were warriors as could be seen by their swords, the dwarven one sported a long beard and held a heavy warhammer. The other two were something of an oddity-- the first wore long robes and carried a slender wand of white ash, his eyebrows were animated as he took in the scene. The other wore a loose fitting tunic and held a thin bladed dagger in one hand as his enigmatic grey eyes took in the setting."
Chris Prynoski's one page "celebration" (page 22) features more bad writing, including an obviously (and badly) contrived "example" of gameplay which introduces the words "fucked" and "piss" into the book for no apparent reason other than to be crass.
"What do you mean, 'What are you gonna do'? Don't I have to roll these fucked-up-looking dice or something? What am I supposed to do?"
"You can do anything."
...
"Okay. My guy pulls down his pants and pisses on the altar."
...
"I'm rolling to see what happens to you."
"Shouldn't I be rolling to see what happens to me?"
"I'm the Dungeon Master, dude."
Riiiiight. Maybe, just maybe, Mr. Prynoski is telling the story sans embellishment, as it actually happened. Even so, it should be up to an Editor to say "You know, this is the one single page in the book where we use profanity, so maybe I should EDIT the page to remove it, for consistency. Since I'm the Editor. And stuff."
Cardell Kerr's one pager, which faces Prynoski's, is fairly coherent, but there are little things that suggest -- like the rest of the book -- that these "celebrations" were all pasted together from emails with little or no editing:
"Wow . . . thinking about it, is almost embarrassing. I mean, kobolds would never ride dragons!"
Other such "celebrations" in this chapter include testaments from Stephen Colbert, Wil Wheaton, Sherman Alexie and Ben Kweller, whose enlightening thoughts include one of the best collections of unrelated sentences in the entire book:
"When I was young, I read a ton of the Dungeons & Dragons Choose Your Own Adventure books. Music's always been my one passion in life. I had piano lessons when I was growing up..."
This first chapter of the book also features sections entitled: "Where Did It Come From?", which reiterates the story of D&D's historical origins; "A Gathering of Gamers," which not only discusses GenCon's beginnings, but also reiterates the story of D&D's historical origins; and "The Birth of D&D," which reiterates the story of D&D's historical origins.
I only wish that they'd included a section that reiterated the story of D&D's historical origins. Alas.
Chapter 2. Worlds of AdventureBy Steve Winter with Peter Archer and Ed Stark
The second chapter of the book is a tour of the main campaign settings that have been featured in Dungeons & Dragons throughout the years. As a whole it's much better written and edited than the first chapter, with more factual and relevant information and less "golly-gee" gushing.
Things begin to turn around when Peter Archer discusses Dragonlance, though he does lead off his retelling of Krynn's development with an interesting bit of time travel, stating that "Tracey Hickman, a Mormon, had returned from his mission abroad in Indonesia in March 1980" and then later that "Laura Curtis had introduced Tracy to D&D in 1997 before he went abroad."
The portions written by Steve Winter are excellently done, this inconsistency leading me to believe that the majority of the book was self-edited by the respective authors, without a final pass-through at the end. Winter's piece on the Forgotten Realms is fascinating, containing anecdotes and information about the creation of the Realms that I was previously unaware of, and his sections on Mystara, Spelljammer, Ravenloft, Dark Sun and Planescape contain similar revelations.
In fact, my only real gripe with the bulk of this chapter are things I've mentioned previously: awful layout (including some truly bad design decisions in the Planescape section, inserting one-page "celebrations" in the middle of the main narrative in a confusing fashion), and the bad editing and inconsistent writing in those same one-pagers. Some of them (Dan Trethaway's, and Feargus Urquart's) are well-written and edited, while others are disjointed (Laurell K. Hamilton's) or somewhat self-serving and seemingly irrelevant (John Frank Rosenblum).
Chapter 3. AD&D 2nd EditionBy Steve Winter
I expected this section to be well-written and informative, as the author, Steve Winter, had demonstrated his ability to do both those things in the previous chapter. I was not disappointed. Here, Winter covers not only the origins of 2nd Edition, but the PHBR Reference Books, the Historical Sourcebooks and the infamous Black Box (aka 1070), which was one of the best-selling items ever (over 500,000 copies worldwide). Winter seems bittersweet writing about these products, recognizing their flaws and respective levels of popularity (or lack thereof). Though not laid out so clearly, this sense of melancholy is a good lead in to the next chapter.
Chapter 4. From TSR to Wizards of the CoastBy Peter Adkison with Ed Stark
This chapter talks about Adkison's view of the merger, from the point of view of Wizards of the Coast, interspersed with Ed Stark's view from TSR. It's an interesting way to present the information, and is informative and interesting. As mentioned earlier, the layout choice to intersperse and interweave these smaller sub-articles through the main narrative makes it somewhat difficult to read, but here it almost seems to benefit the section's two-headed approach.
Sub-sections of the narrative are entitled "How I Became a D&D Fan," "TSR Needed Help," "The Acquisition of TSR," "Wizards of the Coast" and "Building TSR to Last," all self-explanatory as to the sort of content they contain and all interesting. "How I Became" really gets across the wonder of discovery, and "Needed Help" explains in layman's terms how it was that TSR crashed and burned despite record sales. "Acquisition" includes information on Ryan Dancey and the million dollar fax, while "Wizards" and "Building" wrap up the narrative nicely, bringing fact and feeling together quite nicely.
As a whole, this is perhaps the best part of the entire book, though as it starts on page 200 of a 284 page book, it's not really enough to save the whole.
Chapter 5. Third EditionBy Peter Adkison
As one might expect, this chapter covers the origins of 3rd Edition, discussing some of the design decisions that went into its development and covering topics such as the Open Gaming License that modern gamers are probably more familiar with. Though informative, it's bound to be less interesting to most readers since, unlike previous material, it's neither truly historical (it discusses events of the past five years) nor really revelatory. The section also suffers horribly from the poor layout discussed earlier, with numerous sub-articles running alongside and in-between the main narrative. Overall, it's a confused mess, and a slight downturn from the previous chapter.
Chapter 6. Into The FutureBy Ed Stark
Really more of an Epilogue than a Chapter in itself, this consists of more graphical content than actual information. Here, computer games, "mature" products like the Book of Vile Darkness and Hasbro's purchase of Wizards of the Coast are discussed in more detail, though not with as much "oomph" as other sections of the book. It all feels tacked on, a feeling exacerbated by the fact that on page 282, halfway through the section, suddenly none of the paragraphs are indented. And then there's this:
"But things remained quiet. There were a few shake-ups, but mostly outside the RPG R&D department. Hasbro didn't interfere with us, and we kept our heads down for them."
And we turn the page and...
Um.
That's the end of the book, folks. That's how it ends. Not with a bang, but a whimper. It's as if everyone just got tired of looking at it and stopped working on it. Appalling.
CreditsAs far as I'm concerned, only three people need to be called out onto the carpet on this one:
First, the Editor, Peter Archer. Sorry Peter, but you get a C. I'll grant you that it's not like there's a typo on the front cover but there is, on average, one typo or other error on every page of this book. For every one perfect page there's one with two or three errors on it. The editing is at best inconsistent. The middle of the book is much better, but it's far from perfect, and the first chapter really ruins the mood early on. Since there's no copyeditor listed in the credits, I have to point the finger Archerwards. Maybe it wasn't your fault. But we gotta blame someone, and your name's listed first. But you're not alone.
Art Direction: Matt Adelsperger
Graphic Design: Matt Adelsperger & Brian Fraley
Typesetting: Matt Adelsperger & Brian Fraley
Together you guys get a D. This is really bad. Really. I can sort of comprehend how this was perceived as a cutting-edge art book with nifty crosswise and crooked layout, lots of colors and a slapdash, thrown-together look. I just think it looks sloppy. As an art book, maybe it's quite the achievement. As a celebration of the greatest RPG ever published, it sucks.
The Price$49.95? Are you kidding me? For this? It's worth half that, and I expect it'll be half that in about two weeks when it winds up in the half-price bin. I'm not about to take my copy back (I can write it off on my taxes since I wrote this review, after all), but I'm not inclined to show it to my gaming friends.
SummaryThis book does not make me want to celebrate Dungeons & Dragons. It makes me frustrated and sort of angry that this sloppy product was foisted off on us. So much more could have been done, and so much better. Even if no additional content were added, a cleaner layout with better use of graphics and a single pass through by a copyeditor could have caught most of the mistakes I mention above, and helped make it a delightful read. But alas, no. I see nothing stylish about being random and sloppy. If this were anything other than a Celebration of 30 years of D&D I might be more forgiving, but it isn't, and I'm not. We deserve better.
The middle of the book, especially the portions written by Mr. Winter and Mr. Adkison, are really interesting, fun and informative. But these highlights are dimmed by the broad shadow cast by much of the other material, including some of the more awful "gee whiz" one-pagers and the entirety of Chapter 1.
I'd recommend this book if you're a true fan, a completist, or if you have 50 bucks to spend. I would not recommend you buy this as a Christmas gift for someone else, because really they'll probably be disappointed, and you don't want that. Give them a $50 gift certificate for your FLGS instead. It'll be much more appreciated, and chances are the product they buy with that money will get them a much cleaner, much better edited product than this.
Let's hope the "50 Years of Adventure" book is a little better than this. Assuming we're still reading books in twenty years, of course.
You really could purchase 30 Years of Adventure: A Celebration of Dungeons & Dragons from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews. To see your own review here, carefully read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
...wasting my every waking moment on WoW...
dmiessler.com -- grep understanding knowledge
Interesting how one would be able to apply all of those same terms to the state of D&D itself ever since, well, second edition came out. Not that there weren't some good rule tweaks, but that's where this "You need 1000 rulebooks to play a basic game" mentality really emerged in earnest. I mean, c'mon, the illusionist's handbook? "You make people see things". The *bard's* handbook? "Nobody plays this class, nitwit."
You enter a 10x10 room. Two orcs are guarding a chest. They leap to their feet as you enter, one orc looks to the other and says "Looks like Dwarf for dinner again", and the other responds "how come we never get any pork up here?". Roll initiative.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
I may not be a psychiatrist, or even play one on TV, but that sounds *way* too much like you haven't gotten over it.
Find out about the Lexus Rx400h Hybrid!
D&D fans cannot be burdened with the time-wasting task of copy editing. There are twelve-sided dice to be thrown!
Is anyone going to pay that outrageous price? wow. http://fromthemorning.blogspot.com/
This Michael should be the chief editor of Slashdot with unlimited mod points, or maybe not?
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
That was the dragons on what, Mangar 3 or 4? Nice.
I am so fond of one harkening back to yester-years, in pleasant memories of their youth and playing D&D, in those formative years. When I read of this, it brings me to back to my youth, in which I used to beat the crap out of these D&D geeks and then go download some porn and warez off the BBS.
I'm a bit confused the the focus of this review. From what I gather, this is an art book. Yet very little of the review discusses the art within. Typos, grammatical errors and orphan control are not what I usually rate my art books on (although layout is important and shouldn't be this shabby). I found the review 100% helpful in regards to the quality of layout and only 20% help in regards to contents, except when it was misspelled.
It is almost like this review needed to be edited by a third party editor...
Sig under construction since 1998.
I am sadly shaking my head after reading your review. There are a lot of D&D products out there that run the gamut from excellent to poor. I apreciate the review and I will not be tempted to buy this book.
As an aside, I have to ask about the fourth grade experience. What did the girl look like? Couldn't you have marked a few right anyway to make her feel better?
Sean Lane Fuller - The truth is out there!
My THACO isn't low enough to read this article...
Cheezit! We're boned! - famous 31st Century bending unit
I will roll my d30 and eat that many bags of cheez doodles tonight!
No "celebration of D&D" is possible without mentioning games that existed alongside it - Tunnels and Trolls being probably the most obvious. Games don't exist in a vaccuum, and the push to evolve exists because alternatives exist.
I can't recall that many uses for a D10 in D&D/AD&D. Rolemaster, certainly. Rolemaster is 99.9% percentiles, which makes GMing much simpler. But D&D? Nah. That uses almost anything but!
Character advancement is through many mechanisms and it is entirely possible for a character to reach very high levels with never seeing a gold piece or a single monster. Rare, but possible. This book sounds horribly like the author is a weenie power-player who only does dungeon-bashes against hopelessly out-powered, out-classed foes with GMs who prefer to please their players with vast hordes of treasure than serious game-play or challanging problems.
I'll pit my 20th level hamster mage against his best characters, any day.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
My Linux Command of the Day site : LCOD
The players made the game. All the books in the world cannot take the place of the imagination of the players.
I agree with the reviewer, a "tribute" without Gygax is absurd.
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
Read the Gary Gygax interview in the OD&DITIES fanzine (issues 10 and 11 i think??) anyway read the OD&DITIES fanzine anyway, it's quite good and has the oldschool atmosphere of D&D from the 70's/80's. Yeah it's a free download. I'm not going to link to the site so it doesn't get slashdotted. I'll let you look on google for it. ;) :)
Then if you can, get the Dragon Magazine CDROM archive. It has every one of the magazines from #1 to #250 on it in PDF. It's probably one of the best values out there for the money. Great Xmas gift too, btw.
Also, look around used bookstores, online stores, ebay, etc. for the 1981 edition of the Basic and Expert rules. These are the epitome of oldschool D&D, and unlike 1e AD&D, the Basic/Expert rules are quite easy to play. Each book is only 64 pages, and it's not all just rules there's also lots of examples and advice in there. In fact it's quite remarquable that the editors (Moldvay and Cook) managed to cram so much stuff in so little space, and yet still keep it fully understandable by 10-year olds.
Then look around for some of the old Basic edition modules. B1-B5, and X1 (Isle of Dread) are damned fine places to start. You don't really *need* the modules, but they do help set that oldschool tone.
Finally just make sure you got enough pretzels/chips/cheetos and Mountain Dew (or whatever ya enjoy) and grab your dice and graph paper.
That's how I'd celebrate 30 years of D&D. Relive it. Hell, you might even come to like it more than the newer games out there. It definetely has a style all to its own.
Does anyone remember early issues of Wired magazine. Hippest and Coolest magazine ever at the time -- awesome ads and graphics. It even had pretty good articles but the reason I stopped subscribing was the impossible to read text flow. I remember one article that had a flip out page and the text wrapped around the page on the back of the flipout and then back to the original page so you had to flip pages between lines of text... SERIOUSLY.
Vin Diesel?!
VIN DIESEL!!!
*searches in his Bag of Holding for the first large, heavy weapon he can lay his hand on*
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
... in some parents' basement?
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
The thief's handbook was the worst one, ironically because it was the best one. They took a lot of the creative things that players had been doing and wrote it all up so all of the sudden all this neat stuff was standard equipment.
The first time I saw a character played at GenCon make some caltrops and later use them to slow down the guards chasing him, it was cool and inventive and praiseworthy. He told me later he'd been watching a ninja movie and almost leapt to his feet like Hey! I can use that! Two years later, every dufas was tossing them behind them wherever they went because they'd just read the book. Not inventive, not cool.
I've always taken the route that the less books the better. Improvisation is what makes paper and pencil RPG's worthwhile. Otherwise you might as well be playing Everquest.
What information does this offer that you couldn't get for free off of the web with a few minutes spent searching on Google? Heck, just a few weeks ago, there was a nice series of articles referenced right here on Slashdot.
A.C.
Roll percentile dice for color scheme...
Not to pick on the reviewer or anything, but was anyone else beginning to hear the voice of Comic Book Guy (simpson's reference) in your head about mid-way? It actually got better at that point for me. ;)
-- Solaris Central - http://w
You can find this same review, word for word, on a different site.
http://www.gamegrene.com/node/419/
That's pretty low. If you're going to trash something on multiple sites, at least don't just copy and paste the same thing.
Electronic Frontier Foundation for online civil rights information
... that read like a fucking Pitchfork Media review. *gag*
Al Qaeda has ninjas!
Back at the dawn of time, my first exposure to D&D was the original pamphlet-style books, and boy were they sloppy. And the knock-offs were even worse; typos in the D&D books ended up replicated in things like the Arduin Grimoire (sp?) series. There's a Murphy's Rules strip that describes a "% in liar" typo (note spelling) that propogated from the original rules into one of the AG books. So maybe the bad publication values are actually a twisted sort of homage...
"I'm a scientist! I don't think, I observe!" - Dr. Clayton Forrester
Not having read the book, but as someone who still plays the odd game of AD&D (22 years and counting) I found the state and layout of the second edition lamentable at best, and am not surprised that this review was so bad.
The decline, in my mind, started with the release of the Wilderness and Dungeoneers' books, and adding complexity that while making the game more realistic, really contributed little to the overall enjoyment of the game (and the binding on the books was awful - the pages fell out in the first year).
I guess the same could be said of AD&D as an extension of the original D&D game, but that would be splitting hairs.
The old DMG, all said, was a fine piece of work. It took a long time to digest and to understand, and probably even longer for a DM to come up with the set of rules he chose to apply for his players. The basic rules were simple, and you could add as much complexity as you wanted.
Just my 2 cents. Another nail in the coffin.
- - - Non Caffeine Drink or Drink Error
What's next? A critical appraisal of "Pokemon. Past, Present and Future" with a foreword by Steven Seagal and Jean Claude Van Damme? You are not afraid of the dark, are you? :-)
Should this really come as a suprise? Outside of the core books (and even they could stand a few hours of field-testing before the 3.6 release) the quality of work from Wizards is always sub-par from when examined from a design standpoint.
Seriously. The guy's email address is aeon@... The reviewer's name is Aeon. Sure looks like the *same guy* to me.
Haven't seen the book, but if Steven Colbert is involved, I'd be suspicious that the whole project is an excercise in ironic humor.
Proverbs 21:19
I take offense to that. Bards rock. I DM'd a PBeM (based on "Ancient Blood" from an old Dungeon mag) in the early 90's that lasted about two years, IIRC, with a party of 7 that contained 3 bards. (Actually started with 4 but one had to drop out fairly early and was replaced with a different PC.) None of the three was the most suited for an adventure of that type, but they added the most interesting elements to the group. I've found that bard players are often consciously choosing to throw themselves into role-play to a greater degree than others players. You usually don't find min-maxers playing bards.
Constitutionally Correct
Went back to PA from CA this thanksgiving. I came here (CA) in a hurry for a new job, and couldn't pack everything. Needless to say, I have been pining overy my dice since I left. One of the first things I did when I got to PA was to find my dice bag and pack it. I may have to buy some white crayons to re-do the numbers though...
Playing since 1984, and still going strong.. contact me if you are in lake tahoe and need a dungeon master, I need Players!!! jamesjsheridan at hotmail.comThanks, you made my evening. :) :)
Excellent review.
I saved $50
No one will call that a slashvertisement I guess
In my opinion, Scientology is a cult you should avoid.
... by listening to the classic dead alewives skit:
NARRATOR: "Your children, like it or not, are attracted in their weaker years to the occult. And a game like D&D fuels their imagination and makes them feel special while drawing them deeper and deeper into the bowels of El Diablo. This afternoon, the Dead Alewives' Watchtower invites you to sit in on an actual gaming session, and observe the previously unobservable as a hidden camera takes you into the inner sanctum of Dungeons & Dragons."
(Session begins)
Dungeon Master: "Galstaff, you have entered the door to the north. You are now standing by yourself in a dark room, the pungent stench of mildew emanates from the walls..."
Player 1: "Where are the cheetos?"
DM: "Next to you."
Player 2: "I cast a spell!"
P1: "Where is Mountain Dew?"
DM: "In the fridge, duh!"
P2: "I want to cast a spell!"
P1: "Can i get one?"
DM: "YES! You can have a Mountain Dew, just get it!"
P2: "I can cast any of these on the list, yes?"
DM: "Yes, any of the first level ones."
P1: "I'm going to get one, any one else want one? Hey, I'm not in the room, right?"
DM: "What room?"
P2: "I want to cast... Magic Missile!"
P1: "The room where he's casting all this stuff at!"
DM: "He hasn't casted one yet."
P2: "I am though, if you'd listen. I'm casting Magic Missile!"
DM: "Why do you want to cast magic missile? There is nothing to attack here..."
P2: "I'm attacking the darkness"
(laughter)
DM: "Fine, fine, you attack the darkness. There is an elf in front of you."
P2: "Whoa!"
Player 3: "That's me, right?"
DM: "He's wearing a brown tunic, and he has grey hair, and blue eyes..."
P3: "No I don't, I have grey eyes!"
DM: "Let me see that sheet..."
P3: "W... well, the sheet says I have blue eyes, but I decided I want grey eyes!"
DM: "Whatever... ok, look, you guys can talk to each other now."
P2: "Hello."
P3: "Hello."
P2: "I am Galstaff, sorcerer of light!"
P3: "Then how come you had to cast magic missile?"
(laughter)
DM: "You guys are being attacked!"
P1: "Do I see that happening?"
DM: "NO! You are outside, by the tavern!"
P1: "Cool, then I get drunk!"
DM: "There are seven ogres surrounding you."
P2: "How can they surround us? I had Mordenkainen's Magical Watchdog cast!"
DM: "No, you didn't."
P1: "I'm getting drunk, are there any girls there?"
P2: "I totally did! You asked me if I wanted any equipment along before this adventure, and I said no. But I needed material components for all my spells so I cast Mordenkainen's magical watchdog!"
DM: "But you never actually cast it!"
P1: "Hey, roll the dice and see if I'm getting drunk!"
DM (sighs) (rolls dice): "Yes, you are!"
P1: "Are there any girls there?"
DM: "YES!"
P2: "I did though! I completely said when you asked me!
DM: "No, you didn't! You didn't actually say you were casting any spells so now there are ogres, OK?"
P1: "Ogres! Man, I got an ogre slaying knife! It's got a +9 against ogres!"
DM: "But YOU ARE NOT THERE! You're getting drunk!"
P1: "Ok but, if there are any girls there, I want to be able to DO THEM !"
NARRATOR: "There you have it. A frightening look into America's most frightening pastime. Remember that it's not your children's fault that they've been drawn into a satanic cult of nightmare. It's their gym teacher's fault for making them feel like outcasts when they couldn't do a single pull up!"
Didn't 1st Ed have infra- and ultra-vision? I think 2nd Ed only had infra. Dunno about 3rd Ed, I've dropped out of the AD&D scene. In many of our 2nd Ed games we still used ultravision instead of infra for surface-dwellers, as we thought it made more sense.
Constitutionally Correct
It will be, until your Warlock meets the pointy end of my Rogue's dagger...
Now, as to whether the review is a good one? I'd guess so. Wizards has taken what used to be a great franchise, and have done nothing but turn it into the great money-milking machine +5.
I'm not saying I didn't like 3ED, I think it streamlined a lot of things and made it easier for new players. But every single book past that has been nothing but an excuse to cut down on content and quality while hiking the price at the same time. I was taken aback when I saw a very thin soft cover book cost about $26 when it used to be somewhere around $15.
I'm glad I have all my old books, because I have no plans on buying any new ones. Thank god for PDFs. And its such a shame what has happened to Gary Gygax through all of this since he is the one that deserves the lions share. I helped the way I could though, by going to the local gaming store where the Gygax family lives and where they have worked at various points and supporting them by buying pizza and product in exchange for some of the best D&D gaming sessions I've ever played in my entire life.
Thank god D&D has always been a game made by the players and not by the books.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
- AD&D to Real Life Stats Calculator
- French Version
Try it. Have fun. Be glad you don't fight trolls in real life."Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
A parent's basement? What in the world are you talking about?
The first campaign I played in was at my school in the library. I still have most of those dice.
The last time I played DnD was in a well-lit living room. My wife sat next to me, and we played with the DM's wife and her brother. Our kids played nearby. (Not DnD - they're too young... for now.)
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
What a sissy-boy
Sword. Although it's more fun in GURPS where it makes a difference whether you use it 1 or 2 handed.
This book does not make me want to celebrate Dungeons & Dragons. It makes me frustrated and sort of angry that this sloppy product was foisted off on us. So much more could have been done, and so much better. ... We deserve better.
We could say the same thing about our beloved game, more's the pity. We've had 30 years of just-barely-good-enough and sub-par and unprofessional and get-it-out-the-door. It's almost as if the book is merely a cleverly accurate reflection of the quality of its subject matter. Almost.
So much more could have been done in our game, and so much better.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
Anyone have a copy of "Zebulon's Guide to Frontier Space" for StarFrontiers for sale? I hate asking at slashdot, but I figure if this review doesn't garner the attention of some old-schoolers (like myself) nothing short of TSR PDF's will.
Kudos to the reviewer! Thorough job!
People who write books for people who build worlds with them should know better than to half-ass the job. They should have Opensourced the text and used happy-faces for the rough images. After accepting scathing edits and corrections for a few months they would have had something worthy of the presses...in addition to people who would have gladly picked up a copy knowing they participated in its creation. Of course, that could just be idealism speaking.
Every new form of media has it's own Requirimento
I hope you're reaching for something blunt, because you really shouldn't store anything sharp in those things, you know.
...Or do you?
Roll Knowledge (Arcana) to see if you'd know better than to pierce a Bag of Holding. (DC10)
This review comes at a nice time as I saw this book for the first time last night at B&N and my impression after my initial excitement at a cool idea about something that was a large part of my personal past to only open the cover and let out a cry of defeat as the layout showed it was destined for the bargain shelf and at $1 it would be too expensive. Thanks for the review, but after the 2nd paragraph I already want the publishers of the book to refund the time spent on it. (And the time to write my reply would also be nice..)
Everyone is Ignorant, just in different subjects.
n/t
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
A negative book review on Slashdot.
I've been wasting time on this site since, what, 1998, and I do believe the number of negative reviews (scoring 4 or lower) could be counted on no more than two Simpson hands.
Granted, one might argue that if one hasn't anything nice to say then one should say nothing at all, but that's actually wrong when it comes to product reviews. If you believe that tech book reviews 'matter', then it's as useful to know about bad ones to avoid as to know about good ones to buy.
BTW, some of the best reading ever can be found scanning Roger Ebert's 0-star movie reviews. Brutal, scathing, and usually hilarious, those reviews are better than the movies they harpoon.
Is it any shock that there are so many errors in a book about a game that allows dimwits to create Lord of the Ring ripoffs where goblins carrying 1000 gold-pieces per, guard the lair of Medusa and a 10,000 year-old lich husband and wife?
-m
ADnD fills the Microsoft niche in RPG world. Like Windows, most roleplayers use it because they simply don't know that other games exist. Or they claim that it's too difficult to learn a new set of rules, yet gladly "upgrade" to d20/3.5 without skipping a beat.
I've never understood the appeal of ADnD. I stopped playing it the instant I bought my first non-TSR game twenty years ago. I never looked back. In the fantasy genre I've played MERP, Rolemaster, HarnMaster, RuneQuest and many other minor games. Also through in Traveller, Spacemaster, JB007, GURPS, etc. My favorites are Rolemaster (now pretty much defunct) and HarnMaster (still going strong with a tiny but awesome community).
RPGs shouldn't be about rolling dice and counting coup, but that's what the preteen munchkin wants. Sadly, that's the target market for RPGs. Double sadly, many munchkins never grow up. It's hard finding players interested in your storytelling style of gaming. They don't want political intrigue or realistic social settings. If the world doesn't have wall-to-wall dungeons with new-never-before-fought monsters on each floor, they're not interested. In the height of the LOTR movie mania it was difficult to find players for a LOTR game.
I think back to the beginnings of the industry and wonder why the TSR competitors didn't do better. They're like the Microsoft of RPG.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
s/relative/relevant/
gah.
I remember I played a gnome who was an expert in making inventions. My most famous invention: The "insta-drink potion container. No turns required to drink!"
I prepared my ingredient list and handled it to my DM.
Ingredients:
1 long piece of skin to make the straw (yeah you drink by straw)
1 canteen
1 bottle of extra strong glue
8 heavy-duty nails, size "tiny"
The guys couldn't go on. When the DM finished reading the "heavy-duty" part, they all laughed for about a straight minute.
Hello mister reviewer, you mentioned you consider yourself a writer. Well, I have something to show you; here is something you should have read. And if you have not read Strunk & White, please do so. Reread and refer it often. Reading that review induced my eyes to bleed ... profusely.
You can be an atheist and still not want to succumb to some weird cross-over sheep disease -- AC
RPGs shouldn't be about rolling dice and counting coup, but that's what the preteen munchkin wants...If the world doesn't have wall-to-wall dungeons with new-never-before-fought monsters on each floor, they're not interested.
Then maybe you should give them the role-playingless dungeon hacking game, Munchkin instead?
The original writers of AD&D really don't have any creative control over their products anymore. The independant gaming companies have been absorbed into conglomerates. Since then it has been all downhill.
When role playing first came out, it was run by the enthusiasts. The creators and owners of the games were also players. Richard Garfield, the creator of M:TG and the EX-CEO of WOTC was an avid player of M:TG and was saddened and outraged when Hasbro decided to change his game.
Roleplaying and videogame companies like SSI, Blizzard, WOTC, and TSR were once independant. Hasbro now owns all of them.
Hasbro is a children's gaming company. Role playing and CCG's weren't invented for kids, it was invented for young adults. When Hasbro took control over WOTC, one of the first things they did was water down their products.
Hasbro took a lot of cards out of Magic:TG just because they didn't want kids to certain cards because they were "A Family Company." These huge conglomerates don't care about the people, all they care about is profit. A new expansion for M:TG comes out every few months, the newer sets are practically worthless because they aren't out long enough for people to really collect them and use the cards long enough before the next set comes out. To them, you are nothing but a consumer.
The same thing goes with AD&D, there hasn't been anything groundbreaking in the past decade as far as roleplaying goes. The truth is that corporations don't want free thinking individuals. They want kids to act like droids that play videogames all day long. Roleplaying helps develop certain key parts of the brain. It also promotes people to be more social.
Video games do nothing but stunt the growth of the brain and can over time casue permanant brain damage as a result. All video games seem to promote is antisocialism. In extreme cases, they lose their social abilities and become a recluse. It has caused countless amounts of kids to drop out or flunk out of school. In a few cases suicides has been a direct result of playing video games. Speaking of which, WoW is now out. I wonder how many kids will lose out on their social skills and flunk out of school over this one.
Completely off-topic, but I contacted Mr. Gygax for an interview while I was a senior in high school many moons ago. My senior paper was debunking the myth that roleplaying games led to satanism. Although the interview was done over email, I was very surprised that Mr. Gygax was so very cordial and more than happy to help out a mere high school student. He even asked me to send him a copy of the paper, which I made certain to do.
I just wanted to point out that he's a very kind-hearted individual and definitely impressed me during my interview.
First of all, any book that doesn't cover "Dragon" Magazine and "What's New with Phil and Dixie" (essentially, the MegaTokyo of it's time) automatically doesn't really cover what was so cool about D&D.
And what about the wacky and wonderful Marvel/Toei animated series that used to be on Saturday AM?
Overall, I'd say this review was smart and on-target, and will probably prevent me from wasting cash on this book, although, as someone who knows Chris Prynoski, I'll defend his work to the death.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
...it's just as bad as both the 3rd edition and 3.5 books. The background art is distracting, the horizontal lines make following the text hard, the greyed headers make it difficult to scan, the text is very poorly formatted, etc. etc. etc.
Both first and second edition managed to get it right. Maybe not so "eye candyish" because it wasn't competing with the XBox (or the LotR movies) for attention, but at least they were usable as reference books.
Sounds like the same folks did the layout on this tribute book.
I think my favorite experience was when our Party was having a sea battle -- and the ship we were on, which was trying to escape the town, had no weapons.
We did however, have our horses and some very strong men, oil, and torches.
I think you can guess what happened next.
We had the DM in hysterics, trying to figure out if you could sink the vessel by throwing a horse, ON FIRE, at the enemy ship.
Trying to envision such a scene had us all gasping for breath.
PETA would have murdered us, but we thought it was as funny as hell. To this day, all I have to do is get on the phone, call my friend and say "burning horse damage table" -- and that private joke will leave us in stitches....
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
(D&D, natch)
You use the term "natch", and claim to have a critical eye?
Myself, I'm skeptical of people who claim to have a double-digit IQ if they use the term "natch".
steve
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
My first month at my first professional job I got to visit TSR on a business trip. This was after the Wizards of the Coast buyout but before the move out of the Lake Geneva office. If such a thing might interest you, I offer my observations on one of TSR's final days.
Search 2010 Gen Con events
Damn straight. There was actually a "Cyclopedia" that had Basic, Expert, Master, etc in one big book, complete with the basics of the Gazeteer series - great stuff.
...
I still have Keep on the Borderlands kicking about somewhere
*rolls d20* pleased by this anniversary
Music is everybody's possession.
It's only publishers who think that people own it.
Fuck Beta
~John Lenno
Holy crap, your were almost in tears? To quote the Simpsons: "You cry when you do long division and you have a remainder"
I'm not sure if the review was an exercise in reverse psycology. I don't like rpgs. But man that review went to such lengths to bash it, it makes me want to pick up the book, just so I could figure out if he's really anal, or if the book is that bad. In the future, he might not want to focus so much on the presentation and provide some review of the context. In all, I feel sad for the reviewer. I think this review might be a call for help.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
When asked what she thought about Vin Diesel's intro, Paris Hilton replied
/. interview.
"That's hot"
This was follow by Stephen Colbert doing a Goodwrench ad in which Wil Wheaton references a second
Atlas Shrugged : Thematic Story
"OK, perhaps that's harsh."
At the Children's Hospitals I have visited (4 of them), each of those 'cellophane balloons' represents a child that died in the hospital during the previous year. It's an annual event, for the parents and families who lost a child in the previous year. Kool and the Gang is not (to my knowledge) an integral part of the ceremony. Sorry it doesn't meet your 'tribute' standard. Harsh? Try asenine.
Everyone will start to cheer when you put on your sailin' shoes.
If you liked the movie, you'll love the book!
--
make install -not war
So true. One of the reasons my gaming group became so attracted to RuneQuest before Avalon Hill got a hold of it was that the game system was simple, elegant, and lean. It was supposed to be a vehicle for your imagination, not the prop upon which everything rested.
The suppliments released by Chaosium were oritented primarily toward illuminating Glorantha, the "official" world of RuneQuest. The suppliments contained adventures, but their primary appeal was that they provided the GM so many kernels for creation of unique adventures, as well as rich notes about geography, culture, and the denizens of the area. IMHO, the Trollpak and Pavis boxed suppliments were the best pencil and paper game suppliments ever created.
Chaosium had a very "mix and match" attitude toward what was "official' and what wasn't. They didn't really care whether you slavishly followed every word of what Steve Perrin wrote about Glorantha, and they didn't care if you modified the game mechanics to suit your needs. That attitude came out in their books and in the RQ community at large.
It's truly a shame that RuneQuest didn't survive. RQ was a game for roleplayers, and it was very difficult to "game the system" It set the standard for clean, elegant rules and a thoroughly explored yet still wide-open game world.
Dungeons and Dragons is fun, but as we all know, the best don't always win out with the public.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
http://www.gamegrene.com/
When I learned to play D&D (not even AD&D yet), the rulebook came with endpages printed with sequences of numbered squares, to be cut into "chits" and picked from cups, rather than throwing dice. A big improvement over the spiral-bound _Chainmail_ miniatures rules, with roleplaying only an afterthought. The legendary "funny dice" were nearly impossible to find in 1975, even around New York City. We eventually got enough experience to craft up a wooden "spinner", with concentric circles divided into 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, and 20 segments corresponding to the dice. Yes, we conjured the mythical "one sided die", manifested from the twisted mutterings of sages! That meta-adventure set the stage for 30 years of a life spelled "LARP".
--
make install -not war
Then Hasbro bought Wizards of the Coast and gave us D&D 3.5 (a half-ass edition revision) complete with rerelease of all 3.0 edition splatbooks in hardcover with shiny new 3.5 edition names and tons of munchkin bait "prestige" classes. Yes, Hasbro did give us the new Erberon setting which, while not everyone's cup of tea, is a nice change. Unfortunately, Hasbro is completely ignoring the non-Erberon, non-Forgotten Realms settings, in particular the canonical D&D setting: Greyhawk.
Ask any wargaming grognard about how Hasbro's history of purchasing and fucking up gaming properties, i.e. the Avalon-Hill wargames. The same thing is happening here, except D&D is raking in more cash than the old A-H wargames ever did, hence Hasbro hasn't completely fucked over D&D
1. You don't question the GMs decisions
2. You don't question the GMs decisions at our gaming store we had a simular set of rules that followed...
1. Dont question the GMs decisions. (a common one)
2. Questioning of the GMs decisions resulted in a mysterious Red Dragon appearing in the middle of the night to eat you.
3. If questioning was not as severe, you could hold back the Red Dragon by getting the GM a mt. dew.
4. the final rule. looking behind the GM screen results in immediate death, not in game... sigh, soo many holes we had to dig out back of that gaming store because of the lack of following rule #4. I miss Bob soo much...
I thought what I'd do was, I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes. - Catcher in the Rye
You really had something going (blindingly obvious and beaten to death though it was) with that message until your next to last paragraph.
Video games causing permanent brain damage? Who are you, Ted Kaczynski?
"When I was in fourth grade, my teacher once made the class grade each other's papers. As she read off answers, I stared in horror at the paper I had been given from the girl next to me. Every answer was wrong. Every one. By the time I had ticked off the 30th incorrect answer, I was practically in tears. I felt responsible, somehow, for the problems on the page. It would not be her fault that she failed, but rather my own fault for calling attention to her flaws. I felt ashamed. I felt awful. That was twenty years ago.
She still couldn't pass that test today, but that's okay because she's a model or a SCORES dancer, earning hundreds an hour, leaving guys with their tongues hanging out, and having more sex than you ever will.
And here you are reviewing a D&D book.
Which proves that education is nothing and looks are everything in this world.
The ironies of life...
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
D&D is for nerddssss!!!
wait... where am i?
- Hi I'm Linus Torvalds and I pronounce Linux, Lih-nix..
Every answer was wrong. Every one. By the time I had ticked off the 30th incorrect answer, I was practically in tears. I felt responsible, somehow, for the problems on the page. I just figured out what makes some teachers really bad at their jobs.
http://www.aardmud.org
If it wasn't for D&D geeks I wouldn't have my precious, my precious Aardwolf...500 players online a night ~ FREE !
-Rogue, Level 43
Having previously worked at Wizards (circa 1996), let me assure you that the core staff and founders are a bunch of gaming enthusiasts who stumbled into a multi-million dollar enterprise with MTG. Having made that pile of money, they tried to do what any bunch of gaming enthusiasts would try to do: make more games! And failing at many of those, they did what any multi-million dollar company would do: buy-out their competition (Although one could easily argue that D&D was neither competition nor worth buying).
Having acheived success so rapidly from Peter's basement, you can only imagine the wide variety of talent at that company. A fair portion of it mediocre at best, yet still scattered throughout the heirarchy. They did not go through proper growth and attrition phases that weed out the incapable or at least prevent them from obtaining positions of great responsibility. So I'm completely unsurprised that they've put out another mediocre ho-hum piece of work amidst their many knock-offs of MTG. I mean, the protected incompetents have to produce something from time to time or risk the appearance of doing nothing, right?
But as far as D&D goes, as I recall, WotC snatched up a failing business out of sincere desire to make games as big as the movies and TSR's alternative to being owned and managed by sincere, enthusiastic... gamers... was likely financial oblivion and obscurity.
The $50 price tag might prohibit you from picking up this coffee table book and having a good laugh. But remember that WotC is keeping the game of our childhood alive at no small cost to itself. And unless they can demonstrate the ability to forge new genres and release completely new games that reap success similar to the core MTG, their ability to continue to do so is finite. As it stands, their games only imitate the movies through merchandising and in so doing will never be their equivalent.
These opinions guaranteed or your money back.
The reviewer's comments on editing are spot-on. Somewhere in the past year or so, WotC apparently decided that editing wasn't worth the time past, MAYBE, one read-through.
The proof is the debacle that was D20 Modern Weapons Locker. There were so many glaring typos, so many missing tables that you have to wonder if anyone even proof-read it ONCE.
Thankfully, D20 Future isn't so bad. But, something over there seriously needs to get fixed, and soon.
-Erwos
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
"...I live my life one d20 at a time..."
Well, that was your question for the day. Guess you wasted it.
Next, please...
I've noticed the original adventures have been re-introduced to the market under the brand Dungeon-hack. Since the Dungeon-hack brand is currently in production it costs a lot less than trying to find original issues on E-bay.
/* TODO: Spawn child process, interest child in technology, have child write a new sig */
Comment removed based on user account deletion
You've been around a long time, you should know what a real troll looks like by now.
"Video games do nothing but stunt the growth of the brain and can over time casue permanant brain damage as a result. All video games seem to promote is antisocialism. In extreme cases, they lose their social abilities and become a recluse. It has caused countless amounts of kids to drop out or flunk out of school. In a few cases suicides has been a direct result of playing video games. Speaking of which, WoW is now out. I wonder how many kids will lose out on their social skills and flunk out of school over this one."
That's funny, I've met a lot of friends (and even an old boyfriend) on MUDs, got to know others through other games, and I'm currently playing WoW with my boyfriend, whereas before I started playing such games I was very antisocial and usually hid in my room reading. In other words, video games do not innately promote antisocial behaviour. Furthermore, they have been shown to strengthen some skills in children (eg. hand-eye coordination, logic, comfort with technology, etc.) Of course, I'm not going to claim that all are good... but you're making very general statements there. You make it sound like creativity simply can't exist in any modern game, and that's simply not the case.
"A signature always reveals a man's character - and sometimes even his name" - Evan Esar (1899-1995)
Examples:
Murhalla's Spell of the Arrows of Ethereal Anguish
The High Hallowyn's Conjuration of the Aura of Prismatic Protection
Yalthuu's Call of the Flames of Faerie
Charnalla's Call of the Mystik Winds of the Moon
I happen to like this one:
Shalamord's Ritual of the Call of the Wild Hunt
This extremely dangerous ritual requires 13 minutes of time and forty-seven (47) mana points to complete. What it does is to open a "portal into Limbo" so that the terror known as "The Wild Hunt" can pass through into this plane to ride the winds from dusk till dawn.
What The Wild Hunt actually is will vary from Multiverse to Multiverse, but it is usually a pack of spectral hounds leading some 13 riders (mounted on everything from Hell Horses to Dragons) and led by a Demi-God or Deity. In Arduin this hunt has been led variously by the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, "Death" himself and even the "Green Man" of Celtic mythology.
It will usually always be different each time, except for one hard cold fact: All whom they choose to hunt will be pursued relentlessly unto irrevocable death. Who they choose to hunt and why has always been a mystery (only the GM decides). Those in the path of The Wild Hunt may also be hurt or killed if they don't get out of the way in time. All non-sentient creatures, regardless of size or power will automatically flee in terror before it. Stampede!! The priest who opens this portal (which may only be once per solstice or equinox) has absolutely no control over what happens after he has done so. He may end up as the quarry (and they usually choose just one, harrying him the whole night through in a game of "foxes and hounds"). For obvious reasons this ritual is banned by most religious organizations. This terrible ritual needs but 6 weeks of study to properly learn, but beware its usage!
Of Course, your milage may vary. Lots of fun for the party who does not display the proper amount of caution. I usually let the victim have a little bit of a head start. It's even more fun when the pantheon is unknown to the players.
'Who shall we hunt tonight, m'lord?' --- I choose THIS one!
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Especially in the field of games for consoles and home computers.
Does anyone remember Zork? The Final Fantasy series? Innumerable console games that required strong interaction by the player (e.g., role playing) to advance the storyline? Or more recently Ultima Online and the original EverQuest and everything since infuenced by these two massively-multiplayer games?
Yes, I do agree that D&D wasn't perfect, but then, its inspiration for game designers since the first D&D game came out in the early 1970's is still unmatched to this day.
Examples of spells:
Murhalla's Spell of the Arrows of Ethereal Anguish
The High Hallowyn's Conjuration of the Aura of Prismatic Protection
Yalthuu's Call of the Flames of Faerie
Charnalla's Call of the Mystik Winds of the Moon
I happen to like this one:
Shalamord's Ritual of the Call of the Wild Hunt
This extremely dangerous ritual requires 13 minutes of time and forty-seven (47) mana points to complete. What it does is to open a "portal into Limbo" so that the terror known as "The Wild Hunt" can pass through into this plane to ride the winds from dusk till dawn.
What The Wild Hunt actually is will vary from Multiverse to Multiverse, but it is usually a pack of spectral hounds leading some 13 riders (mounted on everything from Hell Horses to Dragons) and led by a Demi-God or Deity. In Arduin this hunt has been led variously by the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, "Death" himself and even the "Green Man" of Celtic mythology.
It will usually always be different each time, except for one hard cold fact: All whom they choose to hunt will be pursued relentlessly unto irrevocable death. Who they choose to hunt and why has always been a mystery (only the GM decides). Those in the path of The Wild Hunt may also be hurt or killed if they don't get out of the way in time. All non-sentient creatures, regardless of size or power will automatically flee in terror before it. Stampede!! The priest who opens this portal (which may only be once per solstice or equinox) has absolutely no control over what happens after he has done so. He may end up as the quarry (and they usually choose just one, harrying him the whole night through in a game of "foxes and hounds"). For obvious reasons this ritual is banned by most religious organizations. This terrible ritual needs but 6 weeks of study to properly learn, but beware its usage!
Of Course, your milage may vary. Lots of fun for the party who does not display the proper amount of caution. I usually let the victim have a little bit of a head start. It's even more fun when the pantheon is unknown to the players.
'Who shall we hunt tonight, m'lord?' --- I choose THIS one!
I also routinely include in my games a set of scrolls which contain spells that non magicians can use, usually over the course of days, if not weeks. Of course, it depends on if they can read, pronouncing the the magic words of power correctly, etc. Most of the time nothing happens, due to too many errors. But every once in a while some does happen. No guarantee that the spell was for what you thought is was for. (Imagine trying to cast a transcription of a Chinese magic spell, knowing only English.) Enough problems to convince amateurs to leave such matters to real professionals.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Synopsis: Seminal RPG company publishes sloppy book, hypercritical fan nit picks every last error and opportunity for improvement in the book in a review that's probably better informed than the source material, rather than seeing it for the obvious piece of crap that it is and walking away immediately without a second thought, like any sane person would do.
If that's not D&D in a nutshell, I don't know what is. And that's why I love this game.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
This dude made a documentary about gaming. It might interest some of you.
It's a small website.
Please be merciful.
I have some fond memories of D&D and the infamous summer campaigns when I was in grade school. However, the trouble with D&D is that many of the players do not fully appreciate the depth and breadth of the game and the opportunities for complex characterization and plot expositions before it becomes socially questionable to continue ones pursuit of the game. I am not saying that the game sessions were not fun, but they always seem to go something like this...
DM: You see a group of wagons approaching along the road from the south. What do you want to do?
Player 1: How long until the wagons reach our position?
DM: You think that they will be upon you in a few minutes, maybe less.
Player 2: Let's hide off to the side and ambush them when they come around the bend.
Player 3: Yeah!
DM: Alright...(rolling dice behind the screen) several minutes pass and the caravan is almost at the bend in the road. The caravan appears to be made up of nomadic plainsmen from the southern lands with some local hired mercenaries. The caravan halts just before the turn and the driver of the lead wagon is obviously suspicious. What do you do?
(All at once...)
Player 1: I roll to attack with my crossbow.
Player 2: I cast magic missile and target the driver of the lead wagon.
Player 3: I charge from behind the bushes, use my barbarian rage ability, and attack the mercenaries closest to the road.
Younger players especially always want to shoot first and ask questions later, but the older and wiser players, at least those who still have the opportunity to play the game on a semi-regular basis, tend to resort to violence only very occasionally and the game can actually be more interesting because it is not a forgone conclusion that just about every encounter is going to end in some sort of combat. When DM runs the game in such a way that the correct response to every encounter is "I roll to attack..." or if the players respond that way anyway due to lack of maturity then the game gets real boring real fast. Anyway, these are just my recollections; perhaps other people have had different experiences.
Looking at the typos, grammatical errors and the like in the book, I can only conclude that it was ghost written by George W. Bush! "It's for the embetterment of the Iraqi people!" - or roleplayers who want to know their own history. Or something like that... Lee Darrow, C.H.
From what I know, true impressive recognition is not always encouraged for each anniversary. In North America, I know as a general rule of thumb that key recognitions happen on years I, V, X, XXV, L, C, M.
So 30 is... yeah it is 3 full decades.. and I guess each decade is pretty spiffy. And I do love the number 3.. But I can see why this book may not be as -tight- as most would except summary literature to be.
So no worries. 50 will be here eventually and I am sure there will be very memorable fanfare. Worthy fanfare.
If nobody reads this. Then so be it.
'Nuff said.
The "30" in this case is represented by two 8-sided dice -- clever enough but very difficult to read. And why 8s? Why not 20s? Wouldn't that make more sense if we were trying to be clever? (Ed. It's been pointed out since I wrote this that it's actually a d8 and a d10, though my opinion stands.)
Why not 20s? I guess because d20s don't have a "0".
Do not be alarmed. This is only a test.
Don't forget Star Munchkin, Munchkin Fu, and Munchkin Bites.
And Munchkin Blender. Don't forget that...
And Munchkin 2 and 3...
And Star Munchkin 2...
And Munchkin Fu 2...
Come to think of it, this is starting to sound a lot like D&D!
I don't know about you all, but the horrible artwork and graphical design inconsistencies are what D&D is all about. It kind of fits. Thats part of what endeared me to it throughout the years. The very first D&D set I bought, the book inside had pages which seemed to be several shades of muave(or was it purple...) horrible artwork etc...
To me D&D was all about your imagination. Gary and Dave put all of this stuff together, basically by themselves as they invented the greatest gaming system ever. They weren't graphic designers or authors, they were purveyors of imagination and inventors of the gaming system which all other RPG's have grown out of and are measured by.
To me they were and are gods; whether or not the tables seemed to line up together or the font changed a little from page to page in the books.
The original AD&D manuals were very rough.
Indeed, this review makes me want to go out and buy the book! It's exactly as it should be. I never needed a high brow representation of a chromatic dragon to see the scintillating colors, or feel it's breath. I didn't need a well printed book to imagine the stench of an ogre, or the hyena like laughter of a squad of orcs as they tortured a young girl, as we were sneaking up on them, to save the village maiden for a reward, and battle the orcs, then loot their stinking corpses.
D&D isn't about satisfying art or book critics. It's about having a good time with some friends on an adventure inside of your imagination, in a nasty dungeon or dangerous wilderness.
You don't need LOTR movies or similar quality books for that. D&D has never tried to be ny/hollywood. Thank god for that.
D&D is like a sexy outfit on a hot woman, it should leave the best part to your imagination. You were looking for an explicit hustler centerfold.
l8,
AC
Well is it?
Richard Garfield, the creator of M:TG and the EX-CEO of WOTC was an avid player of M:TG and was saddened and outraged when Hasbro decided to change his game.
Source?
Does anyone else remember the extreme number of editorial, typesetting and typographical errors in the original Monster Manual II and Module S4: The Lost Carverns of Tsojcanth?
This book came out at the very end of Gary Gygax's reign at TSR, and I always wondered if one event had anything to do with the other. Quality control fell apart during that year - things such as book bindings that failed shortly after purchase (DSG, WSG), more than 100 different editorial errors in MM2, and monsters listed as having 84+ Hit Dice in S4.
Of course they missed one "tribute" to the game - they could have released this book in a 3 ring binder format, and made us assemble it, outselves. Then they could have released an expansion that used the new format, but did not align with the previous pages. Then they could have printed a few more things in the same format, but without bothering to punch holes or even make them stand-alone pages so we had to photocopy them, or cut them out of the module, ourselves.
But I'm not a bitter fan-boy. Really.
geeks not get laid since 1974 flame away...
I want to revise the Intelligence test and have put a request for new questions to add to the test on rec.games.frp.dnd. If you enjoyed the quiz, please go to Google at http://groups-beta.google.com/group/rec.games.frp. dnd/browse_thread/thread/a2bfeab938467790/a8525665 755040ff#a8525665755040ff and contribute ideas. I will be taking suggestions until December 24, 2004.
Thanks again for the great response!
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
Many times, they are responsible.