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The Making of a 1980s Dungeons & Dragons Module
An anonymous reader writes: Over at Medium, Jon Peterson (author of Playing at the World) has put up a new in-depth article covering the internal process at TSR that created Dungeons & Dragons modules in the 1980s. The adventures created at that time (by the likes of Tracy Hickman, then a staff designer) paved the way for many later computer role-playing games, and this piece shows how TSR work was pitched, storyboarded, proofed, edited and organized. With the positive reception of the new 5th edition of D&D and the attention paid to the fortieth anniversary of the game, the historical record behind modern gaming gets ever more important.
Not sacrifice, just the 40 year old kind?
Well that brings me to a fun story of how I got into D&D. I was trucked off by my parents to Florida one summer to stay with a relative for a few weeks. Lucky me there was a hobby store nearby and I had stashed a jar of quarters that had been untapped all year. After looking around for a few hours (what else was there to do in Florida when you're 14?), I found the D&D books, they were already second edition but something about them intrigued me. They were way beyond the scope of playing a video game (we're talking monochromatic consoles/handhelds back then), but they offered so much wealth in terms of creation and exploration. I made the decision to buy a kit complete with DM Guide, Monster Manual and a few starter adventures. I went to the register to inquire if my terms could be met.
I asked the nice lady behind the counter "Can I pay with all quarters (in my New York accent which I didn't know until that day that I had one)" To which the lady replied "What are kawters?". I hadn't brought any with me, so it took me a few minutes to explain that 25% of a dollar was a coin that had a $0.25 value. When she finally got it she said "Oh you mean Kwat-ers." I came back the next day and paid with my Kwa-ters, laughing the whole way. It's one of those things you never forget, and part of it was because it was about D&D, a game that literally helped saved the bored skull of a preteen.
In the end, I actually became friends with someone I never got along with previously, simply because we wound up at a rather raucous D&D game together. Still best friends decades later.
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
I didn't start playing until 2nd edition I believe, but I feel much the same way. The more I read about the newer editions the more it sounds like they are trying to imitate video games. Which is amusing because what I always wanted was a video game that would imitate the open world sandbox and freedom of D&D and similiar games.