Tristan wrote:
The Hero System (Champions[TM] et al.) can kick GURPS’ butt any day of the week. And you can quote me on that.
Heh. I presume you’ve seen the Jack Chick Tract “Dark Dungeons”?
I was thinking the same thing. The Dragon Magazine (back before they just changed it to Dragon) had lots of articles about cavaliers, barbarians, witches, hedge wizards, ninjas and all sorts of other stuff. I’m willing to bet they had acrobats in there as well. Ever read some of the really old The Dragon articles? Man, it’s like picking a random page from an advanced chemistry text and expecting to know what’s going on. It’s like the guy who wrote about new witch spells didn’t bother to actually tell anyone about the witch class, he just wanted to give out new witch only spells that required a bunch of terms only he knew the definations of.
But I digress…
Anyway, I’m pretty sure that The Dragon had more to do with the classes than the cartoon did. Ever read the back of the Fiend Folio? It’s filled with credits to people who suggested various monsters through The Dragon, so obviously TSR was using that magazine as a source for new ideas (without having to actually pay people to think of new ideas). Of course, the Fiend Folio had some of the lamest creatures ever imagined but I’m digressing again…
You are correct, Jophiel and Badtz Maru. The Cavalier subclass first appeared in issue #72. I’m not exactly sure when that issue was released, but, since Issue #1 was released in June 1976, extrapolating forward puts Issue #72 at June 1982, which would have pre-dated the cartoon by about a year. The Barbarian first appeared in Issue #63, with re-examinations in #65 and #72 (again). The Acrobat first surfaced in Issue #65, and appeared with its updated title of Thief-Acrobat in Issue #69. Unearthed Arcana was the first ‘Supplement’ to the AD&D system, which essentially made ‘official’ a number of character classes (and other rules) which first appeared in Dragon®. In fact, I quote this from the Introduction to UE:
(Note: I wrote the stuff prior to the quote before I even noticed the UE quote - I am apparently too much of a geek for my own good and should be put out of my misery.)
Actually, 1st Ed, and 2nd Ed are very close. If you have a 1st ed character, you can play in a 2nd ed game- altho some minor modifications would be useful.
BUT (and this is why I am not playing 3rd ed)- 3rd ed is a whole new game. There is quite a bit to do to convert a 2nd Ed char to 3rd ed.
A lot of my freinds play D&D. NOBODY is playing 3rd ED, everyone is playing 2nd ED. A number have bought the new books, tho.
I just noticed that I’m also a geek who doesn’t pay attention to what he’s writing…substitute UA for all instances of UE in my previous post…
Huh. It seems that the barbarian, cavalier, and acrobat classes do pre-date the cartoon. Darn. The idea that the cartoon inspired part of the game just sounded so neat I couldn’t resist it, even though it turns out to be wrong.
Oh, and Mauve Dog? I’ve mistakenly abbreviated Unearthed Arcana as “UE” many times myself. I think it’s because I’m thinking of “Un Earthed” or something. (And I can’t abbreviate it “UEA”, because that’s the acronym for the Universal Esperanto Association, of which I’m a card-carrying member.)
I noticed one big error in the chronologies at the beginning of this thread. The correct order for early products is this:
Chainmail - minitures combat, no RP
D&D boxed set - these are the digest sized 3-book boxed sets, plus the supplememnts, Greyhawk, Blackmoor, Eldritch Wizardry, and Gods,Demi-Gods and heroes.
Basic D&D boxed set - 8.5*11 paperback, packaged with dice and (later on) a module. Later expanded with the Expert set, and something even higher level.
Then comes all your hardcover AD&D stuff.
Scott
who still has all 7 digest books
Well, you might have all the digest books, but how many hit points do you have? Huh? Hmm? Hah! I win!
[insular reference]
Heh…the thing I like about you, Rog, is that every one of your posts is a big blast of nostalgia for me. The style, the sense of humor…you’re like a bite-sized morsel of RATM goodness. 
Just had to throw that in.
[/insular reference]
tracer asked:
Nope, actually they role-played pretty well. During their wanderings around the map they got in a fight with some goblins, one got away and the other was seriously wounded. The cleric decided to heal the wounded goblin when it gave up, which I had take them back to his cave for dinner in thanks (I had no problem even then when characters did things not anticipated by the module). I also remember that I let them look at the map of the dungeon to the NW except in the section inhabited by the minotaur which was supposed to be magically confusing, again altering the game on the fly to make it compatible with my players (who, though bright, were probably not up to doing their own mapping).
And of course, the higher level stuff (which is probably somewhere in my parent’s attic) include the “Companion’s Set” (IIRC), which came in a green box, the “Master’s Set”, which came in a black box, and the “Immortal’s Set”, which came in a gold box. The immortal’s set was just strange. It dealt, among other things, with dimensional questions. “What happens if a two-dimensional universe collides with a four-dimensional universe” and, “These creatures are three dimensional, occupying the third, fourth, and fifth dimensions.” It was D&D for theoretical physicists.
If you want to know Gary Gygax’s story on what happened to D&D, just check this out http://www.gygax.com/gygaxfaq.html. Granted, it’s a little slanted due to his bitterness, but it will explain a lot of why TSR was driven out of business.
TSR was preparing to release 3rd edition on their own before Wizards of the Coast bought them out. However, when WOTC made the purchase, 3rd edtion was delayed for a year. As for 3rd Edition D&D, the official word on changing over characters from 2nd Ed AD&D was to kill off the old characters and start new.
2nd edition did have Psionics, Barbarians, Paladins, Ninjas, and about 5 subraces of every non-human race. But to get these rules, you had to buy ‘handbooks’ at about $20 a pop. In 2nd ed, everyone wanted to changes the rules and they were pretty much allowed to do so.
Pudgy Dog wrote:
Then why is there a “Conversion Kit” included in .PDF format on the CD-ROM that comes with the 3rd Edition Player’s Handbook? It’s specifically for the purpose of “porting” your 2nd Edition AD&D characters to 3rd Edition D&D.
Um … paladins were part of the “core” 2nd Edition rules. They were in the 2nd Edition Player’s Handbook, sandwiched between Fighters and Rangers just like they were in the Good Old 1st Edition days. (However, the paladin’s continuous emanation of a full-blown protection from evil 10’ radius had been reduced to a paltry “-1 to evil creatures’ attack rolls within 10 feet”. My paladin character didn’t like that. 
)
Gadarene wrote:
Does this mean we have to have sex now?
– tracer, who hasn’t called it “RATM” with one “M” for just ages.
I just wanted to chime in that 3rd edition is making me very happy.
And thank you for making me feel a little less geeky for gaming (Imagine, the SDMB making me feel less geeky!)
I am a bard character and 3rd edition makes bards (and other more-than-just-fighting classes) a lot more useful to the game. My character has suddenly become a leader instead of a liability. I think that by increaseing the usefulness of bards and the like will lead to much better role playing.
That said, I am fairly new to the gaming world. I am having a lot of fun with D&D, but sometimes it does feel a bit juveninile (after all, this is what twelve year olds play to feel cool). I was wondering if anyone knew any good ideas for increaseing the sophistication of the game or any more sophisticated games that would really challenge us.
(Anthracite drifts in nostalgia, thinking of all the good times she had playing AD&D…The Keep on the Borderlands, The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh, the Village of Hommlet, the Temple of Elemental Evil, and the whole G1-3, D1-3, Q1 series…and of course her own little world…)
Political intrigue (lots and lots of it) worked well in our ancient Greyhawk campaign. It’s something our insanely powerful characters couldn’t just blast their way through. You’ve already got a natural tie-in with your bard character. Civil unrest, revolutions, even underhanded tactics in elections (ahem) are good storylines.
Example: A member of the High Council of Grand Poohbahs has abstained on a critical vote–his eventual decision will decide the fate of slavery in his nation. He has begun to receive death threats, apparently from both sides of the issue. He must be guarded, and someone needs to find out who’s behind the threats–your bard hooks him up with your fighter, mage, cleric, or whoever. Your thief does security checks for him. If the party finds out how he plans to vote, do they agree with him? Or even each other? Do they continue to protect him? There’s a lot of roleplaying potential in political scenarios, and you can make like James Bond rather than Conan for a change.
OK, damnit, I can’t stay away.
IMO, the best Dungeon Master is one where she has a very complicated, engrossing, and well-thought out plot, which can be morphed or even thrown out at a moment’s notice.
In my best campaign ever that I ran, I had the players hired by a nobleman in a very large walled city to cause disruption in the halfling quarter, since the halflings were an underclass who were organizing a labor movement. I thought this would be straightforward for the players (mostly neutral to evil) and developed a whole halfling assassin’s guild for them to fight a war of terrorism with through the city streets.
Then the players decided that they wanted to turn and betray their master (the nobleman) - something I had not expected, because he was a real bad-ass. They decided to ally themselves with the halfling assassin’s guild, and made an overture. Thinking fast, I set up a whole new plotline, and had them now fighting on two fronts to bring about a campaign of civil disobedience to push the halfling labor movement forward.
Then the players did something completely different - in a side plot, they became fixated on allying themselves with a small group of powerful lesbian sorceresses who wanted to cause a race riot in the town, simply as a cover to get access to a locked temple of an ancient cult guarded by a whole company of city guards. However, one of the players decided that he wanted to aid in a campaign of passive, non-violent resistance organized by a group of monastic Elves in the town, who were just trying to “stop the bloodshed”. So he went and started acting as protection for the Wood Elves. Why? To cheese the other players in the group off. Then one player assassinated another, just because he was tired of him. So the dead player came back as an NPC and joined up.
Then, finally, the riots started, demons were summoned and let loose, pirates arrived and siezed the docks and the wharfs and warehouses, the halflings took control of the citadel and declared the city to be a new City-State, the city was set ablaze, a squad of Ogres hiding outside burst into the city and started laying waste, and the lesbian sorceresses were killed by the undead within the locked temple, and mummies, vampires, lycanthropes, skeletons, zombies, et al ruled the streets from dawn to dusk. A plague swept the city, there were food riots, screams in the night, and a strange drumming sound like a massive heartbeat that could be heard if one placed their ears to the pavement, going “Lub-Dub, Lub-Dub, Lub-Dub”…
And then, the long-hidden cult of Yog Sothoth (that’s right, I liked Lovecraft at a very young age) flooded the streets, and the cruicifixtions started. Then things got confusing.
This campaign lasted from about April to September of 1983, and we played nearly every single day. It was great while it lasted, and the players were completely taken in, never knowing what was going to happen next. Some even had to make plot diagrams, or keep notes to try and remember who hated who, who killed who, etc.
We quit playing that Fall due to High School studying and events cracking down on most of the players, and we never returned to the game. The Real World had reared it’s ugly head. I will always treasure, and miss, that fantastic Summer.
Balance wrote:
Sure they could! Just kill all the world leaders and declare yourselves Warlords of the Realm. Problem solved!
Incidentally, I have a conundrum with 2nd Edition AD&D that I’m trying to find a solution for. There seems to be NO defense against an Arrow of Slaying! If you get hit by an arrow of slaying that’s tuned to slay your character class, you are dead dead dead. There is no saving throw. Magic resistance won’t stop it. That saving-throw-against-spells-that-normally-allow-no-saving-throw power of the scarab of protection won’t help, because an arrow of slaying isn’t a “spell”. No magic item, wizard spell, priest spell, or artifact power will protect you against it. Sure, you could throw up a wall of force that keeps out missiles, but someone could always charge up to you and stab you with the arrow of slaying. An anti-magic shell will disable an arrow of slaying, but it also deactivates every other magic item in its radius that isn’t an artifact. (And then you’ll still be vulnerable to artifact weapons that have the arrow-of-slaying power factored into them.)
Is there anything in the 2nd Edition PHB, DMG, Tome of Magic, or Book of Artifacts that will negate (or at least allow a saving throw against) an arrow of slaying that successfully hits my character?
God, I hope not. Do you come with buffalo wings?
Hey, watch it, or I’ll start calling it AFM! I was around for the last gasps of that, you know…
(Everyone but tracer: Move along, nothing to see here…)