Screw it...

[Julian Grimm]

Due to the horrid weather we had to cancel our game so I was doing some campaign work trying to nail some ideas down. I was going through the stuff that I had in storage and seeing what I could find when I began pulling Forgotten Realms product after Forgotten Realms product out of one of my totes. Thoughts of my high school campaigns, gold box games and this being where my most successful campaigns have been ran all came to mind.

Yeah, I'm a kid of the 90s TSR era and always will be. So I said screw it, this may be the last real campaign I get to run. Why not do it where I had the most fun...

[Kayolan]

Nothing wrong with that, the CK is supposed to have fun too! And if you aren't really happy with the setting you are using, you risk CK burnout or worse, a failed campaign.

[Julian Grimm]

This is true. I 'retired' for a bit due to burnout, chasing what I thought I should be doing and some personal stuff. I am now ready to go back to it.

[AntiquarianAspirant]

I always did love the idea of Netheril, ever since I played Shadows of Undrentide. NWN (well, it's expansions anyway) certainly endeared me to Faerun.

Is it really frowned on to play in Faerun?

[Julian Grimm]

In certain Old Skool(TM) circles it is. There's a lot of hate for FR and 90s D&D in general out there. Never understood it myself.

[Captain_K]

Despite having lived and played through the 80's, never did much in there that I am aware but then our DMs were rather secretive about any modules used.. I do recall The Castle Amber module once... not sure we lived through that one...

[AntiquarianAspirant]

Huh, interesting. What happened in the 90's to drive that?

[Julian Grimm]

Huh, interesting. What happened in the 90's to drive that?

A lot of people had issues with TSRs behavior and what Lorraine Williams did with the company. I was in High School until 93 and lived in a small town with no real access to anything beyond what the local comic shop would have. The closest game shop was 40 miles away and the internet in my small industrial town was years away. Suffice to say I missed anything that went on in those years due to distance and availability being poor. What I remember of it all was that we didn't know or really care. We enjoyed what was coming out and bought what we could. FR was our world of choice and had a campaign with the DMs having a region (I had NW Faerurn btw).

According to the history I read the glut of products TSR pushed out, their lawsuit happy culture and money grab moves what was turned people off. Honestly, it was so long ago that I don't really care and like I said; I enjoyed what was coming out...well what I could get of it with limited resources. Some really iconic stuff did come during that time; you had Planescape, Ravenloft, Dark Sun, Birthright and so on for AD&D. Games like Dragon Dice, which was really interesting, and DragonQuest(?) which was trying to capitalize on the Heroquest craze and some innovative, if not poorly executed ideas using the rise of multimedia.

Possibly the best thing to come out of it all was the AD&D core rules program which I still use when running AD&D 2e. BTW Trolls something like this would be very welcome.

As for the hatred, I just chalk it up to nerdrage and move on...

Sorry if that was rambling. It's cold and I haven't caffeinated up yet.

[AntiquarianAspirant]

Right, the woman who drove TSR into the ground. All of those settings you listed except Birthright count among my favorite D&D settings, and I believe Spelljammer, my FAVORITE D&D setting, also came out under her regime and I believe half the reason it's so gonzo and wonderful and weird and awesome is in response to her refusal to let the designers playtest anything.

Man, I was only a year old in '93. Sometimes I forget how OLD this hobby is.

Core rules program? What's that?

Rambling is fun! It's nice to learn more about how things were back in the day, when you weren't even born for decades' worth of 'back in the day.' I always wonder what it was like to have been there in the day of Gygax and what gaming was like back then when the rules were looser and you didn't have this false dichotomy of aggressive rules-lawyers vs 'narrativist' gamers.

[Julian Grimm]

Core rules program? What's that?

Rambling is fun! It's nice to learn more about how things were back in the day, when you weren't even born for decades' worth of 'back in the day.' I always wonder what it was like to have been there in the day of Gygax and what gaming was like back then when the rules were looser and you didn't have this false dichotomy of aggressive rules-lawyers vs 'narrativist' gamers.

This and this. It was an all in one program that included the books, character generators, mapping tools and so on. Great stuff. Then there was the Dragon Magazine Archive that was also pure gold.

I had wondered the same thing before and do enjoy the history but I have realized my era was just as valid as theirs. I love the stories but I also have my own and it is an era that not many want to look at.

[AntiquarianAspirant]

Oh, that looks lovely. Like a proto-SRD or something. Yeah, something like that for C&C would be great (and maybe help draw in more, especially younger tabletop players).

I feel a bit intimidated to tell my own campaign stories; I played 3E and Pathfinder with a group that didn't like playing below level 10 (very high powered preference) and I suspect the shenanigans we got up to and our general playstyle (aggressively optimised with heavy multiclassing) would grate against many of the reasons C&C split off from 3E and thus not be well recieved.

Though my favorite stories all either come from my other, low-level group, or those moments where I used cleverness or heroics to get through an encounter instead of high-octane abilities.

[Julian Grimm]

Oh, that looks lovely. Like a proto-SRD or something. Yeah, something like that for C&C would be great (and maybe help draw in more, especially younger tabletop players).

I feel a bit intimidated to tell my own campaign stories; I played 3E and Pathfinder with a group that didn't like playing below level 10 (very high powered preference) and I suspect the shenanigans we got up to and our general playstyle (aggressively optimised with heavy multiclassing) would grate against many of the reasons C&C split off from 3E and thus not be well recieved.

Though my favorite stories all either come from my other, low-level group, or those moments where I used cleverness or heroics to get through an encounter instead of high-octane abilities.

I played a decent amount of D20 as well. I just didn't care for it past Level 5 or so. I actually use a few things from it in my games still. In all honesty D20/3.X had some good ideas but it became too complicated the longer you ran it. C&C gives me a streamlined D20 with a good dose of the AD&D feel that I find just perfect. It's compatibility with both systems is a plus as well.

For that matter I played some 4e and 5e and found things I liked in both. WOTC just has a problem with over complicating everything they do. But there are nuggets of things that have made it into my games.

So don't be embarrassed about it. Many of us came from D20/Pathfinder or have played it.

[AntiquarianAspirant]

For good ideas, I stand by the Tome of Magic (Truenamer woes aside) as being a brilliant attempt to make magic interesting again, and the Tome of Battle being absolutely wonderful for making martials actually fun. And likewise I at least respect 4E successfully bringing all classes onto an even playing field and moving the gamebreaking spells into the area of 'rituals.'

Did you ever play E6 (Epic 6) for 3.5 or E8 for Pathfinder? I found that style of play to be a breath of fresh air that kept things toned down while still allowing for great breadth of character build. It always disappointed me that my other group REFUSED to play lower than level 5 when in my opinion that skips the most fun levels.

C&C wrapping up skills and feats and the like all into one unified SIEGE engine is what sold me on it over, say, For Gold and Glory, yeah. I liked stuff like Skill Tricks in 3.5, but being able to just do whatever I want without having to 'unlock' things, man, THAT is a breath of fresh air.

[Julian Grimm]

Did you ever play E6 (Epic 6) for 3.5 or E8 for Pathfinder? I found that style of play to be a breath of fresh air that kept things toned down while still allowing for great breadth of character build. It always disappointed me that my other group REFUSED to play lower than level 5 when in my opinion that skips the most fun levels.

C&C wrapping up skills and feats and the like all into one unified SIEGE engine is what sold me on it over, say, For Gold and Glory, yeah. I liked stuff like Skill Tricks in 3.5, but being able to just do whatever I want without having to 'unlock' things, man, THAT is a breath of fresh air.

I had heard of E6 but never tried it. And yes, SIEGE's ability to emulate almost everything from D20 in a single mechanic is great. We've even emulated Meta-Magic with it with little issue.

[AntiquarianAspirant]

What's the general way people emulate metamagic, then? I would guess the CL of the check is based on some derivative of the spell level increase that a comparable metamagic feat would impose.

[Julian Grimm]

What's the general way people emulate metamagic, then? I would guess the CL of the check is based on some derivative of the spell level increase that a comparable metamagic feat would impose.

IIRC, I did it by what the spell level would be with the metamagic applied so an empowered Magic Missile would be a Level 3 spell so the CL would be 3. With that the Target number would be 15 to cast the empowered version.

Going from memory here my rules were that that caster had to learn the metamagic being used from somewhere and was only allowed a certain number of Metamagic abilities...I don't remember exactly how I determined how many MM abilities a character could have. While the final target numbers can seem high the way SIEGE allows level to be added to the check works pretty well.

Considering I was using the UA spell point system at the time you had the SIEGE Check plus the spell point cost so using MM could be costly but I felt it emulated the difficulty in altering magic pretty well.

[AntiquarianAspirant]

That sounds quite doable, aye. Does UA convert over well to C&C? Even in my 3.5 days I loved experimenting with its options and I'd love to be able to port over some ideas here and there as needed. Spell points, corruption, sanity... The latter two for extra peril and fun, and the first because I am becoming quite disenchanted with Vancian magic.

[Julian Grimm]

It does so pretty well. Obviously you have to make adjustments and you have to account for the D20 power creep but it is fairly easy. And Vancian magic is possibly my least favorite part of D&D.

[Kayolan]

Huh, interesting. What happened in the 90's to drive that?

A lot of people had issues with TSRs behavior and what Lorraine Williams did with the company. I was in High School until 93 and lived in a small town with no real access to anything beyond what the local comic shop would have. The closest game shop was 40 miles away and the internet in my small industrial town was years away. Suffice to say I missed anything that went on in those years due to distance and availability being poor. What I remember of it all was that we didn't know or really care. We enjoyed what was coming out and bought what we could. FR was our world of choice and had a campaign with the DMs having a region (I had NW Faerurn btw).

According to the history I read the glut of products TSR pushed out, their lawsuit happy culture and money grab moves what was turned people off. Honestly, it was so long ago that I don't really care and like I said; I enjoyed what was coming out...well what I could get of it with limited resources. Some really iconic stuff did come during that time; you had Planescape, Ravenloft, Dark Sun, Birthright and so on for AD&D. Games like Dragon Dice, which was really interesting, and DragonQuest(?) which was trying to capitalize on the Heroquest craze and some innovative, if not poorly executed ideas using the rise of multimedia.

Possibly the best thing to come out of it all was the AD&D core rules program which I still use when running AD&D 2e. BTW Trolls something like this would be very welcome.

As for the hatred, I just chalk it up to nerdrage and move on...

Sorry if that was rambling. It's cold and I haven't caffeinated up yet.

Your background matches mine almost exactly (also graduated in '93 and lived in a small industrial town ) , only difference is that I never got into FR but stuck with Greyhawk, Dragonlance, and Mystara. Also flirted a bit with Ravenloft and Birthright. I too have the Core rules CD but it wont work correctly on my computer for some reason, maybe because it's too old? I don't know, but I still have it and wish I could get it to work.

[AntiquarianAspirant]

(Snip)

I like that Vancian magic helps keep a limit on the broken crap casters can pull off, but increasingly I'm leaning towards just taking a blunt axe to the spell lists and ripping out anything and everything broken as a better solution.

(Snip)
I too have the Core rules CD but it wont work correctly on my computer for some reason, maybe because it's too old? I don't know, but I still have it and wish I could get it to work.

Is it scratched up and such so that a CD buffing machine might be able to fix it? Or is the problem something else?

https://www.reddit.com/r/adnd/comments/ ... on_cdroms/
It seems the program itself ought to be able to work in modern Windows... With some wonkiness involved.

[Lurker]

Wow I must be slipping. I missed a good conversation in the Ne'er-do-Well chat last night & I've missed this one ...

I missed a lot of changes in the game over the years - 3e 4e Pathfinder etc - and was blissfully unaware of all the drauma that went on with TSR etc, so can't add anything to that part of the conversation.

However, JG, and your Forgotten Realms, I'm right there with you on that. Even the same area you had was my preferred portion of FR. Well there and Cormyr.

I have to say my favorite D&D realm over all the years is FR Gray box, with a few of the area source books - Waterdeep, Moonshae & Savage Frontier, - I hate to think how much time I spent thinking through those areas in high school (might explain why some of my grades drifted toward the lower end of B when they should have been higher) and my first duty stations when I was in the military.

[Rigon]

I love FR, especially the Grey Box version. 2 of my most successful campaigns were set in FR (using C&C).

R-

[Julian Grimm]

Huh, interesting. What happened in the 90's to drive that?

A lot of people had issues with TSRs behavior and what Lorraine Williams did with the company. I was in High School until 93 and lived in a small town with no real access to anything beyond what the local comic shop would have. The closest game shop was 40 miles away and the internet in my small industrial town was years away. Suffice to say I missed anything that went on in those years due to distance and availability being poor. What I remember of it all was that we didn't know or really care. We enjoyed what was coming out and bought what we could. FR was our world of choice and had a campaign with the DMs having a region (I had NW Faerurn btw).

According to the history I read the glut of products TSR pushed out, their lawsuit happy culture and money grab moves what was turned people off. Honestly, it was so long ago that I don't really care and like I said; I enjoyed what was coming out...well what I could get of it with limited resources. Some really iconic stuff did come during that time; you had Planescape, Ravenloft, Dark Sun, Birthright and so on for AD&D. Games like Dragon Dice, which was really interesting, and DragonQuest(?) which was trying to capitalize on the Heroquest craze and some innovative, if not poorly executed ideas using the rise of multimedia.

Possibly the best thing to come out of it all was the AD&D core rules program which I still use when running AD&D 2e. BTW Trolls something like this would be very welcome.

As for the hatred, I just chalk it up to nerdrage and move on...

Sorry if that was rambling. It's cold and I haven't caffeinated up yet.

Your background matches mine almost exactly (also graduated in '93 and lived in a small industrial town ) , only difference is that I never got into FR but stuck with Greyhawk, Dragonlance, and Mystara. Also flirted a bit with Ravenloft and Birthright. I too have the Core rules CD but it wont work correctly on my computer for some reason, maybe because it's too old? I don't know, but I still have it and wish I could get it to work.

That's awesome about the backgrounds. I got into FR cause it was the only setting I could find for sale in my area. If you can find a way to rip and then mount the ISO it will work that's what I had to do with it since my original is long gone.

[Julian Grimm]

Since a couple people mentioned it...The Greybox is possibly my favorite as well. Much more of a gritty S&S feel than what came later and there was room for expansion. I do have material all the way to 3e and borrow from it but most of it is set in the Greybox era.

[Julian Grimm]

As for what I am personally doing; I am setting this one around the High Forest area and am going to base it around the assumptions of the Greybox. I am also going to be working in material from the various codices especially Celtarum, Nordica and Germania and may rework the deities a bit to reflect that.

I am working the Village of Hommlet in and will be trying to work some of the A-Series into the setting. Between my own stuff and various modules I own I have enough for a pretty decent campaign.

[Rigon]

Sounds cool. Let us know how it works out.

R-

[mgtremaine]

I have C&C Character sheets for Jaroo (Human Druid in Hommlet) and Kella (1/2 Elven Druid in TOEE) I'd be happy to post up as PDF or send you a link if you want them.

-Mike

[serleran]

I once took the clue books from the FR SSI goldbox games (Pools of Radiance, Curse of the Azure Bonds, and Secret of the Silver Blades) and made my own campaign of them, before realizing that the first 2 were official modules. Mine worked better, I think, as it didn't feel like the computer version despite it being that.

So, anyway, yes, the DM/CK/Whatever should absolutely do what makes it right in their headspace. Players can adapt and if not, at least communicate.

[Julian Grimm]

I have C&C Character sheets for Jaroo (Human Druid in Hommlet) and Kella (1/2 Elven Druid in TOEE) I'd be happy to post up as PDF or send you a link if you want them.

-Mike

Yes please do.

[mgtremaine]

You should be able to grab them from here as PDF there some me-isms in there like Deity that obviously need make your own.

https://www.stellarcore.net/downloads/jaroo.pdf
https://www.stellarcore.net/downloads/kella.pdf

-Mike