Blast from the past

Bill · August 22, 2014, 11:13:35 AM

Quote from: Larsdangly;781863No, but easily found in online used game stores. If you can handle an action point system, get the 1E boxed set. If action point systems make you break out in hives, get 2E. If someone offers you TSR's 3E, kick them under the knee cap and run away. Basically, TSR bought the game, cut its balls off, sold it for a few years, and then let it die of starvation. True story.

I want the original version

Larsdangly · August 22, 2014, 11:24:43 AM

It's a good choice. The real meat of the game is present in the original boxed set. The only significant additions in 2E are skills for perception and horsemanship. The action point system I refer to is the sort of thing few popular games have attempted, and it might remind you of the horribly over-engineered games that rode roughshod over the hobby in the mid 80's. But it is actually an elegant, playable thing. I recommend it. It just isn't for everyone.

Larsdangly · August 22, 2014, 11:33:11 AM

I am tempted to revive a Dragonquest retroclone project I started last year. The original game is good and widely available so my stab at this isn't really very much like Labyrinth Lord or one of the other D&D clones that cleaves closely to the original. Rather, it is a game that is more 'inspired by' Dragonquest, but swaps out the damage, armor and injury rules with those from strucuturally similar but better-made games, simplifies some elements, draws in some D&D isms, simplifies dice mechanics, re-balances and greatly simplifies EXP charts, etc. Basically, the game I wish had emerged from D&D swallowing Dragonquest or Dragonquest swallowing D&D.

Dimitrios · August 22, 2014, 11:48:32 AM

Quote from: Brad;781611I used to play in a D&D game that used Palladium FRP classes and Rolemaster for the combat charts. A little Runequest for flavor. I thought that's how everyone did it...

I used to occasionally see people getting in a huff about Gary Gygax's somewhat dictatorial pronouncements (in Dragon Magazine and the forwards to the 3 1e core books) about what the D&D game is. I think they either forgot or were never aware of the context for these statements.

Everyone was kitbashing their own version of the game and for a while "Dungeons and Dragons" was becoming a generic term for role playing, sort of like "Xerox" became synonymous with photocopying. There was a danger (form TSR's point of view at least) that the game would lose its identity completely.

Phil Moskowitz · August 22, 2014, 12:57:50 PM

Quote from: Larsdangly;781863No, but easily found in online used game stores. If you can handle an action point system, get the 1E boxed set. If action point systems make you break out in hives, get 2E. If someone offers you TSR's 3E, kick them under the knee cap and run away. Basically, TSR bought the game, cut its balls off, sold it for a few years, and then let it die of starvation. True story.

Never owned the game, but in the early 90s I picked up "The Shattered Statue" (TSRs only support for the line aside from the game itself, if I recall correctly), a dual-system AD&D/DQ adventure by Paul Jaquays (of all people). The DQ stats merely mystified me, and the adventure itself didn't strike my fancy the way a lot of the 78-83 TSR modules did. I still have it somewhere in a box in the attic.

Just Another Snake Cult · August 24, 2014, 07:20:13 PM

Back before the Internet, everything in life - music, your available fast food chains, what movies were playing at your local theater, what word you used to describe carbonated candy water- was way more regional. Things would be hits in one isolated pocket of America that flopped everywhere else (Or vice-versa).

In my small Midwestern college town, SPI's DragonQuest was the game the "Cool" crowd played instead of D&D even up into the 1990's. At one point in the Clinton years (Long after TSR had abandoned the game, but before retro-clones or Internet PDFs) privately printed and bound bootleg copies were common.

Nikita · August 26, 2014, 06:59:05 AM

Another interesting gem in the DragonQuest and Universe was that since they were intended to adult boardgamers they were very clear that you followed rules until you tried something not explained in rule:

[4.1] If a character attempts a feasible task not specifically explained in a rule, the gamesmaster derives a percentage chance of the character succeeding.

It seems now pretty much ordinary but back then it must have been a total revolution to boardgamers.

TheShadow · August 26, 2014, 07:05:45 AM

Quote from: Just Another Snake Cult;782391Back before the Internet, everything in life - music, your available fast food chains, what movies were playing at your local theater, what word you used to describe carbonated candy water- was way more regional. Things would be hits in one isolated pocket of America that flopped everywhere else (Or vice-versa).

In my small Midwestern college town, SPI's DragonQuest was the game the "Cool" crowd played instead of D&D even up into the 1990's. At one point in the Clinton years (Long after TSR had abandoned the game, but before retro-clones or Internet PDFs) privately printed and bound bootleg copies were common.

There was (and still is, most probably) a long-running and legendary DQ campaign in Auckland, New Zealand. It morphed into an entire club, publishing newsletters, manuals and so forth, over more than 30 years. Cool for such an obscure game to take root in an equally obscure corner of the gaming world.