I'm not an old school player or DM or anything like that. I've read some books and read about it online, but a lot of it just isn't for me.

But the idea of immortals in BECMI is one of maybe a handful of things I'm really really interested in from old school D&D. I've just picked up Dark Dungeons to see what I can find out about it. I'm loving what I'm seeing so far. I always thought that when players got godlike powers they should get a home plane for example, based on the idea that some gods are also places (hel is hel, hades is hades, I think some mesopotamian gods may have been places? and plenty of cosmological places are godly corpses). The different forms are pretty cool too. I don't know about spells based on XP, but for permanent world-changing stuff I guess it can make sense. I think the things I like least are patron/worshiper requirements. I always kind of preferred the idea where you take godhood from the cold dead hands of another god (or something like it). Anyway, this stuff is way cooler (based on what I've seen so far of each) than D20s epic level rules, which seem silly and arbitrary.

But I wanted to hear about the Immortals/Wrath of the Immortals/Whatever from people who had actually played. So... what's a D&D Immortals game like? What to players usually do in such a game?

I think that the rules were not great, but also not as bad as people might think. There was a lot of resource management with the divine power points or whatever.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;390771I think that the rules were not great, but also not as bad as people might think. There was a lot of resource management with the divine power points or whatever.

RPGPundit

I agree. The rules were not as bad as many people make them out to be.

Quote from: RPGPundit;390771I think that the rules were not great, but also not as bad as people might think. There was a lot of resource management with the divine power points or whatever.

RPGPundit

As someone who has reported going all the way with BECMI, that's a non-answer really. I, for one, would be interested in a more in-depth reply.

Quote from: One Horse Town;390785As someone who has reported going all the way with BECMI, that's a non-answer really. I, for one, would be interested in a more in-depth reply.

No, my group went all the way with the RC; that is to say, the players completed their quest for immortality and became immortals, and that's where we stopped.

I did play a few games with the Immortal rules years earlier, and it was interesting world-spanning stuff; very unpredictable play and lots of power points flying off everywhere.
But I don't remember enough about the system itself in play to be able to really comment.

RPGPundit

It is worth noting that the rules for Immortals found in the Mentzer Immortals box set differ significantly from those found in Allston's Wrath of the Immortals (the RC rules assume that players will use the latter rules).

My impression is that there is a rough consensus that the Allston rules are much superior to the Mentzer rules, although I don't remember enough about either to comment any further (actually, I've never even looked at the Mentzer version).

The 'Immortals' rules presented in the RC retro-clone Dark Dungeons are based on those found in Allston's Wrath of the Immortals.

Wrath of the Immortals was actually one of my first ever RPG purchases as a teen, and I found it a very good read even though we never really played it as game. I've occasionally mined it for ideas/fluff - I have a druid who worships Ka in a current 3.5 game, actually, as well as running a high-level 3.0 game a couple of years ago that wasn't set on Mystara but used Pandius (city of the Immortals) and Draeden (the ultimate monster) indirectly.
We also played the first part of The Immortals Fury adventure using 2nd Ed. rules, and it seemed quite good at the time, though as a player I wasn't actually privy to any of Blackmoor-esque goings on in the background, though possibly I should have guessed ("What do you mean his skin is a pleasant shade of green?")

Got the original box much much later. Most people seem to be annoyed by the idea that Immortals have four spatial dimensions (are hyperspace creatures) and adventure in a five-dimensional multiverse, but I thought that was kind of cool.  After reading it, it made Wrath interesting in context, it actually kept some of the fluff (Dimension of Nightmare, the astral plane making characters "flat" ) without explaining the original context.

I own Wrath of the Immortals and used it pretty heavily in my Mystara campaigns.  We never played an Immortal-level campaign, but as DM I used the Immortal rules pretty much as written.  It really helps make the Immortals run and feel more like extremely potent NPCs and distinct from "gods."

I don't really remember the campaign because of any particular dungeons or encounters, but it most definitely influenced the way I organized my campaigns.  It was quite focused on timekeeping.  The "campaign" was actually a series of four tightly interwoven adventures with extensive notes and calendars for running the rest of the campaign between those key "bottleneck" adventures.  This was because those key adventures were meant to played at different stages in PC development (basically covering levels 1 to the high 20's IIRC).  I still use that basic model at times.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;390997Got the original box much much later. Most people seem to be annoyed by the idea that Immortals have four spatial dimensions (are hyperspace creatures) and adventure in a five-dimensional multiverse, but I thought that was kind of cool.  

The question is: does that mean that they're basically playing RPGs when they do this?

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;391070The question is: does that mean that they're basically playing RPGs when they do this?

RPGPundit

Hmm.
Well, I didn't get that impression from the multidimensional rules so much. I sorta got that vibe in a couple of other places e.g.
 - an Immortal slumming in Mortal Identity is actually creating and playing a character, in character.
- if an Immortal retires and "Disperses", where it suggests they get to be the DM, at least for their home plane.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;391214Hmm.
Well, I didn't get that impression from the multidimensional rules so much. I sorta got that vibe in a couple of other places e.g.
 - an Immortal slumming in Mortal Identity is actually creating and playing a character, in character.
- if an Immortal retires and "Disperses", where it suggests they get to be the DM, at least for their home plane.

Good points, there.

RPGPundit