Thirty Days of D&D, Day 7: Favorite Edition

I might not have a definitive favorite edition,
but I feel this D&D ampersand
is the most iconic.

If we go by my postings, my favorite edition of D&D would appear to be 2nd edition. That may be true given much of my gaming took (takes) place using that edition. By the format of games I'm playing (via Play by Post) the rules are the right system weight. There's enough gristle for players to sink their teeth upon in order to have their rules sheets reflect their characters with a degree of specializations and skill development but the use and interaction of those elements does not bog down the already sluggish pace of PbP (or PBeMs).

Yet, I've also spent a number of years solely playing 3E/3.5E games, also through PbP/PBeM. I have no problems with games of that era or it's recent derivatives like Pathfinder. It takes a certain mindset to get into, but it is not difficult for me to get into. Likewise, a recent interest in and exploration of OSR games reveals they're compatible enough with my 'new school' notions of D&D that I wouldn't have much difficulty giving them a try (or AD&D (1E) for that matter, unless modified OA counts).

I've limited opportunities to play and I count any instance where I get to game to be a favored activity. If I could feasibly try all the editions I would, they would all be my favorite edition as long as I'm playing some form of the game. I see the composition of the gamers and the general premise of the game more important than the rules. I can adapt to quirks of rules throughout the editions and similar games. What would throw me off more would be a poor game setup, either a group of disruptive or mismatched players, or a weak premise. The former part of that statement would hold up a game no matter the edition. The latter part is relative, I could be in the mood for a simple dungeon crawl one game or really desire an deeply interlinked game of cloak & dagger style intrigue the next. What's important is finding games that interest you and playing them or at least discussing them, which is what I take  as the purpose of this blog challenge.

Thirty Days of D&D, Day 1: How I Got Started

Saw several blogs in my feed participating in this nice blogging prompt initiated by Polar Bear Dreams and Strange Things: 30 Day D&D Challenge

Thought I would pick out a few of these topics and blog about them. Since (school) classes start this upcoming week and already I have assignments due by the end of the month, I know completion of all topics on appropriate days will be highly unlikely, but this will get a few posts out of me, perhaps. So onto the topic.

How did I get started?

The first person to proselytize D&D to me was my friend Andrew during lunch hour in junior high. This was during the mid-'90s at the height of Magic: The Gathering. I sat with the Magic playing kids. He talked mostly about the settings of D&D, Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance, Ravenloft, Dark Sun, Planescape. I didn't play D&D at this point, but the concept stayed with me as did the evocative setting discussions. Andrew went to a different school in high school and years later I heard he delved into Warhammer.

During high school, I continued to hang out with several of the guys from the Magic table (and gathered at the new Magic lunch table in HS) and eventually enjoyed weekly gaming day on Fridays after school. We would always gather at Wil's house for alternating games of Risk or Monopoly or just an afternoon of movies or video games (rented from Blockbusters when they were still a relevant company).

Sometime in the very late '90s, probably 1998 or 1999, I suggested we supplement our board-gaming with D&D. Our small reluctant group agreed and we scoured the still nascent internet for anything we could find. Yahoo (or perhaps Infoseek) brought us to the era appropriate Wizards of the Coast site where we downloading the FREE AD&D 2nd Edition Fast Play booklet by Jeff Grubb downloadable in PDF format. The PDF is still available after all these years: http://www.wizards.com/dnd/files/ADND_Fast_Play.pdf

Now grognards or edition elitists could and would groan about starting with such a weak introduction using a vastly simplified rules system (to a watered down version of AD&D to begin with) that vaguely resembles D&D. Also, having reread the adventure recently, even I found it somewhat uninspiring by the standards of time/era/edition and arguably for the purposes of a gratis fast play game. No offense to the most excellent master Grubb and let me explain why.

I simply didn't care at the time about the relative quality of the free material. Blissful ignorance of the quality of other materials would do that. The fact that it was freely distributed on the internet (and remains so 15 years later), readily accessible via a printout from a now-antiquated clunky inkjet printer, and playable with the d6s we commandeered from our Risk game was good enough to get us started.

We were enticed enough to search through eBay to look for second-hand core books (after balking at the price for full-priced new books on Amazon, all fairly new sites at the time) and managed get our hands on someone's modest 2E collection, the black spine 2E core rules, plus some of the derided Player Options book and a couple of the Complete Class Handbooks. Most likely they were liquidating their stuff in anticipation for the next edition. We were such noobs, but I think I'd rather have started with 2nd Edition than not. Had we known more then, we would have stalked eBay to snag a meatier 2E collection, or even some of the mixed edition lots. Would have been nice to grab hold of some vintage gaming swag before they became recognized as such. Net auctions were still a bit like the wild west back then and price varied quite a bit.

D&D 3rd edition would release around 2000 and the OGL would change gaming as we knew it. I stuck with 2E for a bit, especially on PBeMs, before making the switch to 3E then followed through with 3.5E then onto Pathfinder from my Dragon subscription remainder. Looking back, I actually realized 2E remained a fairly consistent part of my gaming even during the 3E/OGL era, so much so in fact my current games are 2E. I wouldn't even say it's a full circle, just a steady ever-expanding continuum.

Second Chances or More 2E

Being a fan and player of AD&D 2E I’ve been a bit disappointed the edition often gets skipped over by the gaming community at large, whether mainstream, OSR, indie, or what have you.

The rising juggernaut of Pathfinder champions the spirit of 3E/3.5E. Their support includes volumes of gorgeous full color books, ample primary and third party publisher support (probably the best in the industry), competent and convenient digital retailing, and print distribution with increasing prominence in many brick and mortar stores.

It can be argued the forthcoming 13th Age is a divergent adaptation of 4E using the OGL. It has a growing community and we will see how well it fares when its released into stores giving all gamers outside of the pre-order folks or convention goers a chance to look at the system.

OSRIC, one of the earliest OSR games, claims direct descent from the ideas offered in AD&D (1E). Other games emulating earlier pre-Advanced versions have supplemental and companion books (S&W Complete, LL AEC) easily scaling up the basic systems to approach AD&D. All these games are reaching out to their audiences and in some instances making headway towards new player-bases. Their growth is made evident by the response to Swords & Wizardry Appreciation Day and other indicators, such as Wizards’ reprinting earlier editions in premium or collector formats.

Where does 2E fit into this? There’s not as much activity as far as I know. Two games always pop up when I search for a 2E ‘retroclone’. Both have been around for a couple of years, but none of them have reached the self-sustaining critical mass like some of the other OSR games have (third party adventures, subsystems, genre variants). One is For Gold & Glory and the main website hosting it appears to have expired.

The other is Myth & Magic and my personal experience (or lack thereof) goes back to Late March, Early May of 2012 with the conclusion of a very successful Kickstarter project. Things were looking up. The supportive community helped the game complete a crowd-funding project with an abundant surplus. Maybe this was the catalyst a 2E-style game needed to gain traction with the gaming community.

I mean, in their DIY scrappiness the OSR games have found ways to gain solid footholds in traditional distribution channels and were always adepts at digital distribution — and self-publishing, and crowd-sourcing, and print-on-demand, all the publishing hot topics that have several industries dizzy, giddy, and panicky from the whirl of activity — always pioneers to begin with.

At the time, the next pioneering wave seemed to be Kickstarter as it was riding off the high of its first mega-projects. It was THE platform with which to launch a creative project and games in particular. It was essentially self-publishing ground-zero, not just self-publishing which other platforms could do, but came prepackaged with expanding an audience as well.

Well, I joined that herd and I can say the experience was especially unmemorable. I promptly forgot about Myth & Magic in the midst of more exciting and better updated projects. Not that New Haven Games didn’t update, I just found a lot of them didn’t raise my interest beyond the surface level of "Oh, that’s nice to hear". Others were focused on the Game Master’s Guide Kickstarter, which I didn’t bother backing as other things again seemed more interesting at the time.

I neglected this project until reading Tenkar’s Tavern updating on the progress on this and the developing history of trouble facing this project, a history which had skipped over my head entirely due to my absence of attention. Previously, I had downloaded the direct upload of the Players Guide, but the password locked PDF annoyed me and I never went beyond a skim of the table of contents. I missed the RPGNow coupons for the regular PDF as it was sent along with the flood of Kickstarter update emails. I have those emails turned off. By now New Haven Games had grown silent and non-responsive, so my request for another coupon is not likely to be heeded.

In a recent update, we at least know the reason for the lack of communication. In the face of mounting pressure from the project and real life issues, the project creator blanked out. The whole situation, what was once a positive experience, became an unpleasant weight.

You know what? I’m perfectly fine with that explanation. Having experienced similar situations and pressures, and falling flat on my face, I can understand. Glad to hear the designer realize it and claims he’s taking steps to resolve the remaining issues with the project. I hope to get what I backed for, sooner rather than later. We’re coming up on a full year now for a project that already had a draft and now a completed PDF but seemingly no where near completion in terms of physical goods. Tom Ryan, the one-man show behind New Haven Games also admits to making a publishing miscalculation choosing the print option of glossy pages. Art for one of the supplements is going to be non-existent and shipping is going to eat into the GM Guide funds or he has to pony up the difference. Doesn’t help that postal rates rose. Another stumble in the long line of slip ups, but publishing dilemmas have plagued far more experienced and well organized projects than this one.

One thing Tom said in his update, "Myth & Magic is likely doomed now because of my mismanagement of the campaigns", may hold true. Honestly, 2E may not be the most popular of D&D editions and a 2E retroclone probably doubly dubious in its position. With the extent of problems disrupting it, M&M may very well be dead in the water. The thing with retroclones is they have to reach out to a large enough segment of the gaming community to warrant groups adopting the rules, at least for gamers like me who play solely online in either PBeMs or PbPs. I don’t have a tabletop group I can convince to play a retroclone they’ve never heard of. Convincing a GM online to run a retroclone he’s never heard of is even more remote.

Funny thing is right around this time last year when Myth & Magic seemed like it would rekindle 2E’s flame, I joined an actual 2E game with members of my group left over from a shuttered 3E game. It’s a lot of fun and probably the best time gaming I’ve had in years. So do I really need a retroclone? Probably not.

What else is right around the corner, a year after Myth & Magic’s funding? The WotC produced official AD&D 2E premium reprints. Not only are 2E books easy to find in used bookstores, flea markets, or eBay, we’re going to have a set of brand new reprints available in May. Steve Winter already received his copies (some of the first off the press) and posted a picture on his Twitter account. They’re handsome books. I may get them just to support 2E.

In the beginning …

Welcome to The Campaign Expanse.

'What's with the name?' would be an apt question to answer in order to establish the primary focus of this blog. I’ve wanted to start a gaming and general geekery blog for some time, but through the course of various obligations and distractions never initiated one with the proper time or effort. A recent set of influences has provided me the impetus to finally try my hand at blogging.

Part of the reason for the long delay to action was a muddled sense of purpose. What would I post about? The thought brewed for some time before I looked back and realized the topics I gravitate towards through my years as a gamer (and geek of other media) were the campaign settings. I like to read about them, discuss them, try them out and play in them, buy the setting guides, examine the different versions, even study their publication history, and when the opportunity arises add to them.

My fascination with settings and worlds was quite obvious, I'm surprised it took me this this long to express, but there was never a need to reflect on something meant for fun, since the objective of fulfillment overrides most requirements for objective scrutiny. As a nod to the campaign settings that inspired me when I first entered the hobby, this blog takes its naming cues from the campaign accessories, regional supplements, and most obviously the campaign expansions of the classic campaign settings.

While I will write about the concept of settings and the settings themselves here, it will certainly not be the sole subject. I've collected an assortment of different game systems, adventures, and other books over the years and continue to increase my library. Expect the usual random thoughts, reviews, product hauls, as well as posts on other non-gaming topics, though I will keep to things of interests within related genres and fandom.

One of the more recent games to enter my library is Swords & Wizardry. My exposure to the OSR community and retro-clone type games is limited. Although I have electronic copies of the more prominent OSR games (because they’re free, why not keep the main PDF for reference), Swords & Wizardry is one of the few OSR games I have acquired a print copy. Thanks partly to Kickstarter and partly to Frog God Games who I previously purchased Pathfinder materials from. Crowd-funding may be a source of many posts for this blog as I have several products derived from these sorts of projects or due from such projects. Come to think of it, this blog just became a lot more interesting due to that thought alone.

A major reason for finally getting a blog off the ground is the upcoming Swords & Wizardry Appreciation Day on April 17th. The growing list of blogs and overall energy of the S&W and OSR communities is infectious. Since I have a perfectly good copy of Swords & Wizardry in hand, I figured I would finally crack open the book. For Sword & Wizardry Appreciation Day, my perspective will be mostly as a 'newish school' gamer looking at an old school style system for the first time, 'newish' since I started at the end of 2nd edition (and still play the system), but spent most of my time in 3E/3.5E and more recently Pathfinder. Then again, by now with 5E on the way, everything is 'old school' in some sense. Everything under the many suns of the 'verse is fair gaming.

H