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Wednesday, February 5, 2014

Old gaming materials- what's worth posting?

I've been digging through old boxes lately, and came across a lot of old RPG and miniature campaign materials I wrote back in the day. I could type up interesting bits from one or more over time and scan or redraw the maps but don't want to bother with stuff nobody is interested in.  Please chime in with comments if any of it piques your curiosity. A couple of projects at the end of the list are already digital but would take reworking from their web-1.0 design.

These are listed in a vague overlapping chronological order.
  1. More dungeon notes and house rules from my original D&D game - keys to various dungeon maps I've already posted, my take on a hybrid Vancian/spell point system circa 1976 or 77, etc.
  2. Homebrew medieval skirmish rules descended from Chainmail's man to man and fantasy supplement. A spiritual sibling to the Heritage Knights and Magick rules that I played a bit later after they gave me a copy at a con where I was running my game.
  3. 79 to 82 or so Runequest 1 & 2 campaign - a not particularly canonical version of the Sartar/Tarsh border region. My Sartar wasn't barbaric and mythical enough in retrospect, but we had a lot of fun with it.
  4. Traveller - some subsector maps and keys, a few planetary maps, encounter tables, a couple of ship plans that would need redrawing to be interesting, pretty basic stuff.
  5. The Morrow Project. I was one of the playtesters and have some maps and campaign notes from my post-apocalyptic Illinois campaign. I didn't GM it much so its pretty thin. 
  6. Aftermath - notes and NPCs from a short campaign
  7. Stalking the Night Fantastic - I ran one epic run of Stalking, set at Michigan State University and very loosely based on the Dallas Egbert disappearance D&D media splash situation. It was very much off the cuff but I could probably reconstruct it more or less.
  8. Early 80s FGU Bushido campaign - mechanically interesting in that I converted the combat system to an Aftermath-lite system, quite lethal Samurai duels, rather crunchy. There's the combat rules used, campaign rules, background material for one Daimyo's lands, some hexes broken down in more detailed subhex maps, and some detailed location scenarios I could scan or redraw to a more presentable standard. Bushido and Aftermath are sister systems so they slot together extremely well, if you like nasty wounds and D30 hit locations on the body.
  9. The Forty Cities Campaign - Eventually nearly every hardcore RPG GM writes up a set of rules. This was mine, written in '82-83. It is a D30 based system, since those were new at the time and I was enamored of them, of a crunch level similar to Runequest, and was my personal synthesis of SCA combat, RQ, Bushido, etc at the time.  It had one of those two stats combine for base value skill systems and the beginnings of a psionics as magic system.  The rules were worked out well enough to have a couple good playtest runs at the time, but the campaign foundered as I moved west for grad school.  Had nice crowquill ink map of a land mass plus an archipelago of city states, some detailing of politics for some of them, and some scenario notes but never got that far on it, drawing and stats of a few weird creatures, etc.  I liked it, it was playable in so far as it was developed, but I never wanted to take it to the point of being publishable. Now it would be mainly an example of yet another game embodying early eighties design sensibility by somebody who knew their way around probability curves and RPG and wargame mechanics.
  10. Mid-80s Renaissance Miniatures Tony Bath style campaign world, sort of a simplified, miniaturized fantasy Europe/Middle East/North Africa with something like 8 or 10 countries, heavily worked out for politics and economic base of each, some diplomatic correspondence, foundered due to the time it took, but good map with a lot of supporting detail suitable to being a pseudo-historical fantasy world circa 1600 level tech. We played a couple of campaign turns, few battles, some skirmish games, and a really good light roleplaying scenario using a hybrid of OD&D and the Sword and Pistol skirmish rules for combat mechanics. 
  11. Vom Kriege - boardgame for 2 to 6 players that I designed based on the mechanics in GDW's A House Divided. Its a Horse and Musket game in a point to point movement fantasy continent filled with vaguely European sounding city & province names. It is sort of like GDW's Soldier King and inspired by a brief description I had read of Soldier King. I put it together when Soldier King was out of print and I wanted to play something like it. I eventually got Soldier King, but I think I like Vom Kriege better. Of course I am biased.
  12. D&D dungeons & campaign map from my mid-late 80s OD&D nostalgia campaign.
  13. Rencounter - my generic skirmish rules that work up to about the year 1900 - I could get the rules back together in an updated format with better illustrations, incorporate the later combat rules variant that never made it in, make it a PDF for printing, etc.
  14. Dig out stuff from the old Ed's Hobby Hovel website backup hard drive if it still runs - lots of miniatures stuff from the '90s, DBM, colonials, Rencounter, Monster Mash, ship photos, old newpaper illustration scans, etc.


2 comments:

  1. 1, 3 and 13 please Ed! I love original D&D, really enjoy early Runequest and we had lots of fun in our group using Rencounter for ECW skirmish games.

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    Replies
    1. Thanks, Michael. That's exactly the kind of feedback I need.

      ECW was one of my favorite periods for Rencounter too, along with Colonials and Old West.

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