My High School D&D Campaign

Tarniss is the background world setting for the Dungeoneer card game. It appears in the flavor text, character names, and monster you encounter while playing. Tarniss was based on my middle school D&D campaign world that I developed all throughout high school, and into my early 20's as well. It went by many names, originally called Talindor. Fortunately I kept many of the notes, drawings, and maps in a binder. One of the few things I still have from back then.

This is the very earliest map drawing I have in my binder.

It has been a long time since I looked at this. It's surprising how many of the original names and much of the original contour survived through multiple revisions and development of the world. In the late 80's I got my first IBM computer, I don't know when I first drew a digital version of this map but I found this printout.

You can see it's called The Empire of the Domains. A title that represented this was just one of many domains in the solar system. It was a little influenced by Spelljammer there were multiple planets, or domains, you could visit. Some had pretty wild geography and the planets were crazy shapes that look a bit like polyhedral dice. Maybe I'll post some drawings of that when they get scanned in.

As a fantasy world made by a middle-schooler it doesn't exactly have an amazing high concept. Eldritch Lords long ago stole the secret of magic from the elves, turned against them, tore the world apart with their dark arts until they were overthrown by the free peoples. At one point a demon lord created a portal into Tarniss and spread a plague of demons who were beaten back through the portal which was sealed with an eternal lightning storm. It's essentially a gonzo medley of a fantasy world with everything thrown in. But we sure had a lot of fun exploring it.

A Chainmail Retro-Clone

I've been playing around with the idea of creating a Chainmail retro-clone. Now that Beasties II is done, this is the next book on my schedule. The original book itself, like all early TSR products, is a scattershot with random organization. For example poring over the text for information on any unit type shows bits of valuable game information scattered across various tables and sections.

A while back I did a little personal project to reformat the original Chainmail to make it more useful for my gaming group. Since Chainmail is not public domain I couldn't disseminate it, other than showing a few fair use page examples (I was even warned on one forum not to post any more images of it).

I wouldn't be the first to make a retro-clone of Chainmail. There is Grognard which you can learn about here. Also there is Platemail, and the excellent Swordplay & Spellcraft that takes it into an RPG direction. There are probably others I don't know about. Grognard is closest to what I envision for a retro-clone as it stays close to the source mechanically, but it doesn't get the aesthetic quality I'm seeking. So here is a little example. This takes all the information of an Anti-Hero unit, puts it all together into one stat block with a cool illustration to decorate it.

Anti-Heroes
Division: Chaos
Point Value: 20

Combat 1:20: 4 figures as unit type +1 die (see below)

Combat 1:1: 4 figures as unit type (see below)

Combat FC: Hero
Hit Points: 4
Move: see below
Charge: see below
Road bonus: as unit type
Missile Range: by weapon type
Morale: n/a

Special Abilities:
Never need to check morale.
Add 1 to dice of their unit for 1:20 combat results.
Last figure in unit to be killed by regular missile fire or melee.
May engage in regular melee with normal troops, 1:1 combat with other heroes/anti-heroes, or engage with fantastic creatures on Fantasy Combat table. (See below)
A Hero-type, armed with a bow, shoots a dragon passing within range overhead out of the air and kills it on a two dice roll of 10 or better (9 or better when firing an enchanted arrow).
Anti-heroes have the fighting ability of four figures. Their class of figure is dependent on the arms and equipment of the Anti-hero types themselves, who can range from Light Foot to Heavy Horse.
Melee (1:20) Combat: Anti-heroes are the equivalent of 4 figures. They move, charge, fire missiles, attack and defend per their class. When meleed by regular troops, four simultaneous kills must be scored against Anti-heroes to eliminate them. Otherwise, there is no effect upon them.
Man to Man (1:1) Combat: Similar to Melee Combat.
Fantasy Combat: Anti-heroes may be attacked individually by enemy troops of like type (such as other Hero-types) or creatures shown on the Fantasy Combat Table. Anti-heroes may act independent of their command in order to combat some other fantastic character.

Gen Con 50

With all the preparation for Gen Con, and being so busy at the con I haven't posted much here lately. Time to change that!

I first attended Gen Con back in 2000 when 3rd edition D&D came out. It was mind-blowingly awesome. I attended several years in a row and started showing there when they moved to Indianapolis in 2003. I stopped attending around 2011. I showed there again this year for the first time in years. The Artist Alley has gotten so good, and the show has grown exponentially with the rise of the popularity of boardgames.

This year, the 50th anniversary, they did something special and made a tribute to the first Gen Con with a recreation of the Horticultural Hall and an exhibit of the history of tabletop gaming specifically related to wargaming and RPG's.

I took several pictures. Here are a few to start with:

Recreation of the Horticultural Hall Entrance

Early Gen Con Program Guides

Early Editions of Chainmail

The Original DMG Cover Art!

Dave Sutherland III's Original Iconic Paladin in Hell Drawing

Early Draft of D&D and the Contract Between TSR and Dave Arneson

A firefighter, a soldier in full gear, and a medieval armored fighter

"A firefighter and a soldier in full gear bear the same load as a medieval armoured fighter. Which one will perform best on the run?"

This video displayed in the exhibition "Armatus Corpus" at the Military Museum, Castle of Morges, Switzerland is a pretty fascinating comparison. The clip shows how well designed medieval armor really was.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAzI1UvlQqw

Cavaliers & Roundheads - TSR's first book

A common misconception is that Chainmail was TSR's first book and out of that came OD&D. The history is much more convoluted and interesting than that.

Cavaliers & Roundheads was TSR's first publication, and the sales were intended to help fund publishing OD&D. In a cruel twist of fate things went awry and the history of TSR became a convoluted mess after that. But that is another story.

OD&D was already well into development when Cavaliers & Roundheads was published. So this game had little impact on OD&D except in a few cosmetic ways. The format of the book: saddle-stitched digest sized. A cover that established the basic layout printed monochrome on textured paper. Plain san serif font body text, clean simple layout. Crude amateurish art.

Cavaliers & Roundheads is like a cliff's notes version of Chainmail. It is succinct, to the point, has no fluff except a couple of pages of art describing uniforms. And it is musketeer-like focused on its topic: the English Civil War of 1642. No dragons, no uber powered Landsknechte, just English, Scottish, and Irish troops battling for the political fate of the Kingdom of England. Even if you're not a history buff you've no doubt heard the famous name Oliver Cromwell, this war is why.

 

Skimming through it the system appears very similar if not identical to Chainmail. Considering it has the same authors that isn't surprising. I just got this copy and am still reading through it, I hope to get a few play tests in to get a feel for how it works. I've started a post over at ODD74 if you want to follow along as I read and comment on it.

http://odd74.proboards.com/thread/12450/read-cavaliers-roundheads

All About the Original Edition

Jon Peterson once again doing a great job taking us through the hallowed halls of D&D history.

Happy Birthday E.G.G.

Really Old School Monster Manual

http://bibliodyssey.blogspot.com/2011/07/monstrorum-historia.html

Really Old School Monster Manual

http://bibliodyssey.blogspot.com/2011/07/monstrorum-historia.html