Thursday, February 14, 2008

coming... soon?

Generally all-around awesome D&D'er calithena has demanded that I email him a copy of my "Xylarthen's Tower" adventure that I ran at the con last Sunday. He's pretty much in a position to make such a demand because a while back he sent me a copy of House of the Axe, his super-nifty Arduin adventure for 3e. That was a load of fun to run.

But rather than just scan all my notes in and fire them off to cal, I think I'll try a make a presentable PDF download out of my mess of a dungeon key. The maps will be scans of my pencil-on-graph-paper originals, since I don't have the foggiest idea how to make a professional looking dungeon map. But the key will be cleaned up so that someone besides me will be able to read the text and know what the hell is going on. I'm planning on presenting the dungeon pretty much as it existed before the PCs from Sunday started plundering it, with the single exception that I simply must include the sickly mule they abandoned on level 1.

So that's my newest gaming project, a free PDF OD&D module. Of course I am now wondering when was the last time someone considered publishing an OD&D module. Are there any others out there on the net? And when was the last print OD&D adventure released?

10 comments:

  1. Anonymous1:28 PM

    I don't know about OD&D but a lot of people are putting up OSRIC stuff, and there is a demand for it.

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  2. Hey Jeff...

    I don't know if you remember or not, but I do have the entire Adobe Creative Suite 2 on my machine at home. With full Acrobat, InDesign, and Illustrator/Photoshop at my dispoasal, I can pretty up your manuscript and put it all in PDF format.

    Just a thought... Dave

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  3. From what I can ascertain, the last module printed for OD&D (if you include the B/X, BECMI, and Cyclopedia D&D under that term) would be In the Phantom's Wake, one of the Thunder Rift line, printed in 1993. Of the modules set in Mystara proper, that would be DD4: The Dymrak Dread, released in 1991. There were also several Hollow World modules released in 1992.

    That said, the modules I will publish at Adventure Games Publishing will follow in the OD&D tradition, though they will be designed for use with Castles & Crusades. I'm a huge fan of Mystara and OD&D (i.e., Cyclopedia D&D); it is my preferred edition to run and play. I'd love to actually publish something for OD&D, and there are even some simulacrum editions out there, but the market for C&C is bigger and growing, while the market for OD&D is stagnant at best.

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  4. Drat, that is supposed to be DDA4: The Dymrak Dread.

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  5. Anonymous1:12 AM

    I do think Mr. Rients does not include BECMI into his OD&D.

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  6. Anonymous1:29 AM

    I wonder what OD&D would've looked like if the 'net was a big thing back in '74 and EGG had access to it.

    The most refreshing thing I've encountered as I've dived into running OD&D is how open minded its fans are. It seems like half the forum traffic on it consists of house rules, variants, new classes, and other changes.

    It's been hard to resist house rules before I run the game, but I want a couple of sessions before I start changing things.

    - Mearls

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  7. Personally, I'm in the camp that maintains one must have an interpretation of the original rules to make them work. Whether you want to call that a set of house rules or not, I don't know.

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  8. Anonymous3:30 PM

    I remember that Cali was going to put together an OD&D sourcebook of sorts. Last fall he was soliciting contributions for it on Dragonsfoot and the OD&D Forum--you may want to include your adventure in that one, if the project's still under way.

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  9. Anonymous2:45 PM

    I certainly want to see this!

    - Zulgyan

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  10. Taking "OD&D" to mean "pre-Basic Set" (or "post-Basic Set & pre-Expert Set but not intended for use with the Basic Set")...

    The only OD&D TSR adventure, I think, would've been the Temple of the Frog in the Blackmoor supplement.

    Then you have the Wee Warriors stuff.

    Then you have the JG stuff done under license. I'm guessing the last would've been a JG module.

    No doubt the Acaeum crowd could provide a better answer, though.

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