Sunday, March 02, 2008

an artifact of gaming past

I found a bunch of old maps and stuff while sifting through my game stuff yesterday. One of the things I dound was my ratty old copy of Dungeon Masters Adventure Log. A bunch of pages are missing from it, but one page from an old session was intact. Click for a bigger, legible view.This info dates from '85 or '86, back when my original crew went through the Temple of Elemental Evil in one caffeine-fueled weekend of gaming. The stats above look like where the party would have stood maybe after clearing out the Moathouse. Was there an article in Dragon round about that time talking about using Hero Points in D&D? We got most of our crazy variants from Dragon articles.

6 comments:

  1. Anonymous4:33 PM

    Great to see Spugnoir on that sheet, even though he was listed as 'quit'. In every game of TOEE I've run he and Furnok have always joined the party.

    As for hero points, I know that they were a concept introduced in TSRs short lived Conan modules, perhaps that was the source of the inspiration?

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  2. I still have about a pound and a half of gaming paperwork from the early-to-mid 80s, and I'm downright irrational about preserving them ... Even when I'm (literally) chucking hundreds of pounds of RPG books into the dumpster to prepare for a move, I'm carefully sifting through each one to rescue stray character sheets, maps, and notes.

    I also squee (and then quickly compose myself and see if anyone overheard) whenever I find note-heavy RPG material in used bookstores. Other people's old gaming paperwork is also a joy to me, so thanks for sharing some of yours ;)

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  3. BTW, I just love that particular piece of Otus art, with the whole vibe of tons of danger immediately above and below (as well as in front of) our doughty heroes ...

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  4. I hate throwing away gaming material I've written, and my current room is too small to keep it around (no shelves or closets).

    As a result the leather case where I keep *all* my current Tekumel campaign stuff is kept is getting heavier by the week as more and more paper is added. One of these days I might brake my spine carrying to a session.

    Let no one say good GMs don't suffer for their gaming.

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  5. I'm just starting to really run into this problem. My wife and I just moved across the country, and we let go of a bookcase or two in the process. Now I've got a long box full of binders, folders, notebooks and loose paper, all of which are notes for old campaigns, adventures I never ran, and brainstormed ideas.

    Letting go of some of my older gamebooks was relatively easy, but I'm dreading going through those folders. It's tough to throw out ideas, no matter how old, and the game notes always bring back such great memories.

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  6. A whole bunch of D&D stuff got passed down to me by a friend's older brother last year, and the notes on those are hilarious. You know, the kinds of stuff that 13-year-old boys write on character sheets. Things like SPECIAL SKILLS: "Ramming swords up goblin asses."

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