Tuesday, August 05, 2008

Poor Randy

The following note was found inside a recently acquired copy of Ready Ref Sheets, an old Judges Guild book that's probably one of the most useful things ever published for OD&D. I've used it for several other editions of D&D as well. Anyway, here's the note:

I love finding stuff like this in old game books. It just warms my heart to see evidence of unknown people having some fun God knows how long ago.
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Posted by Jeff Rients at 6:57 PM
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9 comments:

  1. Patrick W. Rollens8:28 PM

    One of my friends has an old, much-loved copy of the 2nd ed. player's handbook that he got second-hand from a used bookstore. The previous owner -- almost certainly a precocious 13-year-old kid -- drew a series of complex schematics of various magic items on the white pages just inside the cover. One inscription, a sword hilt with a sizzling, jagged blade extending outward, was described as a "Lazar Sword," and a handwritten message noted that it "cuts through anything." The Lazar Sword has become a cult phenomenon in our local gaming group...anytime anything awesome or crazy happens, we invoke the legend of the Lazar Sword. It's become so sublime that we really ought to get t-shirts printed up.

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  2. David Larkins9:30 PM

    Yes! I think there should be a book of these, collected via an open call for submissions.

    I still have and treasure a note we passed to our GM many, many years ago: "That last demon sucked! Give us a REAL challenge!"

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  3. Max11:00 PM

    This is maybe old news, but I recently came across this phenomenal screed found in an old PHB. Brilliant!

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  4. S. John Ross11:06 PM

    I frequently buy copies of old RPG books in used bookstores - even when I already have a copy, even when I've already had a copy and tossed it in the garbage because I know I'll never play it again - when it's filled with personal notes. They are ambrosia.

    Last time I was in Newfoundland, I found a copy of an early Call of Cthulhu boxed set overflowing with personal campaign scribbles. Snapped it up immediately; took me days to get through reading it, never once bothering with the actual text printed on the page (which I already know pretty much by heart, anyway).

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  5. Questing GM4:05 AM

    I remembered there was someone over at ENWorld who mentioned that he found a character sheet in a OD&D boxed set with the player's name written as Aaron Williams.

    Can't find the link now

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  6. Anonymous1:31 PM

    A friend of mine has a second-hand DMG with the note "squared = times itsef[sic]" scrawled in a margin.

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  7. Toasty5:47 PM

    Heh. I also love finding those old adolescent notes in second hand games. Its almost as much fun as I had when I went back home (moved out 20 years ago) to hunt through my old box sets. Nothing like finding a few old Gamma World characters & a copy of Gangbusters I forgot I had. Its interesting how some old characters still have the smack of the emotion you may have attached to them even if its been decades since you last thought of them.

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  8. Anonymous9:00 AM

    Now the question is, were they going to use an alignment-changing sword on Randy, or change the alignment of Randy's sword?

    Either way, sounds like trouble.

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  9. Ron10:07 AM

    How cool would the Randy statement be silkscreened on a shirt, with the notebook lines and everything!? ha...

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