Thursday, March 05, 2009

30 sides of crazy

As far as I can tell the Armory was a game store that turned distributor at some point. In the 80’s they advertised regularly in Dragon, hawking Asgard miniatures imported from the UK and Armory brand dice. They often ran lists of stores that carried their wares, which was one of the few reliable ways to find a local shop back in the day. (That was one of the many ways pre-internet Dragon served as a lifeline to the larger gaming scene.) The Armory also published a few of their own gamebooks, three of which were designed specifically to give you something to do with your Armory brand thirty sided dice. I used to own all three books, but I sold them as part of 2001’s Operation: Make Some Space in the Game Room For a Crib. Recently I re-acquired the last and weirdest of the three published d30 books, The Thirty Sided Adventure and Other Tales.

The first two d30 books weren’t bad. One oddity had all the interior illos be miniature sketches from the Asgard line, presumably to save on the art budget. I seem to recall that one of them was considerably more pedestrian than the other. My gut tells me it was Dan Cole’s 30 Sided Gaming Tables that was the weaker entry, but I can’t swear to it. Even so, I tried hard to get some use out of all three books. I think Cole’s tome had the d30 chart, for instance, that listed thirty different weapons so you could roll up a fighter’s starting proficiencies. I used that one for quite a few NPCs in my Bandit Kingdoms campaign. But the other two written by Bob Liddil had more mojo. I’m pretty sure it was Liddil’s The 30 Sided Character and Other Tales that contained a character quirk chart that I used on some of Baron Phostarius’ followers. That experiment resulted in my campaign’s first canonical lesbian when a female NPC ended up with “passionate for gypsy women”.


The Thirty Sided Adventure and Other Tales was part book o’ charts, part adventure module, and part campaign guide for Liddil’s goofball Strange Lands setting. Sometimes when I read the Strange Lands material I find it delightfully corny. Other times I find it lame as heck. (Maybe this is how normal gamers react to Arduin?) Even when I’m not digging the material, I still appreciate the fact that Liddil put himself into the material. Not everyone is going to want to adventure in a world where the sailors are all lycanthropes and the Grand Canyon is crawling with snake cultists, but I gotta give the guy credit for trying. And his chart Things Slipped Into Your Rucksack By Your Aunt Millie (Because She Loves You) is the direct ancestor of my Deck O’ Stuff.


Last I checked these books still came up on eBay and Noble Knight every once in a while for not-completely-unreasonable prices. Oh, wait, I just checked Noble Knight and they want forty freakin' bucks for 30 Sided Adventure. Never mind. Liddil is selling a fourth installment in the d30 series online, with a sample page here.

11 comments:

  1. The Armory was once my local game store here in MD, and was the public front-end for Alliance Distribution. I'm pretty sure Alliance is still there, but The Armory part is long gone.

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  2. I used to go to the Armory to buy my games back in the 80s. The best part was that they let you wander around back in the warehouse area, where there were endless boxes of games, some of which would presumably be shipped to other game stores as part of their involvement in distribution. There were always these lonely dust-covered boxes on shelves filled with ancient artifacts of the hobby. I picked up some early Judges Guild stuff that way. A pity they don't exist anymore.

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  3. I had a friend who worked for the Armory and later got to know a bunch of guys from Alliance when I used to work in retail (for comic book, game and anime stores). Armory made the best poor quality miniatures paint on the market. They made it and mixed it themselves right in the warehouse in MD. They dumped the line for safety reasons as well as economic. I kind of gave up painting minis when Armory paints disappeared. I mean, what was I going to do if no one was making colors like Black Iron, Glow-in-the-Dark and Burnt Steel.

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  4. James beat me to it, but yes, I loved the fact that shopping at the Armory meant wandering around somewhat aimlessly in their warehouse. While you were shopping you'd see clerks walking around picking up items to fill orders for shipment. Pretty cool.

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  5. What's all this 1-to-30 business on those dice?? My gaming tables book was black, and my Armory d30's (one orange, one white) were numbered 0 to 9, three times - with the number preceded by a "+", a "-", or nothing. You had to figure out the numeric result of a die roll based on that enigmatic configuration.

    You kids - you had it so much easier than we did. ;D

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  6. Oh, and BTW: Whether by the Hand of Fate or by mere happenstance, my earlier blog post is yet another d30 table!

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  7. Ironically, I just pulled out my copy of 30 Sided Adventure out from storage a couple of days ago. Something's in the air...

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  8. These D30 posts always make me a little nostalgic and sad. About 8 years ago the large tote bag I was using to haul manuals back and forth to the game got stolen -- disappearing my entire collection of WEG Star Wars manuals (12+ books) and, more tragically, my dicebag.

    That's how I lost (a) the dicebag my father gave me; (b) the first dice I ever gamed with; (c) my Zocchi D100; and (d) my big purple D30.

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  9. I remember the Armory ads, but I sure don't recall any of those products.

    I've always had a D30, but I think I only ever used it every few years to randomize a day of the month. Because I hate how dragons do damage based on hit points, I am thinking of using a D30 for fire breath damage next time the players tussle with one.

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  10. Certainly remember the Armory (or was it Armoury) ads in Dragon...I think the D30 books were advertised too. One thing is for certain though, when you can buy a copy of Fight On #X from Lulu for approx. $15 and get at least 5x the content there is no way in heck I'm buying the 4th installment in the D30 saga for $15.95! ROI is just not there...Fight On on the other hand ;-)

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  11. I'm not certain but in the documentary Darkon--which is about a large scale fantasy LARP--I think one of the guys they focus on is the son of one of owners the Armory, but bad blood between he and his brother set the stage for the business to fail. Its a tragic story and is presented as such in the film. Anybody know more about this?

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