The Last Great D&D Game

[OldSchoolGamer]

The year is 1985, and it's time for the last great Dungeons and Dragons game of your life.  So grab those books, that case of Coke, those Doritos, those Black Sabbath and AC/DC albums, and those dice.  It's gaming time!

Oh, you'll play D&D again after today, but somehow, deep down inside, you know it won't quite be the same.  Graduation is in a couple weeks, you start your summer job, make your move, or begin your Army duty a week or two afterwards.  That won't leave much time for your hobbies.  You'll steal an evening here, a day there, perhaps, if you're lucky.  But it won't be the same. 

So you're making this one a campaign for the record books.  It's going to run from Friday at dinner to who knows when on Sunday afternoon.  What's more, someone came up with the idea of appearing in-character, dressed for the part.  So you've all decided to go medieval.  You rented a cabin at the lake a few miles out of town, up in the hills.  It's like a graduation present...for yourselves.  You want the game to be as realistic as possible.

But that night, it will become more real than you could possibly have imagined...

This is a story where a D&D game comes to life.  I picture it will be dark and gritty in places (orc sex, anyone?) and beautiful in others.  Characters can gradually turn into D&D-style adventurers, or remain 20th-century people in a rather interesting place.  There will be a deeper plot...I don't want to give away the story, but characters will uncover a storyline here, and find threads tying the world they find themselves in with Earth.  There will be elements of Stirling and Edgar Rice Burroughs here, as both of these writers treated the juxtaposition of eras extensively in their work.  The opportunity to return to Earth at times may present itself.

Anyone interested?

[Ryvaken]

Interested? Mesmerized, more like.

Query. Are we restricted to character concepts that would have existed in 1985's D&D?

[Far eyes]

A highly interesting concept

Is this going to be 3.5E, as my experience with 1 and 2E is limited?

Core books or is anything outside that allowed

[NightBird]

I have so many fond memories of those high school D&D games in the early 80s. I'd love to do this, especially if it's limited to the core classes for the old-style feel. I still have my 2E collection in boxes somewhere, but 3rd is probably easier with the SRD available for free.

I'm thinking elven ranger... as close to the character I played back then as I can manage.

[Muse]

Oh, lordy, Ty!  This is so PERFECT! 

(Please tell me your sticking to your guns for 2E D&D!) 

[WraithBlade]

*still has his AD&D books...*

[Far eyes]

Has ADnD books but newer really got weary much into the mechanics, would need a tincy wincy bit of help with it. But I <3 the spell durations. Armor or Charm person anybody

[BK Geno]

Oh, oh, oh. I want to join! Can I be a half dragon?

[firestorm]

This sounds like a fun game!  I'd dig up my AD&D rulebooks for this in a heartbeat.

[Ryvaken]

Right then, I'm out. Fun concept, love the genre, but for the first time in my life I'm a gamer generation too young.

[firestorm]

Well, to be fair, I don't think a system has actually been mentioned yet -- but 2e WOULD be appropriate for a game supposedly run in 1985.  Then again, I don't think a little historical inaccuracy will spoil the game any.

[kongming]

As far as I recall, 2E was easy: the majority of it  (beyond character creation and some basics) is all made up on the spot, each group running their own patchwork of houserules out of necessity. Apparently character optimisation was easy too: lie about rolling an 18/00 for STR, nothing else to it. None of these "options" kids have these days  ;)

...I couldn't help myself. I just had to sass it.

(Incidentally, I love the idea and would join, but I don't want to be irresponsible here - I currently have been disregarding the games I'm in too much, and ZK has first dibs on me when I get moving again. Otherwise, I would enjoy this a lot.)

[Muse]

*Chortles*  Kon-chan no kawaii desu ne! 

[HairyHeretic]

Could be a lot of fun, but I'm not sure my last D&D character would quite fit ... Rabid Snarling Badger, the half orc monk :)

[Sarat]

OH OH I WANNA PLAY! If it's 2nd that is.....not the pansy non char dying 3.5 version. I want the 2nd edition, gritty, be careful, Save v. Death, one wrong step and you die, version. Now THATS what I'm talkin about! Hardcore. But yeah, I want to play, even if it's not 2nd. Muse can vouch for me...=)

[schnookums]

Man, I shouldn't get involved in another game, but I want to play too...

[Lanzlo]

This sounds great. I want in, even if (or perhaps because) it is Old Skool D&D.

[RubySlippers]

I would but I just threw out my 2E D&D books since I'm moving and had to lighten my stuff and never expected to play it again. 3E is better anyway.

:P

[Tawny]

*has many many many ad&d books, 1st and 2nd ed, plus some advanced/expert rules for the original d&d*  Hmmm.. I might be interested, depending on how swiftly the game moves.  I am in quite a few games here and elsewhere, plus tabletop game or games on the weekend, and WoW.  ;D

What edition would it be???  Please say 1st or 2nd ed :) :) :) *giggle*

[OldSchoolGamer]

Wow...I didn't think my little idea would be so popular.   :-)

A couple of clarifications here:

1) The story itself features modern characters (not D&D) who find themselves in a D&D-style world whilst playing a game of AD&D Second Edition.  Therefore the game itself is not starting as any version of D&D per se.  

2) The way the game works, your characters can transform into first-level Second Edition D&D characters.  Yes, I'm going to be using Second Edition because Third Edition is way too much system overhead.  I'd rather spend my time creating the storyline than consulting 12 diferent tables to resolve 6 variables modified 5 different ways to determine exactly how a goblin gets spavined.

3) As DM I do tend to interpret rules as guidelines rather than absolutes.  I also assign traits to characters...special mods that I think most 3E enthusiasts would agree help bring some of the customizability of 3E to 2E.   For example, a character with a yen for reckless charges into battle might get a trait of Hard Charger, which would give him a +1 to hit but -1 on AC during his first melee attack in a battle.  

[HairyHeretic]

Would the players physically transform into their characters (fully or partially)? I presume they'd have their characters skills and knowledge as well as their own? And what game world would you be using? Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk? That would affect the choice of characters available.

[OldSchoolGamer]

That would depend solely on the player's role-playing decisions.  Players could have their characters "go native," in which case they would slowly but surely acquire the abilities, real and fantastic, of a D&D character (not necessarily the one they were playing).  Or players could have their characters try and be like David Innes in Pellucidar, using their knowledge of 21st-century technology to "civilize" the fantasy world.

Or try to, as this world bites back...

But no, there's not going to be a moment of instantaneous transition when the characters will suddenly get all these cool powers.

Would the players physically transform into their characters (fully or partially)? I presume they'd have their characters skills and knowledge as well as their own? And what game world would you be using? Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk? That would affect the choice of characters available.

[HairyHeretic]

Hmm. So how would you handle magic, both mages and clerics? Seems to me it would be kinda tricky to have those powers just start appearing.

[Muse]

 So, no physical transformation, then?  For example, if I, as a male human, was playing a female elf, would I wind up in a trans gendered story? 

[OldSchoolGamer]

So, no physical transformation, then?  For example, if I, as a male human, was playing a female elf, would I wind up in a trans gendered story? 

You would remain yourself...you would simply "become" a D&D character.  If you wanted to undergo a gender transformation, I could always arrange for you to find an amulet of gender reversal.  ;-)

[Far eyes]

Remembers the belt from BG I  ;D

[Muse]

*Chuckles*  Ah, the ever popular girlde of femenininty/masculinity.  Just keep it away from Minsk! 

[Mindhazingsquid]

I'm in too, this sounds like much fun!

[OldSchoolGamer]

Note that I am also recruiting for monsters to meet the D&Ders on the other side.

[Brylion]

I would love to play this game, if you're still looking for players.

[Sarat]

Seriously, where do I sign up?

[Josh the Aspie]

What kind of monsters?

[Far eyes]

Is the game happening, I would be interested in playing as a monster or as a player I am happy with both and have some ideas

[OldSchoolGamer]

Is the game happening, I would be interested in playing as a monster or as a player I am happy with both and have some ideas

Yes, the game is happening...I was away on business for a few days.

PM me with character concepts for humans from this world that find themselves in the D&D world, or humanoid monsters in the D&D world.  In both cases, your character will likely begin with some history I invent, in addition to the history you come up with.

[Zakharra]

 Oh, this sounds very interesting. It sounds like a 'Guardians of the Flame' sort of game. I would like to try it, have room for another?

[OldSchoolGamer]

Oh, this sounds very interesting. It sounds like a 'Guardians of the Flame' sort of game. I would like to try it, have room for another?

Sure....just PM me.

[OldSchoolGamer]

Founded by ex-miners in 1892, Winchester is a medium-sized town in the Central Valley of California, tucked into the east side, right where the flat farmlands begin to be folded into the gently rolling orchards and forests of the Sierra Nevada foothills.  Because of the state college, the town has more than its share of nerds and gamers.  This being the brave old year of 1985, Dungeons and Dragons has yet to gain a widespread following outside that group...

Winchester has its share of secrets...perhaps when the Internet is widespread and researchers put the pieces together, the town will be investigated more thoroughly.  But for now, the town's secrets rest in a dozen disconnected places, in the memories of old-timers, in the records of the railroad company whose workers found odd artifiacts of an unseen tribe of Indians as well as a skeleton that fit no known species, the airmen at the now-defunct Army Air Corps base who noticed that compasses became hopelessly queered over the east woods, the local sorority that lost two sisters during an initiation back in 1979.  The long-defunct East Town Circus that plied the Central Valley during the Twenties and Thirties, having amongst its attractions, a green-skinned "freak of nature" called Pig-Man.

Bits and pieces, yes...but no one to put them together.

But on the night of April 5th, 1985, a group of D&D players at a cabin to the east of Winchester will learn the town's incredible secret. 

Whether any survive to tell the tale is another question.

[Chameleon]

Are you still looking for more players... playing players?

[OldSchoolGamer]

After slugging it out with a few days of RL bullshit, here is the thread opener I wrote:

https://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?topic=10523.0

[OldSchoolGamer]

Oh, if you sent me a character or monster concept, and I didn't respond, please re-send it.  The area the characters will be in is an orc-infested land near a human settlement.

[OldSchoolGamer]

I'm still looking for monsters and other denizens to play in the D&D world laid out here: https://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?topic=10534.0

Note that monsters should be humanoid.  Drow are not allowed.  Your monsters can gain experience and have their own plotlines...you will not be mere foils for the human adventurers from Earth.

[Sarat]

Are you gone still Ty?

[OldSchoolGamer]

I'm back now...all I can say is this summer's been a balls-up for me.  But I am still keenly interested in this game and storyline.

[Sarat]

Cool. I enjoy reading it. Any need for another player? =P

[OldSchoolGamer]

I'm actually in the process of expanding it into a full-fledged campaign, writing some backstory and campaign materials. 

[Caustic]

so, you need resubmits? 

[OldSchoolGamer]

No resubmits...I'm going to adapt existing characters to the milieu.  It will take a little time, but I do believe everyone will find it to be worth the wait.  There will be races and deities defined...for monsters as well as humans and demihumans.  I'd like to do more than just a cobbled-together hack-and-slash.

[Caustic]

No resubmits...I'm going to adapt existing characters to the milieu.  It will take a little time, but I do believe everyone will find it to be worth the wait.  There will be races and deities defined...for monsters as well as humans and demihumans.  I'd like to do more than just a cobbled-together hack-and-slash.

OK.  Assuming you received the first submission.

[OldSchoolGamer]

Here is the beginnings of a sourcebook for Palmatia, the town in which the adventure takes place:

The campaign setting of Palmatia begins in and around the eponymous town.  Home to about 50,000 souls, the town of Palmatia is expected to become a full-fledged city in another generation or two.  Provided it is able to survive, of course…more on that a bit later.

The origins of Palmatia are lost in the smoke of the post-Firefall world.  Approximately one thousand years ago, a catastrophe befell the world.  (Some sages believe there may be areas of the world that were less affected, or unaffected, but no contact has been made with these areas, if in fact they exist.)  The most visible sign of the catastrophe was the storm of meteorites that fell from the heavens, blasting the landscape, raising tsunamis, and bringing a violent end to a human civilization which, according to most accounts, was more advanced than what the human race has managed to achieve at the current time.
 
After the Firefall came several years of intense heat.  Summers were long and hot, winters short and mild.  Droughts overran many of the temperate regions, with hurricanes blowing across the tropics.  The climate then lurched in the other direction, nearly tipping the planet into an Ice Age.  Magic ceased to function for nearly two decades.  By most accounts, 25 years after the Firefall, the human population was about a fifth of what it had been…
But by the end of the fourth decade, magic returned to the world, and the climate stabilized.  The human race began the long climb back…for the first couple centuries in villages and hamlets, and by the fourth century, into towns.  By the end of the fifth century, certain aspects of human civilization pre-Firefall began to reassert themselves.  The nations and kingdoms and fiefs that had existed before the Firefall had been blasted, fried and frozen into insignificance, lost in the dusts and snows.  The tendency of humans to gather into groups, to forge nations which then turned against nation…that had emerged unscathed, merely waiting for the chance to reassert itself.

By the middle of the sixth century, the Great Game was underway in earnest.

Three mighty city-states emerged: the Light of Letheese, the Sangoonis, and the Empire of Northwood.  The first was run by the clerics of Suun, the Illuminated One, to whom all other gods were false and of the forces of darkness.  The second was a polyglot seafaring state, an empire in all but name, whose corsairs and tradesmen owned or controlled ports for a hundred miles up and down the coast, through which leftover bits and pieces of the Old World—the world before the Firefall—flowed.  The third involved an alliance between druids, elves and backwoods humans who did not care to be under the boot of the Letheese.

For three centuries, these three nations vied for power…sometimes peacefully, often not so.  Late in the eighth century, hoplites and cavalry from a race of bronze-skinned humanoids calling themselves the Children of Alexander landed on the coast, swiftly asserting control and founding a new city-state, bringing strange gods and goddesses like Zeus, Aphrodite, Hermes and Poseidon.  For a time, the existing three united to try and drive these newcomers into the sea from whence they came, but were fought to a standstill in an epic battle in the hills surrounding the Alexandrian city.  By blood and bronze and courage and iron, the Alexandrians established their right to exist in this new land.

Besides, an old threat made new had taken the spotlight…

Just as humans had been making their recovery from the Firefall, so had the Benighted Races…the orcs, the gnolls, the trolls, the hill giants.  They had been a bit slower to recover…but their very fecundity ensured that these races would recover…and once their recovery began, it would proceed rapidly.  And it did…and in the present time, the four Nations of Man are finding more and more of their energies devoted to confronting the threat posed by the Benighted Races.

As if these conflicts are not sufficient, sages and peddlers alike whisper that the Firefall appears to have opened doorways between this world and another with strange people and things.  Legends are too numerous to be dismissed…a metal, mechanical dragon that killed a cohort of the Benighted orcs, another group of people with jet-black skins calling themselves “Zoo-loo” quietly setting themselves up their own territory, still another olive-skinned tribe with sticks speaking fire and bearing a banner showing a rising sun whose raping and pillaging rivals that of the Benighted themselves.  And rumors have it that the Benighted are receiving help from a shadowy group of wizards from this other world, who quest for a black, gooey substance used in fire magic as their own supply of this substances runs low…

So where does this leave Palmatia?

For the past two centuries, Palmatia has managed to avoid being drawn into the conflicts between the city-states, mainly by virtue of its ocation.  Situated far from the capitals of the city-states, Palmatia has been but a footnote in the plots and schemes of the great powers.  Freed from having to play a role in the affairs of the powerful, the town has prospered...until the rise of the Benighted began to cast a shadow about a decade ago.

Not pledging fealty to a liege lord did wonders for the Palmatian economy, but its military was sorely lacking.  So when the nascent orc and gnoll tribes began raiding, there was little the town could do...

But the humanoid denizens of the deep woods were as crafty as they were wicked.  Two tribes menaced Palmatia: the orcish Fist of the Iron Claw, and the gnoll Pack of the New Moon.  While the two different species clashed with each other at times, usually an uneasy peace existed.  And rather than sack the town, the tribes opted for an approach that was more leech-like than wolf-like.  First it was the theft of a cow or sheep here and there.  Then, as the Benighted grew bolder, the occasional maiden was taken, "used," and then returned...often carrying monstrous offspring.

As the monstrous tribes gradually become bolder and more numerous, Palmatia has almost become two towns.  One is the Palmatia of the daytime, which looks like a normal town.  Merchants, smiths, farmers and hunters ply their business.  There is laughter and commerce...children playing.

But as the sun dips low and the shadows grow long, the other Palmatia shows through.  Cattle are brought inside, doors are locked, and womenfolk in particular are kept indoors.  The Terror makes itself felt as the twilight deepens and the stars begin to come out.  Especially for those living near the edge of town, sleep does not come easily.  There is the dread of that knock at the door, and an inhuman voice demanding something...perhaps silver...maybe food...perhaps a cow...or, more and more often, a wife or daughter...

[OldSchoolGamer]

Okay, I know as far as posting rate I've been something of a jag-off lately (mainly due to system/connectivity problems) but I've actually gotten this game going again.  I also got ahold of a cellular PDA/phone, so I can login and update it from work between calls.