Anyone remember the old "Compleat" series by Bard Games?

[Evil_Dead_Jedi]

I recently unearthed The Compleat Spell Caster and The Compleat Alchemist by Bard Games, both circa 1983 from an old box of RPG goodies in the basement. Anyone remember these? I am trying to create a homebrew world for use with C&C and I am excited about adding these to the mix.

Anyone got any good or bad memories about these old books? I particularly like the Witch/Warlock and the Necromancer from TCSC.

 

[Derulbaskul]

I really like the fiends they did in one of the books. I remember the empusa in particular.

 

[Voadam]

I always wanted those old ones, including the bestiary, but only ever owned the big Atlantis world book. Neat reading it sort of blended in a Hyborean type pseudo mythical world with Atlantis still there. During a sale I got pdfs of Morrigan Press' relatively recent redo of Atlantis and the Bestiary, but I've never seen the original Compleat's except in add covers. Enough to lead me to covet them though.

 

[Evil_Dead_Jedi]

Mechanics-wise, they were nothing spectacular, but they have this feel to them that just oozes fun.

 

[Psion]

I recently unearthed The Compleat Spell Caster and The Compleat Alchemist by Bard Games, both circa 1983 from an old box of RPG goodies in the basement. Anyone remember these? I am trying to create a homebrew world for use with C&C and I am excited about adding these to the mix.

Anyone got any good or bad memories about these old books? I particularly like the Witch/Warlock and the Necromancer from TCSC.

Someone in our group got the Compleat Alchemist, Spellcaster, and Adventurer; Alchemist had the biggest impact. The other two sort of faded away. I played an alchemist in a D&D game for a while; it was a lot of fun. Until I died.

They played a more prominent role when Bard Games came out with their Atlantis trilogy, which we played preferentially to D&D for a while. We had a blast with all the character options.

I recall recently someone asking about having alchemist PCs and some designer saying its a bad idea because alchemists are boring. He certainly never played in our Atlantis games.

I'd even play Atlantis today (the original one, not the omni-system thing). As for adapting to C&C... Atlantis had a saving throw system that vaguely resembles the C&C attribute check thing.

 

[Treebore]

Not only do I remember it but I am compiling it, plus Arcanum, and some elements from some 3E alchemist source books, into an Alchemist Class/system for my C&C as well. Plus I will be submitting it to Domesday, so you will see it if you subscribe, and they decide its worth publishing.

 

[Evil_Dead_Jedi]

Not only do I remember it but I am compiling it, plus Arcanum, and some elements from some 3E alchemist source books, into an Alchemist Class/system for my C&C as well. Plus I will be submitting it to Domesday, so you will see it if you subscribe, and they decide its worth publishing.

This is really awesome! I will check it out for sure! Thanks for the tip, and good luck with it.

 

[Taureth]

My older brother (now 41) had everything, back in the day, including these books. We used some of these books in his amalgam 1stEd/2ndEd/Misc. other stuff campaign that I first gamed in as a youngster.

I liked the rogue class from Adventurer as an alternative to thief, and played one for a short time. There were a few others in there I remember liking, at the time.

What I really liked was the Arcanum for the Atlantean setting. Really some (what I thought were) great classes in there, especially some of the spell casting classes and their spell lists. I would still say Arcanum is a good package for running a rules-light campaign, where you just want to have fun with some different sorts of roles and don't want to bog down in laborious character building. I still have that book, at least. My brother may have a few others.