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[OT] Dangerous Journeys: Who's Played It?
- Thread starter ColonelHardisson
- Start date
ColonelHardisson
What? Me Worry?
BluSponge said:Holy thread resurrection!!!! I just noticed the dates of the original posts.
Tom
Yeah, it's weird, huh? I guess back at that time, there must've been a rash of flame wars against various and sundry games, judging by how much I begged for people to keep it civil.
Jürgen Hubert
First Post
"My name is Jürgen, and I played Dangerous Journeys"
Chorus: "Hi, Jürgen!"
Seriously, from what I remember (how long has it been - 10 years?), the system wasn't half-bad in actual play, but I had the following problems with it:
- Character creation is a chore.
- Creating a magic-using character was even more of a chore.
- Trying to figure out the exact number of Heka points (magic points) was a major hassle. I think my character ended up with 1057 or something...
- Much if not most of the jargon was unneccessary.
- Even beginning magic-using characters knew a gazillion of spells. This is a problem, since at least in D&D you start out with a small number and gradually learn more about the spells as your character increases in level. But here you are hit over the head with the book of magic right from the start... and "Mythos Magic" is a big book.
I also found it odd that there were no rules for encumbrance despite an over-abundance of rule details in almost every other aspects of the game...
Chorus: "Hi, Jürgen!"
Seriously, from what I remember (how long has it been - 10 years?), the system wasn't half-bad in actual play, but I had the following problems with it:
- Character creation is a chore.
- Creating a magic-using character was even more of a chore.
- Trying to figure out the exact number of Heka points (magic points) was a major hassle. I think my character ended up with 1057 or something...
- Much if not most of the jargon was unneccessary.
- Even beginning magic-using characters knew a gazillion of spells. This is a problem, since at least in D&D you start out with a small number and gradually learn more about the spells as your character increases in level. But here you are hit over the head with the book of magic right from the start... and "Mythos Magic" is a big book.
I also found it odd that there were no rules for encumbrance despite an over-abundance of rule details in almost every other aspects of the game...
Owned it played it, it had some good aspects and concepts but too much work on the back end.
DanielSchenstrom
First Post
I've played it a few times and started when I had just the main Dangerous Journeys book. I ran a short campaign where two Tripolitanians become crew members on a interdimensional ship called The Winged Pig. (The name is of course from the intro adventure from the Mythus Prime section of the DJ book, and it was the intro adventure of that campaign as well.) For the other dimensions I used the tables for different worlds/dimensions from the AD&D 1st ed Manual of the Planes. I just rolled as they travelled and improved from there.
The rules are detailed yes, but this usually only comes up during character and NPC creation. It took me and a friend 24 hours to create the first PC we ever did with the system. When we did the characters for the campaign above we managed in 5-6 hours. But doing NPC and creatures takes so much time for me as a DM so for that reason alone I won't play it anymore. Like others, I mine it for ideas though.
Compared to D&D 3E it is a very different game. Where 3e has Knowledge [knowledge area here] DJ has them all written out. And you better read them all to see if you get Heka and any other bonuses from them, whether you should specialize or not. You have varying degrees of sensitive areas of the body which can take hits. And in what seems a throwback, elfs and dwarfs are classes, whereas humans can be one of...a lot of classes.
For those that aren't used to Gygax' game writing (as opposed to his novels) you'll probably have a real reading challenge ahead of you. And as other shave pointed out, some additional editing wouldn't have hurt at all.
AD&D 2nd edition is my fantasy game of choice and I take ideas, and some rules from DJ to supplement the experience, along with AD&D 1st ed and 3E. I should go and buy Lejendary Adventures to get another source of idea mining but I think I'll go for the Gygaxian Fantasy books first.
If you want to try it out, try Mythus prime first with the adventure that comes with it, and if you feel like you're up to it try Mythus with the other adventure.
The rules are detailed yes, but this usually only comes up during character and NPC creation. It took me and a friend 24 hours to create the first PC we ever did with the system. When we did the characters for the campaign above we managed in 5-6 hours. But doing NPC and creatures takes so much time for me as a DM so for that reason alone I won't play it anymore. Like others, I mine it for ideas though.
Compared to D&D 3E it is a very different game. Where 3e has Knowledge [knowledge area here] DJ has them all written out. And you better read them all to see if you get Heka and any other bonuses from them, whether you should specialize or not. You have varying degrees of sensitive areas of the body which can take hits. And in what seems a throwback, elfs and dwarfs are classes, whereas humans can be one of...a lot of classes.
For those that aren't used to Gygax' game writing (as opposed to his novels) you'll probably have a real reading challenge ahead of you. And as other shave pointed out, some additional editing wouldn't have hurt at all.
AD&D 2nd edition is my fantasy game of choice and I take ideas, and some rules from DJ to supplement the experience, along with AD&D 1st ed and 3E. I should go and buy Lejendary Adventures to get another source of idea mining but I think I'll go for the Gygaxian Fantasy books first.
If you want to try it out, try Mythus prime first with the adventure that comes with it, and if you feel like you're up to it try Mythus with the other adventure.
howandwhy99
Adventurer
I enjoyed reading these books immensely back in '92 when they came out. I even got Gary and Dave to sign my copies of books 1 & 2 a year later at Gencon '93. My interest in the game rollercoastered and I sold off some books only to try and buy them back later. Now I have:
0 - Mythus Prime
1 - Mythus (my original)
2 - Mythus Magic (my original)
3 - Epic of Aerth
4 - Necropolis (my original)
At one point I had 5 the Mythus Beastiery as someone at GDW mailed me the unreleased book in '93 before everything was boxed up and shipped out of their warehouse. I also had all the Journeys magazines 1-6 and two of the [size=-1]Mythic Masters Magazines (very rare now). Sadly mine are all gone now.
Some of the nice things about DJ that port over well to other systems are: the BUC purchasing system, the multiverse cosmology (including the 9 dimensions), the laws of Magick (others have mentioned), the SHADOWS system for adventure layout, and the dozens of magickal skills many of which were magic systems in their own right (like mediumship, demonology, alchemy, apotropaism, just to name a few)
If you are interested in the game and what it has to offer, there are a few suppliers out there.
[/size]http://waynesbooks.com/MythusDangerousJourneys.html
0 - Mythus Prime
1 - Mythus (my original)
2 - Mythus Magic (my original)
3 - Epic of Aerth
4 - Necropolis (my original)
At one point I had 5 the Mythus Beastiery as someone at GDW mailed me the unreleased book in '93 before everything was boxed up and shipped out of their warehouse. I also had all the Journeys magazines 1-6 and two of the [size=-1]Mythic Masters Magazines (very rare now). Sadly mine are all gone now.
Some of the nice things about DJ that port over well to other systems are: the BUC purchasing system, the multiverse cosmology (including the 9 dimensions), the laws of Magick (others have mentioned), the SHADOWS system for adventure layout, and the dozens of magickal skills many of which were magic systems in their own right (like mediumship, demonology, alchemy, apotropaism, just to name a few)
If you are interested in the game and what it has to offer, there are a few suppliers out there.
[/size]http://waynesbooks.com/MythusDangerousJourneys.html
I picked it up during a dry spell in gaming after I joined the army. The rules were very nice once you wrapped your head around them. I think the biggest disappointment I had was that the realm of the faerie and a good mythical monsters bestiary never got published. Once the game died we kind of moved on because we wanted more of the mystical stuff in our game.
I played. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the detail. Not as bad as Rolemaster but mroe detailed than D&D. Loved that there was actually a system for creating magic spells on the fly. Loved that there was a system for creatingc haracters that was not class based...everything revolved around your skills.
