What things do you miss from D&D?

I'm talking here more about objects than rules. So I'm asking more about boxed sets, magazines, etc. rather than THAC0 or Vancian Magic or writing styles.

Which particular type of product holds that nostalgic glint for you?

I voted Boxed Sets, but to be honest, I'm much more relaxed today than in the past. I will and can play even if no new items will be published.

The magazines, without a shadow of a doubt. Sadly, I'm only too aware that they'll never be coming back in print, and probably not at all, but that doesn't stop me missing them.

I also have a nostalgic fondness for boxed sets, but that's tempered by missing the import duty and VAT not at all.

I miss having lots and lots of different settings to choose from. Since I DM a lot of Planescape, the large variety of worlds in the AD&D era meant an ever-expanding range of posibilities, and I've always been a sucker for setting guidebooks and atlases.

Boxed sets I'm more ambivalent. On one hand, I love how they look and all the stuff they have; on the other, I've always prefered hardcovers to softcovers, and boxed sets almost always include exclusively the latter.

But what I miss the most is the smell of AD&D 2e books. That edition has the best page smell, in my opinion (4e smells pretty good too, though, with that freshly-opened MTG booster pack scent. But something in the thick, possibly-recycled-paper aroma of AD&D 2e brings back all the right memories).

I'm a settings guy. I love FR, Eberron, and Dark Sun, and, to a lesser extent, Spelljammer and Greyhawk.

I missed settings-based products.

Cristian Andreu said:

I miss having lots and lots of different settings to choose from. Since I DM a lot of Planescape, the large variety of worlds in the AD&D era meant an ever-expanding range of posibilities, and I've always been a sucker for setting guidebooks and atlases.

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Oh, heck yeah! Those 2e settings may have been partly responsible for TSR going under, but man were they kool! Especially Planescape.

I also miss great art. Maybe it's nostalgia, maybe not, but it seems that the quality of D&D rules has an inversely proportionate relationship with the quality of artwork.

Morrus said:

I'm talking here more about objects than rules. So I'm asking more about boxed sets, magazines, etc. rather than THAC0 or Vancian Magic or writing styles.

Which particular type of product holds that nostalgic glint for you?

Click to expand...

Dragon and Dungeon magazine were such huge parts of the game and gaming for me. I realize that the world has somewhat evolved past dead tree periodicals, but paper has a certain quality that digital things just don't. There is something friendly and comfortable about a stack of magazines that a folder full of pdf's doesn't have. "Back in my day... Hey, you kids get off my lawn", and such.

Honestly, I miss the small fonts and black ink of 1e hardbacks. These full color glossy treatments to me never seem to have the class of the old books - class that incidentally White Wolf closely emulated in the early versions of their Storyteller books and which can be found in the classic Chaosium Call of Cthulhu thick softbacks. And the D&D module where the maps were printed on a separate detachable cover was the most useful format for an adventure ever. Two things I just hate are maps printed in the text, and stat blocks printed in a separate appendix at the end of the module. And I miss real dungeon maps. Thirty years later, we've never excelled the maps for I6 and the DL series. How is that even possible? I for one never believed we'd have flying cars in 2015, but I would have been absolutely sure in 1985 that by 2015 we'd have actual fine literature and art in RPGs.

And on the subject of art, how is it that the best art for RPGs is from a period between 1985 and 1995? Back to the to magazines, all those iconic Dragon covers from the gold age of the magazine in the early '90's have just never been surpassed. Or for that matter, think of the art of ShadowRun from the same period. WotC has a lot of strengths, but their increasingly tight artistic direction for magic cards has tended to make for art that looks like cells in a comic book or graphic novel, rather than stuff you'd find hanging on the wall of an art gallery, and the art for D&D has tended to follow that trend. Beyond that, has there ever been a better visual aid for an adventure than the book of pictures that came with S1 Tomb of Horrors? How is that we have all these different examples of doing it right, and yet still can't do it better?

I'm not big on settings per se, but how is it that we are still recycling intellectual property from 20 or 30 years ago? Why hasn't there been three or four novelizations at least as good as Chronicles of the Dragonlance in just the last 20 years? Considering just how much penetration gaming has had of science fiction and fantasy - you'll hardly find anyone writing in the genera today that didn't grow up gaming and have it influence how they see works - and yet instead of generating intellectual property of its own that gets novelized, every gaming company out there is trying to license someone else's intellectual property. Looking back just makes TSR look more and more amazing all the time. Seriously, how did they attract that much talent? Has it all moved on into video games because it pays better? Where did it all go?

Well I look at these concerns from two points of view, one as a gamer, and another as someone with a long history working the print industry. From a gamer point of view, I loved the boxed sets (and was my vote). I didn't buy every setting and boxed set, but I did purchase many - most of the Ravenloft boxed sets (2e and before), Birthright, Menzobarrenzan, etc. I never got a subscription to the Dragon/Dungeon magazines, and I think I only purchased one of the first Dungeon magazines, and I seemed to only ever purchase the Halloween issues of the Dragon magazine (because of my love of horror games).

From a print point of view, a long time ago, looked at the possibility of producing a magazine (not for gaming, but local tourism) and spent a good part of a year researching such a project. I even went to NYC and spoke to some small magazine publishers just to get some insight on the industry. OMG, the costs involved just to produce each issue (even for short runs, 1000 - 5000 prints) would cost tens of thousands of dollars just for each issue, which meant 3/4s of the content had to be advertising with full page ads somewhere around $1500 to $3000 per page (who among gaming publishers could afford that?) Unless you had a solid number of advertisers, it was impossible to release a magazine. Then you have the ckicken before the egg problem. How do you acquire paid advertisers for a magazine with no history nor defined circulation - at least during the first year of publication. I'd need a half million dollars in money just to try and get a magazine into circulation and there's no guarantee of success. Later I'd learn that the magazine distribution system was cut-throat, corrupt, and had mob ties. Lesson learned, stay out of the magazine publishing business.

Last year, about this time, a larger RPG publisher was inquiring about the possibility of releasing a boxed set that might include a GM screen, a 96 page, soft bound handbook, some dice, some cardboard, punch out tokens for minis, and a single 24 x 36 inch, full color, folded map - for a total production of around 20,000 boxes. Although the price per unit came out to about $7, that was with a $30K+ investment. I work in the print industry and have ties with print companies that only do work for other print companies, with the intention of farming those services out and still earning income - I can get prices that someone not in the industry cannot. The project hasn't come to fruition, but I figure the quote I provided, though very competitive, was inordinately high in cost.

The budgets required makes successively releasing a magazine or a boxed set as almost excessive in cost. Realistically, I don't think either is pragmatic.

Some of the single book game expansions, such as the series of historical sourcebooks. Enough in them to get your teeth around playing/running such a setting, no danger of bloat, not so much remorse if you spent money on a single book you didn't like.

I voted Box sets.

But honestly, I would have said all of them