D20 Vaporware

[Vocenoctum]

Peter L. Rice. Peter owned a game store in Bath, Maine called the Toy Soldier. I haven't heard from Mr. Wheeler in about twenty years now, sometimes I wonder how he's doing. Peter I touched bases with every now and again.

Peter L Rice that wrote Damned if You Do and Frost Death?
Probably two of the best books I've read. The books I've reread the most of anything. (and I rarely reread anything)

Now I'm curious about the old adventures!

 

[JVisgaitis]

Dune d20. Best world ever created period. I'm damn upset that never saw the light of day.

Gaming Frontiers. I used to like that magazine. What ever happened to it?

 

[grodog]

Peter L Rice that wrote Damned if You Do and Frost Death?
Probably two of the best books I've read. The books I've reread the most of anything. (and I rarely reread anything)

Now I'm curious about the old adventures!

Details on the Companions adventures can be found at http://www.stud.uni-hamburg.de/users/afterglo/rpg/nontsr/others_ak/index.html:

• 40101 - The Curse on Hareth - 85 page adventure, comes as a big stack of loose pages with loads of maps. Supposed to be the first part of a campaign spanning items 40101 through 40103.
• 40102 - Plague of Terror - 60 pages of adventure with 25mm scale maps, a few pages of magical items, very small typeset! This adventure seems to have been developed a long time before release, the play testing credits range back to 1977. A subplot of the adventure is credited to Len Lakofka, the guy who wrote the Lendor Isle series of AD&D adventures.
• 40103 - Brotherhood of the Bolt - 40 page book with three adventures, being the last part of the series that started off with the Curse on Hareth. It comes with a color map sheet, plus some huge 25mm scale maps.
• 40201 - Streets of Gems - town adventure of about 60 pages, again with lots of stuff besides.
• 40202 - Gems of Death - again, three adventures in a 60 page book.
• 40301 - Sacrifices to the Orc Lord - three wilderness adventures with lots of maps. This book was not published.

and the discussion about the Islandia campaign books on the Acaeum boards is at http://www.acaeum.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1410

TheAuldGrump---do you know anything further about Sacrifices to the Orc Lord, or would
Peter Rice? IIRC, Wheeler's still findable/in the industry....

 

[TheAuldGrump]

Peter L Rice that wrote Damned if You Do and Frost Death?
Probably two of the best books I've read. The books I've reread the most of anything. (and I rarely reread anything)

Now I'm curious about the old adventures!

Yep, those were his.

Two of the Companions adventure were his creations - Streets of Gems and Gems for Death. The companions tended to do one urban and one wilderness adventure in a concurrent series. Finding them can be a bear these days. My copy of Brotherhood of the Bolt was destroyed while moving about 15 years ago, after losing three or four EBay auctions (I do not get into bidding wars, I place my current bid and the preselected maximum and then butt out until it is over) I finally managed to get a copy last year for free. (Thanks Mark!)

The Auld Grump, Mark has just gotten home after being stationed in Iraq...

 

[grodog]

Gaming Frontiers. I used to like that magazine. What ever happened to it?

Went belly up so far as I know. They changed hands/publishers at least twice. Still owe me $120 or so for freelance writing I did for them, too :/

 

[TheAuldGrump]

TheAuldGrump---do you know anything further about Sacrifices to the Orc Lord, or would Peter Rice? IIRC, Wheeler's still findable/in the industry....

I fear that it never got written, I do know that I wasn't involved in any playtest of it. I believe that it was one of John Wheeler's projects. The company partially broke up when John Wheeler left Maine.

For a while the Companions were publishing Behind Enemy Lines, which they picked up after Wm. John Wheeler went to work for FASA. (He later went to work for TSR, and was responsible for editing Desert of Desolation when it was released in a single volume.)

Do you know where Mr. Wheeler is now? I have been wondering about him for years, and for once Google let me down.

I wonder about some of the other folks involved with the company now and again. Patrick Hill was in a coma following an automobile accident, eventually passing away. DeRoche, another playtester had cancer but has (last I heard) recovered. Patricia Hutchinson and Ray Estabrook got married. Ted Nutter graduated and left the state. The others I do not know about.

The Auld Grump

 

[JVisgaitis]

Still owe me $120 or so for freelance writing I did for them, too :/

The owe my company free advertising space too. Oh well. . .

 

[DM_Jeff]

Accordlands

Is Warlord of the Accordlands going to come out? Not that I'm looking forward to it. Too many generic fantasy settings.

http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=115406

Someone asked on this other thread and I tried helping with what I knew. Very Brief Synopsis: "Warlords" was written for 3.0 and was in final editing when 3.5 was announced. The company made the brave move to retool everything to conform to 3.5 and because of their attention for detail and triple-checking it's been held back. It is now again in the very final stages. And it'll be really good, I'm sure!

-DM Jeff

 

[PatrickLawinger]

Gaming Frontiers

Went belly up so far as I know. They changed hands/publishers at least twice. Still owe me $120 or so for freelance writing I did for them, too :/

Yeah, they are gone. Some people are owed quite a bit of $ actually (mutters to self for a while and edits out further comments ...).

 

[Varianor Abroad]

Yeah, they are gone. Some people are owed quite a bit of $ actually (mutters to self for a while and edits out further comments ...).

I thought MEG picked them up, or am I getting mixed up? Wasn't Phil Reed going to be the editor for the new mag?

Oh, and vaporware? Let's sadly add ENWorld Gamer to that. (Although I think it's mentioned in the thread, I'm sorry to see it go.)