Dangerous Jouneys

[Lizard]

I remember being quite excited about it from the ad campaign, and being painfully disappointed when it came out. For a promised generic system, it was anything but. It had a nigh-incomprehensible magic system, insane attribute names ("Quick! Roll Physical Neural Capacity!"), a stunningly dull default setting, and impossibly strange emphasis on weird sub-sub-skills (check out the section on Jester skills sometime...). I don't know if it was actually playable.

I've got all of the books except the big adventure.

I think a lot of the obscurity and strangeness was due to efforts to avoid being sued by TSR; that didn't work. About the best thing you can say about it is was that it was Gygax at his most Gygaxian; the writing was typically idiosyncratic and personal, with the author's voice being clear and distinct. That style of writing is sadly rare in modern games, or is limited to blocks of bad fanfiction interspersed with the rules themselves.

 

[Obryn]

I remember being quite excited about it from the ad campaign, and being painfully disappointed when it came out. For a promised generic system, it was anything but. It had a nigh-incomprehensible magic system, insane attribute names ("Quick! Roll Physical Neural Capacity!"), a stunningly dull default setting, and impossibly strange emphasis on weird sub-sub-skills (check out the section on Jester skills sometime...). I don't know if it was actually playable.

Oh, it was playable, all right. More or less. With some wackiness.

I mean, I assume it was playable, since I ran a lengthy campaign in it. When I look at it now, I'm no longer so sure, and I have no idea whatsoever how I endured it enough to run it. I think it was sufficiently complex that, for a group of high-school guys, it worked out pretty well. We even got a few of our girlfriends involved, somehow. As an adult, I don't think it would fly.

It had some cool stuff - the "hit location" chart was pretty neat, where it didn't specify exact locations, just Non-Vital, Vital, Super-Vital, and Ultra-Vital. (Bad names, but the idea is there.)

About the best thing you can say about it is was that it was Gygax at his most Gygaxian; the writing was typically idiosyncratic and personal, with the author's voice being clear and distinct. That style of writing is sadly rare in modern games, or is limited to blocks of bad fanfiction interspersed with the rules themselves.

I'm with you there. He has a strong voice in the books, and it's pretty cool.

-O

 

[JohnRTroy]

I understand why people didn't like Dangerous Journeys. It was somewhat complex.

The biggest regret and flaw I think that happened for its fans was the fact that the monsters were incomplete. They should have released a "core" set of monsters first. The only book they got out was the Animal Beastiary. We needed examples of Phaerie beasts, undead and extra-planar creatures.

Since the first two books are available from Paizo, I recommend if people are interested in Gary's concepts, they should read the book. There's a good discussion of how dimensions are not the same as planes, some hints as to what was to come in future Gygax works or what might have been seen in the AD&D revision and expansion--for instance, the Buffoonery K/S area would have been the powers of the Jester class. There's a glossary of professions which can be used to supplement the Gord books (what a Mountebank would specialize in, for instance). It makes for good reading.

Epic of Aerth, sadly, is not available on Paizo. I wish it was! That book is a gem and could stand alone by itself! You could use it for any game system really. I felt it was his best campaign setting, albeit lacking a bit of the more high-fantasy concepts. That, along with Living Fantasy are the two non-D&D game books I would recommend anybody get if they want to read the best Gary Gygax post-TSR work.

 

[Edgewood]

This game is my "I need to read something to fall asleep." Seriously. I recently read this book again and I still shake my head at the complexity for complexity's sake approach.

 

[Charwoman Gene]

AND, I also played at one of the two cons I have been two.

Was this at I-Con? I played in a Dangerous Dimensions demo at I-Con that went like that.

A friend of mine convinced another friend to buy all the books when it came out as a practical joke...

 

[Lizard]

I understand why people didn't like Dangerous Journeys. It was somewhat complex.

Complexity is cool; I just didn't see that the complexity of DJ allowed me to do anything I could do just as well, or better, with other systems. Using obscure terms in the rules ("A Heroic Personae who invests heka in this preternatural dweomer will affect 3 cubic rods") didn't help much, either. And being promised a generic system and getting a fairly bog-standard fantasy one (one without even playable non-humans!) was also a disappointment.

 

[Jeremy757]

Some of that is ostensibly due to the fact that Mythus was originally planned as a multi-genre game system, with Dangerous Journeys composing only the fantasy element thereof.

You have it backwards. Dangerous Journeys (originally called Dangerous Dimensions) was the game system, Mythus was the fantasy campaign setting and was supposed to be followed up by Unhallowed which was going to be a modern supernatural horror setting.

My game group at the time grew bored with 2nd Edition D&D. We liked all the detail and options that you could create your characters with in Mythus. We played a two year long campaign set in Albion. The game was quite crunchy but it was the Exalted of its time compared to 2E D&D and we liked that.

I think the biggest problem I had with the game was that instead of releasing a book detailing the mythic monsters and creatures on Aerth and Phaeree, they released a book of mundane animals. So stupid.

And the two adventures they published were way railroady. They were only good for mining creatures and personas from.

 

[BluSponge]

OUCH! The misinformation in this thread is making my brain hurt!

So have any of you fellow gamers out there in enworldland ever actually played this game?

Yup. I ran a long campaign with a beefed up version of the Mythus Prime rules and several sessions of full blow Mythus. The books suffered from bad editing, but the errata in the Mythic Masters Magazine helped a lot. I haven't played the game in years, but I still keep my books handy as they make GREAT reference material. Just the bibliography in the Mythus Magick book in and of itself is fantastic.

The setting book is twelve kinds of awesome, but the rules... Wow, I don't honestly know how we ever played the game. Just thinking about an entire, several-hundred-page book that's nothing but spells... well, nowadays it makes my blood run cold.

I have a kind of weird desire to run a campaign set in Aerth, but there is VERY little meat in there to build up. When I discovered the rules, I had become very disillusioned with AD&D 2nd edition. The core rules were fantastic, but parts (Mental and Spiritual damage, for instance) were poorly explained. But the rules were modular, and it didn't take much work to put together a concoction that absolutely rocked!

Probably the deepest flaws were in character creation. There were a few things where, if you rolled just right, you got an incredibly broken character. These weren't stats; they were random rolls for your character's potential that existed outside the rolls. For example, let's say you're a Mage. Most of the time you'll be a half(?) or partial practitioner. You have a small chance, though, to be a full practitioner. IIRC, full practitioners are around 10x more powerful than the lower echelons, and likewise way above any other PCs. It makes balancing almost impossible for the DM. Ditto with Seventh Sons.

I disagree. Full Practitioners had a lot of spells, about twice as many as a standard spellcaster. But they were by no means invulnerable. Ditto 7th Son of a 7th Son. It took a bit more imagination on the part of the GM, and it was a simple thing to remove them without the slightest hiccup in the game.

Whenever I hear someone talk about how much Gygax loved simple, rules-light games, I always think, "Well then what the hell was he thinking when he wrote Mythus?!"

An RPG with a very broad scope that could be many things to many people. You could play it full on advanced, or simple and stripped down (Mythus Prime) or anywhere in between.

And some of the names were just plain dumb. I know he was going for an Egyptian (sorry, AEgyptian) flavor, but seriously. It wasn't luck points - it was Joss Factors (no relation to Whedon). Not magic points - Heka points. No gold pieces or whatever - we had Basic Unit Coins, aka BUCs.

Again, disagree. Joss Factors and Heka Points were very flavorful (and are no more arbitrary than Hero Points or Magic/Power/Spell Points). BUCs made perfect sense, and weren't expected to be called such in play (hence the extensive coin value system that was based largely on Gygax's own Greyhawk campaign).

Yeah... I think pretty much the same thing... "Simple? Dude DJ had like 5 solid pages to it's character sheet!"

3 pages, actually. I've seen (and designed) DnD character sheets much longer and more extensive than that.

Oh, and not to nickpick, but the game was called Dangerous Journeys. Mythus was the fantasy installment. Unhallowed was the stillborn Horror installment.

But regardless, I think DJ is a beast of a misunderstood game. I never found it more complicated than GURPS, and always get a chuckle at how much spite and vitriol it gets from people who have never played it. Some played it and didn't care for it (nothing new there, look at some of the edition wars threads around here), others of us did. DJ is the game that really opened my eyes to the scope that a fantasy game could have, and it has influenced my homebrew world settings ever sense.

Tom

 

[Jeremy757]

BTW, we gave up Dangerous Journeys when we discovered Earthdawn. It was a middle ground between the genericness of 2E D&D and the uber crunch of DJ. We played that for almost 4 years.

 

[BluSponge]

The biggest regret and flaw I think that happened for its fans was the fact that the monsters were incomplete. They should have released a "core" set of monsters first. The only book they got out was the Animal Beastiary. We needed examples of Phaerie beasts, undead and extra-planar creatures.

I agree that was a big mistep. Had Mythus Prime been released on its own first, and the Advanced rules broken down into smaller bits and companions, I think the game would have been a bigger hit. And, more than anything else, if T$R hadn't filed suit claiming ownership of things like "drow" and "spells", the game might have found an audience and had a longer, more fruitful life.

Epic of Aerth, sadly, is not available on Paizo. I wish it was! That book is a gem and could stand alone by itself! You could use it for any game system really. I felt it was his best campaign setting, albeit lacking a bit of the more high-fantasy concepts. That, along with Living Fantasy are the two non-D&D game books I would recommend anybody get if they want to read the best Gary Gygax post-TSR work.[/QUOTE]

I found Aerth to be VERY high magic(k) and high fantasy, there just isn't a lot of detail beyond the mundane, which is disappointing. But it still calls to me, God help me. Living Fantasy and Lejendary Pantheon (whenever that gets released) will complete the picture, however. I really wish WotC would release the PDF, as they have with Mythus and Mythus Magick, or that some enterprising company would license it and release an updated volume. That would be a game setting I couldn't say no too.

Tom