Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Flying Toaster" data-source="post: 9676903" data-attributes="member: 7052563">This whole controversy got me thinking about where the OAR line has come from and where it is going next.  I first noticed these at one of my local game shops, which had a full array of the first six TSR OARs.  They sat on the shelf for a long time, and I would sometimes flip through them out of curiosity while balking at their bulk and price.  One day I saw that someone had bought OAR #1 Into the Borderlands, so I decided to pick up OAR #4 The Lost City and OAR #5 Castle Amber while I still had the chance, and most of the rest disappeared pretty quickly.  I was particularly interested in those two for different reasons.  I had never played or even seen B4 The Lost City anywhere and it looked pretty good, whereas I did play X2 Castle Amber, adapted for AD&D 1E by the DM.  I owned it but never ran it myself.  I later got OAR #1 from Amazon. My very first D&D product was the red Moldvay box set* that is now the Ark of the OSR Covenant, and I got a lot of use out of that Keep, but as a kid I always wondered whatever happened to “lost” module B1 In Search of the Unknown.  I sort of regret skipping OAR #2 The Isle of Dread because I have a lot of nostalgia for that one, but OTOH it was really a sandbox module meant to introduce the Expert Set wilderness rules and hexcrawl procedures, so I could certainly homebrew something more to my taste.  The last time I visited that game store their copy of OAR #3 Expedition to the Barrier Peaks was still collecting dust on that shelf, and although that was never my favorite module, I do respect it for doing something different with a fantasy adventure even in the very earliest days of TTRPGs.  I am still mullling over the idea of “rescuing” that book if it is still there next time.  I also decided to pass on OAR #6 The Temple of Elemental Evil.  I have a lot of nostalgia for that one too, but most of that probably has more to do with its then-current reputation as the ultimate mega-dungeon, and also with the amazing Keith Parkinson cover art (which also would have made a great heavy metal album cover <img class="smilie smilie--emoji" alt="🤟" src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f91f.png" title="Love-you gesture    :love_you_gesture:" data-shortname=":love_you_gesture:" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" />).  My recollection is that it was actually a bit of a slog, with room after room of “humanoid” mooks and relatively little done with the elemental theme, and of course most of it was sort of patched together by Mentzer from Gygax notes after he left TSR.  I found some of the OAR historical essays and interviews on the Internet Archive, and although it was interesting to read the ones for OAR #6 once, I don’t think I need to read them again.  On a related note, I would have paid for a PDF of the collected OAR historical materials, but I am probably the only one.I remember seeing the name Judges Guild in Dragon magazine back in the 1980’s, but no one in my old D&D groups owned any JG products so I had no particular impression of them.  It has been interesting to see the reactions here and elsewhere to the JG OARs.  For every affectionate anecdote about CSIO and other JG adventures (“OMG my older brother and his buddies played this all the time!”) there are other, dissenting voices (“All this nostalgia and $$$ over Judges Guild stuff? LOL”).  I stumbled across a blog post in which someone did an exhaustive reading through the Wilderlands of High Fantasy and absolutely ripped it to shreds, although I think they were looking at a later version (Mayfair Games?) which may not have given a fair impression of the original.I ended up getting OAR #7 Dark Tower from Noble Knight Games and was considering OAR #9 Caverns of Thracia after reading glowing accounts of Jennell Jacquays’ innovations in dungeon design on Justin Alexander’s blog The Alexandrian.  I was probably never going to get CSIO anyway, but now I am not sure I want Thracia either.  Looking forward, what would there be left for GG to do with the OAR line without TSR or JG properties?  Are they going to do more JG products after all, since this seems to be working out for them financially?  Some might say they were already scraping the bottom of the barrel.  As the original 1970’s RPG crowd ages the time to mine the nostalgia market is now or never, but there still needs to be raw material suitable for the OAR treatment, and that may be running out.  *My mother bought it for me second hand from a coworker c. 1985-86, even though it had been replaced by the Mentzer line in 1983.  It was mint or very near mint, as I had to use the included black crayon to fill in the numbers on the orange dice, so maybe it had been a gift that sat unused for several years until it came to me (“It’s mine, I found it!  I was meant to have it, precious!”).</blockquote>

Verification