D&D General Melf's Guide to Greyhawk: The Shield Lands

[Mecheon]

Quite a few of TSR’s successes such as Temple of Elemental Evil and the D&D cartoon are the direct work of Gary

Well, based on some stuff that's come out about Transformers in the years since (and also the Mysterians which. hooooo boy), the cartoon wasn't him solo as Marvel Productions were trying to shove the 'kid and wacky dog' idea to everyone

Including Transformers. Which they kicked back on

Was Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil any better?

Wasn't that the one that bricks your PC if you install it in a root system, and despite that, is still somehow not the worst D&D video game?

 

[Jahydin]

Wasn't that the one that bricks your PC if you install it in a root system, and despite that, is still somehow not the worst D&D video game?

I think that was Myth II: Soulblighter!

 

[pemerton]

Was that the person upthread going off about how elves shouldn't be black?

No, that was someone else: D&D General - Melf's Guide to Greyhawk: The Shield Lands

 

[wizard71]

Was that the person upthread going off about how elves shouldn't be black?

No,
What I said was Dark Elves would have very pale skin due to a lack of melanin because it’s not needed in sunblock. Cave fish found deep in the earth are bone white because they don’t need any UV protection. It’s science. Sorry if that bothers you.

 

[Mannahnin]

No,
What I said was Dark Elves would have very pale skin due to a lack of melanin because it’s not needed in sunblock. Cave fish found deep in the earth are bone white because they don’t need any UV protection. It’s science. Sorry if that bothers you.

No one's bothered by that. I think tons of people have done that with dark elves in their own home games. People have been saying that for decades, and it's not an objectionable idea, though it relies on an assumption that real-world biological factors having to do with melanin are applicable, which is not necessarily justified. (especially given how many underground critters in D&D are not pale white like cave critters in our world).

As Pemerton linked, someone else in this thread was objecting to Yolande (a surface elf queen) being darker skinned (not Drow) in the new books.

 

[Mannahnin]

Yes that it the book I was talking about, can't see how WotC could apologize for any other book (since the others were not written or published by them), not that I would expect them to apologize for this one either... I thought it also had a section about the creation of the game, not just a reprint of it

A little bit. Each document gets a bit of introduction; usually a few paragraphs, sometimes closer to a page, summarizing what it is, contextualizing it in time and place, and often calling out particular concepts or contents which would show up in D&D later (e.g., in a Chainmail battle report from 1972, The Battle of Brown Hills, which mentions a valley and lake of Iuz (a major villain in the Greyhawk campaign setting, who we wouldn't see mentioned in D&D until the late 70s), and which has a Circle of Protection spell rather than Protection from Evil, which was a change in spell name between the first and second printings of Chainmail. Or, say, reporting how Dave explained to Gary the use of AH's Outdoor Survival for overland travel in Blackmoor and how that game informed D&D's rules.

Here's an example of one, for the latter:

The Making of Original D&D p72 wrote:

Outdoor Survival
Excerpts from Outdoor Survival; 1972

Avalon Hill published the game Outdoor Survival in September 1972, so it was quite new when Arneson mentioned it to Gygax in a 1972 letter to Gygax (page 76). Outdoor Survival incorporates a Wilderness Encounter system in which, when a wanderer enters an unexplored hex, a die is rolled to determine if a beneficial or harmful incident occurs. Arneson adapted this to the Blackmoor campaign. As he explained to Gygax, "the wilderness encounter aspect [of Outdoor Survival] was modified to mean that you met various creatures which you had to hack your way thru. There is also the chance that you will die of thirst or hunger (how ignoble) while wandering around lost."

Outdoor Survival also has a Life Level Index that may have influenced the idea of hit points. The Life Level Index grants players fifteen points of thirst and hunger damage they can withstand, based on tracking a Water Index and Food Index.

Arneson eventually built an "Encounter Matrix", a table of random monsters that could be found in each of the six types of squares present in Outdoor Survival: Open (or "clear"), river, mountain, desert, woods, and swamp. This matrix isn't included here, but it was reprinted in The First Fantasy Campaign. The creatures that populated the Encounter Matrix were effectively the same as those included in the second edition of Chainmail. These rules became the foundation for D&D's random encounter system and wandering monsters.

When the book gets to the draft and first printing of OD&D itself, these intros expand to multiple pages talking both about the publication process and the changes made between editions, discussing the editorial process between Gary and Dave and quoting them, etc. But there's basically no editorializing in these. Just fact-based descriptions of the process and the documents, noting interesting details, etc.

 

[wizard71]

No one's bothered by that. I think tons of people have done that with dark elves in their own home games. People have been saying that for decades, and it's not an objectionable idea, though it relies on an assumption that real-world biological factors having to do with melanin are applicable, which is not necessarily justified. (especially given how many underground critters in D&D are not pale white like cave critters in our world).

As Pemerton linked, someone else in this thread was objecting to Yolande (a surface elf queen) being darker skinned (not Drow) in the new books.

I felt that was the point the OP made when bringing my view up. Which was to claim I was conservative or bigoted because I was against elves with a dark complexion. Neither of which are true. Real world biology was my point.

 

[Gradine]

I felt that was the point the OP made when bringing my view up. Which was to claim I was conservative or bigoted because I was against elves with a dark complexion. Neither of which are true. Real world biology was my point.

Nah I was totally thinking about that other dude talking about Yolande

Still not sure what "real world biology" has to do with elf games though

 

[Mannahnin]

Neither of which are true. Real world biology was my point.

Ok, sure, though real world biology seems to apply sporadically at best to D&D monsters.

We could posit alternative fantasy biology reasons why most underdark & subterranean monsters in D&D are dark in color rather than pale without straining our suspension of disbelief too much. It's certainly less of a stretch than the constant violations of the square-cube law when it comes to large and huge (and bigger) creatures.

 

[Gradine]

Ok, sure, though real world biology seems to apply sporadically at best to D&D monsters.

We could posit alternative fantasy biology reasons why most underdark & subterranean monsters in D&D are dark in color rather than pale without straining our suspension of disbelief too much. It's certainly less of a stretch than the constant violations of the square-cube law when it comes to large and huge (and bigger) creatures.

Which is reason to be leery at best to calls to follow "real world biology" as they often (a) only tend to be selectively applied to conform to the speaker's preexisting biases and/or (b) are actually based on faulty or limited understandings of actual biology.

It could be a lot worse though, it could be appeals to real world "history"