Mystara and Old Gazeteers

[Dahak]

Cool! Thanks! Now I have digital copies, without having to go back and try and translate them from 5.25" Apple IIe floppy disks!

I don't suppose there is anyway Atlas would consider looking into picking up the Mystara d20 liscence, is there? Your work on PC1 -- especially the detail put into the five spheres (matter, thought, entropy, etc.) and how they were morally switched during the age when faeries were in power -- indicated to me that you "got" the setting better than many of the other authors.

 

[ThomasBJJ]

I just sold my Karamiekos, and Glantri boxed sets that were pretty much unused for $1.50 each at a garage sale. I bought them still sealed at a KB Toy store for $3.00 each about 4 years ago. I never got into that setting, but the monstrous compendium book for it is good.

 

[JohnNephew]

I don't suppose there is anyway Atlas would consider looking into picking up the Mystara d20 liscence, is there?

Let me just say that I would personally find it a real joy to bring Mystara (heh, I still think of it as "Known World") books out for D20.

Thanks for the kind words about PC1. It's really nice to read them. Back when I wrote that book, there simply wasn't the kind of feedback you get from readers today. It tickles me to no end that you appreciated it! All those all-night writing sessions paid off!

(Long nostalgic digression: I wrote almost all of PC1 during my Christmas break, my sophomore year of college. I'd sleep all day, get up in the evening, go socialize a bit, and then write, write, write all night long, and sometimes top it off with a crisp run around sunrise. I remember one amazing morning when it was like running through faerieland -- it was a warm December, and it had been raining, and so this morning every tree around the town and the college arboretum was sheathed in ice and glittering with tiny icicles, and everything was so quiet, like time itself was frozen. I went to Carleton College, which has this weird 6-week winter break, whereas some folks I had recently met were townies (like Nicole Lindroos) and Oles (St Olaf College students and alumni, like Mark Hagen and Jonathan Tweet), so they were around to hang out with while most of my classmates were home for the holidays. And if anyone is wondering if Northfield, MN, puts folks in a mind for the fey, there are also a few fantasy novels out there written by alumni and set in the town or a reasonable facsimile thereof...)

 

[Tratyn Runewind]

Hi again!

Posted by arwink:
Also the reason some of us loved the Wrath of the Immortals. What can I say? I play fighters

Besides, if you're going to mess with a campaign world like that, you may as well make it really, really interesting...

Well, Thyatis got a pretty good pasting too, but yes, I'm sure the fighter-types weren't shedding too many tears over the colossal damage done to the two haughty magocracies of the Known World...

And potential for at least a couple of the really major events was hinted at in some of the Expert- and Companion-level modules for BD&D, but I admit I never thought they'd have the guts to actually put them in a published product and make them part of the official current continuity. Shows what I knew.

Posted by Dahak:
I have a complete (as I would measure it) set: 14 Gazetteers and Dawn, 4 Creature Crucibles, the Hollow World set and supplements, the Trail Maps, Champions of Mystara and Wrath.

You're obviously blessed with foresight. A friend and I had pretty much everything between us, but we live very far apart now, and so both have big gaps in our individual collections. And the Poor Wizard's Almanac series is worth looking into; they're handy little references for when you don't want to dig through a big stack of books for some world data, and they're also about the best source of info I have on Wendar, since I'm still waiting on GAZ 15 (especially with what was done to Alfheim post-Wrath!).

Posted by Dahak:
Collectively it is in my opinion the best setting ever released for D&D. I would love to see a 3E version that captured the setting's somewhat over-the-top nature, without resorting to kid-ifying it like some of the AD&D line did.

If I had to pick just one AD&D setting to get the lavish 3e Realms-style treatment, it would probably be Mystara (though passing over Birthright would be a real heartbreaker). I know what you mean about the "kidifying", though - it started to show up even under the BD&D rules, when they ditched the term "witch doctor" for "wokani". Still, it didn't seem quite so bad in Mystara, which was pretty youth-oriented to begin with.

Posted by JohnNephew:
Thanks for the kind words about PC1. It's really nice to read them.

Ach! A published author of Mystaran materials posts here, and I don't recognize him until someone else points him out. I've been too long without a good read through my materials...

Here are a few more good words, though. I was very impressed by the Creature Crucible series in general, and I thought Tall Tales of the Wee Folk did an excellent job of setting up and maintaining the whole "fantasy-Celtic" atmosphere. Though I'm echoing Dahak here, I'll say that your treatment of the Fair Folk as dwindled quasi-deities displays a wonderful feel for both the Celtic source legends and the BD&D/Mystara cosmology. And ya gotta love rules for playable PC treants, hsiao, and POOKA!

Your Dreamland court unfortunately got rather short shrift post-Wrath. If I remember correctly, their only mention was in a "Known World Grimoire" column in Dragon, where it was basically said that they were withdrawn into a pocket dimension, and wouldn't be coming back anytime soon. Serraine popped up from time to time in the Poor Wizard's Almanacs, and the crew from Night Howlers got Morlay-Malinbois, but I don't remember seeing anything about the vast territories of the Sea People. Might make for some interesting adventures...

Posted by JohnNephew:
Let me just say that I would personally find it a real joy to bring Mystara (heh, I still think of it as "Known World") books out for D20.

May it one day be so. I'd settle for just one really, really good one (again, using the 3e Realms hardcover as my standard of excellence), though that Wendar Gazetteer would be nice as well... The Vaults of Pandius is a valuable resource with some excellent articles (my favorite is the one on Ochalean Immortals), and it has helped keep the flames of Mystara fandom alive, but it's no substitute for books in hand, and much of the new material there (like the NACE and other timeline additions) seems uninspired.

Ah well, one can dream...

 

[Darklance]

GAZ 13, The Shadow Elves, is available for free from here:

http://www.wizards.com/dnd/files/SHDELF-DM.ZIP
http://www.wizards.com/dnd/files/SHDELF-player.ZIP

This is a great gazetteer, second only to Principalities of Glantri IMHO.

These are ASC files. What program runs them?

 

[JohnNephew]

"These are ASC files. What program runs them?"

ASC=ASCII, that is, plain text. You should be able to open them up from within any word processor (though you may have to pick some kind of "open any file" option). Alternately, if you're on a PC, I'll bet it will work if you change the .ASC extension to .TXT, and then double-clicking the file should open it up in WordPad.

 

[Kwalish Kid]

I run a Mystara campaign, and love it. I recommend looking at the Poor Wizard's Almanacs, too. Some great resources there.

I'm working on adapting the immortal rules from the wrath of the immortals into 3E using D&Dg (and maybe epic level). Those will be posted when I finish them (sometime in the summer).

 

[rounser]

John, thanks for your work on Tall Tales of the Wee Folk. I think that you captured a lot of fey atmosphere that really spices up the atmosphere of D&D as a whole if put to use - very few supplements manage that. It's the only oD&D supplement I held onto, which says something of the value I place in it.

I gather that you're now involved with d20 publishing; if so, have you considered releasing a campaign guide for running fairytale style campaigns? Perhaps with a style not necessarily with the same focus on PC faeries, but for running campaigns in the style of the Lost Seneschal (PC1), or Legacy of the Liosalfar (Dungeon 42). It would be great to see the themes you covered in PC1 updated and released on a grander scale, IMO, and with the popularity of Shrek, Baba Yaga etc. I can see reasons why it might be a popular supplement.

In fact, I think I remember hearing about someone working on a similar d20 project a while ago...