Snarf Zagyg
Notorious Liquefactionist
BECMI is set up as a player's and a DM's book with a choose your own type adventure to get a player going.
Also? Don't believe BECMI.
BECMI lies.
#BarglewasFramed
#JusticeforBargle
BECMI is set up as a player's and a DM's book with a choose your own type adventure to get a player going.
Also? Don't believe BECMI.
BECMI lies.
#BarglewasFramed
#JusticeforBargle
For Aleena - Bargle had to die!
I like a lot of it as a setting. Some of it I actively dislike.Also, what do y'all think of the Known World/Mystara as a setting?
I understand the humor in GAZ10 Orcs of Thar is not to everyone's taste. It's really juvenile. But the bones of GAZ10 are really solid - the various humanoid player classes, the humanoid cults and their shaman, and most particularly the city of Oenkmar. A lost orcish city floating in a lake of lava - a fantastic adventure setting....or the Orcs of Thar regional gazetteer. Thar in particular had such promise but went in some hard core poor directions with humor characterizations and art directions when it could have gone with awesome Jim Holloway humanoid art themes and not gone the humor route it took.
The humor of the orc queen being portrayed as a short black-skinned heavy set woman with exaggerated big lips who bonks the king on the head with a bone is certainly not for everyone.I understand the humor in GAZ10 Orcs of Thar is not to everyone's taste. It's really juvenile. But the bones of GAZ10 are really solid - the various humanoid player classes, the humanoid cults and their shaman, and most particularly the city of Oenkmar. A lost orcish city floating in a lake of lava - a fantastic adventure setting.
and the cover is a cool King Conan as an orc scene.Orcs? A Gazetteer about Orcs?
Absolutely. And hobgoblins, kobolds, bugbears, gnolls, trolls, goblins, and more! If you think the only good orc is a dead orc, you're in for a surprise. Orcs (and the other humanoids) are more than just anonymous hordes to be slaughtered for easy experience points - they are creatures with personality, culture, likes and dislikes, and a point of view. Find out all about them in The Orcs of Thar.
The Orcs of Thar is the tenth in a series of Gazetteers for the DUNGEONS & DRAGONS game system. It gives you a comprehensive, in-depth look at the orcs and their world, including:
- Orcs and other humanoids as player characters
- A large full-color map of Thar, home of the orcs
- Complete rules for humanoid spell-casters
- The King of the Orcs, and why you don't want to run into him
- Seperate DM and Player's Booklets
- ORCWARS! , a complete boardgame, also included!
"Juvenile" is a lot more kind than I was, when I described it in another thread.I understand the humor in GAZ10 Orcs of Thar is not to everyone's taste. It's really juvenile. But the bones of GAZ10 are really solid - the various humanoid player classes, the humanoid cults and their shaman, and most particularly the city of Oenkmar. A lost orcish city floating in a lake of lava - a fantastic adventure setting.
Here's my thoughts* -- If you are trying to introduce a group to a TSR-era D&D/AD&D-like gaming setup, I would get a couple POD copies of Moldvay-Cook B/X, tell the players that that is the game you are for the most part using, set up the expectation that levels cap at 14 (or 12,10,8 for demihumans) and spells cap at 6th (5th for elves/clerics), and that you want people to read the player sections of the books (not just the character creation section). Then get one copy of RC or BECM (I optional) and mine it for ideas. This will give the players the best presentation of the procedural systems of the game, and at the same time resetting expectations and scale such that a halfling capping out at level 8 isn't a grievous issue because 8 is still frickin' high level and that the magic user doesn't have to have wish or meteor swarm to be high level.So, if I am understanding everyone's responses correctly, B/X is the best way to proceed, and the gameplay should be dungeons to wilderness to next dungeons in order to properly feed the gameplay loop? Is that a fair assessment? Note that I'm not judging it as bad, just trying to figure out what it does best.
I like a lot of it as a setting. Some of it I actively dislike.
It has a lot of fantasy analogue kingdoms, so there is a D&D fantasy Mongol area, a fantasy D&D viking area, a merchant prince area, a sea trading guild area, etc. Also there are specific non human areas, the dwarven kingdoms regional sourcebook, the elven one, the shadow elven one, the halfling one. Also things like a big Magocracy. Gazetteer 1 is a standard D&D type area for baseline stuff as well. Tons of neat stuff for distinct cool themes for D&D areas and lots of resources for using it as a setting or taking stuff to use in your own.
The humor of the orc queen being portrayed as a short black-skinned heavy set woman with exaggerated big lips who bonks the king on the head with a bone is certainly not for everyone.
and the cover is a cool King Conan as an orc scene.
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I was looking forward to reading about the Orc King who uses the severed head of an enemy (dwarf?) as a footstool in his throne room.On the converse, that is one heck of a cover.
Yeah Mystara was never cohesive but each of the Gazeteers is essentially a mini settings in their own right so a DM could just take one or two and that would be sufficient without ever having to use anything else.I think that's a near universal. While it is set up as (in theory) a cohesive* setting, it really is a hodge-podge of disparate ideas and tones. It's obvious that it was built by a group of different voices without a centralized plan going forward (which can be part of the charm). There are physical inconsistencies like the Viking -analog culture and (IIRC) a jungle culture existing in close proximity at the same parallel. More often there are tonal variations, with one book being strongly serious and grounded, another silly, a third serious but ungrounded (airships or winged minotaurs or a city of 1000s of max-level wizards). It is definitely something to take what you want and omit what you don't.
*although not complete. Unlike the AD&D game worlds, this one left quite a bit of territory (somewhat close to the established starting areas) open for DM development. Something I appreciate.
That's one of the strengths of the Mystara setting, in my opinion. Instead of having hundreds of pages of information on dozens of different kingdoms and nations and continents that your group will never even visit, you can focus in on what you actually will play and get everything you need in a single booklet. You want to run a high-magic Potterverse-style campaign, in a land where everyone is a spellcaster of some stripe? "The Principalities of Glantri" has what you need, you can ignore the others. You'd rather play a historic, gritty, Viking-flavored setting? Start everyone off in "The Northern Reaches." Swashbuckling adventure on the high seas? "Minrothad Guilds." Gothic romance and court intrigue? "The Kingdom of Ierendi."Yeah Mystara was never cohesive but each of the Gazeteers is essentially a mini settings in their own right so a DM could just take one or two and that would be sufficient without ever having to use anything else.
A game could have a great time defending the The Grand Duchy of Karameikos or engaged in the intrigues of the Principalities of Glantri or the Imperial ambitions of the Dawn of the Emperors.
I was looking forward to reading about the Orc King who uses the severed head of an enemy (dwarf?) as a footstool in his throne room.
Some parts of the orc king are decent. Him being a 29th level orc and 12th level shaman a decade before 3e is pretty cool.
The internal art of him being a fat snouted pig faced orc whose caricatured wife is bonking him on the head with a bone was quite jarring.
His story of being easily overwhelmed by one opponent, and being subject to a simple manipulation by another to turn the whole kingdom he created into a pawn was another part that has some decent stuff to work with but I did not really care for overall in the end.
And lastly, a pet peeve: I know it's a translation convention, but the original text of Homer's Iliad actually starts, "Sing to me, O Goddess ..." The implication is that the goddess is the muse Calliope, but still. (I didn't spend hours of my life translating the *** Iliad from the Greek at school not to point these things out.)
Having bought the entire BECMI over the course of several years in my early teens, and read them ceaselessly but never got to play more then 2 levels, I've been following this thread with great interest. If I hadn't just started a Star Wars D20 campaign I'd be tempted to play BECMI.
One thought struck me earlier today when I was reading one of the many threads about the OGL: someone wrote that they had dozens of character concepts left to play. Is it me, or is that a change from the old BECMI/AD&D days, that back then we played for the adventures, not for the characters? Since there were so few character options available, the focus was more on what they were doing than on who they were.
And lastly, a pet peeve: I know it's a translation convention, but the original text of Homer's Iliad actually starts, "Sing to me, O Goddess ..." The implication is that the goddess is the muse Calliope, but still. (I didn't spend hours of my life translating the *** Iliad from the Greek at school not to point these things out.)
I mean, we often ended up playing different actual characters, as in personalities (and maybe fighter Joe became 'a swashbuckler' while fighter Jim was 'a barbarian,' but they both wielded 'swords' and wore plate once they could afford it). We also definitely would roll up the next character saying 'I hope I have stats for a halfling or cleric this time, as I haven't played one of those in a while,' so yeah we did play with the character creation options we actually had. That said, the stats were at the whim of luck and much of your character's abilities came from the spells or magic items they found (so, play-emergent), so there wasn't much 'character build' mechanisms to do. A character might be 'Joe the fighter who got a +3 spear at really low level and thus it became his signature weapon and proposed marriage to the orc princess as a bluff but we ended turning them into strategic allies' instead of 'Joe the dex-based battlemaster with the shield master feat and proposed to the (same story).' I don't know if that's more playing for adventure or not.One thought struck me earlier today when I was reading one of the many threads about the OGL: someone wrote that they had dozens of character concepts left to play. Is it me, or is that a change from the old BECMI/AD&D days, that back then we played for the adventures, not for the characters? Since there were so few character options available, the focus was more on what they were doing than on who they were.
So, for those of you who have experience, what separates BECMI from AD&D, both in rules and flavor?