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General Tabletop Discussion
D&D Older Editions
Sing to me, O Muse, of BECMI!
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<blockquote data-quote="Gus L" data-source="post: 9298917" data-attributes="member: 7045072"><p>King's Festival is not an adventure I like very much. A decade ago when I was reviewing the B-series, its the last one I did. I didn't think of it positively then, but I was pretty critical of most of the B-series based on my then understanding of 2010's OSR play goal. I still don't love B11 though - it's small, uninspiring and bland to the point of feeling like something anyone with 10 minutes, a bar napkin and a vague idea about vernacular fantasy settings could write up.</p><p></p><p>Yet! It's an interesting module as an artifact of later TSR. It shows the "professionalization" of TSR in the late 80's and early 90's and the efforts to both make it family friendly and predictable. I'd suggest it was a response to the Satanic Panic (check out the referee advice regarding alignment and such). Its aesthetic likewise the result of the normalization of D&D fantasy in popular culture by that time and its mechanical/structural aspects show the way that the path/scene/fixed narrative/Hickman style of design had come to dominate TSR's ideas of play style. These are all more or less the focus of subsequent editions and the model they have followed to lesser or greater success. </p><p></p><p>So while I personally don't find it much of an adventure, King's Festival strikes me as a very representative adventure for BECMI. BECMI struggles to adapt the old mechanics of D&D to a the commercial demands for a product that seems "safe" to Reaganite America and while embracing a morally simplistic aesthetic of heroism. Fascinating stuff really.</p><p></p><p>Here's a link to my old B-Series reviews that sort of charts the change in play style (not overtly or clearly)</p><p>[URL unfurl="true"]https://dungeonofsigns.blogspot.com/p/classic-module-reviews.html[/URL]</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Gus L, post: 9298917, member: 7045072"] King's Festival is not an adventure I like very much. A decade ago when I was reviewing the B-series, its the last one I did. I didn't think of it positively then, but I was pretty critical of most of the B-series based on my then understanding of 2010's OSR play goal. I still don't love B11 though - it's small, uninspiring and bland to the point of feeling like something anyone with 10 minutes, a bar napkin and a vague idea about vernacular fantasy settings could write up. Yet! It's an interesting module as an artifact of later TSR. It shows the "professionalization" of TSR in the late 80's and early 90's and the efforts to both make it family friendly and predictable. I'd suggest it was a response to the Satanic Panic (check out the referee advice regarding alignment and such). Its aesthetic likewise the result of the normalization of D&D fantasy in popular culture by that time and its mechanical/structural aspects show the way that the path/scene/fixed narrative/Hickman style of design had come to dominate TSR's ideas of play style. These are all more or less the focus of subsequent editions and the model they have followed to lesser or greater success. So while I personally don't find it much of an adventure, King's Festival strikes me as a very representative adventure for BECMI. BECMI struggles to adapt the old mechanics of D&D to a the commercial demands for a product that seems "safe" to Reaganite America and while embracing a morally simplistic aesthetic of heroism. Fascinating stuff really. Here's a link to my old B-Series reviews that sort of charts the change in play style (not overtly or clearly) [URL unfurl="true"]https://dungeonofsigns.blogspot.com/p/classic-module-reviews.html[/URL] [/QUOTE]
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