Tell me about these older edition D&D products [list updated: Nov 20/10]

[Crothian]

What are the two books, that you mentioned, about? What's the story behind those books? Also... Do you know if Coffin has written anything for any other companies?

He was doing something for West End Games but that fell fklat. The book I think was shopped around and may have been picked up by another company. I haven't heard anything to confirm that nor have I heard anything about it in months.

Baalgor Wastelands is literally, a giant wasteland. But there are literally a thousand little adventurer ideas in it. I talked to Bill Coffin at a connection about it and one of his goals was to place as many little hooks in the book as possible.

The Library of Bletherad is a fantasy version of the library of Alexandria. There are lots of neat things that cover all sorts of things because the library is a collection of information from all over the Palladium world.

Both books do have a good amount of game mechanics in them, so they are not as system clear as say GURPS source books are.

 

[Crothian]

Man, I actually found some old TMNT stuff at a Used Book Store once. Never bought it though. I wonder if I should be kicking myself right now.

There is a used book store near me that has a used copy of TMNT and they have it for $50 which is saying something since I tend to get gaming stuff there for great prices. I found a Planscape Planes of Chaos for 8$ just last year.

 

[Knightfall]

Man, I actually found some old TMNT stuff at a Used Book Store once. Never bought it though. I wonder if I should be kicking myself right now.

I would be.

There is a used book store near me that has a used copy of TMNT and they have it for $50 which is saying something since I tend to get gaming stuff there for great prices.

Wow, that's a lot. I don't think I'd spend that much for it.

I found a Planscape Planes of Chaos for 8$ just last year.

Lucky!

Planescape stuff is really hard to find in my area. Whyte Knight has a few books, but I've ended up buying other things instead. The store has both Planescape MC 1 and MC 2 for CAN $25 each.

 

[Knightfall]

The Library of Bletherad is a fantasy version of the library of Alexandria. There are lots of neat things that cover all sorts of things because the library is a collection of information from all over the Palladium world.

Now that sounds interesting.

 

[Crothian]

Planescape stuff is really hard to find in my area. Whyte Knight has a few books, but I've ended up buying other things instead. The store has both Planescape MC 1 and MC 2 for CAN $25 each.

It is rare here too. I pick up the occasional book I find at used stores but I imagine I average finding maybe one a year.

 

[Knightfall]

It is rare here too. I pick up the occasional book I find at used stores but I imagine I average finding maybe one a year.

I think WK has a couple of other Planescape references, at the moment, that aren't on my "to get" list; however, none of those include any of the boxed sets, which I'm hesitant to get again -- not because they aren't good references but because they'd be really expensive.

The owner of WK told me that if he get in a copy of Hellbound that he'd price it at CAN $90. That would be too expensive for me. I'd rather have two or three other 2e boxed sets for that price.

Right now, the boxed set I really want is "The Ruins of Undermountain." I've incorporated both Undermountain and Waterdeep into my homebrewed world, and I want that boxed set to go along with the 3e Expedition to Undermountain hardcover.

 

[Knightfall]

Another photo of some "trade bait" I'm going to use to acquire some of the older D&D products I want. The owner of WK says he wants Conan stuff, so I'm going to include these two comics in my next trade package.

He can't have my "Conan the King" comic collection, however.

 

[Knightfall]

FYI... I've gone through my Master List and removed anything that I've added to my "to get" list(s) on my collection thread as well as anything that I've decided I'm not interested in.

These five books are my most recent additions to my "to get" wish list(s)...

Dark Sun

• Black Spine ("got it")

Dragonlance

• DLT2 Book of Lairs
• Dragonlance Classics, 15th Anniversary Edition

Mystara

• DDA1 Arena of Thyatis
• DDA2 Legions of Thyatis

I've also added Forest Maker to my Dark Sun wish list, but I'm still unsure about that adventure. I might change my mind about that one.

Also, I've added a few more items to the Master List that I'm now curious to learn more about. The TSR Archive web page is helping me make up my mind aout a lot of the items on my list but the site isn't 100% complete. I've also been delving into the official fan sites for Greyhawk, Mystara, and Ravenloft in order to learn more about older edition products that I haven't had any experience with.

Of course, I'm always eager to hear the opinions of my fellow gamers regarding anything from older editions of D&D (even if it's not on my list). Remember!: I owned A LOT of the 2e stuff (except for the later Birthright and Ravenloft products), so I don't really need very much advice regarding 2e products that aren't on my list.

Anyway, time to stop rambling.

Cheers!

KF

 

[Castellan]

BLACKMOOR
Adventures in Blackmoor [DA1]
City of the Gods [DA3]
Duchy of Ten, The [DA4]

HOLLOW WORLD
HWA1 Nightwail
HWA2 Nightrage
HWA3 Nightstorm

MYSTARA
Atruaghin Clans, The [GAZ14] (*) (CAN $20)
Endless Stair, The [CM8]
Minrothad Guilds, The [GAZ9] (maybe) (rare?)

I'm a fan of the Blackmoor series, so I suggest picking up DA1 Adventures in Blackmoor and DA2 Temple of the Frog, especially (I know DA2 wasn't in your list, but it's worth keeping an eye out for). DA3 City of the Gods is interesting, and has a bit of a connection to DA2, but not enough that you need the earlier module to run this one. The City itself is not well fleshed out so I feel there's a lot of work to be done there, but to be honest I don't really know if I would have liked more detail. You're already getting into some weird stuff there, anyway. I recently grabbed DA4 Duchy of Ten but haven't had much chance to read it. If you only get one of these, get DA1 -- not for the adventure so much (which is a way to get your PCs from the modern era into the past to have adventures in Blackmoor), but for the nice campaign map and good mini-gazetteer of the Blackmoor world. If you only get two Blackmoor modules, try to find Temple of the Frog. My one complaint about the Temple module is that the maps have some rooms that weren't drawn to the proper scale -- you'll have to correct that by modifying them for play. Still, very entertaining stuff in my experience.

To take advantage of the Hollow World adventures, you'll need the boxed set. The adventures themselves take surface-dwellers on a whirlwind tour of this whole area and they end up seeing some very interesting stuff. The adventures are great from the standpoint that they introduce some new areas and have some of the high-quality maps that the D&D game of that era produced. The adventure itself isn't so hot, though. I found the overall plot to be somewhat (wait for it....) hollow. Yeah, I went there.....

The Atruaghin Clans Gazetteer is my least-favorite of the series. While the fold-out map is good, you're looking at an American Indian inspired setting. If that's your cup of tea, then this might be of interest to you, but I felt that it didn't fit the feel of the rest of the world. You also get a passage into the Hollow World campaign setting, but even when I bought this book as a teenager I felt that the connection was more gratuitous than logical. Overall, the setting feels like it was created to help get people into the Hollow World rather than to complete the Known World regions from the Expert Boxed Set. I wish TSR had focused on the Heldann Freeholds, or the Kingdom of Wendar instead.

CM8 The Endless Stair is written by Ed Greenwood. If you're into 1st edition Forgotten Realms material (and I am, so consider my viewpoint as biased) then you'll find this a fun adventure. It really isn't strongly tied into the Mystara setting, so you could pretty easily throw it into an FR game (or anywhere else you like). Overall, I recommend it if it's a good price.

The Minrothad Guilds gazetteer is a reasonably good pickup if you're interested in lots of guild info, as well as seafaring trade info for the Known World. If I recall correctly, it is matched by the overland trade info that comes from the GAZ11 Republic of Darokin gazetteer. It doesn't contain the cool ship combat minigame that was introduced with GAZ4 Kingdom of Ierendi (which disappoints me) but does have some decent info in it. It's not my favorite of the GAZ series, but if you're looking to round out your collection, I'd recommend picking it up before the Atruaghin Clans...... There is a prestige-class-like class introduced in this book -- the Sea Merchant? (can't recall as I'm at work) -- that I think anyone can take and gets some interesting spells. I never played/encountered one in play, and I can't vouch for balance, but it was an interesting early concept of a non-base class that you tack onto your character later.

I hope some of this helps to make some of your decisions a little easier!

 

[Knightfall]

I'm a fan of the Blackmoor series, so I suggest picking up DA1 Adventures in Blackmoor and DA2 Temple of the Frog, especially (I know DA2 wasn't in your list, but it's worth keeping an eye out for). DA3 City of the Gods is interesting, and has a bit of a connection to DA2, but not enough that you need the earlier module to run this one. The City itself is not well fleshed out so I feel there's a lot of work to be done there, but to be honest I don't really know if I would have liked more detail. You're already getting into some weird stuff there, anyway. I recently grabbed DA4 Duchy of Ten but haven't had much chance to read it. If you only get one of these, get DA1 -- not for the adventure so much (which is a way to get your PCs from the modern era into the past to have adventures in Blackmoor), but for the nice campaign map and good mini-gazetteer of the Blackmoor world. If you only get two Blackmoor modules, try to find Temple of the Frog. My one complaint about the Temple module is that the maps have some rooms that weren't drawn to the proper scale -- you'll have to correct that by modifying them for play. Still, very entertaining stuff in my experience.

Temple of the Frog wasn't on my list because I've already added it to my "to get" list, plus I have the recent d20 modern/v.3.5 revision that WotC did as a free PDF file.

More than likely I'd be collecting the DA Series to enhance the Blackmoor hardcover that Arneson did under the OGL. It sounds like DA1 would be an interesting look at how Blackmoor fits into the Known World/Mystara versus how it stands on its own as a campaign setting.

To take advantage of the Hollow World adventures, you'll need the boxed set. The adventures themselves take surface-dwellers on a whirlwind tour of this whole area and they end up seeing some very interesting stuff. The adventures are great from the standpoint that they introduce some new areas and have some of the high-quality maps that the D&D game of that era produced. The adventure itself isn't so hot, though. I found the overall plot to be somewhat (wait for it....) hollow. Yeah, I went there.....

The boxed set is already on my wish list. I had it at one point, but sold it along with a lot of other stuff that I wished I had kept. I had the accessories for Hollow World as well but I never had the adventures. Now that I'm getting into BECMI, I want to reacquire a lot of the Mystara stuff I once had.

The Atruaghin Clans Gazetteer is my least-favorite of the series. While the fold-out map is good, you're looking at an American Indian inspired setting. If that's your cup of tea, then this might be of interest to you, but I felt that it didn't fit the feel of the rest of the world. You also get a passage into the Hollow World campaign setting, but even when I bought this book as a teenager I felt that the connection was more gratuitous than logical. Overall, the setting feels like it was created to help get people into the Hollow World rather than to complete the Known World regions from the Expert Boxed Set. I wish TSR had focused on the Heldann Freeholds, or the Kingdom of Wendar instead.

This is one of the few Gazetteers that I didn't own. I didn't know it was connected to the Hollow World.

Perhaps I could adapt some of it to work in conjunction with the area north of Maztica in the Forgotten Realms.

The Minrothad Guilds gazetteer is a reasonably good pickup if you're interested in lots of guild info, as well as seafaring trade info for the Known World. If I recall correctly, it is matched by the overland trade info that comes from the GAZ11 Republic of Darokin gazetteer. It doesn't contain the cool ship combat minigame that was introduced with GAZ4 Kingdom of Ierendi (which disappoints me) but does have some decent info in it. It's not my favorite of the GAZ series, but if you're looking to round out your collection, I'd recommend picking it up before the Atruaghin Clans...... There is a prestige-class-like class introduced in this book -- the Sea Merchant? (can't recall as I'm at work) -- that I think anyone can take and gets some interesting spells. I never played/encountered one in play, and I can't vouch for balance, but it was an interesting early concept of a non-base class that you tack onto your character later.

I might have had this one, but I can't remember. I owned a lot of the Gazetteers, but I never got around to reading them before I sold them (*). I think part of the reason I sold them was that I was hoping that TSR was going to create 2e boxed sets for all the gazetteer regions like they did for Karameikos and Glantri.

Now, I wish I had hung on to them.

*I think I only read the first two or three. It was a while ago, so I can't remember. (If I collect them again, I won't be letting them go. The Karameikos and Glantri gazetteers are already on my "to get" list.)

CM8 The Endless Stair is written by Ed Greenwood. If you're into 1st edition Forgotten Realms material (and I am, so consider my viewpoint as biased) then you'll find this a fun adventure. It really isn't strongly tied into the Mystara setting, so you could pretty easily throw it into an FR game (or anywhere else you like). Overall, I recommend it if it's a good price.

Hmm, the official fan site for Mystara, Vaults of Pandius, lists that The Endless Stair is explicitly for Mystara; specifically, that it is set in the Principalities of Glantri. Does the module mention specific Realms locations in it?

I hope some of this helps to make some of your decisions a little easier!

Very helpful. Thanks.