What did you do during TSR's dark days of '97
- Thread starter Davelozzi
- Start date
MrFilthyIke
First Post
astralpwka said:
Ahem to that Brother (or Sister...whatever
)!In '97 I was full throtle in World of Darkness, buying only WoD
and Cthulhu (and Cthulhu was a rare purchase). Playing Necromunda,
and LARP, LARP, LARPing!
Now I hardly get to game.
Thresher
First Post
By about 1996 our group had pretty much gotten jack of 2E, we'd propped that wobbly wagon up with a lot of house rules but eventually it crumbled into a steaming pile of crap. After that we went back to other game systems we'd liked and knew held up to a few years of constant campaigning without going to crap, Shadowrun, Mage, Vampire, Dark Ages Vampire, SLA Industries and a couple of others.
D&D in short, became a dirty word.
We like long games, games where you didnt have to constantly keep an eye over your shoulder to make sure the wheels didnt fall off and D&D wasnt it.
Looking back on it, those years after 2E produced some damn fine roleplaying and GM'ing from us. While those characters wouldnt mean anything to anyone else they where played with such heart and soul it was emminently refreshing to see and such characters where very rare occourances in D&D for us previously, I think it was something of a comming of age.
During that time I also got back into computing, I started playing Doom2 and Quake mostly online and there was much lamenting, though later we started playing some HL and Counterstrike. Actually I think I hosted the first Beta1 CS server in Australia from home and progressed all the way through to V1 of the game before hanging up my desert eagle due to the deluge of cheaters. Though not before leaving such a wake of carnage and suffering that the nic my team used is still talked about in hushed whispers at LAN games, praying that we dont return...
Sadly I moved away from the city where my friends played, though I went into writing a large amount (and I mean LARGE!) game supplements which I sent up to them to be play-tested before unleashing them on unsuspecting game communities around the internet and when I could I went up to see them. But work and a commitment to making people dead as a part time CS-Killer (I actually won a fair bit of dough playing CS competitions) and distance made it tough.
So, having written close to 430,000 words of game supplements, dozens of illustrations, multitudes of fiction and killed damn near anything that walked crawled or breathed in CS I went looking for something else... or more likely, it found me...
The Dark Ages
I chose not to choose life... I chose something else
Kickin around the house looking at all the new games comming in and Dave my housemate/guy who slept on the couch, has a new game. Not really like any I had seen before, I'd been spared the curse of 'Evercrack' by being a hardcore quaker but this one seemed to be different. At first we called him a [offensive word] for playing one of these MMORPG's and heckled him for the dated graphics, lame animations and then he took us out on a 'raid' where 80 a side charged in and hacked each other to pieces.... oooh!
3months later my first level 50 hacked and destroyed its way through multitudes of mobs and enemy players alike and it was all over rover.
Yep, no roleplaying, no writing, no art. I went to work, I came home and killed stuff in DAOC and it got kinda 'blurry' there for about 12months, but I loved it... possibly too much
Oh how the mighty had fallen into the depths of depravity and it was only on a sunny... (or maybe it wasnt, I dunno, didnt get out much) day 12 months ago that I was sitting around crafting crap in a daft game that was turning into a 2nd job.
I didnt need a 2nd job!
Goddamnit! I aint getting paid for this! So I quit DAOC...
The return.
While I was still playing some of my friends would attempt contact via email to see if I was still alive.
GM "Wanna play some D&D?"
Me "But Ive got a level 50 minstrel now!"
GM "A what?"
Me "Nevermind, D&D, that game we stopped playing years ago because it sucked arse?"
GM "Its a new edition!"
Me "So, who makes it?"
GM "Wotc"
Me "The same [really, really bad word!]'s that made those daft cards you spent all your dole on and dropped SLA because it was 'too mature and too dark' for their target audience? And Pokebum cartoons...?"
GM "Yeah... them"
Me "D&D is for dumb newbs, its 'entry level' tard material for munchkins!"
GM "This one's better, trust me"
So I took a leap of faith and drove up there. I figured I was wasting away what was left of my life and turned up with some folders of reams of yellowed paper that was my old 2E character (that didnt suck) and sat down. It seemed weird that she was older than most of the kids that some of us had...
The first 6months of 3E where pretty rough, at face value it looked better than 2E but it still took us 8months of houseruling to fix a lot of the bugs in the D20 system and its progressing a pace quite well. By 3.5 there was a definate improvement in the game which even to my jaded opinion was beginning to drag the game out of the mire of being branded 'dumb no0b system' and while it wasnt perfect, we where managing to have a lot of fun!
Im pretty sure they regret dragging me back into the fold, while my appearances at the game table are infrequent due to work they are also accompanied by additional reams of material to bog up the busted bits of D20 which I inflict on them...
I cant help it really, its in my nature to fix things rather than complain without contributing at least an effort to make things better when something dosnt work.
D&D in short, became a dirty word.
We like long games, games where you didnt have to constantly keep an eye over your shoulder to make sure the wheels didnt fall off and D&D wasnt it.
Looking back on it, those years after 2E produced some damn fine roleplaying and GM'ing from us. While those characters wouldnt mean anything to anyone else they where played with such heart and soul it was emminently refreshing to see and such characters where very rare occourances in D&D for us previously, I think it was something of a comming of age.
During that time I also got back into computing, I started playing Doom2 and Quake mostly online and there was much lamenting, though later we started playing some HL and Counterstrike. Actually I think I hosted the first Beta1 CS server in Australia from home and progressed all the way through to V1 of the game before hanging up my desert eagle due to the deluge of cheaters. Though not before leaving such a wake of carnage and suffering that the nic my team used is still talked about in hushed whispers at LAN games, praying that we dont return...
Sadly I moved away from the city where my friends played, though I went into writing a large amount (and I mean LARGE!) game supplements which I sent up to them to be play-tested before unleashing them on unsuspecting game communities around the internet and when I could I went up to see them. But work and a commitment to making people dead as a part time CS-Killer (I actually won a fair bit of dough playing CS competitions) and distance made it tough.
So, having written close to 430,000 words of game supplements, dozens of illustrations, multitudes of fiction and killed damn near anything that walked crawled or breathed in CS I went looking for something else... or more likely, it found me...
The Dark Ages
I chose not to choose life... I chose something else
Kickin around the house looking at all the new games comming in and Dave my housemate/guy who slept on the couch, has a new game. Not really like any I had seen before, I'd been spared the curse of 'Evercrack' by being a hardcore quaker but this one seemed to be different. At first we called him a [offensive word] for playing one of these MMORPG's and heckled him for the dated graphics, lame animations and then he took us out on a 'raid' where 80 a side charged in and hacked each other to pieces.... oooh!
3months later my first level 50 hacked and destroyed its way through multitudes of mobs and enemy players alike and it was all over rover.
Yep, no roleplaying, no writing, no art. I went to work, I came home and killed stuff in DAOC and it got kinda 'blurry' there for about 12months, but I loved it... possibly too much
Oh how the mighty had fallen into the depths of depravity and it was only on a sunny... (or maybe it wasnt, I dunno, didnt get out much) day 12 months ago that I was sitting around crafting crap in a daft game that was turning into a 2nd job.
I didnt need a 2nd job!
Goddamnit! I aint getting paid for this! So I quit DAOC...
The return.
While I was still playing some of my friends would attempt contact via email to see if I was still alive.
GM "Wanna play some D&D?"
Me "But Ive got a level 50 minstrel now!"
GM "A what?"
Me "Nevermind, D&D, that game we stopped playing years ago because it sucked arse?"
GM "Its a new edition!"
Me "So, who makes it?"
GM "Wotc"
Me "The same [really, really bad word!]'s that made those daft cards you spent all your dole on and dropped SLA because it was 'too mature and too dark' for their target audience? And Pokebum cartoons...?"
GM "Yeah... them"
Me "D&D is for dumb newbs, its 'entry level' tard material for munchkins!"
GM "This one's better, trust me"
So I took a leap of faith and drove up there. I figured I was wasting away what was left of my life and turned up with some folders of reams of yellowed paper that was my old 2E character (that didnt suck) and sat down. It seemed weird that she was older than most of the kids that some of us had...
The first 6months of 3E where pretty rough, at face value it looked better than 2E but it still took us 8months of houseruling to fix a lot of the bugs in the D20 system and its progressing a pace quite well. By 3.5 there was a definate improvement in the game which even to my jaded opinion was beginning to drag the game out of the mire of being branded 'dumb no0b system' and while it wasnt perfect, we where managing to have a lot of fun!
Im pretty sure they regret dragging me back into the fold, while my appearances at the game table are infrequent due to work they are also accompanied by additional reams of material to bog up the busted bits of D20 which I inflict on them...
I cant help it really, its in my nature to fix things rather than complain without contributing at least an effort to make things better when something dosnt work.
Eridanis
Bard 7/Mod (ret) 10/Mgr 3
I had so much stuff going on IRL (fresh out of college, wedding coming soon) that I didn't notice that my DRAGON wasn't arriving until it had been several months (I had unsubscribed from adnd-l when I graduatd, and hadn't resubscribed, and so was out of the loop). I was playing a lot of Magic at that point, so I found out when WotC swooped in for the save and announced it on their website.
Wormwood
Adventurer
I played White Wolf.
I played a lot of White Wolf.
I played so much White Wolf that I welcomed the release of D&D 3.0 like it was sweet, sweet mana falling from the heavens. Cool rain upon the parched face of the desert. The first green shoot of a springtime flower in the frozen winter earth.
But that's just me.
I played a lot of White Wolf.
I played so much White Wolf that I welcomed the release of D&D 3.0 like it was sweet, sweet mana falling from the heavens. Cool rain upon the parched face of the desert. The first green shoot of a springtime flower in the frozen winter earth.
But that's just me.
seankreynolds
Adventurer
Emirikol said:
Technically, TSR never went bankrupt. It was bought by WotC before that happened.
d4
First Post
that's pretty much exactly my story too. i went from the Red Box Basic Set to AD&D 1e to just about anything that wasn't D&D. GURPS, HERO, WFRP, Cyberpunk, Shadowrun, Earthdawn, Mekton, Traveller, Pendragon; to name a few. now that i think about it, i think i only played D&D for about three or four years before dropping it entirely.Joshua Dyal said:
i'll ashamedly admit that from around 1985 until 2000, i was one of those gamers who would turn up his nose and sneer at anything D&D-related.
early in 2000, i heard that WOTC was doing a new edition of D&D. all i knew about WOTC at the time was that "they're the company that makes Magic" and all i knew of D&D was that it was the game i didn't like. somehow i found my way to Eric Noah's old site and started reading the previews... and discovered that it sounded like they were actually making a good game. the site got me excited about 3e, and i bought each of the three core rulebooks the day they hit my FLGS.
if it wasn't for Eric Noah, i wouldn't be a d20/D&D player today.
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Wormwood
Adventurer
Same here. Noah's site was my first preview of what 3e would become, and I recall thinking, "They're finally moving D&D in the right direction!"d4 said:somehow i found my way to Eric Noah's old site and started reading the previews... and discovered that it sounded like they were actually making a good game. the site got me excited about 3e, and i bought each of the three core rulebooks the day they hit my FLGS.
if it wasn't for Eric Noah, i wouldn't be a d20/D&D player today.
I remember the summer of 2000 watching the sacred cows getting killed one-by-one and grinning from ear to ear.
edit: I should stop there
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In 1997, I was mainly playing Magic: the Gathering. Yes, I'm one of the people who contributed to WotC's ability to save D&D!
About that time, I ran a short (9-month) campaign using the 2E Player's option books. It still stands as one of the best games I've ever run. However, this was about my only Role-playing in a 4-5 year period.
Mainly this was because I'd just moved to Ballarat, and I didn't know enough role-players. Before that, I'd been playing Amber, Star Wars (WEG) and Marvel Super Heroes, and very little D&D.
I ran a AD&D (2E) campaign from 1990 to 1992, and diverged after that into other games.
2000 was when I was able to find people who wanted to play D&D with me again. I ran a couple of sessions with 2E (Player's Option) and then went straight into 3E, and found it the best version of D&D yet by a long, long way.
Cheers!
About that time, I ran a short (9-month) campaign using the 2E Player's option books. It still stands as one of the best games I've ever run. However, this was about my only Role-playing in a 4-5 year period.
Mainly this was because I'd just moved to Ballarat, and I didn't know enough role-players. Before that, I'd been playing Amber, Star Wars (WEG) and Marvel Super Heroes, and very little D&D.
I ran a AD&D (2E) campaign from 1990 to 1992, and diverged after that into other games.
2000 was when I was able to find people who wanted to play D&D with me again. I ran a couple of sessions with 2E (Player's Option) and then went straight into 3E, and found it the best version of D&D yet by a long, long way.
Cheers!
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