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What did you think of the Stranger Things D&D game?
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<blockquote data-quote="Erich the Fuzzy" data-source="post: 8660965" data-attributes="member: 7015978"><p>In my 1986 experience in small-town Canada, which had more limited retail than the US, gaming supplies were available in some comic shops and hobby shops (selling sports cards and such) and sometimes even book stores (which sold game books) in large towns and small cities, and if you were in a small town, there was always a bigger town or city that you'd have a chance to shop in every few months, at least. Cities had dedicated game stores with all sorts of RPG supplies. The size of the Hawkins mall indicates a medium-sized town. If the local store didn't normally stock them, you could request them by special order. Plus, mail order has always been pretty cheap in the US (the cost of shipping to Canada was much more prohibitive). (The Starcourt mall had a game store, a bookstore and a "chess king", which indicates a pretty strong local gaming community. Local downtown stores are noted to have closed when the mall opened so the game store may have replaced a prior one.) And these kids somehow managed to afford custom small-run multicolour printed T-shirts of their own design for their local Hellfire D&D club, which means they had some spare bucks to put into gaming non-essentials. The DM also has a dice tower, which was a premium mail-order specialty product, although he doesn't seem to use it. (Although it's possible he had the woodworking skills to make it himself).</p><p></p><p>According to the official series companion, Hawkins is about halfway (hence an hour each way) between the cities of Indianapolis and Fort Wayne, and not very far from Muncie, all of which should have decent gaming supplies.</p><p></p><p>The TSR shortage that led to chits or coupons being put in Basic sets was long over by this time. Each Basic or Advanced box set came with the full 6 dice. (I still have 5 of my 6 basic dice, and all 6 of my expert, from the early 80s). If you were able to source the AD&D rulebooks or the DM Screen (a more specialized product) or if Dragon Magazine (seen on the table) was in your local stores, then you could source dice the same way, if for some reason you had skipped B/X and gone straight to Advanced. </p><p></p><p>Of course, the gaming scene depicts, altogether, a near-full set of orange (black-numbered) dice (d4, d6, d8, d10, d10 of 10s, d12) that look like they came from a tube or a boxed rules set, plus dark grey or dark brown d4, d10, and d12. And we see at least 3 of the players rolling the same black (red-numbered) d20. Hence there was certainly no need to do the d10 + d4/d6 for even/odd/0/+10 kluge for a missing d20. Even the d6s used are all D&D (numbered), not cribbed from wargames or table games (pips). While I've heard that some gamers started with that kluge (lacking a real d20) and for some reason stuck with it even when they didn't need to anymore, the players at that table are generally too young to have started that way and it would be a very odd quirk to adopt unnecessarily. I'm not aware of standard (B/X) sets coming with the paired d10 set (10s and 1s) before the 90s, so the fact that someone has that specialty 10s version of a d10 indicates extra dice were being acquired. (At some point between when I bought my Moldvay B/X boxes in the early 80s and when I got back in to 5e a few years ago, the standard dice set went from 6 to 7 by including a 2nd d10 to simplify percentile rolling, and now an extra d20 for advantage/disadvantage).</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Erich the Fuzzy, post: 8660965, member: 7015978"] In my 1986 experience in small-town Canada, which had more limited retail than the US, gaming supplies were available in some comic shops and hobby shops (selling sports cards and such) and sometimes even book stores (which sold game books) in large towns and small cities, and if you were in a small town, there was always a bigger town or city that you'd have a chance to shop in every few months, at least. Cities had dedicated game stores with all sorts of RPG supplies. The size of the Hawkins mall indicates a medium-sized town. If the local store didn't normally stock them, you could request them by special order. Plus, mail order has always been pretty cheap in the US (the cost of shipping to Canada was much more prohibitive). (The Starcourt mall had a game store, a bookstore and a "chess king", which indicates a pretty strong local gaming community. Local downtown stores are noted to have closed when the mall opened so the game store may have replaced a prior one.) And these kids somehow managed to afford custom small-run multicolour printed T-shirts of their own design for their local Hellfire D&D club, which means they had some spare bucks to put into gaming non-essentials. The DM also has a dice tower, which was a premium mail-order specialty product, although he doesn't seem to use it. (Although it's possible he had the woodworking skills to make it himself). According to the official series companion, Hawkins is about halfway (hence an hour each way) between the cities of Indianapolis and Fort Wayne, and not very far from Muncie, all of which should have decent gaming supplies. The TSR shortage that led to chits or coupons being put in Basic sets was long over by this time. Each Basic or Advanced box set came with the full 6 dice. (I still have 5 of my 6 basic dice, and all 6 of my expert, from the early 80s). If you were able to source the AD&D rulebooks or the DM Screen (a more specialized product) or if Dragon Magazine (seen on the table) was in your local stores, then you could source dice the same way, if for some reason you had skipped B/X and gone straight to Advanced. Of course, the gaming scene depicts, altogether, a near-full set of orange (black-numbered) dice (d4, d6, d8, d10, d10 of 10s, d12) that look like they came from a tube or a boxed rules set, plus dark grey or dark brown d4, d10, and d12. And we see at least 3 of the players rolling the same black (red-numbered) d20. Hence there was certainly no need to do the d10 + d4/d6 for even/odd/0/+10 kluge for a missing d20. Even the d6s used are all D&D (numbered), not cribbed from wargames or table games (pips). While I've heard that some gamers started with that kluge (lacking a real d20) and for some reason stuck with it even when they didn't need to anymore, the players at that table are generally too young to have started that way and it would be a very odd quirk to adopt unnecessarily. I'm not aware of standard (B/X) sets coming with the paired d10 set (10s and 1s) before the 90s, so the fact that someone has that specialty 10s version of a d10 indicates extra dice were being acquired. (At some point between when I bought my Moldvay B/X boxes in the early 80s and when I got back in to 5e a few years ago, the standard dice set went from 6 to 7 by including a 2nd d10 to simplify percentile rolling, and now an extra d20 for advantage/disadvantage). [/QUOTE]
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