Teeth of the Barkash Nour - Debuts at Gary Con X!

[thedungeondelver]

Hi everyone,

I've been keeping this under my hat for a little while so I thought I'd go ahead and spread the good news: I will be running the module I worked on for Gary Gygax, Teeth of the Barkash Nour at GaryCon X in March of 2018! It will be strictly for 1e AD&D rules (PHB only, please).

I'm pretty excited about this since it'll be the first public showing of something I put a lot of work into and that along the way of its development, Gary guided and approved of. Now, ten years later, if you're at GaryCon folks will finally get the chance to play it!

The fabled "Teeth of the Barkash Nour" are the original "Teeth of the Dalhver-Nar" as eventually featured in the Dungeon Masters Guide for 1st Edition AD&D. While the module itself was written for Castles & Crusades, the notes I worked off of were definitely OD&D/AD&D.

If you're going to be there I hope you get a chance to sit down and play or at the very least stop by and spectate.

 

[Spinachcat]

I loved the Teeth as low level artifacts! What level is your adventure? When are you publishing it? Why are you running it in 1e vs. C&C?

Also, what took so long in the development?

 

[thedungeondelver]

I loved the Teeth as low level artifacts! What level is your adventure? When are you publishing it? Why are you running it in 1e vs. C&C?

Also, what took so long in the development?

Wow! So much asked in so few questions

I'm running it in 1e AD&D because that's how it - and all of the things I wrote for C&C* - was developed. Even the 3e book I wrote with Lance Hawvermale (which was actually published; look up Elemental Moon on amazon.com, I wrote under a pseudonym "Andy Luke Crossness"), was written with 1e AD&D rules and then ported over. It's what I know and what I love and it's what's easiest for me to get my head around. On that aspect, Gary was OK. His admonishment to me was to make sure it was well written, make sure converting it back to C&C wouldn't change anything, and go for it. He liked my work on the C&C town modules and trusted me enough to get the job done.

The whole affair was finished in 2006, in just a few months. Heck I think I knocked the whole thing out in a few weeks, if I remember correctly. The development time...sigh...there was no real "development time" to speak of. This is the sordid affair:

Gary asked Frank Mentzer to pen Teeth of the Barkash Nour. It is my understanding that Frank asked for cash up front, and Gary balked, and instead offered it to a currently "employed" C&C/Yggsburgh staffer. I jumped at the chance because the town modules, while interesting, weren't exactly fulfilling my creative desires.

I volunteered, wrote the module, and turned it in to both Gary and Troll Lord Games.

A long time passed and I didn't hear what was going on. Finally I reached out to Gary and asked what the status was, he insisted I move forward with C&C projects and get ready to write a raft of Lejendary Adventure modules for him - cities, adventures, etc. When I pressed him for details, he told me the ToBN module was unsuitable because it contained "multiple" violations of the open gaming license.

Gary passed away and the module fell in to limbo.

I spoke to someone doing some editing for TLG with whom I was friends at the time and he informed me that he'd passed it on to...Frank Mentzer to look over. At the time I had no acrimony towards Frank, so I contacted Frank and asked what the status was. He recommended we speak face to face at LGGC, as I was going there that spring.

I met Frank at the VFW in Lake Geneva and he proceeded to inform me that ToBN had been a "mess" because of my IP violations. He then launched into this long-winded discussion about how "Gary fans" had "stars in their eyes" (those are direct quotes) but he didn't, so he didn't jump at every opportunity...and also that he wouldn't do work without being paid first, ha ha. However, he told me, he would "fix" ToBN so it was suitable for publication but my name would be on it too somewhere.

I was crestfallen: I was certain I had sanitized the whole thing. I spoke to the Trolls at LGGC and asked them if I could have another crack at it. ToBN was my baby. Steve Chenault told me, "Ignore Frank, write the module." I sat down with a copy of the OGL and a copy of my manuscript with my laptop in my room at the Con and started to go over it with a fine-toothed comb.

There were no IP violations anywhere in it. Period, fullstop. None. No monsters, no descending armor classes, no reference to named spells or magic items, magic weapons and armor were formatted correctly, as were magic items, no references to IP such as Greyhawk, etc. I didn't accidentally say "D&D" anywhere in it...nothing.

Frank took my project, which he shouldn't have had access to, and lied to Gary about it, and tried to put his name on it.

Once Gary passed away, Gail Gygax elected to end business arrangements with TLG regarding Gary's works and that was that. So despite it's suitability for publication, there is no outlet for it to be published (I highly doubt Gail, even as munificent as she might be towards table top RPG folks, would make an exception for me). It was ready for publication, or at least pre-publication, in 2006. Frank Mentzer interfered and scuttled it, although TLG's slow rate of publication probably would've meant it didn't get published anyway.

Now, I realize this all may sound very one-sided, but please observe this:

In the 2000s, Gary published his latest RPG, Lejendary Adventures. The OGL had just appeared (y2k) and he and Gail were very suspicious of it, legally. Gary wanted me to complete his vintage "Teeth of Dalver-Nar" tournament adventure, but he backed off because neither of us really understood how the OGL worked, nor were we about to spend money on attorneys (see above) to explain it. (Other potential co-authors were also burned by this uncertainty.) The Teeth project was parked, Gary passed in '08, and a decade later Gail has still never published anything under OGL rules. If we'd only had it explained to us, and the right time... but so it goes.

Straight from Frank Mentzer.

- this is an abject lie. Gary actually got Upper Works published plus some of the C&C Town Modules because of the Open Gaming License. If Gary were so "suspicious" of it, it sure as shit looks like he was OK enough with it to commit a few hundred thousand words to it through an initial 30 (later down to 12) authors! No, Frank deliberately stepped on my project. That's why it wasn't published. I take some comfort in that it didn't poison Gary on anything else I was working on since he was keen to get me started writing Lejendary Adventures and getting my C&C town modules published.

There's a LOT of other sordid personal details involved here but that is the meat of it.

...

Anyway, to answer your questions on the game itself!

The Teeth?! Low level artifacts? Have you seen what a whole set will do?! Okay perhaps one or two individually is fairly low level but a full set of 32...brr.

Probably 8th-10th, I will have to look at the pre-generated characters and see what levels they are. The original pre-gens are 20 in number, so to make up for that gap I will likely increase the level (I think 12 is the maximum number of seats I can register). If somehow I can have more I will lower the overall level and use the pre-generated characters. as presented in the module.

Fun fact: that adventure actually contains the first multi-classed characters** for D&D!

...

* = I wrote four, total
** = if you discount Supplement I: Greyhawk having noted that elves can function as "elf" or "thief" or "elf/fighter" etc.

 

[opaopajr]

*pours tea* "Go on..."

 

[thedungeondelver]

Well I can't give away any more details about the module, and there's really no more of the story to tell...

I will say that, if you are going to GaryCon, it IS (the game I mean) in the Grid, just not showing quite yet. So when the pre-registration goes live you'll be able to sign up.

Note: I do not understand their game signups so...uh...yeah.

 

[thedungeondelver]

Hey...an update to this. Luke Gygax has asked that I run it all four days that I'm there...! So if you're going to be at the con, odds are you'll be able to get in a game.