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Man, FF had tons of essential stuff. Githx, Slaad, Daemons, Drow, Kuo-toa, Elemental Princes of Evil, Oriental Dragons, tons of Undead, topped by the Death Knight, lots of different little humanoid races to toss at your PCs. Great stuff.

To this day, players still talk about the Throat Leech. :devil:
 
Also American, there was a store (The Game Keeper) in a mall in the town I lived in (Palm Desert, CA) between 1982-1986.
IDK if it's the same chain but we had a Game Keeper in the new (at the time) mall here. It's where I bought most of my earliest RPG stuff... AD&D and Arduin and Traveller... probably Runequest as well. Their RPG corner was tiny but dense... with digest-sized books on a turn-style rack.
Most of the store was puzzles and board games... chess sets.
No miniatures that I recall, those were in the back of the toy store at the other end of the mall... which is where I first saw Citadel figures and White Dwarf.
 
Some of the FF originals got translated to The Fantasy Trip in a recent monster book. I made a point of tossing a Flumph into a recent TFT adventure and it was glorious. I defy anyone to explain convincingly why the Flumph is lame, other than its silly name (which I actually like).
 
Some of the FF originals got translated to The Fantasy Trip in a recent monster book. I made a point of tossing a Flumph into a recent TFT adventure and it was glorious. I defy anyone to explain convincingly why the Flumph is lame, other than its silly name (which I actually like).
I just backed the "quick quests" kickstarter specifically to get the "Old School Monsters" book.
 
First, I gotta say that none of the British stuff made it to the suburbs of Salt Lake City (other than fiend folio). Never even heard it mentioned. We didn't have a dedicated game store until late 80s or so and it was on the other side of the city. Compared to the D&D of the time, things like Dragon Warriors would have been a revelation. I didn't start getting into until the 21st century.

I'm taking a second at Troika! but have had a chance to play, yet. I'm imagining that the initiative rules would be a blast for simulating the chaos of combat. But I can see it really annoying the type who spend hours in games optimizing character builds and that expect everything to happen according to their plans - "I wanted to go before Steevo! What to you mean I don't get a turn this round?"

The one thing that bothered me about AFF that is carried into Troika! is how Skill is an Uber stat and a single low roll in chargen dooms you. The one change I might make is, instead of 1d3+3, you have 3 Skill scores: combat, magic, everything else. You allocate a 4, 5, and 6 to these how you want. That way, you have basic competence in what's important to you. For AFF, I would probably take the same approach but roll 3 times. I think both games are simple enough that this small change won't over complicate things.
 
First, I gotta say that none of the British stuff made it to the suburbs of Salt Lake City (other than fiend folio). Never even heard it mentioned. We didn't have a dedicated game store until late 80s or so and it was on the other side of the city. Compared to the D&D of the time, things like Dragon Warriors would have been a revelation. I didn't start getting into until the 21st century.
Yeah, I don't want to overstate the differences either, but it wasn't until the rise of the Internet I realised quite how different UK roleplaying culture was to the US. (And other countries. I'd be fascinated to know more about France in particular).
I'm taking a second at Troika! but have had a chance to play, yet. I'm imagining that the initiative rules would be a blast for simulating the chaos of combat. But I can see it really annoying the type who spend hours in games optimizing character builds and that expect everything to happen according to their plans - "I wanted to go before Steevo! What to you mean I don't get a turn this round?"
Hah, yeah, I think it's fair to say that optimisers really aren't going to fit Troika.
The one thing that bothered me about AFF that is carried into Troika! is how Skill is an Uber stat and a single low roll in chargen dooms you. The one change I might make is, instead of 1d3+3, you have 3 Skill scores: combat, magic, everything else. You allocate a 4, 5, and 6 to these how you want. That way, you have basic competence in what's important to you. For AFF, I would probably take the same approach but roll 3 times. I think both games are simple enough that this small change won't over complicate things.
The new edition of AFF fixes that.

It's a Point Buy system, with SKILL ranging from 4-7 for a starting character. (Already way less unbalanced than the original random determination of between 7-12).

MAGIC has been seperated off. It can have a starting value of up to 7. But considering it starts at a value of 0, you're going to pay in your other stats if you want to be good at MAGIC.

There is a random optional version for those who prefer it, which is a lot more unbalanced but still allows customisation.

It's one of the few editions I've never heard of anyone arguing that the original was better.
 
The new edition of AFF fixes that.

It's a Point Buy system, with SKILL ranging from 4-7 for a starting character. (Already way less unbalanced than the original random determination of between 7-12).

MAGIC has been seperated off. It can have a starting value of up to 7. But considering it starts at a value of 0, you're going to pay in your other stats if you want to be good at MAGIC.

There is a random optional version for those who prefer it, which is a lot more unbalanced but still allows customisation.

It's one of the few editions I've never heard of anyone arguing that the original was better.

I go even further with AFF and split Skill into Combat, Mental, Physical and Social. Giving players 4 additional points to build with.

This can really add more differentiation to the player characters while retaining total system compatability.
 
There is a random optional version for those who prefer it, which is a lot more unbalanced but still allows customisation.

It's one of the few editions I've never heard of anyone arguing that the original was better.
Keeping random as an option might have something to do with the latter:thumbsup:.
 
Keeping random as an option might have something to do with the latter:thumbsup:.
I've never heard anyone say that at least. If the old system was really that popular you'd think someone in the community would still be using it and I don't think anyone does.

The reason for that is actually pretty simple.

The random system in the original books was in fact completely broken. If you rolled a SKILL of 7, the vast majority of FF were impossible to complete and frequently would kill you in the first few encounters with no chance of avoiding that.

Everyone dealt with that by cheating and either giving themselves a high SKILL without rolling or even just assuming they won all the combats.

So nobody that actually plays the game is nostalgic for that system, because it doesn't work at the table.
 
I've never heard anyone say that at least. If the old system was really that popular you'd think someone in the community would still be using it and I don't think anyone does.

The reason for that is actually pretty simple.

The random system in the original books was in fact completely broken. If you rolled a SKILL of 7, the vast majority of FF were impossible to complete and frequently would kill you in the first few encounters with no chance of avoiding that.

Everyone dealt with that by cheating and either giving themselves a high SKILL without rolling or even just assuming they won all the combats.

So nobody that actually plays the game is nostalgic for that system, because it doesn't work at the table.
Yes, but there are people who just like random chargen. Keeping it as an option has probably assuaged them, while still allowing a system that works at the table,is what I was saying:thumbsup:.
 
It's one of the few editions I've never heard of anyone arguing that the original was better.
Probably the only complaints I have with it are the scenario in the book are a bit rubbish (And the conversions aren't great), talents feel a bit out of place, and the XP system uses big numbers when I don't think it really needs to (I cut the costs and rewards by a factor of 5). But they're all incredibly minor and nitpicky things that I don't feel actually matter in any real way; yeah, it's a huge improvement over the original.

Oh, also I ruined missile combat for everyone. There was a playtest game ran at Conpulsion one year, and I played the elf archer pregen. When a fight started, Graham (The designer) discussed all the combat options, one of which was to fire two arrows at once with some trivial penalty; I pointed out that this was strictly better than the basic attack option and explained the maths as to why, and he agreed and said he'd look at it, and the actual published version is significantly worse as a result (But, I feel, significantly more reasonable).
 
Probably the only complaints I have with it are the scenario in the book are a bit rubbish (And the conversions aren't great), talents feel a bit out of place, and the XP system uses big numbers when I don't think it really needs to (I cut the costs and rewards by a factor of 5). But they're all incredibly minor and nitpicky things that I don't feel actually matter in any real way; yeah, it's a huge improvement over the original.
Heh, I'm in agreement with two of those.

I used the original's scenarios and Riddling Reaver, followed by Sorcery and cut the XP rewards like you.

I like talents though; I think if you see them as quirks they help personalise characters.
 
Yeah, I don't want to overstate the differences either, but it wasn't until the rise of the Internet I realised quite how different UK roleplaying culture was to the US. (And other countries. I'd be fascinated to know more about France in particular).

I'd be happy to answer that if you have specific questions. First, unlike Germany or Sweden, AD&D had a very strong presence in France but soon we had a very dynamic RPG scene (but very few things were translated in english) but as far as heroic-fantasy was concerned AD&D was the 800 pounds gorilla in the room. Other great successes in France were Call of Cthulhu and the Eternal Chamipion rpgs: Hawkmoon and Stormbringer (we even had an exclusive edition of Hawkmoon which kinda did what Elric! did with Stormbringer with loads of regional supplements). Warhammer was a big hit as well (though it's very hard to get reliable sales number).

Much of the creative scene in the 80s/80s was very much about creating new settings and the rules always seemed to be an afterthought ('yeah, let's put a BRP-like system here, that should work").: Maléfices (horror/weird in early XXth century France), Hurlements (play as yourself but amnesiac and as a member of traveling circus in XIth century France), Berlin XVIII (play Cops in a futuristic Berlin) but also quite fiddly/complex games like Legendes or Rêve de Dragon.

In the 90s, the World of Darkness had quite an impact as well, though it was limited to Vampire (but the splatbook economic model didn't translate well to a much more limited market as France).

We still have a very strong RPG scene with a lot of indie publishers (and the clusterfuck that was the D&D5 release(s) in France feels like it's not as predominant as it was before but as I have no numbers to back this up I may be pulling that out of my ass).
 
Mid 90s in Sunderland (around the time of the Vampire boom) Joseph's toy store was where you went if you were a student gamer. It was great, full on traditional toy store downstairs and our stuff up top
Joseph's was an absolute treasure trove back in the day. Ìt must have been around '82 when I first got into RPG's and Joseph's seemed to stock most of the games I'd seen in the pages of White Dwarf.

Originally the shop had its game section downstairs, with two carousel racks of early Ral Partha and Citadel minis (in plastic bags rather than blister packs!) and a fairly eclectic section of RPG books and boardgames. I remember they had a selection of the Traveller little Black Books in the window display.

I wonder just how many of the older games in my collection were purchased over the years in there? Most of them I'd hazard.
 
Portsmouth did ok for game shops in the 1980's.
As well as the usual Virgin and Betties (good for Avlon Hill wargames and Car Wars). Boots had a shelf of stuff of stuff for awhile including Toon And Twilight 2000 and two local shops U-Need-Us and Southsea Models had a range of stuff.
 
I'm thinking running something with Troika! Anyone have suggestions for things beyond the core book? Is any of the stuff from other companies good?
 
I'm thinking running something with Troika! Anyone have suggestions for things beyond the core book? Is any of the stuff from other companies good?

I liked the starter adventure So You've Been Thrown Down a Well. It has imaginative ideas and an appropriately strange setting. Ignore Melan and Bryce's rather clueless reviews, I had no issue reading it but that may be because I had the pdf.
 
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A few of the BOSR games now have their own regular fanzines.

The Warlock Returns covers Advanced Fighting Fantasy and is quarterly. The 4th issue has just been released.


Casket of Feys is free (!) content for Dragon Warriors. Less definite with its release scale, but it's also on issue 4.

 
A few of the BOSR games now have their own regular fanzines.

The Warlock Returns covers Advanced Fighting Fantasy and is quarterly. The 4th issue has just been released.


Casket of Feys is free (!) content for Dragon Warriors. Less definite with its release scale, but it's also on issue 4.

I took a quick look and the Dragon Warriors zine publisher also has some free adventures, including a few solo adventures.
 
I'm thinking running something with Troika! Anyone have suggestions for things beyond the core book? Is any of the stuff from other companies good?
I have Acid Death Fantasy, and it's pretty cool. There is also a ton of free and low cost stuff for Troika! on itch.io .
 
I just got it and am digging into it, though I had read (not played) the core book earlier.

Warlock! itself is based on WFRP - I have never read 1e of that so I don't know how close it is. It's like Fighting Fantasy in that you have Luck and Stamina. Instead of a skill stat, you have individual skills, with ratings that start 4-6 and can go 10+; roll d20 + skill to get 20+ to succeed. You have careers which allow you to advance a set of skills as you use them. You can change careers and get advanced careers. The overall feel is average schmoes doing what you need to survive. Careers are along the lines of grave robber, mercenary, and rat catcher. In this, and the rest that I've seen so far, the art is not good, but interesting. One the whole, it's a simple game for low fantasy adventuring. Magic is easily accessible but hard to be good at - you have to roll to successfully cast a spell and there is a 1/20 chance that problems could happen. Spells also cost a couple of points of stamina whether or not you're successful so you're not going to be casting an endless stream of magic. Armor is damage reduction. Attacks are opposed rolls - in melee whoever wins does damage so there is no chance of both sides standing there hitting only air.

Also in the starter set is a a book with 3 adventures, at 30 pages, and two setting books, one a frontier, the other a kingdom with it's capitol city.

In the bonus set are two compediums, one with new careers and spells, the other with DMG type stuff. There's also a monster manual, a book of interesting NPCs, a setting book with a frontier town, and a book on goblins with culture and stats.

If you don't intend to play, the setting materials would still be easy to drop into other low fantasy games. The monsters and NPC would be good inspiration.
 
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Magic is easily accessible but hard to be good at - you have to roll to successfully cast a spell and there is a 1/20 chance that problems could happen. Spells also cost a couple of points of stamina whether or not you're successful so you're not going to be casting and endless stream of magic.
We played a short bit of Warlock! a while back and yeah, the magic is a bit punishing. It took some getting used to but I liked it.
 
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I've always found the Games Workshop version of the Holmes Basic set to be fascinating:

ddcover.jpg

Some comparisons with the US edition for interior art on the same pages. Games Workshop version is the lower one in each case.

10r8hmt_COMPARE.jpg

Dungeons & Dragons - Box Set-28_COMPARED.jpg

Dungeons & Dragons - Box Set-3_COMPARED.jpg

DnD_Basic_Rules_Holmes-38_COMPARED.jpg

Dungeons & Dragons - Box Set-29_COMPARED.jpg
 
Just come across this interview with Paul Cockburn, ex Games Workshop and the editor of Imagine (and then Gamemaster magazine). http://realmofchaos80s.blogspot.com/2013/08/imagine-interview-with-paul-cockburn.html

Some bits I found especially interesting.

And then I think there was an ad in the paper from TSR UK, who were in The Mill in Cambridge, for an editor for their new magazine, Imagine. I went up, interviewed, and though I didn't get the job, they took me on as Assistant Editor. Even before the first issue, the original editor was fired, so then I was in the hot seat! We just made everything up as we went along, determined only that we would try and muscle in on White Dwarf's circulation numbers.

Hmm... well, Imagine was going to be a British Dragon magazine, according to plan. Don wanted to create product in the UK, and he wanted a magazine. So, we had the UK series of AD&D modules, and Imagine. I think the point was that Don was a real contemporary of Ian Livingstone and Steve (UK) Jackson and wanted their level of kudos. So, we tried to make Imagine bigger and better, and since we had D&D, how could we go wrong? We'd clawed up to about half WD's circulation by the time we closed.

Interesting level of rivalry there and one that doesn't seem to have been mirrored by TSR USA.

Basically, the UK operation really couldn't sustain all this activity, and there was a level of... ummm... creative accounting when the time came, that pushed all the losses onto the magazine (or so I was told at the time by a very unhappy accounts lady). Don didn't last too long after that - he'd blown it with the powers that be in the USA, but by then the magazine was gone. A shame. I thought we were nailing it a lot of the time in the year before we closed.

An amusingly different account to Gygax's on the financials of Imagine. People will make their own judgement, but my instinct is that Cockburn is probably telling the truth here, but that nobody will have mentioned the creative accounting to Gygax so his retelling of it is based on what he knew.

On being editor of White Dwarf:

Ha! Did I only do five? I really didn't want the gig, and if it shows in those issues, I apologise to all who had to read it. It was already clear that content was going to change. All non-GW product was going to be phased out, the focus was going to be on miniatures and painting, and WD was on its way to being a GW catalogue. I really didn't want that, and I think already you could see the signs that I was just not a GW kinda guy. I believe in gaming and a wider hobby, not just Warhammer and all that. I hired Mike Brunton from TSR to take over from me, so he really got the short end of the stick. What did it involve? A lot of talking about painted miniatures, and the photography thereof. We had some drama around reviews of other products - GW still had partnerships going with the likes of Chaosium and West End Games, so we featured their stuff. But Bryan had a plan I really hadn't bought into, and so I really was just a caretaker for WD after the move up from London.

(...)

I don't have clear memories on all this, but I had a few scraps with Bryan over policy. And by the time I handed WD on, it was clear things were heading in a direction that would see the magazine only feature GW product. Along the way, we had a guest over from the USA, and we then proceeded to trash a product that he had written, in a WD review, pretty much while he was in the building. Stuff like that just showed we couldn't sustain a level of independent editorial policy. Everything was political.

I find it both interesting and funny that he left Imagine, joined White Dwarf and had exactly the same fight with management again.

I mean, we had some excellent days, and produced some ace product (as well as some dross), but there was a management ethos there that was just moronic as far as I was concerned. I didn't like the strategy the company was following, but that wasn't really my biz. All my battles were fought around the games we published. I'm sure a lot of people who knew me then have memories of me being an arrogant, opinionated prick, and they may not be 100% wrong. I wanted to lead the editorial arm of the most creative games publisher there could possible be. Instead it was snotlings and goblins and all that. Apologies to anyone reading this who loved or loves their Warhammer or their 40k, but I hated them then, and I've ignored them since.

I can see why Cockburn's time at GW didn't work out. I think its a shame we've had no more games from him though.
 
A Fiery Flying Roll Black Leaf Sounds a lot like a similar interview he did with the Grognard Files guy more recently. So he's consistent in what he's recalling. Also from what I get from the Grognard Files was that GW was really ran rather half assed seat of the pants. Which honestly is how they did come off to me often back in the day.
 
A Fiery Flying Roll Black Leaf Sounds a lot like a similar interview he did with the Grognard Files guy more recently. So he's consistent in what he's recalling. Also from what I get from the Grognard Files was that GW was really ran rather half assed seat of the pants. Which honestly is how they did come off to me often back in the day.
It's a complicated one. My heart is with the chaotic geek visionaries in the early days who just put out stuff because they liked it. My head says that if Ansell and Kirby hadn't taken over and refocused the business Games Workshop wouldn't have survived past the mid 90s.
 
A Fiery Flying Roll Black Leaf Sounds a lot like a similar interview he did with the Grognard Files guy more recently. So he's consistent in what he's recalling. Also from what I get from the Grognard Files was that GW was really ran rather half assed seat of the pants. Which honestly is how they did come off to me often back in the day.


Here's that interview in two parts, great stuff as usual from the Grognard Files.


I love White Dwarf but Imagine is the most literate gaming mag I've ever encountered.

It and WD show just how different in tone and style the UK scene was compared to the mainstream D&D scene in the US.
 
Here's that interview in two parts, great stuff as usual from the Grognard Files.


I love White Dwarf but Imagine is the most literate gaming mag I've ever encountered.

It and WD show just how different in tone and style the UK scene was compared to the mainstream D&D scene in the US.
Did you ever come across G.M. Magazine in the US? Only 19 issues but it was very good. (Unfortunately I'm not sure where you can track down back issues now the obvious source is gone).
 
Did you ever come across G.M. Magazine in the US? Only 19 issues but it was very good. (Unfortunately I'm not sure where you can track down back issues now the obvious source is gone).

No, our local comics/game shop only ever carried Dragon in the 80s. By the time I discovered White Dwarf it had abandoned covering rpgs. It is only thanks to the net I've been able to discover early WD and Imagine.

A quick search via Google doesn't turn up an archive for GM Magazine unfortunately, it sounds cool.
 
No, our local comics/game shop only ever carried Dragon in the 80s. By the time I discovered White Dwarf it had abandoned covering rpgs. It is only thanks to the net I've been able to discover early WD and Imagine.

A quick search via Google doesn't turn up an archive for GM Magazine unfortunately, it sounds cool.
Doing a bit of digging can't find that, but I did find also ran Adventurer Magazine!

 
I'm guessing by GM Magazine you mean the magazine that was later renamed GamesMaster International? I had a couple of issues of the latter and I remember it very fondly. I haven't seen my copies in years (Dad probably threw them out in the 90s) but I really enjoyed it. I started to read White Dwarf at the end of it's RPG covering era, so I'm not exactly an expert on it's golden years, but I always thought of GMI as the superior periodical.
 
I'm guessing by GM Magazine you mean the magazine that was later renamed GamesMaster International? I had a couple of issues of the latter and I remember it very fondly. I haven't seen my copies in years (Dad probably threw them out in the 90s) but I really enjoyed it. I started to read White Dwarf at the end of it's RPG covering era, so I'm not exactly an expert on it's golden years, but I always thought of GMI as the superior periodical.
It was essentially the same magazine. Different publisher, but same editorial team. And yeah, it was really good. (In particular, it played a large part in helping grow British LRP which some of the White Dwarf people were always sniffy about).
 
It was essentially the same magazine. Different publisher, but same editorial team. And yeah, it was really good. (In particular, it played a large part in helping grow British LRP which some of the White Dwarf people were always sniffy about).

Yeah, I remember it having some LARP stuff in there. I was never really into LARPing but I do remember making some weapons based on a magazine article. I'm pretty sure that was from an issue of GMI.

I wish I still had my issues. It would be a nice dose of nostalgia (like when I found a bunch of Crash magazines from the 80s).
 
Notable thing I just found out about the Fiend Folio. The githzerai, githyanki, slaads, and death knights were all created by a 16 year old Charles Stross, now successful author.

Yup, I loved that when I found out about it a few years ago. Had to share it with my wife who is a fan of his books as well. :smile: Damn impressive for a 16 year old.
 
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