I have discovered that I have more items that I wrote stored away someplace... meaning I am half way through my project of creating what I will now call Tessia's Deck of Acquirement...or something.
Admittedly in a much diminished state than at it’s heyday.
I don’t know if you ever heard the term Usenet before, and even if you did, if you don’t just connect it with data piracy. Because that’s what it is mostly used for nowadays.
What it started out as were discussion forums.
Back in the late 70s, after ARPANET had been created and email had been invented, a few programmers came up with an idea for an electronic bulletin board that could be read asynchronously. This was the time when computers still were only in big institutions like universities, big companies, and the military, and the whole idea was to create “a poor man’s ARPANET”. Connections between computers were rare and expensive , but possible. So these “news” started as a way to propagate articles and messages along servers that were not constantly connected to the internet. Some of the servers involved would only connect once a day to the network to transfer messages in and out (often at night because charges were lower then). A message might travel for multiple days before it reached all nodes in the network, and some of the earliest were messages about a nascent hobby popular among the people using this network: fantasy role-playing.
From what I can see the first two messages on the brand new group net.games.frp were sent out on the 12th of January 1982.
To give you an idea just how early this was: it was before the abbreviation RPG became common, people were still talking about Fantasy RolePlaying instead, so even today the group-names use the abbreviation FRP.
It’s quite a fascinating system that over time has become ever more complex and popular, before the ascent of html, hyperlinks, and the world wide web pushed it into the seedy corners of the ‘net.
Instead of having websites, Usenet is organized in newsgroups, and those groups are organized in hierarchies. There are the so called Big Eight that have a certain standard for group creation and posting (e.g. rec. for recreational topics, and comp. for topics concerning computers), and there are others, organized in one way or another (famously https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alt.*_hierarchy which had lower standards for the creation of new groups).
Messages are sent to one or more groups (crossposted), distributed around the network, and people respond to these posts. Interesting discussions and arguments ensue, people get angry, flame wars ensue, other people learn something new, weird in-jokes develop, stuff happens.
All that can be read via archives, the biggest of which is Google Groups, which both is a boon and downfall of the service: Google purchased the old newsgroup archives of DejaNews back in the 90s, and integrated it in it’s Google Groups service. In a picture-perfect example of Embrace, Extend, Extinguish the users of Groups had a web interface that allowed them access to their old newsgroups, access to new groups that only existed on Google, but also allowed spammers to flood the connected newsgroups with loads of unmoderated spam. Spam that recently was quoted by them as a reason to cut the connection with Usenet, bringing this phase of the network to an end.
But Usenet still is running, and most likely will be running as long as there are people willing to run servers for it. But the biggest Usenet servers nowadays are piracy servers that keep the text-part of the Usenet as more of an afterthought. At one point someone came up with a way to use the text-only format of Usenet in a way to distribute data that was binary, i.e. not purely text. And this took over most of the system.
But I am not really interested in that and never was. What I am interested in are the fantasy roleplaying parts of that network.
rec.games.frp.*
I said that the forum has been running since the late 70s, but that’s not quite correct. The original structure of Usenet grew organically from the beginning. People were creating new groups when it suited them and it seemed logical. Which soon caused some hierarchies (specifically the net. hierarchy) to swell with groups that could barely be maintained. In a great upheaval in 1987 all the groups were renamed and restructured.
Some old hands are still angry about it and will bitch about it for days. That also is Usenet.
One can argue that the fantasy roleplaying group has existed since before that time. One also could argue that it only exists since 1987. Which still is older than the World Wide Web.
Usenet is divided into hierarchies, and the frp-hierarchy is part of the rec. (recreation-hierarchy) and .games. sub-hierarchy.
There are currently 11 .frp. groups in that hierarchy:
rec.games.frp.dnd
of course… it’s the hierarchy for Dungeons and Dragons. Always one of the biggest topics of the whole FRP forums this one got it’s own group.
rec.games.frp.misc
for basically all other kinds of discussions about roleplaying games
rec.games.frp.cyber
for cyberpunk systems (e.g. Cyberpunk 2020 or Shadowrun).
rec.games.frp.super-heroes
for superhero games
rec.games.frp.live-action
anything LARP goes here.
rec.games.frp.announce
announcements and news about products go here
rec.games.frp.industry
for all kinds of discussions about the rpg industry
rec.games.frp.storyteller
yes, this was created when the World of Darkness was big enough to demand it’s own forum
rec.games.frp.gurps
For GURPS, this part was created because while never the most popular game, it’s fans flooded the main group with so many messages about builds that it was decided to give them their own place.
rec.games.frp.advocacy
all kinds of discussions about roleplaying games as such and how they work. This is where the Forge came from back in the day
rec.games.frp.market
I guess this is for selling stuff. I have literally never seen a message in there.
Most of these lay fallow right now, with me and a few others being the only ones posting there every once in a while. I do have to admit part of it is because I don’t want to lose the that part of ttrpg history to a random deletion request for non-use.
Other TTRPG groups
The main hierarchies are not the only ones. Most normal Usenet servers carry at least the Big Eight, but most also carry others. The big other hierarchy is alt. (…definitely not named for Anarchists, Lunatics, and Terrorists, all evidence to the contrary…), which makes it easier to create groups. This means there are a few other groups here that might be of interest, if they ever would get someone to post in them. Their structure though is not as organized as the ones in the Big 8.
alt.games.frp.adnd-util
about utilities for playing ADnD. I would say, a general groups for RPG utilities.
alt.games.adnd
for ADnD. I am not sure why this exists, maybe because the main one was too stodgy, or it was created because someone thought ADnD was sufficiently different than DnD to warrant it’s own group
alt.games.earthdawn
for Earthdawn. Remember Earthdawn?
alt.games.x-files.rpg
For the X-Files RPG. Remember that?
alt.games.whitewolf
I guess a group for White Wolf games, which is also already covered in rec.games.frp.storyteller
alt.games.tolkien.rpg
a group about playing in Tolkien’s Middle-Earth
There are also local and language dependent groups around. Many languages and regions have their own hierarchies for exchanges between locals and/or in other languages.
uk.games.roleplay
group for roleplaying in the UK
de.rec.spiele.rpg.misc
general group for discussions of RPGs in German
z-netz.freizeit.rollenspiele.dsa
originally this was an Echo in a mailbox network, by now z-netz. is a small alternative German Usenet hierarchy. This particular one about Das Schwarze Auge/The Dark Eye
pl.rec.gry.rpg
Polish-language group
es.rec.juegos.rol
Spanish-language group
se.spel.rollspel
Swedish-language group
dk.fritid.rollespil
Danish-language group
fr.rec.jeux.jdf
French-language group
it.hobby.giochi.gdr
Italian-language group
hr.rec.igre.rpg
Hungarian-language group
aus.games.roleplay
Australian group
There are more, some of which I might not even find that easy because they are not on the servers I frequent (not all servers carry all groups) or are so specialized they might not be of interest to anyone but locals (e.g. saar.rec.rollenspiele exists, but I doubt many people in Saarland (the smallest of Germany’s federal states) still know Usenet exists)
Ok, ok, but how do you actually ACCESS this Usenet thingy?
That’s a bit more difficult, but not much. It used to be ISPs were all running their own news servers, this was actually the REASON you might want internet access as a private person, but that isn’t the case anymore. Google Groups is also going away, so that’s not a real option.
An easy way to check out what is being talked about on the FRP-hierarchy is campaignwiki.org/news. This server makes it possible to read and post on his own small server via a web-interface. The server is only running roleplaying-related groups, including the global FRP-hierarchy, and a few local ones that do not get carried in many other places.
Another way to access it via web browser is via web gateways. There are a few around, e.g. NovaBBS. There are a few of those around, but they might not carry all the groups (NovaBBS e.g. only rec.games.frp.dnd and .misc, because those are the ones with most activity).
The proper way to use it is of course by getting an account on a news server and adding it to your feed reader of choice. True hardcore users use terminal-based readers like tin or Gnus, but many Email programs like Mozilla Thunderbirdallow you to subscribe to newsgroups.
Most of these have instructions on how to connect on their websites.
Note: This is a redo of an article I wrote 13 years ago. Originally I thought I could just let that one stand like that, but just briefly reading through it I noticed things had changed dramatically in some areas. So I rewrote the whole thing from scratch.
First appearing to the mass market fanbase within 5th Edition Dungeons & Dragons in Eberron: Rising from the Last War and now in Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything, the Artificer is a kind of techno-wizard. For someone without previous connections to Eberron, the setting that exploded on the scene in 3rd edition, the Artificer confused me.
The fiction upon which it is based seemingly is all self-referring, or modern fantastical. There’s a subclass that essentially reads as if it is Iron Man ported back into D&D for example. Whereas most D&D classes stretch into the myths and legends that predate the game itself, the Artificer does not seem to have that convention.
Oddly enough, it was a Christmas movie that reminded me of Artificers within our lore. There are magical techno-wizards within holiday tales. From Christmas elves of tradition, to the inventors of Jingle Jangle, you can find your inspiration for your next Artificer.
These creators take the mundane and imbue it with magic. They create automatons, magically tinker, infuse items, and all the other things you expect from the description of an Artificer.
Masters of invention, artificers use ingenuity and magic to unlock extraordinary capabilities in objects. They see magic as a complex system waiting to be decoded and then harnessed in their spells and inventions. You can find everything you need to play one of these inventors in the next few sections.
Artificers use a variety of tools to channel their arcane power. To cast a spell, an artificer might use alchemist’s supplies to create a potent elixir, calligrapher’s supplies to inscribe a sigil of power, or tinker’s tools to craft a temporary charm. The magic of artificers is tied to their tools and their talents, and few other characters can produce the right tool for a job as well as an artificer.
Opening up a vision of an Artificer to include these amazing gift-gives also helps change how you approach D&D. A character of kindness and generosity, or that thieving Gustafson, expands the stories you can tell. When you visit the village you can brighten the spirits of the community via your infusions and spells.
https://fullmoonstorytelling.files.wordpress.com/2020/12/pexels-photo-730256.jpeg*Photo by Lisa Fotios on Pexels.com*It may be a Hallmark/Lifetime/FreeForm/UPTv cliche, but there is magic in the holiday season. Incorporating the magic of elves, toys, inventors, Santa, and others into your D&D characters and stories means adding more joy to a game that so often centers violence.
Generosity and joy exist in D&D (even in Barovia). Your Artificer has the power to amplify those feelings (while also being an effective combatant, but there are many places that talk about optimizing in those ways). There are 1,000 times a thousand stories available at any table and any session. Adding a little Christmas to your Artificer is a way to discover more of them.
Be Jeronicus, Jessica, Journey, or even Gustafson. Be Alabaster Snowball, Bushy Evergreen, Pepper Minstix, Shinny Upatree, Sugarplum Mary, or Wunorse Openslae. Roll dice and tell stories about the power of Artifice.
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https://gmkeros.files.wordpress.com/2023/12/campaign-tracker.pngI am currently going through a lot of trainings, and specifically I am doing something to work on my SQL knowledge. I only have hovered around the edges of the topic before. Some of my previous jobs involved making some basic database queries, but I never really looked further than basic database structures and simple queries.
But that got me thinking about doing a campaign database in SQL, with a better way to track all those elements that might be interesting to know for a campaign.
Now to be fair, I am not thinking about the usual wham bam 20 levels in a campaign thing 5e seems to have going on, I am talking about a multiplayer campaign in the OSR/West Marches vein where every single session might be played by different players. I think I should actually write about this ideal of a campaign I have.
But anyway… when thinking about it I remembered that years ago for my idea of a Harnworld campaign in my own Harnworld B/X derivative that got derailed quickly by parenthood and everything involved in that I made a campaign tracker spreadsheet in Google Sheets that was supposed to do a lot of this already. This was inspired by multiple other sheets I found, e.g. the old ADnD ones or the Hackmaster one. I found it a bit cumbersome to use, but mostly I was waiting for the campaign to continue which it never did, and forgot about the existence of the spreadsheet. I fully intended to improve on it, but haven’t gotten around to it for years now. It mostly is a layout without any formulas.
I did put some thought into it though, it has some Harn specific things (e.g. a tab about Godstones, which are dimensional gates in the setting), so if someone else might find it useful have a look. Maybe give me some feedback while you’re at it.
It turns out “Gantlet” is an archaic form of “Gauntlet”, still technically in use, but I assume most people coming across this might not recognize this. Not even native speakers.
I got this module for free as a community copy, which puts me into a bit of a bind. Can I really review it unbiased? Complaining too much about it sounds a bit like beggars being choosers (although I didn’t really beg for it). Not reviewing it feels wrong as well. Andrew certainly put work into this, even though, at points, he might have put in a bit (or a lot) more.
I know, I know, this is supposed to be one of those punky releases that do away with artificial standards, and give you the proper gonzo experience with bad formatting and art. But the art is not even that bad, besides the maps that is, and in a lot of ways proper standards of formatting are there for a reason.
Now, I actually like this scenario. It is supposed to be an OD&D one, but I don’t quite see that. I think it might be great for a one-shot, maybe a challenge scenario you give to people multiple times. It’s a bit long for a proper tournament scenario, but is anyone really doing RPG tournaments still?
It’s not all that creative one though. The players are captured by a fire giant and his hobgoblin army. Now they are being made to run the gauntlet in his dungeon, with the giant pointing and laughing every once in a while via magic. It feels like I played this before. Or seen the movie. And the Saturday morning cartoon.
It’s been done before I mean to say.
But that might be cool as well. Everyone knows what this is about. Go through the dungeon, find the key, slay the monsters. Survive or look good trying. If you add some stuff from previous attempts every time someone tries this it might be a fun recurring scenario for different people to try.
It does have an alien mantis monk and a giant mouth on legs though, so there’s that.
Is this worth the 0 dollars I paid? Yeah, it has a some good stuff in there. Is it worth the 2.50 it normally costs? I would have to think about that. But the drivethrurpg link has the whole document as a preview, so you can check out the whole thing.
Let’s go through Das Schwarze Auge adventure B13 Der Streuner Soll Sterben (The Vagrant Shall Die)
It has the secondary title Das Blutgericht von Thalusa (The Blood Court of Thalusa) which is one of the few times when both titles are equally evocative.
Ok, let me preface this: I utterly adore this scenario, even though it has it’s problems (dare I say it? some parts are quite racist). But I would say this is where Ulrich Kiesow shows real promise.
Now at this point MOST (but not all) of the DSA scenarios were written by him, or in cooperation with him. This included A1 which I really liked, and A2 which I found at least ok. But it also included the whole rest of the scenarios which contain some bad railroads, even if their premise might be good.
But this one is one where I really see what he is going for. This is intentionally pulpy, in the way that 19th ct. adventure stories were.
Unfortunately this includes some rather unfortunate tropes that come with such stories. For one the setting is quasi-oriental. And of course it involves arranged marriages, beheadings at the drop of a stone, and an evil looking coal black executioner.
On the other there really aren’t any really bad people involved. The executioner just happens to be coal black from a magical accident and is otherwise doing his job, and the one actual antagonist is coded as German, and even he has reasons to behave like he does.
Lots of bad decisions that come with the choice of setting and NPCs. I guess for the 80s it was fair for its day, but even in the 90s I remember this module as being discussed as “the racist one”.
But anyway, the plot concerns Prince Selo of Khunchom who had the really bad idea to have just a small peek at his fiancée Shenny of Thalusa. [that name tho…]
You see it’s tradition in their culture that enfianced people are not to see each other until the marriage rites are concluded. Which is all fine for Selo, except he HAS seen her parents and now fears his future wife might take after either of them.
So he makes the plan of… sneaking into the palace of Thalusa and having a look at her.
And if it’s really bad, can a life as a vagrant on the roads of Aventuria be quite so bad?
Yes, Prince Selo is an idiot.
In any case he even is successful in sneaking in, and quite enamored with Princess Shenny.
And Princess Shenny for her side is quite enamored with that handsome stranger she just encountered.
Unfortunately while they are both very enthusiastically consenting with each other (at least that discussion we don’t have to touch), he is captured by the guards and immediately sentenced to death by his prospective father in law.
Well, you should accept it, the Prince’s father promises you riches if you manage to make it to Thalusa in time with a document of his hand that can rescue his son.
Unfortunately Thalusa is about 300km away, easily a 10 day trip over land, and the execution is set for in 14 days.
And even if you get there on time with the document (which is not a given), and hand it to the wrong person, then you are back at square one. Well, square whatever Thalusa is in.
The heroes are given the choice of going by sea, which might shorten the journey to three days, but has a problem: it’s a the stormy season right now, and it might make things worse. A single ship is willing to make the passage on the off-chance of arriving in one part at their destination to make a killing selling hard liquor.
(I realized afterwards that I am not quite sure which season it is supposed to be, the text is talking about Frühjahr being a storm season in that part, so the early year. In our world this commonly would be spring. But in Aventuria the early year is autumn. But was this already established at that point? When does this actually take place?)
Despite Kiesow’s known fondness for railroads he does not actually go for them here. With a bit luck of the dice the PCs can indeed reach the halfway point, after which the storms become no problem anymore. It’s not likely, but it’s possible.
https://gmkeros.files.wordpress.com/2023/11/b13game.pngThen they are attacked by pirates though. Which also can be circumnavigated with proper care (the scenario contains a specifically designed boardgame here), and even if they board your ship they only will steal the document.
(they are not actually real pirates)
If luck is not with them, or if they decide to go there from the beginning, they end up having to go by land. But at least they might have gained a day or two.
This would be the place where a DnD scenario would pull out the hexmap. And we saw a hexmap in B8 already. Kiesow instead decides to use squares, for a squarecrawl, basically.
There are also no permanently keyed encounters, all the encounters are on random tables.
This includes meadows which have an encounter on a roll of 7 on a d6.
Oh yes, did you see! Did you see?! He made a joke!
What’s interesting about the encounters is how… stock medieval fantasy they all are. One would assume that with a setting where he uses all kinds of orientalist tropes he would do the same for the wilderness section. Instead it seems like he just took the monster descriptions from the rulebook: wolves, trolls, boars, a tatzelwurm. The closest to the Arabian Nights scenario you might be expecting is an Earth Spirit that can give you some healing.
But it’s really the city adventure part where this scenario shines.
For one: there is an actual city adventure part with an actual map of Thalusa.
For the second: you are given free reign how to actually deal with the situation.
Now you were supposed to deliver a document, but you likely lost it either on the sea journey or over land.
If you didn’t you most likely handed it to the wrong person at the palace and he lost it for you instead.
Springing the prince might not be easy, but can be possible. Sneaking into the palace is possible (it’s worked out), but finding the right person there is difficult. Dealing with the executioner and his tools is also another option (the tools need to be in top order according to tradition).
Here is when the bog standard fantasy scenario all of a sudden turns into a heist. most likely the heroes will have to do something to save the prince, but what and how is their own choice. The scenario gives some valid ideas, but I bet some players would have more.
You could have an infiltration/dungeon crawl through the palace, but you don’t have to.
For what it’s worth if you are breaking into the palace you might encounter a scribe you can blackmail by threatening his favorite calligraphy.
And if you break into the executioners house you might encounter a Ulmenknecht, which seems to be a treant kind of being? I don’t think this being is still canon in DSA. It’s not the proper treant equivalent (that would be a Waldschrat), more like a wood golem?
Which is the result of a rather sinister human sacrifice he and a druid wanted to perform on a magician who managed to hit back with a transformation spell. Which caused him to turn completely black.
For some reason this story is the longest of all the NPC bios, despite being otherwise a rather incidental character.
And one who doesn’t actually do anything bad as such while the PCs are around.
I think Kiesow is very much going very much for the image of Der Schwarze Mann here, a “Kinderschreckfigur” (character to scare kids with? Man, we Germans have weird concepts sometimes) that is quite widespread. I still remember playing both the associated kids game and the card game based on it.
But here it manages to keep all the bad connotations that made this game… inappropriate in polite society.
Dolguruk is I think still an active NPC in current DSA lore, he usurped Shenny’s father at one point and became ruler of Thalusa, and being an elf he also doesn’t seem to be easy to get rid of. He also had his backstory modified to have gained his look from a pact with a demon.
Not sure if that’s better or worse.
So…what do I think about it?
I don’t think Kiesow intended for this to come across as it does, but he nevertheless managed to write some really unfortunate implications in here.
Which might explain why this adventure never got the re-releases that other adventures from him got, despite being, from a design standpoint alone, one of his best so far.
There is considerable freedom of choice both in the wilderness and the city sections, and room for player creativity, all under time pressure. I really like this and I want to play this with people. I might need to prepare people that it was written 40 years ago.
Other languages
This gets into the times when the DSA adventures were no longer translated into many languages. The only translation I can find is the French one, in both the Schmidt and Gallimard version.
Still not sure why there were two versions. According to one commenter on dice.camp one was the Schmidt version, like in German, the other was the same format as the Gallimard gamebook translations and would have been sold in bookstores instead of toy stores.
In any case they used the secondary title for that, Le Bourreau de Thalussa. Not the worst choice.
#LegacyOfDragonholt durchgespielt. War für mich eine neue Erfahrung. Ich fand es ganz gut, auch wenn es nicht unbedingt meine Art von Spielen ist.
Da es ein one-off ist, gebe ich es jetzt gern weiter. Weil das Hauptbuch leider anfängt hinten ein paar Seiten aus der Klebebindung zu verlieren und wegen eines (gut reparierten) Transportschadens an der Box würde ich mal VB 20€ inkl Versand in den Raum WERFEN. Bilder kann ich gern schicken bei Interesse
Mela: "GM says I should make up a rumour about one of the other characters..."
Fannie: "..."
Mela: "..."
Fannie: "..."
Mela: "..."
Fannie: "May I make up rumours about all three of my companions AND spread them?"
Mela: "No."
Male players: Why do you play female characters?
Got the idea of posting this when I watched this YouTube video that talks about reasons men love playing as girls....