Random Thoughts or OT Chit-Chat Thread • Page 24 • Collecting General • The Acaeum

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Random Thoughts or OT Chit-Chat Thread
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sauromatian
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Posted: Sat Dec 06, 2014 7:41 am

stratochamp wrote in Random Thoughts or OT Chit-Chat Thread:wait a minute, 95% in lair? where is it the other 5% of the time? and how did it get there?

That should read "95% Liar."

Bracton
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Posted: Sat Dec 06, 2014 7:55 am

stratochamp wrote in Random Thoughts or OT Chit-Chat Thread:wait a minute, 95% in lair? where is it the other 5% of the time?

Out in LA, working on movie deals.

"Parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus."

rredmond
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Posted: Sat Dec 06, 2014 9:41 am

OSRIC Fanzine fundraiser for Kramer! Please BUY HERE! Thank you.
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All OSRIC all the time: OSRIC - First Edition Fantasy Roleplaying Game

increment
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Posted: Thu Dec 11, 2014 9:34 pm

Bracton wrote in Random Thoughts or OT Chit-Chat Thread:That would be the Holy Grail of D&D. As far as I know, no copies are known to have survived.

I'm not sure Gary's memory entirely served him in terms of there being a 50 page draft and then a 150 page draft, but the 24 or so pages worth of Gary-typed draft D&D text that I've been calling the "Mornard Fragments" are surely part of what he was talking about here. So I wouldn't say they didn't survive at all, though no complete draft has been found yet.

Speaking of historical quandaries, I've always been really miffed at the wizards.com timeline of the history of TSR, cited by so many web sites - the one that says that Chainmail came out in 1969, that TSR was founded in 1972, etc. I asked Mike Mearls if I could fix it, Wizards agreed, and they've put up the result:

History: Forty Years of Adventure | Dungeons & Dragons

Apparently the original timeline is on such an old system that it'll take them a while to direct that URL to the new one, but they plan to. Folks here might also be interested in my attempts to figure out what inspired the original timeline to be off by so much - I put some stuff up in my blog (including an excerpt from an internal 1995 TSR history) to try to explain that. Oh, and I appreciate stratochamp looking over the new timeline before it went up - he gets a nod in my blog post.

If anything in the new timeline strikes anyone here as wrong, I'd be interested to hear about it - things can still get fixed pretty quick at the moment while it's fresh in everyone's mind.

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sauromatian
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Posted: Thu Dec 11, 2014 11:11 pm

increment wrote in Random Thoughts or OT Chit-Chat Thread:If anything in the new timeline strikes anyone here as wrong, I'd be interested to hear about it

"1979.. Shortages in the supply chain lead to some copies of the Basic Set shipping with a cardboard chit sheet instead of dice."

Didn't this happen with the 1980 version?

I've been thinking about timelines, but in terms harder to pin down - when did younger kids start playing D&D? By the time you identified earlier as "the D&D fad" (1979-82), it was popular with the 10-15 age set. What about in the years before? When I talk to people who are a little older, few of them remember D&D. Based on that anecdotal data, the ages line up with how the major generations are defined. That is, the Baby Boomers are those born up to mid-1964, so the youngest of them turned 18 in 1982. For that generation, D&D was an underground phenomenon played by those in college & upperclassman high school (ages 15-25). For the Baby Bust/Gen X kids, D&D was a mainstream trend that they started playing in middle school. Or do I have this misconstrued?

Scalydemon
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Posted: Fri Dec 12, 2014 2:27 am

increment wrote in Random Thoughts or OT Chit-Chat Thread:
Bracton wrote in Random Thoughts or OT Chit-Chat Thread:That would be the Holy Grail of D&D. As far as I know, no copies are known to have survived.

I'm not sure Gary's memory entirely served him in terms of there being a 50 page draft and then a 150 page draft, but the 24 or so pages worth of Gary-typed draft D&D text that I've been calling the "Mornard Fragments" are surely part of what he was talking about here. So I wouldn't say they didn't survive at all, though no complete draft has been found yet.

I am curious. How common is it that Gary (apparently) mis-remembers stuff when he wrote things in threads regarding game history subjects? Is it rare? Fairly common? more common later towards 2008?
I am not insinuating anything disparaging in any way, just asking so I know how much of a grain of salt to take things of this nature thanks

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increment
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Posted: Fri Dec 12, 2014 3:58 am

sauromatian wrote in Random Thoughts or OT Chit-Chat Thread:
increment wrote in Random Thoughts or OT Chit-Chat Thread:If anything in the new timeline strikes anyone here as wrong, I'd be interested to hear about it

"1979.. Shortages in the supply chain lead to some copies of the Basic Set shipping with a cardboard chit sheet instead of dice."

Didn't this happen with the 1980 version?

At least one scurrilous web site purports it was late in 1979: Basic Set

My assessment in this case was that the web site was correct. It also jibes with the fact that D&D sales spiked hugely and unexpectedly at the time following the Egbert incident.

I've been thinking about timelines, but in terms harder to pin down - when did younger kids start playing D&D? By the time you identified earlier as "the D&D fad" (1979-82), it was popular with the 10-15 age set. What about in the years before? When I talk to people who are a little older, few of them remember D&D. Based on that anecdotal data, the ages line up with how the major generations are defined. That is, the Baby Boomers are those born up to mid-1964, so the youngest of them turned 18 in 1982. For that generation, D&D was an underground phenomenon played by those in college & upperclassman high school (ages 15-25). For the Baby Bust/Gen X kids, D&D was a mainstream trend that they started playing in middle school. Or do I have this misconstrued?

Before 1979, D&D was still comparatively obscure. I'd agree it was more in the gamer/college community at the time, mingled with sci-fi fandom clubs. The demographic definitely trended younger after 1979, as you suggest. Holmes perhaps appealed to that demographic, and Holmes sold a ton of copies from late 1979 forward.

Scalydemon wrote in Random Thoughts or OT Chit-Chat Thread:I am curious. How common is it that Gary (apparently) mis-remembers stuff when he wrote things in threads regarding game history subjects? Is it rare? Fairly common? more common later towards 2008?
I am not insinuating anything disparaging in any way, just asking so I know how much of a grain of salt to take things of this nature thanks

Common enough that I feel like I really have to ration out the times I differ from Gary's statements so people won't interpret it as an attack - because it's certainly not my intention to take Gary down a peg. As much as I can, I try to cast these matters as whether you think Gary was in a better position to answer these questions in 1973 or 2003, and just put the quotes up against each other to let the reader sort it out. But this isn't an issue unique to Gary by any means; in most anecdotal histories there's a bit of perceptible drift over time - where when things come down to raw numbers, people supply different figures at different times.

Thunderdave
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Posted: Fri Dec 12, 2014 9:59 am

So as I'm moving in to the new library / gameroom, I'm photographing the individual items in my collection. I was going through common TSR mods last night, and well the mind wanders... here's my candidate for Worst TSR Cover.

Attachment:

IMG_20141211_184241.jpg

You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.

I draw the line at collecting... D&D beach towels.

Shoulda been: ".. from Pangreenia to Floratopolis, from mystical Treeonia of spectral Forests to Schruborial dimensions." - The Forests of Leng

Thunderdave
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Posted: Mon Dec 15, 2014 1:42 pm

As I move through modules and on to Dragons, I notice often the module's cover artist has their signature missing or cropped out, but it almost always appears on magazine covers. Is that a function of staff artists vs independent artists? Or some another game-trade or publishing reason?

I draw the line at collecting... D&D beach towels.

Shoulda been: ".. from Pangreenia to Floratopolis, from mystical Treeonia of spectral Forests to Schruborial dimensions." - The Forests of Leng

Thunderdave
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Posted: Mon Dec 15, 2014 1:43 pm

How do you post pics as attachments, like Thom does here: ThrowiGames Non-KS Project - False Promises

I was hoping to put up some images of building the new gameroom/library.

I draw the line at collecting... D&D beach towels.

Shoulda been: ".. from Pangreenia to Floratopolis, from mystical Treeonia of spectral Forests to Schruborial dimensions." - The Forests of Leng

JasonZavoda
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Posted: Mon Dec 15, 2014 2:35 pm

Thunderdave wrote in Random Thoughts or OT Chit-Chat Thread:How do you post pics as attachments, like Thom does here: ThrowiGames Non-KS Project - False Promises

I was hoping to put up some images of building the new gameroom/library.

I think you have to have the image hosted on another site then hit the Img button when you reply and paste in the images url between the bracket ends. I think.

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throwi
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Posted: Mon Dec 15, 2014 3:53 pm

Thunderdave,

Stored the pics on my local drive.

I used the 'Upload attachment' part of the acaeum forum tool... Look below the text area and you'll see it (it's a tab next to Options).

We have a 2 MB per pic limit - I had to reduce the resolution on the pics to get them to upload (I used picresize.com, it lets you pick a target KB size w/o worrying about LxW sizes).

Works well.

~throwi

throwi
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Posted: Mon Dec 15, 2014 3:57 pm

Oh wait, if you meant with the Photobucket insert earlier in the thread, then yes to what Jason said.

I think I might have modified the string to insert the link correctly though, can't remember. I know it took me a couple of previews to get it to work!

~throwi

Bracton
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Posted: Tue Dec 16, 2014 12:52 am

OK, I'm back home from the Hobbit marathon with two of my sons. If you liked the first two movies, I think you'll really like the third. It suffers a bit from the odd story arc, given where the second movie ended; [spoiler alert, as if anyone here hasn't read the book] after all, Smaug -- the main antagonist for the first two films -- dies in the first half hour of this movie. But I think it is more emotionally satisfying than the prior two, and not just because it ends the narrative. It ties up the storylines well, and in satisfying ways.

Best moment -- the White Council at Dol Guldur.

The negative? As with the other two, it can drag. Seems like there's an awful lot of fights with Azog and Bolg; a couple fewer wouldn't have been missed. And Thorin . . . well, I don't think I can really say much without spoiling it a bit, but suffice it to say I did get somewhat tired of his melodrama.

I enjoyed seeing all three back to back. We don't own the first two movies, so I hadn't seen them since they originally came out. Seeing all three provides a better appreciation for how Jackson wants the whole narrative to come together. And it is certainly a spectacle, especially in 3-D on an IMAX screen.

Three stars out of four.

"Parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus."

benjoshua
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Posted: Wed Dec 17, 2014 8:55 pm

I liked the movie as well, but there were few chill bump or mind-blowing moments. The story wasn't exactly like the book or how I imagined it, but there were places where the movie was better than the book. There was so much CGI it made the actors look fake sometimes. Some people have complained that it was too long or short, but I thought it was about right. I saw it in IMAX, and I am glad I did.

I didn't like the romance scenes or the children running away from monster scenes. There's a sniveling toad character put in there for laughs or something, but he's wasn't funny or entertaining enough and could have been deleted. Smaug could have been half the size and still have been mind-blowing and a lot more believable. I'd like to do what Bracton did and see the movies back to back, but I imagine they'll all be on TV sometime next year, probably over Thanksgiving or Christmas, and I can wait until then.

I've heard several people say the movie was "good enough," and that sounds about right.

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sauromatian
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Posted: Wed Dec 17, 2014 9:22 pm

Bracton wrote in Random Thoughts or OT Chit-Chat Thread:it can drag.

That's why the best version is this one:
The HOBBIT 1966 - YouTube
Eleven minutes, 53 seconds. All that's needed.

throwi
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Posted: Thu Dec 18, 2014 10:08 am

sauromatian wrote in Random Thoughts or OT Chit-Chat Thread:
Bracton wrote in Random Thoughts or OT Chit-Chat Thread:it can drag.

That's why the best version is this one:
The HOBBIT 1966 - YouTube
Eleven minutes, 53 seconds. All that's needed.

Love this version, have seen it many times (but love to watch it over and over). And a hobbit gets to marry a princess! yes! ;-)

Peter Jackson did well compared to this one. lol

~throwi

throwi
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Posted: Thu Dec 18, 2014 10:10 am

My kids and I saw the Battle of the Five Armies last night too.

Best of the three I'd say. I still would have preferred that Azog not be in it (since he was long dead at this point), but oh well.

~throwi

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