Monday, December 9, 2024

The R. Michael Grenda Collection - The Characters

 I am still in the process of working through my friend's collection of old D&D material.  While I have put his books on my shelves and given my current copies to my kids, I am still working through all the characters.

And he had a LOT of characters.

stacks of characters

There are some here dating all the way back to 1976. The vast majority are for AD&D 1st ed. There is a long period of post 1987 to 1989 where there are dozens and dozens of characters. And then there are a few 2nd Edition ones as well.

Among these I found versions of my characters Retsam, Death Blade, Rogue, and Phygor. But those are not as interesting to me as my nearly forgotten and abandoned SpellJammer characters. And these pale to the shear weight, number, and import of his own characters. Names I have known now since the early 1980s.

Even Yoln is here in his original form.

Yoln

Characters

Characters

Characters

Here are my problems.

What do I do with them all? And what story about them should I tell? 

Also, they have been in a house with cats, and I am deathly allergic. I can only handle them for a little bit. So my son suggested putting them in sheet protectors. That was smart. It will take me a bit to get them all in, but it has been fantastic so far.  Plus, he wants to use them as NPCs in his AD&D 1st Ed game (more on that later).

Here is what I am considering.

I am thinking about participating in The TARDIS Captain's New Year New Character challenge/fest. These are not new characters by any stretch of the imagination, but I feel the need to share them with you all. 

I just hope I can remember enough about each one to do them justice.

In addition, I am considering taking these characters and putting my spin on them. I might even post Wasted Lands or OSE or ShadowDark stats for them. I am still deciding. 

3 comments:

Nathan Irving said...

Collecting them in some form, like an NPC codex, is the best sort of thing I can think of.

HJB said...

You can scan them- keep the originals, but away from where they'll cause you health problems. You can then use the copies without worrying about wear and tear too.

Tim Knight said...

This is phenomenal. Personally I have very few of my original character sheets from back in the day, so I have massive nostalgic envy.

I love the idea of them living on as NPCs in your son's campaign.