Fantasy Fridays Review: Forgotten Realms City of Splendors

I have not been very good at keeping up with my Fantasy Fridays. Nor have I been good at keeping up with my exploration into the Forgotten Realms. I think that is why so often they end up on the same post. I had good intentions of doing this one yesterday, but sadly my day got away from me.

So here we are, standing outside the gates of the City of Splendors. I read a lot of material about this place, but today is the day I visit the city proper. Reminds me when I first moved to Chicago to be honest. Big city, lots of new and exciting places.  Let's go.

For this review, I will mostly consider my boxed set I scored at an auction a few years back when I was building up my Forgotten Realms collection. I will also bring in the DriveThruRPG pdfs as needed.

Before I get to that though I do want to read, briefly, the "Welcome to Waterdeep" article from Dragon Magazine #128 from December 1987.

The copy I had was falling apart so I took the "Welcome to Waterdeep" article and put it into this boxed set. It fits...rather perfectly. The boxed set was published in 1994, so this article is the perfect introduction.  While there was FR1 Waterdeep and the North and FR8 Cities of Mystery, this article is the "real" introduction in my mind. The traveler's brochure. It is not long, it doesn't need to be, it just describes some areas outside of the city proper. Wonderful lead in.

City of Splendors

1994. Steven Schend with Ed Greenwood. Three books, one booklet, lots of maps. There is so much going on here it is best just to get into it. I count over 300 pages. I am shocked the PDF at DriveThruRPG was under $7.

Book I City of Splendors Campaign Guide

At 128 pages it is the largest book. We learn right away that Waterdeep is Ed's favorite city in all of the Realms. No surprise I think. 

We dive right into the division of the city into the various "wards" Sea Ward, North Ward and so on, and of course the tantalizing City of the Dead, the walled cemetery.

At the time of this writing the population of the city is just over 122,000, so about the size of Topeka, KS. We get some basic geography and some history, but told with the Ed Greenwood charm that makes the reading not seem like a history text. I mean it is, but it is still very engaging. This includes much of the same surroundings as covered in the Dragon article.

The history is split up into the various ages of Waterdeep and then getting into a more detailed timeline. As dry as timelines can be, I do love reading them. I mean I see things like "the Trollwar" and want to go off on a tagent to discover more.  For the record, and mostly for my own record keeping, the current year of this set is DR 1368.

Next up is a chapter on the city wards. This followed by a chapter on Places of Interest & Danger. Honestly there is so much here I could run adventures in Waterdeep for years. The sewer map alone is just begging to be used.

An aside. This came out in 1994, by this time I was working on my first Ph.D. and not buying a lot of AD&D books save for Ravenloft. BUT I was still reading Thieves' World book where I could. Seeing this labyrinth of sewers puts the "Maze" of Sanctuary to shame. Well...it certainly gives it a run for the money. 

There is some minor details on Undermountain. I am not going to get sidetracked by that right now, save that Undermountain only adds to the playability of Waterdeep. I must make an effort to learn more.

Chapter five covers the Lords of Waterdeep. Some of these even I know by name, and others are familiar enough. 

No city book would be complete without a section on Law & Order. (Damn. Now I want to do a "Law & Order: Waterdeep" campaign!)

Sorry. I had to do that.  🎵 Dun Dun.🎵

One of my favorites is next. The Magic of Waterdeep. So all new spells and magic items. 

Appendix One covers trade and travel. One that is very important for our "It's Always Sunny in Waterdeep" game, travel from Waterdeep to Baldur's Gate via the High Road is 32 days. 

Appendix Two covers Skullport a city beneath the waves. 

Appendix Tree covers the Blue Alley.

Appendix Four is a conversion of old and new map keys from previous books, and Appendix Five is a very robust index.

Book II City of Splendors Who's Who in Waterdeep

Let's be honest. Ed LOVES his NPCs. There are so many characters here that I should never, ever run out. So what do I get? A 96 page book of MORE characters!

Ok, it is not all characters, there are also roles (that people fill) and the expectations of society. 

Chapter 1 covers Waterdeep Society. I actually take to this one rather easily. There is my social psych background and I have written similar characters for Victorian era games about London. This one is rather brief though.

Chapter 2 has our nobles of the city. So we are leaving "Law & Order" and headed into "Bridgerton" territory. I guess Xenk can be "the Sexy Duke" here too! I wonder who our Lady Whistledown is? My guess is Laeral Silverhand in her Irusyl Eraneth guise. 

That is only a third of the book and I am already overwhelmed with ideas.

Chapter 3 covers the money and guilds. Back in 94 this would have been the chapter for me. But right now  can't get past the Waterdeep/Bridgerton crossover I am now currently planning. Though I don't want to undersell this chapter. The Forgotten Realms was built on the idea of Adventuring Guilds. It is a world that supports the AD&D rules and vice versa. We get more details on Adventuring Guilds in Chapter 5. 

Likewise, in the 1980s, I would dive headfirst into Chapter 4, Religion. I do wish this one was a bit longer. I was looking forward to details on the Temple of Selûne and the abandoned Temple of Shar.

Chapter 5 covers the independent operators in Waterdeep. This includes some details on select Adventuring Guilds. This is a chapter of loose groups and some personalities, but really, this feels more like "Realms" to me. If nothing else, it is a great source of names. The same applies to all the NPCs listed after the groups. Waterdeep also has its own Aleena. Who knew? Well, not me until a few minutes ago. 

Chapter 6 covers the enemies of the City. This gives us a glimpse of Xanathar from the cover of Book I.

Appendix One here is a tale about adventure. Appendix Two is about The Thirsty Throat. 

Book III City of Splendors Adventurer's Guide to the City

Slight editorial aside. I love this cover. It might be one of my favorite Elmore covers ever.

Chapter 1 covers a local's guide to Waterdeep. What I love about this book is it is done from the point of view of locals from Waterdeep. This includes what the common folk know about the various rulers and locales. It covers much of the same territory as the first book, but from a different point of view, so the material does not feel like it is repeated. 

Chapter 2 gives us details on Waterdeep's festival life. This includes a brief coverage (too brief) of Watedeep's nightlife and the various festivals through out the year. 

Chapter 3 covers what it is like to be a Waterdhavian adventurer and what benefits there are to that. We get into some game mechanics here with new Proficiencies. 

Chapter 4 discusses the Waterdeep campaign. This is some good information for new DMs and New-to-Waterdeep DMs. Chapter 5 continues this idea with NPCs of the Adventuring Quarter. Great as NPCs to help/hinder characters. Certainly PCs are far more likely to rub elbows with Branta Myntion than they are Elminster. 

Chapter 6 has some adventure seeds. Though they are going to have to battle for room in my mind since "Law & Order: Waterdeep" and my "Brigerton/Waterdeep" crossover are both being very loud right now. Though seeing how our "It's Always Sunny In Waterdeep" went, I think my Brigerton/Waterdeep crossover will end more like "Laeral Silverhand's Fight Club."

Book IV City of Splendors Secrets of the City

This 16 page booklet really could have been folded into Book III to be honest. It covers similar territory. It is just a more fleshed out set of adventure seeds. But I suppose it works like an adventure pack.

The boxed set also came with more AD&D 2nd Ed Monstrous Compendium sheets. I copied them here at home to stick in my binder and kept the originals in the box.

There a lot of maps too. 

My favorite is the last one, the map of Waterdeep and all the streets. I'd hand this one up, but I know the lights in my office will bleach it out like it did to my map of Chicago and is doing to my map of Victorian London. 

I have always loved city and urban adventures. There is just so much to do. Hell I am not even sure when the last time characters leveled up in "It's Always Sunny..." but everyone is having a great time. 

I knew this boxed set was going to be great and it lives up to the hype in my head about it. I know I have more books about Waterdeep to work through, especially with 3rd edition coming up later (likely next years really) and 4th and 5th as well. 

I can see why this is Ed Greenwood's favorite city in the Realms. 

I don't recall what I paid for this, but I do know it wasn't a lot. In fact, my memory of it now, I got it pretty cheap. Whatever I paid it was worth every penny. 

Sinéad, Nida, and Company

And what of my erstwhile adventurers in the Forgotten Realms? Well Sinéad and Nida are sticking around Waterdeep for a bit, though my plan was to have them begin going East.  I do know that my characters, Rhiannon and Jaromir, were anxious to return to Rashemen*.  Like I mentioned above, there is no great change to their stats just yet.  Since I am using Sinéad as my way to experience the Realms, I would have to say that, like me, she is fascinated with the city. Her "pagan" background has totally unprepared her for any large city, let alone the largest one on the Sword Coast. 

This is the same with Rhiannon and Jaromir. *Because I have not figured out which witch class to use for her nor how I want to replace the barbarian class for him, they have been largely absent. I said they have gone home, but looking over my notes I see they are still staying in the cheap inn with everyone else. I am going to have to do some work on these two. Maybe a side quest. I could follow the Minsc example and make Jaromir a Ranger. I have to admit that while he began as somewhat generic barbarian, I have been playing him more like a member of the Fianna. I think I'll take a side trek to figure out their AD&D 2nd Edition classes prior to their return home to Rashemen. Rhiannon then should very obviously be a Rashemi witch. 

The question is now, will Sinéad and Nida go with them? That was always my idea. But who knows now. I'll have to see how the games go. I do know that Nida is going to pick up some spellcasting levels. I thought witch, but maybe it will be magic-user/wizard. 

DriveThruRPG PDF

The PDF from DriveThruRPG is a single file of 377 pages. The images are a touch fuzzy but the text is sharp and clear. All the maps are here, but they are in letter-sized chunks. The Monstrous Compendium pages are here too, and can be printed for obsessive/compulsive completists like myself. 

Like I said above, at under $7 this is an absolute steal. 

Final Thoughts

Between the PDF and the used but in fantastic shape boxed set I have, I feel like I robbed someone. There is no way I have paid more than $20 for all of this (boxed set and PDF), and the value is an order of magnitude beyond all of that. 

I loved the AD&D 1st Edition Campaign setting Boxed set, and this is akin to that. Rock solid, enough for decades of play, and I am not likely to run out of ideas for it anytime soon.

Honestly, just so much great stuff here, I am overwhelmed. 

Monstrous Mondays: FOR1 Draconomicon

For today's Monstrous Monday I want to get back into exploring the Forgotten Realms. I was exploring the early AD&D 2nd edition books when I last left off.  Next on my list is one of the classic books for the Realms; so classic that we will get 3rd, 4th, and sort of a 5th edition versions of it.  I am talking about the Draconomicon. 

FOR1 Draconomicon

1990. by Nigel Findley, et al. Softcover, 128 pages. B&W art with magenta and some full color pages. 

For this review I am considering my original softcover book and the PDF from DriveThruRPG.

Obviously named after the Necronomicon and the more in-universe Demonomicon. I grabbed this one fairly late in my gaming life to be honest. I knew about it, of course, but I never bothered to grab it until my oldest began an interest in D&D at a very young age. He had a copy of the Draconomicon for 3rd Edition that he had carried with him everywhere (he was 5). It was so beat up and abused I thought it might be nice to get him the AD&D 2nd ed one as well, so I grabbed it at the local Games Plus Games Auction a few years ago.  He loved that one too, but took better care of it!

So I suppose, this book really isn't part of *my* collection. 

In any case this book feels more like the "Complete Handbooks" and "Dungeon Master Guides" books than it does an Forgotten Realms one. Thus the "FOR" code vs. the "FR" one. And yes, while there is a lot of Realms specific lore here, it reminds me enough of the old "Ecology of..." article from Dragon to be portable to any other world, save for maybe Krynn. That world has some very specific dragon lore already.

Chapter 1: Reference

This covers some history of how dragons first came into the world. There is an interesting piece on dragon evolution from the early Eodraco to "modern" dragons. Love the supposedly "extinct" line of dragons, perfect for an enterprising DM to come up with their own. We also see the return of the taxonomic nomenclature for dragons from the the 1st Ed. Monster Manual. 

The various "main" dragon species are described in detail, including a "racial preference" table common to the time. 

There are even Draconic Gods other than Bahamut and Tiamat listed. Note Bahamut and Tiamat are not listed here, but Zorquan is. I like the notion that dragons also worship "human" gods, they just appear draconic to them. This honestly makes a lot of sense and helped pave the way for Dragonborn in my mind. 

And to come full circle there is even some information on human who worship dragons. We will see more of this in future books.

Chapter 2: Geography

As expected, this covers the area where the dragons are found, listed by dragon type. Only slightly expands on what has been seen already in the AD&D 2nd Ed Monstrous Compendium/Manual.

Chapter 3: Dragon Psychology

A little more detail here, and this feels like the old Ecology of articles more. It discusses what motivates dragons, including their hoarding behaviors, and how to deal with such a long-lived creature. 

Chapter 4: Role-Playing Dragons

This chapter flows, concept-wise, from the previous. That is, how do dragons become (or be) "Dragons." How do they deal other species, how do they learn to fly, talk, do magic, what do they eat. All of these are discussed. There is even some discussion on how to raise a dragon. 

Need to know how long a dragon needs to incubate an egg? That information is here as well. Interestingly enough it mentions that chromatic dragons can interbreed. More on that later.

This chapter is good for an DM that uses dragons in their game and either wants to them be more fleshed out as a character or wants them to be a greater threat in combat. 

Chapter 5: Dragon Hall of Fame

Here we get some unique dragons. Bahamut and Tiamat seem "demoted" here to just special unique dragons. Others mentioned are Lareth, Aurus, Nexus, and Lux to name a few, I recognize. 

Chapter 6: New Dragon Species

We have some tables on dragon interbreeding. This section also has Monstrous Compendium style sheets for you to use. They are not numbered, so I wonder if the idea was you cut them out for use? No chance of that today! I'll just print mine from the PDF. These include the Mercury Dragon (with all of page 65's text on the back side!), Dracohydra, Steel Dragon, and Yellow Dragon. 

Chapter 7: Magic

Spells and magic items. I like the idea that some of these spells are so rare that only dragons know them. 

Chapter 8: Hunter's Guide

I mean, the game is called "Dungeons AND Dragons" so hunting dragons will come up. This chapter has some good advice and role-playing tips for both sides of the DM's Screen. 

Chapter 9: Miscellaneous Information

It covers everything else not touched on in the previous chapters, including details on the in-world Draconomicon itself. There is a bit on dragons and Spelljamming too. 

Adventures

The last 30 or so pages gives us three mini-adventures. 

Dragons should be awe-inspiring, or at least terror-inspiring, in the *D&D game and this book moves us a little closer to that. 

For a book about dragons, it is great. I would have eaten this one up back in 1990, but I would have chaffed under Bahamut (and Tiamat) getting such ill-treatment.  As a Forogtten Realms book tit dosen't push my understanding of the Realms any further save for the fact that there are colleges of scholars who spend a lot of time talking about dragons, but little time actually near dragons! (maybe they are smarter!)

It does help build a world where this is some mystery. What about that extinct line of dragons? Where are they? What were they? Can I learn new spells from dragons? What treasures do they hoard?

Great way to start adventuring in the world.

Catching up with Sinéad

Since I am using my character Sinéad as my discovery point of view of the Forgotten Realms, I think it is time I check in with her and her band of adventurers. When we last left them they had run into some trouble in Waterdeep ("Ill Met in Waterdeep" a year ago!). Since then they have been wandering the lands. With this book, my son and I decided that they see a yellow dragon flying overhead, ala, Ash Ketchum and his Ho-oh Pokémon. We thought that was funny given my son's love of dragons and Pokémon growing up. 

The party consists of Sinéad, the thief Nida, the barbarian Jaromir, Rhiannon the witch (not Grenda's Rhiannon), Arnell the cleric, and Argyle the dwarf fighter. Right now I am still using their 1st Edition AD&D sheets, but I will need to update them soon. There are no real barbarians in AD&D 2nd ed, so I think when I do update, Rhiannon and Jaromir will have moved on. Too bad really, I kinda liked Rhiannon. I will have them show up again when Sinéad and company get to Rashemen. We decided that while Nida and Rhiannon get along well, Sinéad and Arnell do not. Well. Sinéad want to know everything about elves from Arnell, but he is uncomfortable talking to a worshiper of Sehanine Moonbow. I am playing him as having a crisis of faith at this point; his faith vs his attraction to Rhiannon. 

Not sure who is making the cut to AD&D 2nd Edition yet, but I better figure it out soon.

In Search Of...TSR's R.I.P.

 Spend any time in horror RPG communities or the classic TSR communities; sooner or later, the topic of R.I.P. will come up.  But what is/was R.I.P., and why was it never published?

These are the questions I will try to answer on this special Halloween edition of In Search Of...

In Search Of...TSR's R.I.P.

So, what do we know about this game? Very little to be honest.

• It is modern-day horror. 
• Slated to be published in 1991
• Trademark was applied for in 1990.
• Written by Scott Herring [sic], Jim Ward, and Paul A. Linberg [sic]
• At least one accessory, Lost Souls, was planned and another, a set of cards, were mentioned.

And that is really about it. From the TSRArchive, we learned that it was going to be a boxed set with 32, 64, and 96-page rule books. Dice, cards and fold out maps. I am speculating here that the books were some combination of a fast-play Basic set of rules, complete rules, and possibly an adventure. But that is only a guess. There could have been Game Master's books and a creature book. IF we are to follow the clues from Top Secret, it would have been a Player's book (96), a Game Master's book (64), and maybe an equipment book or world guide.

This is only a guess. Afterall they misspelled two of the three authors on the cover. 

Scott Haring is known for his contributions to GURPS, Dragonlance, Mystara, and the Forgotten Realms. His contributions to Top Secret S.I., Agent 13 and Ghostbusters might interest us more here today though. 

Jim Ward was the creator of Metamorphosis Alpha; he also wrote a lot of material for D&D and then would later move on to various publishers, including Troll Lord Games.  In particular to this conversation Ward designed the "Tainted Lands" horror setting for Castles & Crusades. James died earlier this year on March 18, 2024.

Paul Arden Lidberg was one of the founders of Crunchy Frog Enterprises/Team Frog Studios. He also worked on many games and was part of the TSR West group with Flint Dille for a brief time. He went on to create the games Critter Commandos and Duel. Paul died on June 13, 2022.

Now we do know there is a history of TSR padding their product schedules.  David "Zeb" Cook recently stated at Gamehole Con that he would come up with names of products and other writers developers would have to figure out what that meant. This seems slightly more than that, but not by much. You can't even trust the art. TSR catalogs often had concept or placeholder art in place of a product. That is not an uncommon thing really.  The "blue" Rules Cyclopedia cover is a good example.

In the early 1990s we know TSR was feeling the heat from the new kid on the block, Vampire the Masquerade. I have been talking about the effects of that game and White Wolf all month long in my Ravenloft retrospective. 1987's "Lost Boys" and "Near Dark" showed that vampire movies were still popular and there were certainly rumors about the upcoming Francis Ford Coppola Bram Stoker's Dracula scheduled for 1992. Even Chill saw new 2nd Edition from long time thorn in TSR's side, Mayfair Games. The time was ripe for a supernatural game. 

We do know from many sources, notably Steve Winter, that next to nothing was produced for the game, beyond this cover mock-up. There are no files siting on a 5.25" floppy somewhere and no dot-matrix print out of chapter 1 or anything like that. I do think we have seen everything about this game, save for maybe some TSR inter-office notes or emails that likely no longer exist. 

There are two product codes that appeared in the TSR catalogs for this.

• TSR07404: R.I.P. Horror RPG
• TSR07405: R.I.P. Horror Card Game
• TSR07406: Lost Souls

Here is the text featured, along with the art from the cover.

"Nobody's safe. The undead disregard today's best high-tech security and surveillance systems. These demons attack helpless victims as they sleep - their electronic fences and computers buzz through the night. This horror and much, much more fill the R.I.P. role-playing game. This all-new game awaits horror fans with three rules booklets, full-color cards, dice and maps that spin a tale in modern-day terror."

This is our best clue to what the game was going to be about. But it is not the only one.

The R.I.P. Comics

Our best guesses at the tone and tenor of the game come from the R.I.P. Comics produced by TSR a couple of years before.  Two four-issue series were released. And because I care about you, my faithful readers, I scored 3/4ths of them. 

What can we say about the comics?

• There were two series of four for a total of 8 comics.
• Described as "Comics Modules." 
• Published around the same time TSR had a comics deal with DC.
• Each had some game related content, sometimes Top Secret/S.I. related, sometimes standalone. 
• Flint Dille, brother of Lorraine Williams, was the creative director. 

Flint Dille also wrote the Agent 13, Top Secret/S.I. tie-in media, Agent 13: The Midnight Avenger. 

Now I am being honest here, the comics are not very good. But that is fine, because I am not interested in that. Why I bought these was for the last section of the comics, the game materials. The comic themselves feel a bit like Tales From the Crypt.

In Issue #1 (I will just number these 1 to 8 for ease), has notes for adapting the Top Secret/S.I. part 1 by Scott Haring. This first section details the type of horror game you might want to run. There is nothing particular to the TS/SI rules here, just campaign modes.

Issue #2 shares the same art as the proposed TSR07406: Lost Souls book. This includes the Zombie Hunt game, with rules in the center and a play board on the inside covers, and tokens. Part 2 of our TS/SI aka Role-Play in Peace, section covers some new advantages and disadvantages. Mostly for dealing with the supernatural. They promise more are coming, just write to TSR West.

Issue #3 adds to the Zombie Hunt game with Zombie Rampage. For TS/SI we get some new skills and some Powers as described in the Agent 13 book. This game takes the Chill 2nd edition approach and has the Powers limited to "the bad guys." You know it would not stay that way for long.  Powers here are treated like Skills.  

Issue #4 gives us some monsters. Or at least I would like to say it does. The trouble is the text is small and printed on a color background that is almost impossible to read. I tried a lot of different filters and skill could barely read it. We get Vampires, Werewolves, Frankenstein's Monster and a Mad Slasher.

The Zombie Nation game, a continuation of the zombie games from Issue #1 is written by Paul A. Lidberg.

Issue #5 (or 1 of the second series) features more Role-Play in Peace with some Monster powers by Scott Haring AND a R.I.P. collector card game by Paul Lidberg, which could be the same as TSR07405: R.I.P. Horror Card Game listed above.

Issue #7 (I do not own Issues #6 or #8) includes a solitaire game called The Crypt by Paul Lidberg and a page of a new power (Cause Madness) for Top Secret/S.I.

Now, this certainly begs the question. Was the only material written for the R.I.P. RPG sitting before me right now?

The R.I.P. RPG

It would be folly to try and guess what the completed R.I.P. RPG would have been like, AND would we have called "Rip" or "Are Eye Pea?" But that doesn't mean I can't make some guesses. Especially given some of the Vampire:TM "catch-up" TSR was doing at the time with Ravenloft. For the record, "Are Eye Pea."

Obviously, the biggest, and maybe the most error-prone guess, is that the system used would have been some version of TSR's Top Secret/S.I. RPG. I mean there is no reason to assume it would have been this, comics examples aside, especially since TSR had a history of using a different system for each and every game. BUT maybe with the new Top Secret/S.I. TSR saw a way into modern games. The comics certainly give at least some lip service to this. 

My other "evidence" is the product codes. R.I.P. had the 74xx line and Top Secret/S.I. covered the 76xx numbers. Not that this is solid evidence save for the fact they were all "in production" at the same time.

I think a safer guess is that Vampires would have played a bigger role in this than what little evidence we have. I have stated in the my reviews of Van Richten's Guide to Vampires and Children of the Night Vampires that TSR was well aware of the growing popularity of Vampires and Vampire RPGs. While we know the the production teams were often siloed and unaware of what the others were doing, who knows what would have become of Ravenloft if R.I.P. had been a hit? Would Ravenloft still have been produced? Would we have seen Gothic Earth for R.I.P. instead? 

What can I speculate about this game?

Well, there are certainly tie-ins to the Agent 13 sourcebook. In fact, a 1990s update to that is not just a safe bet but likely the only safe bet. 

The Agent 13 novels are throwbacks to the pulps of the 30s, save without the charm of being from the 30s. I mean, they were throwbacks in the late 80s, but I am not sure they would have fared much better in the 90s. So, the new R.I.P., even if it builds on the mythos of that brand, would need to be thoughtfully updated. The Lemuria origins of the Brotherhood would still be fine. Even the evil takeover of the Brotherhood. Given the 90s, I expect to see more about the Freemasons, the Templars, and plenty of other secret groups. Agent 13 portrayed heroes and villains in terms of black and white. R.I.P. would likely do something similar. While other horror games of this time (Chill 2nd Ed, Vampire, Kult, SLA, CoC) were embracing shades of gray, they were all fairly dark. No one was "pure good," but I do see TSR, especially TSR of the early 90s, trying to push a "PCs are good guys" narrative. 

For monsters, I am sure there will be vampires, werewolves, Frankenstein's monster(s), zombies, and very likely succubi. I would also expect to see all sorts of "high tech" monsters too, like brains kept alive via advanced machinery, "Borg"-like monsters, and maybe even monsters caused by modern problems like global warming and pollution. Would the monsters be well known to normal humans? I can see different campaign modes that allow this or keep them secret. I think our best evidence of this is to look toward Ravenloft for AD&D 2nd Ed. 

One thing that is very easy to guess is that I am sure there will be more skills regarding Occult sciences and powers that "agents" can take. These would be limited, but more skills than the ones seen in the Agent 13 book. Again, I think the model here would be what Chill or SLA Industries were doing in the 90s. 

I would also expect to see a re-print and expansion of all the different types of campaign settings mentioned in the comic. From humor to slasher flicks, to monster hunters to cosmic horror. It is the 1990s, but the X-Files are still a couple of years off (1993), so I am not expecting Governmental and Alien conspiracies just yet. I would expect a group of some sort the PCs could work with. Like ORION from Top Secret/S.I. or even SAVE from Chill.

Given what we saw in Top Secret/S.I., Agent 13, and later in AD&D 2nd Ed Ravenloft, I fully suspect that there was going to be some secretive shadowy organization bent on World Domination^TM, that is, if they didn't already control everything, whom the characters will have to fight the agents of. Whether this takes the shape of The Brotherhood or something more akin to the Dark Powers is difficult to guess. It is likely would be skewed more to the Brotherhood side.

In truth, we will never know. With 2/3rds of the writing team gone, the company gone, and the persistent suspicion that nothing was ever really produced for it there is not enough to go on.

But I think I will see if the idea has any legs all the same. Check back tomorrow.  

Links

• R.I.P. Modern Day Horror, TSR Archive
• Entry at RPGGeek.com
• RPGNet: Can anyone tell me about TSR's R.I.P. game?
• Grognardia: Two RPGs That Never Were
• R.I.P. Comics
• R.I.P. Comics
• Review of the comics
• TSR Was Planning to Launch a Comic Book Company in 1992!
• Crapbox of Cthulhu: Halloween POST-A-DAY, October 19, 2016
• Horror RPGs Historical review: Age of Ravens
• History of Horror RPGs (Part One: 1981-1990)
• History of Horror RPGs: Part Two (1991-1995)
• Authors
• Scott Haring
• James Ward
• Paul Arden Lidberg

RPG Blog Carnival

This post is my last entry for my October RPG Blog Carnival: Horror and Fantasy.. I hoped you enjoyed. I'll post a wrap-up for it tomorrow as well.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Review: Ravenloft Carnival

One last AD&D 2nd edition Ravenloft product before moving on. This one is unique for me for a lot of reasons. First off, I never owned the original print version. I wanted to, but at the time it came out (1999), I was pretty much out of D&D completely. I made a comeback at the end of the year with my "Complete Netbook of Witches and Warlocks" and soon would come back fully with D&D 3.0.  Secondly, I also don't have PoD version of this since there isn't one. So it is just the PDF this time.

Carnival (2e)

1999. by John W. Mangrum and Steve Miller. Cover art by Todd Lockwood. Interior art by Kevin McCann. 64 pages.

Carnival, if memory serves me correctly, was the last Ravenloft product produced. It's banner is "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons" with the late 90s "Advanced" part reduced in size, and "For use in Ravenloft" as a subtitle.  It is also one of the TSR Silver Anniversary branded books. Strange that there is as much time between now and this product's publication as there is between it and the publication of the original D&D rules.

This product covers "The Carnival," a traveling side show/carnival with some not-so-subtle horror elements.

The product gives the players some background on this carnival and very detailed NPC descriptions. As with many of the later-day Ravenloft products, this one is heavy on the "fluff," and the "crunch" is typically presented in boxed text.  The entire product is given from the point of view of the Carnival Barker. It a way it reminds me of the Planescape setting.  Though there is a fair amount of Ravenloft background here, ie. some language used in the previous Vistani sources are used here: "Vardos" instead of "wagons."

This can also be seen in the Mistress of the Carnival herself, Isolde is an Ghaele Eladrin from the Planescape setting. 

The vast bulk of this book covers the various people and things found in the Carnival. This is actually a good thing since the attraction of the Carnival is it's, well, attractions. The people that work for it. 

While there are implicit plot hooks spread about these pages, the adventure ideas and campaign only uses the last four-five pages of the book, along with Isolde's stats.

Honestly, despite that, there is a lot here.

This covers every concept from Tod Browning's "Freaks (1932)," to "Something Wicked This Way Comes" (book and movie). I would also say there is a little bit of the 7th Doctor serial "The Greatest Show in the Galaxy" here. There has always been something a little unsettling about a carnival. Hell, Rob Zombie has made a career out of it.  

I feel like it accomplishes more in fewer pages than "The Wild Beyond The Witchlight" does. However, both products could benefit from notes from the other. Both could benefit from ideas from Baldur's Gate 3's Circus. 

This would be a great product to have as a PoD, but at 64 pages it is not unreasonable to run off on my home printer and put it into a three-ring binder. I could then scribble notes on my changes.

Maybe I could even port over the clowns Dribbles or Thaco.  

I just need a good place to use it. I am certainly not at a loss of ideas here.

Review: Children of the Night Vampires

 We are getting to the end of the AD&D 2nd Ed era of Ravenloft. Well...there are still a lot of products to cover but we are getting to the end of my coverage of them.  

AD&D 2nd Ed was really the golden age of campaign settings. Sure, that gold was only a very thin veneer, maybe even just electroplating.  But instead of focusing on that I want to enjoy what was great about that time and that was the depth of products.  TSR must have known the writing was on the wall by 1996 because the Children of the Night books, starting in 1996, were an attempt to build bridges across the campaign worlds.  

Children of the Night Vampires

1996. By Paul Culotta and Steve Miller with Carol L. Johnson and Jonathan Ariadne Caspian. Cover art by Daniel Home. Interior Illustrations by Jason Burrows. 96 pages.

For this review I am considering the PDF and PoD from DriveThruRPG and my memories of my original print copy.

This book is dedicated to the memory of Nigel D. Findley, who created Rudolph Van Richten. Findley had died of a heart attack at age 35.

This first of the Children of the Night series features 13 unique vampires to challenge PCs. "Challenge" doesn't always mean "fight."

I should point out that this is not the first time we have seen a "Children of the Night" for Ravenloft. The first one was "MC15 - Monstrous Compendium - Appendix II Children of the Night." 

The concept is a solid one. Ravenloft breathed new life (heh) into Vampires with the very first adventure, so it makes sense that it would continue to do so and then expand on that. The book starts out by saying that while these are all unique takes on vampires native to Ravenloft's mists, they don't have to stay there, and they can be added to your own campaign world. 

Each entry includes a stat-block, description and history, usually with how they became a vampire. There is also a mini adventure/plot hook you can use with the vampire in question.

Among the famous, or about to become famous, vampires include Ravenloft's Jander Sunstar, the eleven vampire introduced in the novel "Vampire of the Mists." Jander is a Chaotic Neutral (which as close to Good as it gets) vampire from the Forgotten Realms. He is just as likely to help the PCs fight vampires as he is to want to be left alone. 

Also, here are Lyssa von Zarovich, Strahd's great-niece (or something like that) and one of the members of his family line that was not killed when Barovia was pulled into the Mists. Don't mistake her hate for Strahd as "goodness" she is still quite evil. She will later go on to appear in Curse of Strahd.

We get a desert vampire, Moosha, the Ixitxachitl vampire Myxitizajal, and the vorlog Don Pablo among the others. 

The one I liked the most back then, because the concept was novel to me, was Lady Heather Shadowbrooke, the Druid Vampire. She is quite evil and a tragic character, really. 

I certainly think this is a great addition to any AD&D 2nd Ed game, Ravenloft or not. 

Note about the PoD

The Print on Demand copy I have does show some fuzziness, but all in all it is a very good copy. There are two PDFs you get from DriveThruRPG. Once is quasi OCR and the other is image. Neither seems as clear as the PoD which I find weird. 

This PoD is a worthy replacement for my original book from 1996. 

Children of the Night vs. Vampires

Children of the Night Vampires is not the first time a collection of various vampire NPC/Antagonists has been done for an RPG. The first one I ever bought was Vampires for the Chill RPG (1st Ed). The 2nd edition version is available on DriveThruRPG.

Both books do the same thing for their respective games, and both do it well. I give a slight nod to the Chill one since it came first.  The Ravenloft/AD&D one has 13 vampires vs the Chill's 11 (10 entries), so it has that in it's favor. 

Review: Ravenloft Domains of Dread (2e)

 I am skipping over the otherwise great Ravenloft Campaign Setting, Revised for the last core book of the Ravenloft AD&D 2e line for a few reasons.

First and foremost, I don't have a copy of the Ravenloft Campaign Setting, Revised boxed set anymore. I had the box, but it was lost somewhere along the way. I have the PDFs, but that really isn't the same, is it. Also, the Revised set is just that, Revised. It came out in 1994, only a couple of years after the original boxed set. It takes some details from the Core set and Forbidden Lore plus other material current at the time and gives us a new boxed set complete with more Tarroka cards.

All of this would then be surpased with the publication of Ravenloft Domains of Dread.

Ravenloft Domains of Dread (2e)

1997. By William W. Connors, Andria Hayday, Steve Miller, and Bruce Nesmith. Art by  Paul Carrick, Henry Higgenbotham, Scott Johnson, Robert Lazzaretti, David G. Martin, Val Mayerik, Mark A. Nelson, Arnie Swekel, and Peter White. 288 pages.

We are nearing the dawn of several eras. The end of the 90s, the end of the 20th century, and the end of TSR. Wizards of the Coast had just recently purchased TSR and saved it and D&D from bankruptcy oblivion. The changes were subtle at first, but one of the first clues was the shift in trade-drees and art for the Ravenloft books. Domains of Dread was a new hardcover, the first, for Ravenloft. I am not sure when the hardcover novels (and I think it was just "I, Strahd") were published.

For this review, I am considering my PDF and Print on Demand versions from DriveThruRPG and my memories of my original hardcover.

This is a good-sized book of the sort that was popular in the waning days of TSR. Notable about this one is the copyright page which includes the address for Wizards of the Coast, located in Renton, WA and not Lake Geneva, WI, and the use of the website www.tsrinc.com. You can still buy that if you like.

This book covers the same ground as the two previous core Ravenloft sets and updates them to reflect the recent events in the lands. 

I am happy to report that this one does indeed have 13 chapters and extra appendices to cover all the matieral. For example Darkon was gone and The Necropolis was in it's place

There are subtle as well as overt changes here. Some Domains are gone, others sent off to be Islands of Terror, and all due to the Grand Conjunction. Now I have mentioned this in terms of some of the adventures I have covered this month. If you buy this version, as opposed to say Realms of Terror, it is going to assume that the meta-plot of the Grand Conjunction has already happened. Does that mean you can't run say, Feast of Goblyns or Ship of Horror? No, but they are not going to work the exact same way.

I think this was one of my big disappointments with this book.  By 1997 I had began to not play much AD&D at all. So a lot of the Grand Conjunction and later plots were still new to me when they were old news to everyone else. While this was certainly the shape of all AD&D settings at the time it did make entry, or re-entry a lot harder.

That all being said if you are new to AD&D Ravenloft OR you don't care about the meta-plots then this is a great place to start. Everything is revised and brought upto date with all the other Ravenloft rules published. It is the book I recommended to my oldest when he wanted to read more about Ravenloft in AD&D.

Of most use here to all Ravenloft players and DMs are the appendicies which cover various character creation rules. This helps with creating Ravenloft-native characters. Ability scores, races, and classes all get an individual appendix. New races and classes are also covered. Among the new classes are Avengers, new rules for Elementalists, Arcanists, and Anchorites. There is even a new "Gypsy" class as well as Psionicist.

There is also a fairly robust index.

About the PoD version

The PoD version is actually rather nice. It compares well to the original hardcover version to be honest.

Review: Night of the Vampire (2e, Mystara)

 A side step today, but one that is important to me. I have been talking about how I believe that Barovia, the core domain of Ravenloft, was originally part of the World of Mystara and from Glantri in particular. Today I am providing some more fuel for that fire, but with the runner-up land of Karameikos. 

Night of the Vampire (2e)

1994. Adventure Design: L. Richard Baker III. Editing: Michele Carter. Project Manager: Andria Hayday. Cover Art: Jennell Jaquays. Interior Art: Dan Frazier. 32 pages. 

This review is considering the PDF file from DriveThruRPG only.

A couple of points about our creative team. First, more art from the legendary Jennell Jaquays. Rich Baker would go on to have a very good career at TSR and then Wizards working on D&D 3.x, D&D 4, and Gamma World. Andria Hayday, who does not often get mentioned (she is not even on the DTRPG page for this) would later go on to be one of the main developers of the Ravenloft: Domains of Dread hardcover. 

I never owned this boxed set, but after buying it from DriveThruRPG, I really wish I had. It is, CD-Audio aside for the moment, a fun adventure for low level characters.

The task set before Richard Baker and his designe team was to created a low-level (levels 1-3, or possibly 4-6) adventure where the big bad was a vampire. A daunting task. A well-played vampire can wipe out a party of even mid level, and an exceptionally well-played one is a challenge to higher level characters, especially in what is now a Post-Ravenloft I6 world.

Baker gets by this issue by having some magic items available to the PCs to use. And even provides some rules for grappling and taking down a vampire en masse. 

The adventure starts with a shipwreck trope, in which the PCs end up on an island off the coast of Karameikos. Now, there are a lot of ways to spin this; my choice? The shipwreck is not about the sea but instead the Mists of Ravenloft. 

The adventure is a bit rail-roady and there are a LOT of NPCs to keep track of. The vampire-plot is reminiscent of the Strahd-Sergei-Tatyana tragedy so much that this adventure could be used as stand-in prequel to I6. Granted, there is a LOT more going on here. Namely all the NPCs, but an enterprising DM could re-mold it into this prequel. Great for heroes and players familiar with the tale of Strahd already in a strange time-travel adventure.

About the PDFs

Ah, the 90s. There was a lot of role-playing, and that often meant lots of handouts. The PDF allows you to print out all the handouts you want.

Plus, printing out the PDFs also allows me to edit them as I need. For starters I would make the PCs higher level and get rid of some of the aids given to them. The pages are all filled with color so 

About the Audio Tracks

There are 72 audio tracks on the CD, which is not included with the PDF. BUT you can find them on YouTube. 

The pros include proper pronunciations of the names of the various NPCs and some eerie background music. 

The cons include audio tracks putting words into the PCs mouths and it doesn't always jive with the adventure itself. It's not a perfect fit. For example the PCs are treated as well known heroes in the tracks. At 1st to 3rd level this is not really likely. Also, there are some spoilers in the audio tracks. Personally, I would listen to them all first and be a little more selective. That is if I used any of them at all.

Despite the shortcomings, this is a rather interesting adventure with a lot of potential. It also satisfies my desire to use Ravenloft and Mystara together. 

The layout and trade dress are very good and bright, which is typical of the Mystara products of the time. I rather love them, to be honest. It is a shame everyone was fighting online (at the time) about Forgotten Realms this or Greyhawk that while Mystara fans were off on their own enjoying some really fun products.

I think my FLGS might have a copy of this in the store now that I think about it.

Review: Ravenloft Gothic Earth Gazetteer and A Guide to Transylvania

 Today I continue my exploration of Ravenloft's Gothic Earth. But first I want to set the proper stage. These next two products were released in 1995 and 1996, respectively. I had moved to Chicago already and I had gotten married. I moved to the suburb of Mt. Prospect, the point? Well, after years of buying my Ravenloft material from Carbondale's Castle Perilous, I was buying again from Games Plus, a place I had mail-ordered from since the 1980s. I bought my copy of Chill Vampires via mail order from Games Plus, so buying these two from their physical store seemed like a sort of homecoming. 

This is also when I  began to feel the shortcomings of the AD&D system. I loved the idea of Gothic Earth, I wanted that to be a world I played in, but that AD&D 2nd Edition rules just didn't quite cut it for me. I began to go back to Chill, this time the 2nd Edition, and most importantly to CJ Carella's WitchCraft RPG. But before I get to that, let me talk about these two products and why I still love them. 

For this review, I am considering the PDFs from DriveThruRPG and my originals purchased in the mid-1990s.

The Gothic Earth Gazetteer (2e)

1995. by William W. Connors. Cover art by Robh Ruppel. Interior art from Dover Publications. 64 pages, detached cover and poster map.

I want to state out of the gate that this is an indispensable guide for playing in the 1890s. While some Ravenloft-isms are here, I have used this guide with countless Victorian-era RPGs. 

The Gothic Earth Gazetteer goes into greater details than the similarly named sections in the Masque of the Red Death boxed set. 

We start with an Introduction and an overview of the 1890s in the form of Headlines. A set of bullet points covering the biggest news items around the world from 1890 to 1899 and The Spanish-American war. Even in the days prior to easy to access resources like Wikipedia (and I practically wore out my copy of Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia CD-ROM looking all this up back then!) there is enought here in the first 16 or so pages to keep an enterprising Game Master* busy. Sorted by date and then by continent. 

I say Game Master instead of the more accepted Dungeon Master here for two reasons. Gothic Earth is really a significant step away from the dungeon-crawling ideas of Dungeons & Dragons. While yes there could be dungeons here, that is not what Gothic Earth does best. The back street of London, Paris, or New York is where this game does well. Also, I have already mentioned that this guyid can be used anywhere. This first section typifies what I mean. You can just as easily use this in Victorian Age Vampire, Cthulhu by Gaslight, or any other later Victorian-era game. 

This section is then expanded in the next section with other events more closely tied to the setting. Events of the 1890s covers The Ghost Dancers (and man, did I ever want to make ShadowRun the future of Gothic Earth!), Arctic Exploration, Railroads, Spiritualism, and a lot more.  Each section gives a real world background, and then in true Ravenloft fashion some "Forbidden Lore."

We then have a similar section, Who's Who on Gothic Earth, that covers specific people. There are more people covered than events, so the section on each is smaller. Not everyone has a Forbidden Lore section, but enough to keep any Game Master busy. This book + a little research would allow the GM to create even more if they wanted. If there is a figure from the Late Victorian era you can think of, then they are likely covered here. Sadly one of my favorite figures from the time, Harriet Tubman, was not listed. Maybe I could fix that.

Our last section covers various groups and cabals active in the 1890s (and beyond) on the Gothic Earth. 

The original print copy has a poster of the calendars for the 1890s, complete with images of ephemera from the time. At the time of publication, it was an amazing resource.  The only thing it is missing are moon phases.

There are no AD&D stats or rules in the book at all. It still assumes AD&D and the Ravenloft universe, but the book itself has no "crunch" only "fluff." But it is extremely useful fluff.

While similar details are to be found in other Victorian Era games, I still find myself going back to this one time and time again.

It is a resource I highly recommend. 

A Guide to Transylvania (2e)

1996. by Nicky Rea. Developer and Editor Steve Miller. Cover art Dawn Murin, interior art Val Mayerik. 96 pages.

This is another book I have used with many games. For some reason that I can't quite figure out, this one feels more like a Ravenloft core book than the Gothic Earth Gazetteer does. Maybe because Dracula's Transylvania was the model of for Strahd's Barovia and thus the core of the Ravenloft concept. While I stand by my assertions that Barovia is from Mystara, I have entertained the idea that it was really from Gothic Earth. 

A little more stage-setting, this was released after the wildly successful and critically acclaimed "Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992)" while the author and developers do a very good job of sticking to the novel and history, the movie still casts a long shadow.

The book's dedication is to various noted Dracula scholars; Radu Florescu, Raymond T. McNally (In Search of Dracula: The History of Dracula and Vampires), Dan Richardson, Tim Burford (Guide books), Rosemary Ellen Guiley (various encyclopedias), and Julian Hale (Historical guidebooks). 

Chapter One details the history of the lands in and around Transylvania with a bulk of this covering the conflicts between the Roman Catholic people of the area and their struggles against the Ottoman Turks. Special attention is given to the family of Vlad Dracul and Vlad the Impaler.  As with previous works the text is largely game-stat free and has only a few mentions of the Red Death and other "Ravenloft" details. More "game" details are given in the Forbidden Lore boxed text.

Chapter Two is a "current" sketch of Transylvania with entries on the geography, cities, and various landmarks such as the various castles. It reads like an 1890s travel guide, with Forbidden Lore boxed text. 

Chapter Three covers the peoples of Transylvania. This includes the various native Romanians, Magyars, Szeklers, and Germans as well as the Romanii and Jewish populations. Language is covered a bit which is good since this place really does feel like a crossroads of Eastern Europe just before one enters the East. There is even a bit on vampires in this land.

Chapter Four, Personalities, has the most Game-related information in the book. For example, it has stats for all sorts of highly detailed NPCs. In addition to Gothic Earth's particular flavor of AD&D 2nd ed stats, there is Forbidden Lore boxed text. We learn that Jonathan Harker is a 6th-level Tradesman, Dracula is a 13HD Vampire, and Van Helsing is a 12th-level Metaphysian. Dracula's write-up is similar in feel to the write-up Count Strahd got in Ravenloft I6. 

Finally we end with an AD&D 2nd Ed Monstrous compendium style page for the Dhampir.

There are maps throughout the book and on the inside covers.

Both books are still quite serviceable today and work well with any Victorian era game you might want to play. 

Monstrous Mondays: The Ravenloft Monstrous Compendiums

 I have been covering the AD&D 2nd Ed version of Ravenloft all this month. I have also been covering the the Forgotten Realms and currently in the AD&D 2nd Edition era. One thing they both have in common is that a few of the books feature new monsters in AD&D 2nd Monstrous Compendium format.

I reviewed the Ravenloft Monstrous Compendiums sometime back. Since I have been reviewing the various books I have been printing out the Monstrous Compendium pages and adding them to my three-ring binder for Ravenloft.

As I run across a monster page for these reviews OR from Dragon magazine in my This Old Dragon feature, I print them out (or cut them out as the case may merit) and add them to my binder.

It has taken 30+ years but I feel that the Monstrous Compendium concept is finally living up to its potential for me.

I have been doing the same thing with my Forgotten Realms monsters as I talked about a while back.

Again, I might start mining my other MCs to see what would fit here. I already have one filled with demons and devils, so I wont add those, but I am considering taking the Death Knight from Krynn and putting in this one.

The truth is I am not likely to play AD&D 2nd ed Ravenloft again. BUT my son is running his 5e group through Castle Amber using AD&D 1st ed. So it is possible I could run an AD&D 2nd Ed game again one day. I have mentioned that I am running an AD&D 2nd Ed Forgotten Realms game with my oldest, though we have not played in a while. So I guess never say never.

Despite my concerns with Ravenloft under AD&D 2nd ed, it was my game for the 90s. 

In any case I feel like an archivist in some dusty library, collecting tomes for my own pleasures. 

This is another entry for my RPG Blog Carnival for October!