#AtoZChallenge2024: I is for Imagination

 It has often been said that all you really need to enjoy Dungeons & Dragons is some rules, dice, paper, pencil, friends, and Imagination!

TSR 1983 Product Catalog

This is pretty much true.

Unlike Monopoly, Scrabble, or even war games from which it is descended, D&D largely exists as the "theater of the mind." There is no board. Your character sheet is just a collection of items and numbers. Same with the monsters being fought. The Dungeon Master, DM, describes what is going on, and you have to picture it in your mind.

This was particularly true in the early days. Yes, there were miniatures, in fact, Original D&D recommends them, but they were only being made by a few companies, and they were expensive (relatively speaking), and you had to paint them yourself. As opposed to today where those options are still available and there are cheaper plastic minis and even ones you can design on your own.

There is no board. Today, we can get maps where 1" = 5', perfect for 25mm minis. If you wanted to see what was going on, you had to imagine, and that was pretty good, really.

Back in 1983 TSR, the company that published Dungeons & Dragons, had an ad campaign with the tag line, Products of Your Imagination. It worked really since by 1983 they had moved out to other types of games and toys as the 1983 Product Catalog above reveals.  

They also had a somewhat cheesy TV spot with a very young (Pre-Farris Bueller) Alan Ruck and very young (Pre-Lost Boys) Jami Gertz. It's a bit silly, but does capture the excitement well.

If you have been reading here since B-day, you will see that the actors are playing the Moldvay Basic set, but the ad appears to be for the Mentzer Basic set. Which tracks well with 1983.

Today we have all sorts of great things we can use for D&D. But there is something to be said about the whole use of your imagination to see how your adventure unfolds.

Tomorrow is J, so I will talk about Jennel Jaquays and the Judges Guild.

Mail Call: Black Magic Ritual Kit (1974)

 Well, I finally picked up another "Holy Grail" item. It makes me glad I didn't spend a lot at Gary Con.

This is the "companion" game (I am not sure that is what this really is) to the Witchcraft Ritual Kit (1974) I talked about back in 2020. Both are from Avalon Hill.

Let me just start off with this. Man, the '70s were weird. 

This "game" has a board that looks like an altar set up from an occult bookstore's own manual of rituals. There are a lot of pieces here with various names of demons and angels on it. There is a "Rule book" and a "Manual of Interpretation," just like the Witchcraft Ritual Kit. It is also written by the same "Dr. Brooke Hayward Jennings," whom I still have found nothing of.

What I said about the Witchcraft Kit holds true here, too. It's 1974. The biggest movie in the world right now is "The Exorcist." Time Magazine is talking about the Occult Revival and the Return of Satan. An maybe, just maybe, Avalon Hill knows about a game featuring fantasy magic and wizards coming up. Well, they do know about it; they rejected it just a bit back.  Hippies have not yet become the Yuppies and they are searching for "alternative experiences."  What is a game company known for its war games and battle simulations to do?

Knock together some vaguely occult-looking games, put them into their standard "bookcase games" box, and slap some softcore porny covers on them. Next step...profit! 

Maybe. I don't think these games ever sold very well. There are so few of them on the aftermarket and the ones I do find are really expensive. I got this one from eBay from someone who I don't think knew what they had (based on their other sales), but I was bidding against someone who did know. Thankfully, the amount I set aside for this was much less than my final bid.

I got it just over the weekend.

What treasures are to be found here?

I love it for the cover alone!

AND, as a special bonus (and one of the main reasons I like buying these used games), someone included their own spell!

It has the same production values as the Witchcraft Ritual Kit and the same head-scratching "What do I even do with this?"

"Hey babe, come back to my pad, and I'll show you some magic."

You've got to love the covers, though. It makes me wonder what Avalon Hill product 712 was. (ETA doesn't look like there was one.)

According to BoardGameGeek, quoting the company history, "Top management decided to leave the realm of games and produce a couple of do-it-yourself kits entitled BLACK MAGIC & WITCHCRAFT." These were both advertised for a short while as a "Leisure Time Game." Neither come with, or need, dice (an Avalon Hill staple) and candles and incense are not included.

Both of these "games" are very strange, and I am not sure what events led to their publication, except for the ones I have outlined in speculation above. Neither game appears in the catalog included in the box.

Long-time readers know of a condition called "Traveller Envy," where I am constantly looking for board games to supplement my D&D experience, particularly my campaign "War of the Witch Queens." This is certainly why I bought it, but I am still stumped on how to add it. 

I mean, the demons all seem to be taken from The Lesser Key of Solomon, so I have that working in my favor since so many other games do the same thing. 

Honestly, just reading through it all is fun. It also gives me some ideas for my 1976 and 1979 campaigns. Though in different ways.

In any case, it is a wonderful curiosity from the 1970s Occult Revival and is sure to confuse anyone who tries to clean out my collection after I am gone!

#AtoZChallenge2024: H is for Hobbit

 "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit."

A very unassuming start to an epic adventure. Not just the epic adventure that propelled the hobbit, Bilbo Baggins, and his dwarf companions from the quiet of the Shire to a dragon's hoard and a great battle, but also how it shaped what would become Dungeons & Dragons.

It doesn't take a scholar of either J.R.R. Tolkien or of Dungeons & Dragons to see the similarities between the two. Elves, Dwarves, Orcs, Dragons, Were-bears, Goblins, Trolls, Hobbits-er Halflings, and Dragons. Ancient underground areas, dark forests, and a grand adventure. 

It was enough that "Chainmail" and the first version of Dungeons & Dragons (often called the "Original Edition" or 0 Edition), had Hobbits, Ents, and Balrogs in it. Which got TSR a lot of threatening letters from the Tolkien Estate. So instead, we now have Halflings, Treants (Tree + Ent), and Balors (like the Irish Balor, but in name only).

Where it Began, Part 1: Chainmail

Prior to D&D there was Gary's first game, Chainmail, described as "Rules for Medieval Miniatures."  These rules were for War Gamers and not Role-Playing games, which did not really* exist yet.

*Yes there were and have been close games and others that were RPGs in all but name, but the term and the genre did not exist yet.

Chainmail allowed you to play medieval war games with minis. Most often made of lead and played in a large sandbox.  It was released in 1971, but there are claims that the rules in one form or another, existed in Gary's basement since 1968 after the first Gen Con. As people played with these rules, they expanded on them. One of the expansions was the Fantasy Supplement. Here, creatures like dragons, orcs, elves, Balrogs, Ents, and Hobbits were added.

These additions proved to be very popular among some, and not so popular among older War Gamers. Yes. Even then the Edition Wars had their first salvos. 

This popularity and the notion that people wanted to play individual characters led to the first drafts of what would become Dungeons & Dragons.

The Tolkien Estate, of course, noticed. 

While sales stopped on TSR's "Battle of the Five Armies" (1975), copies of Dungeons & Dragons and Chainmail had to be edited to change to the more "Tolkien-approved" terms. My copy of Chainmail above still has Hobbits, Ents, and Balrogs. My 1st printing of OD&D has them, my more complete 3rd-4th printing does not.

Of course, there were missives in Dragon Magazine on how D&D was not even remotely inspired by Tolkien, but honestly they rang as hollow as the ones of D&D and AD&D being completely different games. Likely for similar reasons.

Years later on TSR had the chance to do a Lord of the Rings/D&D game and somehow managed to mess that deal up.  Competitor Iron Crown Enterprises (I.C.E.) would have their own Middle-Earth Role-Playing Game, and it was wildly successful. 

Where it Began, Part 2: Rankin/Bass

It is hard to think about a time when The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings were exclusive to literate geeks. We are far removed from the time when you could see patches on student's backpacks that proclaimed "Frodo Lives!" While today we have the massive Peter Jackson movies, back in the 1970s we had Rankin/Bass and "The Hobbit."

The Rankin/Bass Hobbit movie, appearing on TV in 1977, was my generation's gateway drug to D&D. I consider myself the 2nd (maybe a little on the 3rd) generation of D&D gamers. I did not come to this hobby because of wargaming. I came here because I read The Hobbit.  In fact, the book pictured above was the one I got for Christmas in 1981 along with my Moldvay Basic set because I was tired of borrowing other people's copies.  I had first read it in Jr. High and had already been exposed to D&D; this was exactly the right book at the right time in my life. I would later go on to read the Lord of the Rings and try to read The Silmarillion. I would finally succeed years later. 

For me, and many others, the Hobbit/Lord of the Rings and D&D are deeply linked. I have even joked that everyone is allowed one "Tolkien rip-off" character while playing D&D. Mine was a Halfling with the completely uninspired name of "Bilbo Perrin."

I reread the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings every few years or so. They are still among the best "D&D" tales out there, even if Gandalf only has the spell-casting power of a 6th-level D&D Wizard.

--

Tomorrow is I, and I will talk about Imagination.

#AtoZChallenge2024: G is for Gary Gygax, Gen Con, and Greyhawk

 I can't talk about Dungeons & Dragons and not at least mention the man who made it all possible, Gary Gygax.

Gary is often credited for creating Dungeons & Dragons and Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, but he really co-created with fellow game enthusiast Dave Arneson (gone 15 years ago yesterday). I discussed this a bit with Advanced Dungeons & Dragons on A Day.  In truth, it would have been difficult for either man alone to have produced this game, but one thing is certain: it was Gary's vision (and thanks to Gary's oldest daughter for the name) to make Dungeons & Dragons the worldwide phenomenon it is today.

I spent a lot of time last month talking about Gary and his games. Dungeons & Dragons, Mythus (1992), and Lejendary Adventure (1999). Yes, that is spelled correctly.  I also was at Gary Con this past month, a celebration of his life and games well played. 

It is kind of strange in a way, my relationship with Gary. I grew up, like all gamers my age, knowing and even revering his name. I went on and began to recognize some of the all too human flaws we all have. To a point where he emailed me out of the blue to thank me for my "Mystery Science Science Theatre 3000" parody of "Dark Dungeons."  We share a writing credit, Unearthed Acania, and chatted online until his death in 2008. 

Before D&D, he created Gen Con, the world's largest gaming convention. It was named because it took place in Lake Geneva, WI, a play on the Geneva Convention. Gen Con is now in Indianapolis, IN, and Gary Con is held in Lake Geneva. This con was initially devoted to his love of war games. 

Dungeons & Dragons itself grew out of these classical wargames and soon became its own new thing.

Greyhawk

He also created the World of Greyhawk, a fantasy world he created for his Dungeons & Dragons games. It was the forerunner to the Forgotten Realms and is still preferred by many of the old guard.

The name of the planet of the World of Greyhawk was Oerth and was supposed to be an alternate Earth. It is the world I combined with Mystara (from D&D Basic) to get Mystoerth.

There is no way I can do Gary's story justice here. So instead I am going to refer you all to some books that talk about him and the creation of Dungeons & Dragons.

• Empire of Imagination: Gary Gygax and the Birth of Dungeons & Dragons by Michael Witwer. One of the best treatments.
• Rise of the Dungeon Master: Gary Gygax and the Creation of D&D by David Kushner (Author) and  Koren Shadmi (Illustrator)
• Of Dice and Men: The Story of Dungeons & Dragons and The People Who Play It by David M. Ewalt. By a fan, for the fans.
• Slaying the Dragon: A Secret History of Dungeons & Dragons by Ben Riggs. One of the most meticulously researched of all of these.

There is also a DVD/BlueRay I meant to pick up at Gary Con but forgot to.

• The Dreams in Gary's Basement.

I spent a lot of time trying to dig up an obituary I wrote for Gary back in 2008, but it has eluded me.  Which might be better, really. My opinion of him has changed over the years; reading about his life, reading his games, and mostly talking with his children. I had a wonderful conversation with Luke Gygax at Gary Con. We talked about his dad, Dave Arneson, and the recent loss of Jim Ward. 

Sometimes we forget that these "Big Names" we read about are human until they do something all too human. But also, it is nice to remember that they are human and quite approachable. 

Tomorrow is H, and I will talk about Hobbits.

Larina Nix for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition

Larina by Beatriz Sanguino

Again, I'm surprised I haven't posted something like this already. Given that I talked about AD&D 2nd Edition earlier today, I thought this might be a good time to discuss the different witches from the AD&D 2nd Ed era. 

I have talked in the past about how the AD&D 2nd edition era was a good time for all sorts of witch classes. By my count, there were at least four official classes from TSR (and later WotC) for AD&D 2nd Ed, and quite a few unofficial ones. 

I have compared a few witch classes with each other at varying levels of detail over the years and will likely do it more when I take my deep dive into the Forgotten Realms for AD&D 2nd Ed. But looking back, I see I never taken the time to compare the AD&D Second classes to each other. The closest I have come was comparing two AD&D 2nd Characters to each other, Nida and Sinéad, and Sinéad is no longer even a proper witch. 

One day, I'll do more, but I want to look at one official witch and two unofficial ones for today.  I think I'll save Nida when it comes time to discuss the other official witches. Plus, using Larina here is much more appropriate. 

As I mentioned earlier today, AD&D 2nd Edition can be seen as an extension or continuation of the AD&D 1st Edition line. The games are very compatible. So, my characters often moved from 1st to 2nd Edition without so much as getting a new sheet. Larina here is no exception. She began in 1986 with AD&D 1st Ed and moved to AD&D 2nd Ed in 1989 without a blink. But I did make new sheets for her eventually.

Let's go back a bit before AD&D 2nd edition came out. Back in July 1986, I created a witch character, Larina, to test some ideas I had about doing witches in (A)D&D. When Dragon Magazine came out in October of 1986 I started using that. But all the while, I am collecting my notes and ideas. Moving forward to 1989, AD&D 2nd Edition was released. There were a lot of new ideas in that and I was looking forward to trying out my collected notes. One set of notes became my Sun Priest kit for Clerics, another became a pile of notes for the Healer, another the Necromancer/Death Mage, but the largest would become the Witch. It would be almost 10 years before it would see publication but it did and Larina was a central figure in that work.

In those 10 years, there was a lot of writing and playtesting. 

While I kept my Dragon #114/AD&D1st ed witch version of her, I created a parallel version using my new witch rules. This version was supposed to be the same person, just with a different set of rules to govern her. While that happened, two other witch classes were published to help me make other choices. I also set her up for these rules and played all three (or four, really) versions to see how she worked in different situations.  So, if you have ever wondered if I have run out of things to say about witches or even this witch in particular, the answer is no, I have spent more hours with her than any other character I have.

So I would like to present her for AD&D Second Edition, but three different witch classes.

• AD&D Complete Wizards Handbook, Witch Kit
• Mayfair's Role-Aids: Witches
• My own Netbook of Witches and Warlocks

Larina Nix for AD&D 2nd Edition

This version(s) of Larina is just the continuation of her AD&D 1st Edition incarnation.

Base Stats (same for all versions).

Larina Nix
Human Witch, Lawful Neutral

Strength: 9
Dexterity: 17 
Constitution: 16
Intelligence: 18 
Wisdom: 18
Charisma: 18

Movement: 12
AC: 1
HP: 86

Weapons
Dagger, Staff

Defenses: Bracers of Defense (AC 1)

Languages: Common, Alignment, Elven, Dwarven, Dragon, Goblin, Orc, Sylvan
Ancient Languages: Primordial, Abyssal, Infernal

So, in this version, her dex and con were raised by some magic.

The Complete Wizard's Handbook

Class: Wizard
Kit: Witch
Level: 15

Saving Throws (Base)
Paralyze/Poison/Death: 11
Rod, Staff, Wand: 7
Petrify/Polymorph: 9
Breath Weapon: 11
Magic: 11

THAC0: 16

Proficiencies: Ancient History, Astrology (2), Herbalism, Reading/Writing (4), Religion (2), Spellcraft (4), Animal Handling, Artistic.
Weapons: Dagger, Staff

Secondary Skill: Scribe

Powers
3rd level: Familiar
5th level: Brew Calmative
7th level: Brew Poison
9th level: Beguile
11th level: Brew Flying Ointment
13th level: Witch's Cure

Spells
1st level: Burning Hands, Charm Person, Comprehend Languages, Copy, Chromatic Orb
2nd level: Blindness, ESP, Tasha's Hideous Uncontrollable Laughter, Knock, Ice Knife
3rd level: Clairvoyance, Hold Person, Hovering Skull, Iron Mind, Pain Touch
4th level: Dimension Door, Fear, Magic Mirror, Remove Curse, Fire Aura
5th level: Advanced Illusion, Cone of Cold, Feeblemind, Telekinesis, Shadow Door
6th level: Eyebite, Dragon Scales
7th level: Shadow Walk

--

Mayfair Role-aids: Witches

Class: Witch / Wizard
Tradition: Classical
Level: 15 / 1

Saving Throws (Base)
Paralyze/Poison/Death: 13
Rod, Staff, Wand: 9
Petrify/Polymorph: 11
Breath Weapon: 13
Magic: 10

THAC0: 16

Proficiencies: Ancient History, Astrology (2), Herbalism, Reading/Writing (4), Religion (2), Spellcraft (4), Animal Handling, Artistic.
Weapons: Dagger, Staff

Secondary Skill: Scribe

Powers
Herbalism

Spells
1st level: Feather Fall, Identify, Read Magic, Sleep, Chill Touch, Protection from Evil, Color Spray
2nd level: Flaming Sphere, Locate Object, Forget, Ray of Enfeeblement, Strength
3rd level: Cure Light Wounds, Dispel Magic, Clairvoyance, Delude, Mystery Script
4th level: Call Lightning, Fear, Fire Shield, Magic Mirror, Wall of Fire
5th level: Feeblemind, Shadow Magic, Dream, FAlse Vision
6th level: Geas, Legend Lore, True Seeing
7th level: Shadow Walk

--

The Complete Netbook of Witches & Warlocks

Class: Witch (Priest Sub-class)
Level: 15

Saving Throws (Base)
Paralyze/Poison/Death: 5
Rod, Staff, Wand: 9
Petrify/Polymorph: 8
Breath Weapon: 11
Magic: 10

THAC0: 12

Proficiencies: Ancient History, Astrology (2), Herbalism, Reading/Writing (4), Religion (2), Spellcraft (4), Animal Handling, Artistic.
Weapons: Dagger, Staff

Secondary Skill: Scribe

Powers
1st: Turn Undead
3rd level: Read/Detect Magic
6th level: Chill Touch
9th level: Candle Magic
12th level: Immune to Fear
15th level: Fascination
11th level: Brew Flying Ointment
13th level: Witch's Cure

Spells
1st level: Create Fire, Katarine's Dart, Witch Light, Dowse, Wall of Darkness, Painful Wounds
2nd level: Burning Wind, Acquire Witch's Familiar, Blackfire, Dance Trantra, Minor Hex, Pain Armor, Protection vs. Elementals
3rd level: Lesser Strengthing Rite, Beguile III, Astral Sense, Lethe, Witch Writing, Rite of Remote Seeing
4th level: Spirit Dagger, Cloak of Shifting Shadows, Broom, Cleanse, Card Reading, Grandmother's Shawl, Middle Banishing Rite
5th level: Rite of Magical Resistance, Starflare, Dolor, Bull of Heaven
6th level: Anchoring Rite, Greater Banishing Rite, Kiss of Life
7th level: Demon Trap

--

The biggest differences are in the powers and the spells. 

I kept her HP the same in all three cases to keep combat a fixed variable, the same with her weapons and non-weapon proficiencies. 

The Wizard's Handbook from TSR strikes a good balance of powers and spells. The Mayfair Role-aids Witches book has some great spells. Of course I am fond of my own Complete Netbook of Witches & Warlocks. Of course, after 25 years, there are things I would do differently now.

Playing All Three

Playing all three in a game was interesting but also a lot of fun. I'd generally alternate between them, choosing which one to use in combat beforehand so I could measure the utility of the spells. So when I say I have played her more than any other character, I really mean it. I kept her "real" sheets as notes in MS Word 2.0/95/97 to make easy changes to them as I played with my CNoW&W one as the "official" character sheet. 

This also gave me the idea that all her incarnations are aware of each other. It has nothing to do with any of the game mechanics I have written, but it is aa fun little role-playing exercise. 

In 1999, on October 31st, I was sitting in the hospital. My wife had just had our first baby, Liam, and I had my laptop. Just after midnight, I released my "The Complete Netbook of Witches & Warlocks" for free on the web. Larina was featured in that book as a 6-year-old who discovered she was a witch.

All the playtesting would then lead to my "The Witch: A sourcebook for Basic Edition fantasy games" released exactly 14 years later.  It would also lead to my 3rd Edition books on witches, but I'll talk about them next week.

#AtoZChallenge2024: Sunday Special, AD&D 2nd Edition

I know that in the A to Z Challenge we skip posting on Sundays, but since we have enough Sundays here I am going to use them to talk about the various editions of D&D that otherwise would not get talked about.

Up this Sunday?  AD&D 2nd Edition.

 

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, 2nd Edition

AD&D 2nd Edition was released starting in the spring of 1989, 12-10 years after AD&D 1st Edition. The game was met with great anticipation by many, myself included, and by trepidation by others.

Trepidation since was going to be the first major edition of Dungeons & Dragons with Gary Gygax's name on it. Now to be fair, the Mentzer BECMI also did not feature Gary's name on the cover, but his fingerprints if not his tacit and implicit blessings were all over it.

This edition did not have that and there were some that felt it could not live up.

I was not necessarily a Gygax loyalist. Sure I knew he had been ousted from TSR, the publisher of D&D and the company he helped create, but D&D by this time had had a lot of names on it.  D&D, in my mind then, was bigger that Gary Gygax alone.  

So when AD&D 2nd came out I was in. I got my books as soon as they were released and I went head first into this new game. For reasons that seem silly now, I always felt I was behind the curve when it came to AD&D 1st Ed. That there were people who had gotten in early and "knew" more than me. This was not going to be the case for 2nd Ed! 

In truth, I enjoyed the game for a very long time, but it was also the game that would nearly turn me away from D&D.

I bought AD&D 2nd Edition and I put up, and eventually loaned out, all my older D&D rule books. That was a HUGE mistake. First off, save for minor details, AD&D 1st Ed and AD&D 2nd Ed were still very compatible. I could move characters, monsters, and adventures between the two with relative ease. In some cases the changes were also improvements in my mind. The Bards were better; the initiative used a d10 and not a d6, which made a lot more sense, and the monsters were far more detailed.  In fact, I spent a whole series of posts on the monster books.

Though it was not without it's own problems. The "splat" books (called that because the * often used as a wild card is also called a 'splat') began to get out of control, and each one introduced new levels of power creep. For example, I loved the new Bard class and HATED "The Complete Bards Handbook." 

There was also a level of enforced morality in the game. Spells like Bestow Curse were now gone, Assassins and barbarians as classes were gone, and demons and devils were also gone. Now honestly I didn't mind all of that, I could, and did, add my own material.

The Campaign Settings

The REAL selling point for AD&D 2nd Edition for many of us were the Campaign Settings.  I talked about the Forgotten Realms yesterday and I'll talk about Ravenloft later. Mystara had a few brief moments, and there were others. And that was part of the problem. Ravenloft people like me didn't buy Forgotten Realms books. Forgotten Realms fans didn't buy Birthright or Red Steel or Mystara. People who bought Planescape never bought Spelljammer. There were too many settings and too many books in each one and no one was buying them all. Or at least not enough to matter.

So when TSR finally went bankrupt and was deep, deep in debt, it was not a surprise really.

My History with AD&D 2nd Ed.

When AD&D 2nd Edition was released, I was living in the dorms at my university as an undergrad. When the next edition was released in 2000, I had been married for five years, had been living in a new house for three of those and my oldest son was nearly one year old.  Talk about changes. 

Also, at that time, I went from "AD&D 2nd Ed is the game for me" to "I will play ANYTHING but AD&D."  A few factors went into that. First was the power creep I mentioned above. The worst books for this were the Skills and Powers books, an attempt by TSR to patch all the leaky holes the AD&D system (now 25 years old) was showing.  Also, AD&D didn't support the type of game I wanted to play anymore.

Then, there was the issue with how TSR was treating the D&D players online.

In the early days of the Internet, there was a rush to share ideas, particularly D&D ideas. Netbooks became very popular. TSR responded by trying to sue anyone that talked about D&D online. So much so they became known as "They Sue Regularily."  Hard to imagine in today's post-OGL and Creative Commons world. People also forget how bad it was and how Wizards of the Coast, the next publisher of D&D, essentially gave away their rules for free to use.

Today. My stance on AD&D has softened a lot, and I am back to loving it again. 

Will I ever play AD&D 2nd again? I don't know, I'd love to, to be honest.

Tomorrow, we are back to the regular schedule, and I have G for Gary Gygax.

#AtoZChallenge2024: F is for the Forgotten Realms

 This one might feel like a bit of a recycle; I have been talking about the Forgotten Realms all year long so far and will keep at it. But today is different, I think.

For people new to D&D and my blog, the Forgotten Realms is a campaign setting, a world filled with people, creatures, gods, and history for use with the Dungeons & Dragons game. It was created as a world to tell stories in by Ed Greenwood. It was first published for the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st Edition game system back in 1987. I reviewed that set earlier this year. Now I was playing D&D when this game came out; I was about ready to enter my second decade of playing, so I was not a newbie. But I felt the Forgotten Realms was the "Johnny come lately" of D&D, and I really wanted no part of it. 

That was a mistake on my part.

Well...I mean at the time I going to University, my funds were limited and soon I would be HARDCORE in another campaign setting, Ravenloft. I will talk a bit about the Campaign settings for AD&D tomorrow and about Ravenloft on R day. 

So, going back a few A to Z Challenges (2016), I posted about how I was changing my mind about the Forgotten Realms. It actually began back in the 3rd Edition days, and solidified to me in 4th Ed days. Now, in the later days of 5th Edition, I find myself drawn to it more. And I have REALLY had a great time with it. 

The Realms are wildly popular. There is over 35 years of RPG publications, hundreds of books with many as New York Times best sellers, a few dozen or so video games including the amazing Baldur's Gate 3, comics, an actual play podcast (I am sure there are more), and yes the most recent Dungeons & Dragons movie.

I freely admit, I was gearing up for a big push into the Forgotten Realms anyway, but it was Baldur's Gate 3 that really pushed me over. 

Me and the Realms

My regular readers know I have a campaign world that I really love, Mystoerth, which combines aspects of two other published campaign worlds Mystara (published with Basic D&D) and Oerth, the World of Greyhawk (designed for Advanced D&D). These two worlds were smooshed together so my old High School DM and I could have one world. This suited me well for a very long time. 

But there is something to be said about living in a shared world. You can talk to others about adventures in a place, and they have their own stories. It makes the world alive in a way I can't really do with my Mystoerth. 

These blog pages document my attitude shift towards the Realms fairly well. However, they don't really capture how much I disliked them initially, especially in the 1990s. 

I was never a fan of Forgotten Realms. I dismissed it in the 1980s as an "upstart," ignored it in the early 1990s, and actively disliked it in the late 1990s. But it seems my ire was misplaced. Around the time the 3rd Edition Realms book came out, I was beginning to soften my stance. By the 4th Ed era, I considered moving a campaign to the Realms. In the 5th Ed era, I made it official, more or less.

It was my coverage of Ed Greenwood's work in Dragon magazine that changed my mind. 

To this end, I have amassed a small collection of Forgotten Realms books—nothing special, just ones that I have easily come by either at game auctions, Half-Price Books, or, as in the books pictured above, Print on Demand from DriveThruRPG. So, I have been going through them in detail throughout the editions.

The Forgotten Realms to me was always viewed through the eyes of a character, whether that was Elminster or Drizzt or whomever. Likewise, I am going to look into the Realms through the eyes of a new character. So I am opting to also experience the Realms through the eyes of my characters. The one I am starting with is Sinéad. She began as an AD&D 2nd Ed character, moved over to become a very successful Baldur's Gate 3 character, and now she is my "Ego" character for my Realms games.  She even has her own set of dice.

I have some others that I have discussed and there will be more.

So far, this has been nothing short of fantastic. There is not a moment of this new series of posts and these new explorations I do not love. If you are here from the A to Z Blogging Challenge, I recommend coming back to check these out if you want to learn more about the Forgotten Realms. I know a little bit more than you do, so we can all learn together.

Tomorrow is Sunday and normally not a day we post in the A to Z. But I am doing my Sunday Specials again this year and posting about numbers. Tomorrow is AD&D 2nd Edition.

This is also my next entry of the month for the RPG Blog Carnival, hosted by Codex Anathema on Favorite Settings.