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Dungeons and Dragons Knowledge Compendium 235

Posted by michael from the airspeed-of-an-unladen-ogre dept.
ScurvySeaDog writes "Like me, I would bet many slashdotters where D&D players before they got their first home computer in the early 80's. This site seems to have every book, module, supplement ever published along with scans of the covers. They also have current collector values for you packrats. It was nostalgic for me to browse around looking up all the old modules and books."
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Dungeons and Dragons Knowledge Compendium More

Dungeons and Dragons Knowledge Compendium

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  • Counter (Score:5, Funny)

    by Alorelith ( 118865 ) on Thursday August 01, 2002 @05:02AM (#3990827) Homepage
    Ooohhh, a counter. *Reloads website*

    • Re:Counter (Score:5, Funny)

      by A Rabid Tibetan Yak ( 525649 ) on Thursday August 01, 2002 @07:00AM (#3990993)
      You hit the counter with your +1 "HTTP GET". The counter is still standing, and glaring in your direction. The gazebo next to it isn't looking happy, either.
      • Yes, yes, but have the shrubberies moved? ;)

      • Re:Counter (Score:5, Funny)

        by Jugalator ( 259273 ) on Thursday August 01, 2002 @07:20AM (#3991025) Journal
        You hit the counter with your +1 "HTTP GET". The counter is still standing, and glaring in your direction. The gazebo next to it isn't looking happy, either.

        Moments later, the Slashdot Effect approaches acaeum.com and strikes with his +5 vorpal Siteslayer while muttering "damn those webservers thinking they are something". Then he goes back to his eternal rest, only awakened by new sounds from Members of Slashdot approaching a site.

      • +1 Parent (Score:5, Funny)

        by MattW ( 97290 ) <matt@ender.com> on Thursday August 01, 2002 @08:49AM (#3991318) Homepage
        /me falls over. I wish my mod points hadn't just expired.

        DM: "You enter a clearing, and near the center, you see a gazebo."
        Incredibly Ignorant Paladin Player: "Has the gazebo seen me?"
        DM: "Um, no."
        IIPP: "I approach the gazebo."
        DM: "Ok."
        IIPP: "It still hasn't moved?"
        DM: "No."
        IIPP: "I attack the gazebo!"
        DM: "Ok, you swing at the gazebo. Pieces of it are flying off."
        IIPP: "Is it attacking me back?"

        The good news is, roleplaying will improve IIPP's vocabulary.

        • The full Gazebo Story (Score:5, Funny)

          by Jugalator ( 259273 ) on Thursday August 01, 2002 @09:11AM (#3991416) Journal
          Eric comes quite close to being a computer. When he games, he
          methodically considers each possibility before choosing his preferred
          option. If given time, he will invariably pick the optimum solution.
          It has been known to take weeks. He is otherwise in all respects a
          superior gamer, and I've spent many happy hours competing with and
          against him, as long as he is given enough time.

          So... Eric was playing a neutral paladin (Why should only lawful, good
          religions get to have holy warriors? was the rationale) in Ed's game.
          He even had a holy sword, which fought well and did all those things
          holy swords are supposed to do, including good or evil (by random die
          roll). He was on some lord's lands when the following exchange
          occurred:

          ED: You see a well-groomed garden. In the middle, on a small hill, you
          see a gazebo.
          ERIC: A gazebo? What color is it?
          ED: (Pause) It's white, Eric.
          ERIC: How far away is it?
          ED: About 50 yards.
          ERIC: How big is it?
          ED: (Pause) It's about 30 feet across, 15 feet high, with a pointed
          top.
          ERIC: I use my sword to detect whether it's good.
          ED: It's not good, Eric. It's a gazebo!
          ERIC: (Pause) I call out to it.
          ED: It won't answer. It's a gazebo!
          ERIC: (Pause) I sheathe my sword and draw my bow and arrows. Does it
          respond in any way?
          ED: No, Eric. It's a gazebo!
          ERIC: I shoot it with my bow (rolls to hit). What happened?
          ED: There is now a gazebo with an arrow sticking out of it.
          ERIC: (Pause) Wasn't it wounded?
          ED: Of course not, Eric! It's a gazebo!
          ERIC: (Whimper) But that was a plus-three arrow!
          ED: It's a gazebo, Eric, a gazebo! If you really want to try to
          destroy it, you could try to chop it wih an axe, I suppose, or you
          could try to burn it, but I don't know why anybody would even try.
          It's a @#%$*& gazebo!
          ERIC: (Long pause - he has no axe or fire spells) I run away.
          ED: (Thoroughly frustrated) It's too late. You've awakened the gazebo,
          and it catches you and eats you.
          ERIC: (Reaching for his dice) Maybe I'll roll up a fire-using mage so
          I can avenge my paladin...

          At this point, the increasingly amused fellow party members restored a
          modicum of order by explaining what a gazebo is. This is solely an
          afterthought, of course, but Eric is doubly lucky that the gazebo was
          not situated on a grassy knoll.
          • Haha, excellent! I knew I was botching it a bit, but it is quite hilarious. So, I hear this all went down at a convention, and that the story was circulating like ~15 years ago, so when did it actually happen, and at what con? And since you're referring to Ed, is that greenwood? I really have to have this all down for posterity ;)
            • I don't know which Ed it is...
              Wait, I'll check for the post in Google Groups.

              There... It's over here [google.com].

              That's were I got it actually. Perhaps you can find out more with some research.

              Good luck - or whatever. ;-)
            • That particular telling of the story was from Knights of the Dinner Table, a comic that appeared in Dragon and a few other gaming magazines and is now it's own little empire under Kenzer and Co. They even bought D&D 1st Edition, and released rulebooks for "Hackmaster Fourth Edition", the heretofore imaginary game that is played by the Knights, and published by the imaginary (and amusingly named) Gary Jackson.

              Another really good spoof of D&D is "Freebase", a tiny newsprint manual folded *inside* Dirt Merchant Games' (the "evil games" division of Black Dog, which is the "adult games" division of White Wolf) Buttery Wholesomeness, a suppliment to the very gamer injoke laden HOL: Human Occupied Landfill. Alignment is "Liberal, Noncommital, Conservative" against "Estabishment, Noncomittal, Granola". Potion of Sleep is pictures as a Nyquil bottle, and Potion of Speed is Dexatrym. Baggies of Spell Storage contain a dried leaf. The monster manual includes Cabbies, Delirium Tremens ("may appear as anything from tiny plaid spiders to miniature clones of Carol Channing scaling their prey's back with shrimp forks"), Hos and their leaders Hokings, and Register Jockeys. All of which is laid out, including deliciously beautiful parody artwork, just like D&D 1st edition.

              --
              Evan

  • D&D Adventures in NWN? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by DamnYouIAmALion ( 530667 ) on Thursday August 01, 2002 @05:06AM (#3990829)

    Is anyone working on putting the adventures from the original D&D sets into Neverwinter Nights? It would be great to go and play them again. I might even try and track down the crazy DM I used to play with!

    • Re:D&D Adventures in NWN? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Jugalator ( 259273 ) on Thursday August 01, 2002 @06:57AM (#3990986) Journal
      Yes.

      I'm afraid I don't know any specific URL's but there's a lot in the works.

      Some maniacs are linking together a whole lot of servers to form the major parts of Faerûn. See Alandfaraway.net [alandfaraway.net] for more info. Sadly they're not taking player applications right now, so I haven't been able to try it out. Here's the mind-boggling server maps [alandfaraway.net] (click on a part of the map to see the server numbers).

      Some other guys are implementing the city of Sigil with some planes as well.

      And here's a module list [ign.com] on one of the largest fan sites [ign.com]. Most aren't D&D campaigns from "the books" but some might be.

      Keep in mind that it's pretty time consuming to do large campaigns, but there *are* groups working on D&D adventures from the books while I type this.
      • here's a module list on one of the largest fan sites

        Is anyone else getting weird defects when visiting NWVault [ign.com] in Mozilla? Yesterday any page I tried would load about 90%, then go to gray and start over. Today the pages load but I'm seeing black text on a black background.

        Some settings info: no popups, no status bar scripting, no cookies from ign, no 3rd party images

    • Re:D&D Adventures in NWN? (Score:5, Funny)

      by WWWWolf ( 2428 ) <wwwwolf@iki.fi> on Thursday August 01, 2002 @07:48AM (#3991086) Homepage

      Maybe... actually, I dragged my entire (classic) D&D stuff collection across the country to see if that could be translated to NWN.

      Even found a couple of game magazines and 2nd ed AD&D modules sent by people. The only problem was that NWN doesn't have "erotic painting" and "beautiful young woman chained to the altar" tiles, and this makes converting the reader-made modules a bit tricky, because those things appear in just about every one of these for some obscure reason... =)

      • "Erotic Painting" Hmmmm... now that's a texture you could never find on the internet.

    • It probably wouldn't work (Score:5, Interesting)

      by tmark ( 230091 ) on Thursday August 01, 2002 @09:54AM (#3991640)
      When I first heard about Neverwinter Nights, I thought "Great, I can go and code all those modules I had when I was a kid"...then I started flashbacking to all my favorite modules' codes...D3, S2, Q1, etc.

      But I realized it probably wouldn't work very well. The best modules always had a problem-solving aspect to it that just would never translate well to a the game frameworks that we have now. Neverwinter Nights is just not going to allow you the flexibility to really solve puzzles without cueing you so obviously as to what the solution might be.

      The only game framework I could imagine that could really capture the essence of the best modules and campaigns is an Infocom-style framework - where the textual descriptions are so rich and your range of actions so potentially large that the solutions to the problems - and even the problems themselves - aren't painfully obvious. A puzzle isn't very satisfying when you only have to select one of 3 solutions from a menu, or when you just have to show up with an item and walk close to some target character, etc.

      But sadly, this framework is almost completely incompatible - almost by definition - with Baldur's Gate-style graphics.
      • A puzzle isn't very satisfying when you only have to select one of 3 solutions from a menu, or when you just have to show up with an item

        That's why you still need a DM. NWN includes a DM client that can take control of gameplay, allow freeform dialogue, and cause things to happen manually. Yes, even a good NWN module will have scripted puzzles of the choose-your-own-adventure variety, but a really good module will let a human DM turn those off and force the players to think harder.

    • The official site has a list of modules that you can download here [bioware.com].

  • D & D (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Gizzmonic ( 412910 ) on Thursday August 01, 2002 @05:06AM (#3990830) Homepage Journal
    Does anyone remember those Capcom 2D arcade games that were Dungeons & Dragons themed? Shadow Over Mystara I think one was called....you could play 4 players with dwarves, fighters, thieves...I always liked being the cleric.

    D & D as an action game was an interesting take...wonder if anyone will ever try that again?

    • Re:D & D (Score:2, Informative)

      by 3.5 stripes ( 578410 )
      Yeah, you can still find them for mame, they were well done, although I would have liked a bit more depth...

    • Re:D & D (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      They were called D&D: Shadows over Mystara and D&D: Towers of Doom.
    • Yeah, those were great. Even better were the "Gold Box" SSI Dragonlance games. Then again, SSI was the major RTS publisher and those games were, of course, RTSs... and it always seemed to me that they worked best that way, better than the Gauntlet-ish arcade and the might and magic-esque Myth Drannor series.
      • Ever play Dungeons and Dragons for the Intellivision. It was a simple 4-bit dungeon crawl, but it was still pretty cool.
      • For $9.99 you can buy an AD&D game pack at Wal*Mart or K-Mart that includes most of the SSI gold box games, plus parts I-III of the Eye of the Beholder series, Hillsfar and Blood & Magic.

        I just picked it up and I'm in the process of playing the original (and still the best!) Pool of Radiance.

        It's amazing how great a game you can fit in 1.5 MB of space...
    • Two of my friends love Shadows Over Mystara so much that when the local arcade was selling it, they bought it! It's scary how much they know about that game.
    • Clerics were the best, I would sit there and cast sticks to snakes, then watch all the goblins and kobolds run around with snakes hanging on them.

      I just wish they would put the system back in somewhere around here again, I miss playing it.

    • Actually, there is a game that is sort of similar for the GP 32 called Dungeon & Guarder:

      Dungeon & Guarder [lik-sang.com]

      I keep getting killed though... it isn't easy!

  • VAST? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Perdo ( 151843 ) on Thursday August 01, 2002 @05:10AM (#3990838) Homepage Journal
    there was a D&D database called "Vast Database". Seems like everyone added their house rules to the database untill it was this monsterish download.

    I can remember spending 2 days on a 14.4 modem on some BBS in Hawaii. I was in Alaska. My parents were VERY upset with the phone bill.

    Has anyone seen it around? It had the # to another BBS to send updates/recieve updates. In mid 1992 it was 101 mb. That is about the last time I saw it. BBS died and the new "internet" thing was rolling.

    Even now, no one has the bandwidth to host such a file given it's exponential growth rate. Given that it always seemed to take up half my hard drive, it ought to be up to about 80 gigabytes by now.

  • Connections (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Overcoat ( 522810 ) on Thursday August 01, 2002 @05:14AM (#3990845)
    The link between computers and RPG's goes back as long as either existed. Geeks' love of Role Playing Games has affected computer culture for decades: from "Adventure" and "Zork" which were both originally programmed on mainframes, to the heavily D&D-influenced classic "Nethack", both computers and RPG's have developed together to the point where today we have... um... faster computers and more elaborate RPGS.
    ...
    Damn, I was hoping for something more profound to come out of that line of reasoning...

    • Re:Connections (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Well, I was going to say how much I doubted that D&D influenced "Adventure" (since Crowther began work on it around 1975), but lo and behold, I find that he himself credits Gygax's game as an influence.

  • D&D? No thanks, RM please :-) (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Xouba ( 456926 ) on Thursday August 01, 2002 @05:24AM (#3990856) Homepage
    It's true that many people started with D&D, but I guess that, while it has a lot of nice features (being quick and clean the one I like most), also many people got soon tired of the stereotypical characters it allowed and the poor realism of its rules. That's why I've always liked RM (RoleMaster) more. Much better (and complex, and maybe slow, yes), IMHO.

    And it's a pity there's no good shop to boy RM things, as it seems there's for D&D (on-topic protection, yes :-D). Sure D&D is the most "mainstream" of the RPG rules around, and that's the cause.

    But only my 0.02EUR, of course :-)
    • I think people let the rules of any certain RPG system worry them too much. Combat is only part of role-playing...and certainly everyone's least favorite part. We've all spent entire sessions in town doing nothing but screwing around hand having fun. D&D all depends on the DM. DMs that stick exactly to the rule book are boring....
      On that note i hate being a paladin..nothing is more boring than being lawful good.

      • Re:D&D? No thanks, RM please :-) (Score:5, Funny)

        by bakes ( 87194 ) on Thursday August 01, 2002 @06:29AM (#3990953) Journal
        On that note i hate being a paladin..nothing is more boring than being lawful good

        Verily, thy comments strike deep into mine soul. If thee is unable to play the part of the paladin with a joyful heart, then thy effort is short of that deserving knightly honour. Surely thou canst piss off all thy friends with an ancient dialect, at the very least?
        • > . Surely thou canst piss off all thy friends with an ancient dialect, at the very least?

          Verily, thou canst not do even such a thing. For by sooth, thou wouldst say, werest thou worthy of thine attitude, thus:
          Verily,
          thine comments strike deep into my (or mine own) soul. If thou art unable to play the part of the paladin with a joyful heart, then thine effort is short of that deserving knightly honour. Surely canst thou piss off all thine friends with an ancient dialect, at the very least?
          Virg
        • While you were running your mouth, I picked your pocket, stole your sword, and sold it to feed some starving orphans.

          That's what being Chaotic Good is all about.

          Putz.

      • Re:D&D? No thanks, RM please :-) (Score:1, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        > screwing around hand having fun?

        sounds like your DM really deviated from the rule book...
      • On that note i hate being a paladin..nothing is more boring than being lawful good.

        I think it's in the second edition PHB, but somewhere the authors remind you that alignment is not a straitjacket. "Being lawful good" can be interpreted many different ways. You don't have to be a robot; the last paladin I played was anything but--she was a hard-drinking, tough-ass fighter who was on a "mission from God". If you have a good DM, you'll be presented with choices between what is good and what is right, and you'll have a difficult time deciding between the two. Alignment informs you about your character's outlook, but tells you nothing about how your character behaves.

      • ...you have to follow the rules closely or you have no game. It would be like letting a guy run down the court with the ball tucked under his arm...that wouldn't be basketball anymore.

        And as for the LG comments...
        Anyone can be Chaotic, being Lawful (Good, Evil, whatever) is a much more challenging alignment to play. 20 years ago when I used to play AD&D it was so fun to DM a game and try to push a Lawful character outside their alignment...make them do something totally selfish. One Lawful Good character, IMO, was a must for almost any party...they tended to be the glue.
    • Hmm, I used to make up my own rules. Or even better, ignore them altogether. The best games were when I decided that what happened was basically what I felt like happening. Bar room brawls were the best, pulling out a crossbow got you a bottle in the face, while beating someone to the ground with a stuffed fish (still in the sturdy glass case) was more useful. Of course, this only works when the players trust the DM (or are at least having fun).
    • Listening to those RM guys ranting on D&D and calling their RPG 'realistic' allways has been a good laugh.
      Fact is that D&D and RM are RPG's that follow very much the same 'classical' principle of Charakterclasses, Levels and Hitpoints (aka 'CLH' RPG). And tons of pointless table-filled books to decash the junkies ;-) .
      Anyway, talking about realism in an RPG is silly even if the rules come as close to being plausile as it can be (GURPS and Milleniums End kinda go that direction).
      To me the hilarious paragraph-and-rulebook tonnage of CLH RPG's allways was the major downside of playability and fun. Torg was one of the first real reliefs I expierienced - and the Dramadeck is so much of an encouragement to drop CLH Hack'n'Slay I couldn't believe it.
      RPG's have come a long way since D&D (the DOS of RPG's), RM and it's heritage , it's kinda a shame people still stick to those game mechanisims that actually hinder roleplaying quite a bit (one would be suprised).
      Bottom line:
      If you wanna get an RPG, buy one of those which don't have Characterclasses, Expieriencelevels and Hitpoints. Everway, Torg, GURPS, and Milleniums End are a few that apply to that rule - and are worth looking at.

      Oh, and please spare the endless "if you don't like the rules you can change them" and "rules aren't important, the people are" - I know those allready. Here's the response: You can by a good RPG in the first place, saves you a lot of time. And I usually pick my friends first, then pick the RPG. Might aswell be a good one.
    • ...while it has a lot of nice features (being quick and clean the one I like most), also many people got soon tired of the stereotypical characters it allowed and the poor realism of its rules.

      Quick? Clean? Who were you playing with? Your campaigns were quick and clean? You didn't have people you were playing with who acted perversely for the express purpose of annoying the DM? You didn't have a DM who figured out how to keep these freakish people in line by ever-increasing creativity?

      The character guidelines were a list of suggested career paths, really. You took your statistics and you decided on a character that you would enjoy playing. You act based on what you think your character would do, not according to some stupid rule book. Anything else and you're just writing numbers on a paper and rolling dice, while accruing imaginary tokens. D&D should be role playing, not Sim City.

    • Re:D&D? No thanks (Score:3, Informative)

      by DarkMan ( 32280 )

      D&D was, for it's time, an incredible piece of work. It managed to put across so much that's now taken for granted. For example, the fact that you play just one character was near revolutionary for the time - D&D was the first to get that across sucessfully. Were it not for D&D, RPG's would exist . (Okay something else would have taken it's place, but that's a given).

      Since then, however, there's been a large number of different RGP's produced, some more or less like D&D (such as RM), some a bit different (Call of Cuthullu, Vampire:the Masqurade, etc), and some rather different (Sorcerer [sorcerer-rpg.com] and
      De Profoundis [demon.co.uk].

      Some of them really push the envelope of what RPG's are. Some are just kick ass fun. With all the nostalgia, remeber to try some of the newer stuff.

      On RM Leisure Games [leisuregames.co.uk] based in london, will mail order, and have a stock of [leisuregames.co.uk]
      Rolemaster gear. They will deliver outside the UK (including Spain), but that costs extra. Hey, if it's the only place to get it...

    • I've always liked RM (RoleMaster) more.

      Bah. RuleMaster is a pain. Real roleplayers do it with no dice and no rules, just imagination and character play. :p

      xDND is like Windows and x86 -- it's annoying and kludgy, still based on old cruft that was a bad idea 25 years ago. But it's also the predominant standard.

      Anyone want to complete this analogy for GURPS, Hero System, RuleMaster, RuneQuest, etc? ;)

      --
      FDND [tripod.com] now available
  • You just have to wonder how is it that a game called "rules for medieval miniatures" had such success...

  • motivation (Score:3, Interesting)

    by great throwdini ( 118430 ) on Thursday August 01, 2002 @05:43AM (#3990885)

    Maybe now I can find the motivation to unload the 600+ issues of Dragon Magazine clogging up my apartment ... oh, well, someday.

    Casual perusal of the Web site didn't turn up reference to the (failed) attempt to collect the "Wormy" cartoons into a single volume. I believe the artist was making a stab at self-publishing, selling "shares" to interested individuals. I must have been thirteen or so at the time, but I sent off for my "share" only to have it refunded months later due to insufficient share sales. I believe I still have the nifty printed scrap of paper somewhere.

    Also of note are the "Phil and Dixie" volumes published by Phil Foglio long after its run in Dragon Magazine. Again unlisted, but I guess the site focuses on direct TSR publications only? Perhaps that's why the CD-ROM collection of a substantial number of Dragons is also missing (it gets brief mention in the "What's New" section. Maybe I'm simply too tired to comb through the site for the info.

    • Re:motivation (Score:2, Informative)

      by Mathness ( 145187 )
      "What's New?" and other Phil & Kaja Foglio material can be found here [studiofoglio.com] and here (Adult!) [xxxenophile.com]

      "What's New?" contains material from Dragon Magazine, Duelist and other sources. Probably why it is not avaible at TSR, besides Phil often do his own publishing.
    • Search Google for Wormy or Dave Trampier and you can glean some additional info on Wormy. Always was my favortite from the old Dragons.

  • Never really got into AD&D... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by blackcoot ( 124938 ) on Thursday August 01, 2002 @05:44AM (#3990887)
    ... too many (*$#^@^# different dice! That's why Steve Jackson [sjgames.com] gave us GURPS ;-) Incidentally, these were the folks that got raided a while back for their BlackOps supplement...
    • The raid on Steve Jackson Games [sjgames.com] was for the GURPS Cyberpunk [sjgames.com] supplement, written by Lloyd Blankenship (and a first-printing autographed copy sits proudly in my collection). It is now out of print.

      • The raid on Steve Jackson Games was for the GURPS Cyberpunk supplement, written by Lloyd Blankenship

        GURPS Cyberpunk wasn't a reason, it was an excuse. The Secret Service and the Chicago Computer Crime Bureau raided SJG as part of the "Operation Sunfire" raid on the hacker group the Legion of Doom. Blankenship (aka Mentor) was a former member of the Legion at that time. They raided his home and his place of work, SJG. When it became clear to the feds that they'd found nothing in the SJG raid, they offered as a face-saving pretext the preposterous idea that GURPS Cyberpunk was "a manual for computer crime."

        I second the recommendation of the fine Bruce Sterling book THE HACKER CRACKDOWN, linked in another post on this thread.

    • The 3rd edition D&D probably partially solves this problem, since the game "mechanics" there are based on the d20 system and a lot of rules use... well, the d20. :)
      • Whoops --- wrong book, right guy ;-) As for D&D 3rd ed. meh. The rules still feel clumsy, and damnit, I want to be able to call shots to the groin! (-3 to hit, [humanoid male] characters need to start worrying about being stunned if memory serves me -- very effective for those of us that like to fight dirty and move on to the raping and pillaging ;-))
    • Has several chapters on the raid. The full text of the book is available at Bruce Sterling's site [texas.net].

  • Monster Manuals (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The Monster Manuals were always my favorite D&D books. Where else could you find the intelligence level or hit points of a vampire or Dracula himself. Monster Manual 2 even had the stats for omnipotent beings who existed on multiple dimmensions simulataneously. The Old Ones, the Greek/Roman Gods and other legendary monsters were all systematicaly categorized with pictures as well. The monsters descriptions, "special attacks", and stats all followed traditional monster lore to a T and geeks appreciated this.
    • Bah! Gods and omnipotent beings should never be in Monster Manuals. That takes all the mystery and terror out of an encounter.

      Remember: If it has hit points, it can be killed.

  • Trolls (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    troll n. First recorded at the Nirnaeth Arnoediad in I 471, but must predate this by some time. Still extant at the time of the War of the Ring at the end of the Third Age

    Divisions: Cave-trolls, Hill-trolls, Mountain-trolls, Olog-hai, Snow-trolls, Stone-trolls

    Meaning: 'Troll' is a word from Scandinavian myth, used as an English translation of the Sindarin torog, of uncertain derivation

    Lumbering evil creatures originated by Melkor, and said to have been made by him 'in mockery of the Ents'.

  • MUDs: dikus, mushes, moos, etc. I started out with Merc, a modified Diku based MUD by Kah, Hatchet, and Furey and was completely hooked. If I'm not mistaken, Diku was based on some other type of MUD and so on, and was originally based on D&D in some form or another. DikuMUD was a very popular MUD which spawned Merc, Circle, Copper, Viel, Silly, Pirate, Sequent, TheIsles, Envy, Rom, and others. Of course it isn't the same as D&D, but it's very fun if you're into text based adventures. telnet://mad.rom.org:1536
    • it's very fun if you're into text based adventures

      Hmm... Too bad I'm so hooked on a hardware accelerated 24-bit 3D adventure with 3D environmental effects right now... :-P
    • Hiya MaDROMer! Glad to see there's more than just me from MaDROM who visits this geeky place.

      Should I go into a vast diatribe describing the many wonderous advantages of text-based over graphics based RPGs? No, fact is both have their advantages.

      Cheers from MP,

  • Watermarked cover scans? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by galaga79 ( 307346 ) on Thursday August 01, 2002 @06:22AM (#3990940) Homepage
    Taken from the Credits & Legal section of the site

    Our scans are watermarked, and have been since the site's inception (albeit for a completely different reason); modifications to the image will not remove this watermark, and distribution or public posting of a watermarked image, without permission from The Acaeum, is prohibited.

    Is this actually possbile? I noticed the images are stored in JPG format so wouldn't the watermark perhaps be lost in the compression scheme?

    BTW Can you even copyright the scan of artwork/cover of which you don't even own the copyright?
    • Regarding watermarks, there are algorithms which can survive most types of tampering. You could print the image, fax it, and then rescan it and the watermark would still be intact. AFAIK it's not trivial to remove the watermark "by hand" neither.

      I'll agree with you that the "copyright" thing is odd. If it was back in the old days this site would have been "TSR'ed" before it'd been slashdotted. ;-)
    • So, they've taken a scan of someone else's copyright images, but they'll be torqued if you used the scan without permission?

      Fair use probably gives them the right to scan and display TSR's copyrighted artwork in this way. It also gives me the limited right to some use of their scans. In fact, I'm using one as a desktop wallpaper right now, just because I legally can!

      It's incredibly funny to me that they, of all people, would post the standard "use without permission is prohibited" crap. They have to realize that the claim is totally without merit, because otherwise they wouldn't be copying and distrubting TSR's artwork -- artwork which almost certainly has the same meaningless phrase printed on it somewhere.

      If they didn't know the words were meaningless, they wouldn't have the site in the first place. Since they know they're meaningless, why do they have them on the site?
    • I'll take one of those pictures and apply my Ultimate Anti-Watermark Procedure to them and *then* see who's laughing:

      1. Apply Emboss.
      2. Apply Blur.
      3. Apply Sharpen.
      4. Apply Solarize.
      5. Apply Mosaic.

      Readable? Hell no, but I got the bastards!
  • Hoo-ray! My piles of GW character sheets and original Chainmail, D&D + suppliments and obscure modules have finally paid off. Pity I don't want to sell them.

    I can't believe anyone would really pay that sort of money for my old floorplans and city geomorphs.

    On the other hand, I'd pay a lot for the original Petal Throne maps.

    TWW

  • Is thanks to the new game, Neverwinter Nights [bioware.com].

    FYI, User Friendly's [userfriendly.org] latest cartoons are about a game of AD&D...
  • Gold Box Series > NWN. 2nd rules > 3rd

  • The site (Score:4, Funny)

    by bjtuna ( 70129 ) <brian@@@intercarve...net> on Thursday August 01, 2002 @07:10AM (#3991009) Homepage
    The books on that site are good if you're studying for your Ph.D&D.
    • The books on that site are good if you're studying for your Ph.D&D

      It's true. I would have k i l l e d to have a site like this when I was getting my PHD from Miskatonic University.

      Go Pods!
    • The books on that site are good if you're studying for your Ph.D&D.
      DM: You find a scroll

      Player: What is it?

      DM: It is a scroll of thesis.

      Player: I read it.

      DM: You can't, your scroll of thesis is blank!

  • I know that site (Score:4, Informative)

    by Graspee_Leemoor ( 302316 ) on Thursday August 01, 2002 @07:29AM (#3991049) Homepage Journal
    I am familiar with the site in question. It is nowhere near as comprehensive as the story suggests. They seem to have all the 1st edition and earlier stuff but hardly any 2nd edition and no 3rd edition.

    This is, I think because it's mainly a site for collectors, and 2nd edition stuff doesn't fetch as high a price as 1st edition stuff. (Although I have seen a lot of 2nd edition stuff fetch lots more than some 1st edition stuff).

    Details of modules etc are confined to differences between printings, rarity, etc.

    This is definately a site for collectors, not players, and people wanting a stroll down memory lane (complete with random encounters) should look elsewhere.

    graspee

  • Looking at my shelf and I count no less than 15 different books that they don't have listed on their site. In addition 10 modules of which they have no mention. That site isn't as good as it looks.
  • Once as a young boy I invested most of my money in (A)D&D materials.
    It seems that I made a wise choice since someone is now willing to pay 150$ from the books I bought with 5$.

    ...I just wish it would be as easy to give up these as it is to sell my stocks.
  • Thou shall bow before the Loard of the ping!

    Or is it... I'm all confused now!
  • Ran across this link [ebay.com] just yesterday, how strangely relevant... The guy's selling a set of what looks like the very first printing. Kinda cool if I was a D&D fan... (I play Classic Traveller)

  • Dr. Dimento's D&D (Score:4, Interesting)

    by mshiltonj ( 220311 ) <mshiltonjNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Thursday August 01, 2002 @09:16AM (#3991444) Homepage Journal
    Go on gnutella or your preferred p2p and search for "demento dungeon dragon".

    There's an mp3 (the original) and an mpg (someone created a computer animation to go along with the soundtrack).

    If you played dnd in high or junior high (now called middle) school, you will love this. You won't be disappointed.
  • I got the main page and a couple of the price lists before the /. effect kicked in.
  • Check it out. Its from the game summoner and its funny cause its true.
    http://www.ifilm.com/ifilm/product/film_inf o/0,369 9,220487,00.html
  • I'm betting that it won't take long till a cease and desist arrives at the door.

    All of this is especially funny because Wizards (whom I hate because of all of the collectible card games) is in fact the best RPG company I've dealt with. They produce the best qualtiy (and proof-read) books that I've bought in forever. Anyways. Wizards has made a good effort at making all of the old D&D materials available at their site either for free or for a nominal fee and you can download them all as PDFs.

    See Wizards page for Classic downloads [wizards.com] So ultimately you don't have to go to a pirate site to download someone else's copyrighted materials, but can in fact "do the right thing" and download it for free from wizards or pay for it...

  • Unfortunately I forgot this in my last post.

    Wizards is committed to making all of the old books available for those of you that "must have them all" [wizards.com]. It's also probably cheaper then scrounging in old bookstores to get beat up copies of all of the books. Though Ebay might make it easier these days.

  • Wow, Does that bring back Memories (Score:4, Interesting)

    by DigitalSorceress ( 156609 ) on Thursday August 01, 2002 @11:36AM (#3992453)
    I first played D&D somewhere in late '79 or early '80. Looking at the Acaeum site and seeing the values placed on some of those modules... I still have quite a lot of them... I don't think I could bring myself to ever part with the stuff. It's been years since I've even looked at it, but somehow, it's a part of my life.

    I love computers and computer gaming, but I am really quite glad that I was at just the right age to get involved when D&D was at its peak. (God I feel like an old fart for saying this...) Today's kids will never find the intellectual and creative stimulation from their consoles and gameboys and PCs that many of us did from books and dice and mountains of graph paper. (To this day, I still always keep a pad of the stuff nearby)

    I've played through Neverwinter Nights, and enjoyed it thoroughly, but as other posts here have said, much of the joy of roleplaying AD&D is just not possible to emulate in a graphically oriented paradigm. Until someone can develop an AI computer that is 1 part actor, 1 part genius, and 2 parts off its rocker, computer based D&D games will never measure up.

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