Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/05/24/here-are-the-dungeon-and-drago.html
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As the link makes clear, these stats are from the early 80s, not 90s.
I remember these artifacts as critical elements in my eventual decision to abandon (A)D&D. Trying to kludge everything into the class/level/alignment schema ruthlessly demonstrated just how rickety the whole structure was. Those “Not applicables” were really self-damning.
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The actual issues of Dragon in question:
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Ah, the Egyptian god of frustration. You could always play Toon as well.
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We covered issue #60, including the Saturday Morning Monsters, in some detail in a video in the Fall of '17
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I had the second one with the Jolly Green Giant. Never used it in a game though.
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The link says 1980s.
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I remember these. I use the characters stats for a fun adventure for a Science Fiction Convention. It was a Maze with Bug Bunny and Marvin the Martian fighting with each other and the players stuck in the middle.
The goal was to survive.
I did not kill any of the Characters but I did do things like having a player get run over by a large rock and he was flatten for 3 rounds. Then he got better.
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This is basically where “DM fiat” came into the whole thing. Old-school ADnD was a horrific mess if you tried to mix & match too many different elements, or if you stuck too rigidly to the rules.
A lot of this stuff was just supposed to be suggestions / templates that you would then surgically graft into your own curated world, with powers and stats trimmed, altered or supplemented as appropriate for the story. And anyone who mentioned THAC0 viciously beaten to death with an ax handle, of course.
And that’s really where the whole thing fell apart, of course. A lot of people treated the rules as THE RULES WHICH SHALL NEVER BE BROKEN instead of a broad set of suggestions and core mechanics that would take a backseat to gameplay/narrative/DM evil as appropriate. Fortunately, this became a lot more explicit in later versions, although they also did a lot better about having a cohesive system that didn’t completely break every time a munchkin so much as breathed on it.
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Oh wow! The main site is just a treasure trove of my nerdy youth!
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Most of the art looks to be by Jeff Dee, who while he was working for TSR at the time, had co-written Villains & Vigilantes a few years earlier. (He’s still illustrating and designing!)
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I played Baldur’s Gate instead.
Making characters was like an ten hour affair in that game.
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I feel like this is the sort of thing Warhammer 40K is going for with their new childrens books series
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thx! I stopped and heaved a sigh looking at the Wizardry ad. Melee and Wizard were some fun RTS games that presaged the awesome computer based Myth and Myth II games (still going today 20 years later!)
I had some drawings in a few mags of that era. Good times.
My sixth grade self and 44-year-old self happily applaud this
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Moose and Squirrel are NOT lawful goodniks
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I remember those when I was in junior high school. My friends and I thought those were pretty funny. And yes, that was definitely the early eighties.
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Missed opportunity (opportoonity?).
Should have been for Toon the cartoon RPG!
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You got it. In the games that I played, no one, other than the DM, needed to know them. All you needed to play was was a lively imagination. This way the scenarios played out like a book or a movie and were entertaining as hell. Of course, being a DM was a hell of a lot of work. You had to provide an environment that didn’t fall apart easily, which meant ti had to be rather well thought out.
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Why? You only had to make one character. Choose a class, choose a kit, click a couple of options and bam. You’re exploring Candlekeep.
