Apologies, friends. A weekend of training has left me a bit befuddled and a bit beat up physically, so I fear this is the equivalent of "phoning it in" - although it is a great meme.
Training was fantastic. It is the sort of thing one does not get access to in larger groups.
For those that do not know the reference please see below. One of the best Monty Python bits ever. Run time 5:19:
Nothing to apologize for. Monty Python is the gold standard of bad puns and the current "Woke" never enjoy it.
ReplyDeleteVorpal Rabbits for everyone!
Michael, Monty Python is the "anti-modern" of the modern world. They were either madmen or prophets before their time - or perhaps both.
Delete"the most bad tempered rodent you ever set eyes on".....(heh..heh) Using a twenty sided dice roll nineteen or higher for a save.....that's one tough bunny TB..........used to be a DM back in the day.....:)
ReplyDeleteHa! I knew we had things in common, Nylon12!
DeleteI have threatened to start carrying dice at work to meetings and shouting "Roll for initiative" before starting.
Your last sentence had me rolling at the kitchen table TB, NOT using dice.
DeleteNylon12, I have great coworkers.
DeleteI'll second you've no need to apologize. Holy Grail is a nerd classic and is applicable in a wide variety of situations.
ReplyDeleteTo Nylon's point, I think our host would have played 2nd edition D & D, if any. Depending on the save, he might have to skip the d20 and reach for the percentiles.
... Never, ever use a d100. It's a novelty that takes several minutes to stop rolling, and requires its own interpretive dance of the Pocket Protector Tribe to figure out what face is supposed to be showing. Just get 2d10. Please, for sanity's sake.
P_P, Python remains a relevant part of my life even to this day.
DeleteAh, I get to surprise you then. I actually played AD&D with the original three book set in a box including Keep on The Borderlands and "graduated' to 1st Ed. I fell off by the time 2nd edition came around.
Oh? I must be conflating 2nd with AD&D, then. 3rd and 3.5 were all the rage when my old crew were playing back in the halcyon days, but I had some limited experience with AD&D before then thanks to my brothers... when I barely understood what was going on in a session, but minor details.
Delete1st edition, though, I've only heard stories of. Horror stories, of course, what with how uncompromising its systems were at the time.
The early D&D books were like Traveller. A basic system that gives you a framework to play out your combined storyline. Yes, combined storyline. A good DM starts the story, and the players actions and reactions generated most of the rest.
Delete2nd Edition was for me the peak of AD&D. Traveller was intergalactic D&D as someone wiser than I said, "High enough technology is undisguisable from magic".
One of my fav planets was Erehwon Prime. High tech worked in orbit but as you got deeper into their gravity well less and less reliable until TL1 swords and black powder firearms was best.
Amusing to see Spacers trying to land there for what I referred to as the "God Trades" to low tech primitives and discover what crash landing was :-). Operation spiderweb was the recovery of a wealthy Imperial Noble stuck there.
P_P - I can see where uncompromising could be used. The available modules were for higher level characters and could be merciless. One of the best series ever - Against The Giants, Against the Drow, and The Demonweb pits - we only accomplished by creative interpretation of the rules.
DeleteMichael - One of the great things to me about early D&D and the stretch of role playing games from the late 1970's to the mid 1980's was the fact that a lot of it was basically making things up. There was no skill system, which later into vogue through Twilight 2000. Suddenly, everything had to have a skill or statistic.
DeleteOriginal Traveler was amazing. Such a simple set of rules with endless possibilities, a great backdrop of believable interstellar politics and races - and all with D6 dice. And the original boxed set - "Mayday, Mayday, this is free trader Beowulf...". We will never see their like again.
If your interested in good yarns, check out the Dungeon Delver on The Tube of You. On Tuesday nights he runs an AD&D campaign and on Fridays he runs a Gamma World 1st ed. game.