From Kuroth's Quill -
grodog's AD&D blog

"From Kuroth’s Quill" is grodog's regular design column covering the elements of adventure design (and more-specifically dungeon design, given my interest in that topic). I will also wander through the design of spells and magic items; monsters, traps, tricks, and treasures; PC and NPC classes; planes and pantheons; and likely other topics as well. In the blog, I hope to provide practical examples that will be useful in campaign play, to show theory in action.

Showing posts with label steve perrin. Show all posts

03 January 2022

Happy Needfest and Merry New Year!

While life has continued to wear me out (in particular my day job*), with the new year's turn, there's always a fresh bout of hope that seeps into my fingers and toes, so I'm dusting off the ol' blog once again.

This post will summarize some news and updates, and help to kickstart the rest of the month's writing!

News and Updates

Jason Zavoda - Greyhawk Fan and Friend - 1965-2021

I have sad news to share that Jason Zavoda died on 22 December 2021. Jason was a long-time Greyhawk fan and member of its online communities dating back to AOL's late-2e heyday.

Jason published his Hall of the Mountain King blog, wrote Greyhawk fan fiction, contributed articles to the Oerth Journal (and edited some issues during its Turmoil Between Editors phase), and, perhaps most importantly to Greyhawk fans, spearheaded his wondrous index of Greyhawk references in all published products. The index is an indispensable research tool, and began as a humble .TXT file that grew over the years, and was recently updated by Eric Johnson in the Greyhawk Resources Files on Facebook as a Microsoft Excel format to allow more filtering and sorting.

Carlos Lising of casl Entertainment wrote a very nice Greyhawk-themed tribute to Jason in the Facebook Sages of Greyhawk group (you'll need to be a member of the group to access his story).

Paul Stormberg (of The Collectors Trove and Legends of RolePlaying) and I have discussed putting together a compilation of Jason's many contributions to the Greyhawk fan community, to help ensure that they're preserved and available to the fans for years to come, and I've reached out to the GreyhawkOnline admin team on that front too.

Additional 2021 Losses

2021 was not a kind year to my gaming friends. In addition to Jason Zavoda's recent death, I still have draft blog posts in queue for:

Doug Rhea, co-founder of the North Texas RPG Con, who died on 19 September 2021
Steve Perrin, game designer for RuneQuest and c0-founder of DunDraCon, and frequent guest at the North Texas RPG Con, who died the day after Blair, 13 August 2021
Blair Reynolds, artist extraordinare from Pagan Publishing and Traveller, who died back on 12 August 2021

I had started in on a long tribute post for Blair when Steve died, and then when we lost Doug in the next month, all of the wind left my blogging sails....

2022 Conventioneering

GaryCon XIV @ 24-27 March 2022

Jon and I currently plan to return to Lake Geneva for GaryCon XIV in March 2022 with our ever-inspiring Black Black Publishing booth, where we'll have a number of new releases available. More news on that front over the next couple of months.

I haven't caught up with Jay Scott to see if we'll have another Greyhawk-themed track of events at GaryCon this year, but will report back once I have an update.

I do not plan to run on-grid events again this year, and will focus on our BBP booth and playing in friends' games again.

North Texas RGP Con @ June 2022

While the NTX web site is currently down for updates, the North Texas RGP Con is still on, and the NTX Facebook group remains the best place to follow for news and updates.

grodog's Projects Projects Projects

I still have too many longer projects and articles to complete and share but given my present-day job-driven time constraints (both in my current role and in seeking a new one) those aren't likely to surface in the near future.

But I can at least get back into the habit of writing shorter posts with news updates, smaller pieces of creative content, and such, which will make me happier (and presumably the four of you who still read the blog ;) ).

I do have several entries that fall into the latter category in my design journal, some of which has grown out of my solo campaign with Henry, in addition to ongoing Castle Greyhawk research and design work, so keep an eye out for those.

Allan.

* I am in the market for a new job—willingly so, and while I’m still in my current job.

I’m looking for new roles in this zone: knowledge management, content strategy, master data management, taxonomy/ontology, support portal program management, enterprise content management, information architecture, and such.

If you, or one of your friends, happen to be hiring such roles, please get in touch!: https://www.linkedin.com/in/allangrohe

I am focused on remote work opportunities, but am always open to offers I can’t refuse 😉

07 October 2018

Kellri's 18 Module Challenge - Day 9: Pavis and Big Rubble

Day 9 - A Module That You've Never Played: _Pavis_ and _Big Rubble_ by Greg Stafford, Steve Perrin, Oliver Dickinson, & Diverse Hands

Big Rubble box contents (Chaosium, 1983)

Pavis: Threshold to Danger
back of box (Chaosium, 1983)

I never played RuneQuest back-in-the-day (despite my love for Call of Cthulhu, and frequent experimentation with new systems demo'd at local conventions), likely in part because my exposure to it was pretty limited (and primarily through the Oliver Dickinson short stories in White Dwarf). At the time, the setting didn't resonate with my more-AD&D-driven tastes, and Dickinson's stories didn't really click either.

That changed in the early 2000s when I picked up a copy of the RQ2 hardcover rulebook at a gaming fleamarket at DunDraCon or KublaCon, and a few years later Jason Zavoda sent me some RQ materials he was getting rid of. After going through them I grew a bit more intrigued, then I remembered Dickinson's stories, and picked up a copy of The Complete Griselda. Dickinson's tales of Pavis and its adjoining ruin, The Big Rubble, came to life in ways I never appreciated as a teenager: it's adventuring companies and ruffians, scoundrels and monsters, cults and mythologies, resonated and clicked for me, finally.

I have since played RQ2 with Jennel Jaquays at the North Texas RPG Con, and with Steve Perrin using his RQ-like SPRQ rules at one of the SoCalMiniCon events organized by Dragonnsfoot members during the later '00s, and would happily play again, if given the chance.

Why I Love Pavis and Big Rubble

One of things that I like about Pavis and Big Rubble is their inter-twined proximity: the much-smaller, non-ruined city of Pavis is dwarfed by the huge ruined metropolis of The Rubble, which is inhabited by trolls, broos, and other beasts of Chaos. It's a proving-ground for new and mature adventurers, and its right next door!

This creates an excellent set-up for an urban-based dungeoneering campaign, with several active and competing parties of PCs and NPCs combing the Rubble for loot, all the while scheming against one another.

I've considered updating my version of Castle Greyhawk using this as a model (with a healthy dose of inspiration from Scott Casper and Mike Bridges' Castle Greyhawk web comic), by placing a ruined settlement/village/whatever in close proximity to the old Castle ruins---perhaps abandoned after a plague, or magical curse, or who-knows-what....

I'm also quite fond of the scale of The Rubble's ruined environs---the ruined city is HUGE in comparison to Pavis, and for whatever reason that size difference really appeals to my imagination:

The Rubble map

The city of Pavis map

The entire second map fits into the tiny dark blister to the top-left of the map of the Big Rubble!

Three Runners Up

Many vaporware products exist as incompleted ideas and/or as unpublished manuscripts that I'd love to play sometime, with Castle Greyhawk by Gary Gygax and Rob Kuntz heading the top of that list (in fact, it's on it's own list, all by itself!): Stoink: A Wasp's Nest by EGG/RJK, Steve Marsh's Starstrands, the Pagan Publishing End Times project, Chaosium's cancelled "One Night" project, and many more if I stop to think longer about it, I'm sure. (This also goes back to my comments in Day 7's Module I Wish I Had Written post, which I'll return to again in the future).

Three properly-published scenarios that I still haven't played and would love to to one day include:

D1 Tomb of Abysthor by Clark Peterson and Bill Webb (Necromancer Games, 2002): my favorite adventure published by Necromancer Games during their heyday
Necropolis by Gary Gygax (GDW, 1992): I'd really prefer to play the AD&D version that Gygax created in the late 1980s while still running New Infinities Productions, Inc., but I'll probably have to be satisfied with Trent Foster's recollections of playing Necropolis with Gary at Glarthicon
The Yellow Clearance Black Box Blues by John M. Ford (West End Games, 1985): I've loved Paranoia every time I've played it, and it's been so many years since I last read this adventure that it'd be tablua rasa for me!