I still have my Monstrous Compendium binder. It also has the second volume additions, and both of the first Forgotten Realms and Ravenloft additions. I liked it when it came out but if you used it a lot, the punch holes would wear out and then you had hanging sheets. 🤷♂
Yes! This is a problem with pretty much any 3-ring anything I've ever owned, and I had a feeling that would happen over time. I did like the idea that you could alphabetize the newer monsters in with the old, and also take out the sheets you needed for a specific game, but I still prefer the book format. Thanks for watching and commenting!
That and the ability to insert and organize was ruined by anything new that came between the monster on the front of a page and the monster on the back of the same page. Would only have worked if they limited it to full page (front and back) per monster.
Top TSR era stuff: RulesCyclopedia, the Gazetteers, Realms of Horror & In Search of Adventure, AD&D 1E DMG, AD&D 1E Unearthed Arcana, AD&D 1E Oriental Adventures, AD&D 1E Deities and Demigods, Revised AD&D 2E PH, the AD&D 2E Player's Options and GM's Options, the AD&D 2E Spell Compendiums, the AD&D 2E Complete Handbooks. Honorable mention: Dragon Magazine #127 just for Tucker's Kobolds. Top WotC era: The SRD.
@@paavohirn3728 Yep. Basically everything colloquially referred to as AD&D 2.5E is the best extensions of the core I've personally ever seen. I was the house rules guy in my playgroups when young, and those books cover basically the same ground in a better way.
Great list, and nice call on the SRD (and associated Open Gaming License)! Thanks for watching and commenting! I just dug Dragon #127 out of my collection from a box in the garage for another purpose, but I forgot that Tucker's Kobolds were in that one!
Saltmarsh was the 2nd module I bought in the early '80's. I fell in love with it right off the bat. It was the first adventure that I tried to DM. Four players got started at a friend's house. I was excited as hell. Fifteen minute in, the players start to learn about a "haunted" house. That's when my "friend" decided this was stupid and haunted houses weren't real adventures. I tried to convince the group to give it a chance, but nevertheless the game was blown. Sigh.... I never got to run it.
@@WayneBraack Unfortunately, I don't think anyone in that group ever went on to play it. In hindsight, I should have known that a haunted house setup would be a tough sell in 1982. It may have been better to frame it as a ruined castle that a vagabond alchemist had been squatting in recently. The townspeople could speak of strange occurrences at the castle without explicitly calling it haunted.
@@brautigan217 Can't say I see it as your fault for choosing a setting. Perhaps it's just they weren't the kind of people who would find an RPG fun and where going along with an idea a friend had because he wanted to and took an easy out rather than just tell you it wasn't a thing for them. Possibly. Anyway I do hope you kept on and are still enjoying the hobby
@@WayneBraack Thanks! I have been enjoying the hobby. Interestingly, the guy who opposed the Saltmash adventure does have a love of fantasy literature and the idea of TTRPGs. We got in touch with each other a year ago after being out of touch for a couple decades. We decided to get a game started with a group of other people that were mostly new to the hobby. The party ended up in a TPK after 10 or so sessions when they got into a bad situation with most of their resources drained. He got mad over that and quit. The rest of us have continued, with the TPK probably being something of a bonding experience. So yeah, some people just aren't really wired right for this game.
I think I might have a copy of #58 as well! I need to get them out of my garage and back in the house. Over a decade ago, I had to get them out of my office because they took up too much space and I was be overrun with comics. Now it's the comics that are moving into the garage, as I've found, with the exception of trade paperbacks, I don't often go back to revisit them, whereas I would love to have my physical copies of Dragon available to skim through from time to time. So many great ideas in there. So sorry to hear you lost all your magazines! I got the CD-ROM collection back in the 90's that had all of Strategic Review and issues #1 - 250 which was very cool, but I still prefer reading physical copies.
Fantastic! Thanks so much for watching through to that part. I always record it right at the end of the videos, and it's kind of when I "relax" a bit after the anxiety of trying to make sure the first part of the video is as good as it can be, so I'm much more chill during the bonus content. I appreciate that folks watch all the way through!
I could've sworn I wrote back on this but I'm not seeing my comment. Thank you SO MUCH for your generous support, and for going back to watch one of my old videos! I really appreciate it. Cheers to you!
I really miss it! I'm trying to catch up on your story! I didn't forget! Just a lot going on with regular work stuff right now. My clients are planning for next year so that keeps me busy!
Excellent! I'm running B/X for my daughter and her friends, but I do include some stuff from AD&D and also from time-to-time I'll throw in stuff from 2E, 3E, or 5E!
Cool stuff. I was never much into adventures when I was younger, didn't see the point of them. I'm rediscovering a lot of classic modules these days, and Saltmarsh is one of my favorites I've ran. As for my list of 10 TSR products I love I'd probably say: 1. The Rules Cyclopedia. I only discovered it recently, like in 2020, and I had been going through a long funk with D&D because I was really put off by 5e and the Rules Cyclopedia honestly rekindled my love for D&D. I know a lot of people say it's a boring reference tome, but there's a lot of little things in there that just grabbed me. 2. The Dark Sun box set. What's there to say? Dark Sun is arguably one of the best settings ever made for D&D. It's so good I own two copies, one to play one, and one for collection purposes. I also have the revision box set, and almost every book published for Dark Sun. 3. Planescape box set. The "arguably" above refers to Planescape. An amazing setting, so much good stuff. 4. The 1e Monster Manual. This is almost purely nostalgia, the 2e Monstrous Manual is pretty much better in every way. But the cover of the 1e MM is, to this day, my favorite D&D book cover. When I saw it at my friends house I was sold on D&D before I even knew what it was. 5. Principalities of Glantri. The only thing I'd add to what you said is that the outlaw of clerics instead of magic-users is a great deconstruction of the typical witch-hunter/witch dynamic. 6. Dawn of the Emperors. Great box set for Mystara. The country of Alphatia is so interesting to me. A literal magocracy of alien humans from another world. Much as I love planescape after the multiverse becomes a big idea everything is another plane, and other planets seem to be largely forgotten about (except for in spelljammer, arguably). 7. The Fiend Folio. It's weird, it's wild, it's quintessentially British. Gotta love it. 8. Dune Traders. A dark sun supplement with a focus on trade in the harsh world of Athas, even has a Dune Trader class. It's cool to see non-combat options given more love than the optional half-baked non-weapon proficiency system. 9. Metamorphosis Alpha. I've never owned a physical copy, but I just love mixing sci-fi and fantasy, and to do it in such a novel way. You could probably still surprise players with the Starship Warden to this day. 10. The PC Series for BECMI. It made a ton of playable monster races, and added a lot of interesting ideas to Mystara. If I had to pick one it would probably be the Sea Peoples, but Top Ballista is too funny not to love. Who doesn't want to have dog-fights between dragons and bi-planes?
Yes! Dawn of the Emperors was the thing that forced me to really learn English eventually paving the way for getting into 2nd ed 😄 Dark Sun really fired my imagination but unfortunately never got to playing in it. Still got the neat box and a couple of extra books so perhaps one day yet..
People may say the Rules Cyclopedia is a boring reference tome but they're player minded. You are of a DM's mindset. So it grabs you. Most people who play RPG's are not of the DM/GM mindset. Luckily for them there's people out there who are and read these boring reference tombs so they can have fun being players. Keep on creating good sir. The hobby is nothing without people like you.
Dragon+ was canceled last year. I can't speak on its earlier issues, but it became a glorified collection of ads for upcoming products by the end of its run. I read through 3.5 era Dragon and Dungeon mags to get tips, because I started running that edition recently. I was really surprised by the quality and amount of content in them at first. Since so many people online parrot a handful of advice for running the game (with some less talked about advice thrown in rarely), I didn't expect to see the variety of advice that they have. Makes me wish I were old enough to play the game in that era.
You're never too old (or young?) to go back and read stuff from the past to help the games you run now! I spent so much time running 3E/3.5 (and still am running a game that started in May 2001 with 3E rules, then switched to 3.5 and later Pathfinder 1E) and I still find those old Dragon (and Dungeons) helpful, especially with NPC creation. Thank you so much for watching and commenting!
WOW! That was a lot of stuff that I had never used or played with. As far as using different "brands", why not. If it helps with ideas for the campaign or module then it's a definite plus! You can always modify, change, alter or abolish as you see fit. You are after all the "god" of your campaign.
Oh yeah, I use "third party" and indie published stuff all the time. There is so much creativity out there, and once the corporate shackles are removed, it's fun to see what people come up with. Plus, a smaller publisher can take a chance on a niche product that might not be as appealing to a wider audience served by the big corporations.
One of my favorites would be the box setup in the star which redid the principalities of gallantry and glitch city which retreaded a lot of that stuff but one of the secret ones was the secret magical thing of rad
My dad also did a lot of photocopying for me - hex sheets, graph paper, character sheets, dragon articles when I borrowed them from friends, and even made me plastic see through hex and graph sheets to lay over hand drawn maps.
That is so awesome! I *also* have a folder full of photocopied graph and hex paper that my dad copied for me at his office. I like the plastic overlays, though! Great idea!
I have a similar story to your B6 story. When I was a kid I was looking at S3 at the hobby store, and I must have been holding it for a long time because as we left my stepmother unexpectedly bought it for me. I was only in 6th grade so I rarely had more than a dollar or two for the arcade or candy. And as it happens S3 Expedition to the Barrier Peaks has always been my favorite TSR product.
For whatever reason, it stuck with me, even more than Keep on the Borderlands (as a player). It's been a lot of fun to reinterpret it for my daughter's group.
Oh man, martini and Mingus Ah Um. Can't go wrong with that combo. I think I'll make one of those myself tonight. Thanks for the inspiration. Suggestion for a cocktail: French 75. Suggested music pairing: Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers Ugetsu.
WEEKEND PHOTOCOPYING! My dad was also awesome like that and would go into the office on weekends and copy for me - over my young/middle teen years probably hundreds of pages of old Dragon Magazine articles, character sheet blanks, maps...and the occasional entire 80 page book from RuneQuest... 😊 If I was going to pick a single issue of Dragon Magazine it would have been Issue #106 with the famous (infamous?) "Plethora of Paladins" article - one paladin for each of the other 7 alignments since the PHB Paladin was LG and the CE Anti-Paladin had already been written in Dragon years before (Issue #53 - one of those articles photocopied by my Dad).
(I know this is a bit late but I keep forgetting to leave this comment) I've been meaning to check out all of the books in this video, but I can tell you I did seek out that Hero Builder's Guidebook from 3.0, and that was quite a fun read. I really enjoyed that it went through every race and every class (in the PHB at least), one by one, and breaking down the vibes of each possible race/class combination. That seems so helpful for a new player to just give you a foothold to operate on, and it helps bring forth the idea that anyone can be anything, the only limit is your imagination. It was a lot of fun! It's great for character concepts even if you're not specifically playing 3.0, the skillsets it suggests are pretty general purpose. This one almost passed me by despite having quite a 3.X collection due to nostalgia, so thank you for shouting it out! It was a really fun read!
My group once photocopied DMG, now that took some time i can tell you. Early part of this video is just the same as my path. Had no idea ADnD was a different game at all. We briefly played DnD, then expert (Dread) and quickly into Advanced.
U1 and S4 are two of my favorites, as well. I remember S4 being crazy deadly, but we all still had a ball. As for playing an amalgam game of B/X and AD&D 1e... yup, our group did the same. Heck, we STILL do it 40+ years later! lol :-D
@@daddyrolleda1 Oh wow... if I made a list, it would crossover with you quite a bit, actually. I also love B2, B4, B10 and X2... I really enjoyed the UK2-3 modules... The green and blue covered 2e splatbooks... White Dwarf magazine (1st 10 years, when it was still about TTRPGs... mainly D&D)... and Dungeon magazine, which was good for little adventures to slide into my games from time to time. :-)
I still use the FR supplements of Pages from the Mages, Magic of Faerun, and Volo's Guide to All Things Magical. Terrific stuff from that era for most of my fantasy games.
I use a bunch of my old stuff from various editions in the B/X game I run for my daughter and her friends! A good idea is a good idea, regardless of edition!
The original from 1st Edition or the 3E version? I have both, but only recently acquired a copy of the 1E version - the last 1E hardback I didn't have. A kind viewer sent me his extra copy after he saw me mention that I didn't have it. Thanks for watching and commenting!
Nice trip down memory lane. I love playing The Sinister Secret of SaltMarsh. 5E did a good job of updating the adventure.They also fill out the town. If you don't own it, amazon has it for a good price.
Thank you for posting dude. Without me mentioning the mods that I enjoy I will say I still enjoy the hard backs , Fiend follio , monster manual, deities and demigods(original) , players handbook and unearthed Arcana . They are still a lot of fun to go through just for kicks. One of my favorite mods is ruins of the undermountain . There are several video games that are based on different parts of that mod. Thanks again dude.
I was scoping out those ads while you were flipping through the magazines, boy howdy I spent a lot of time looking at those back in the day. I wanted to order every dice set from The Armory. My group also got some chainmail dice bags from a Dragon ad, we all still have them. Held your dice AND good for killing mice in the garage (drow level reflexes from my cousin, long story). So if you were out of college in 1993 then you are probably 4 years older than me. You outed yourself 🙂Also explains why you have some stuff that I never saw in stores but always wanted. All my older stuff I found in games stores in the "used" section and it was always a lot more used than I would have preferred, and the REALLY good stuff was hard to find.
Thanks for sharing your list. I really dug the Complete Series and the Historical Campaign books of AD&D. Dragon/Dungeon Zines were goldmines for game materials. 5e does this "big" campaign books and I think we are missing out with lower price point, adventurers that we can just drop into our games like the days of old.
Thank you so much! I'm glad you enjoyed this. And I totally agree - all of the new published stuff are these big hardback books that are mostly intended as "adventure paths" versus smaller toolkits to help DMs learn how to run games. I suspect there must have been some kind of market research done and people answered by saying they didn't know how to begin or run a campaign, so these campaign-sized adventures became the norm, as they include pretty much everything you'd need to run a group through multiple levels of adventures. So, it was probably answering some kind of need, but I agree with you that something's been lost along the way in terms of the sheer variety, creativity, and lower price-points of the materials produced in the past that were more intended to help DMs figure out how to run their own ideas/adventures instead of an entire pre-packaged campaign.
I love the anecdotes! It's so cool to hear about the actual experience of gaming back then. The differences and similarities tuo how it was for me a few years later in Finland. I'm with you on the Monstrous Manual! I really digged that same artist particularly. But man it hurts to think I threw mine away. 😭 Ooh! And the 3rd ed FR setting! Probably my favorite ever WotC book. I remember browsing it without having had any intention of getting into 3rd ed. Of course I did 😅 Wow! So cool you wrote the Quintessential Aristocrat! Would be super fun to hear more! I did have the Quintessential Fighter. Oh! There's one book I never hear mentioned (it's a little obscure): Faiths and Pantheons for 2e FR. It's a gem! Correction: the 2e book is Faiths and Avatars. Simply amazing. 3e book Faiths and Pantheons is really good as well.
As always, I really appreciate your support watching and commenting! I'm so sorry you got rid of your Monstrous Manual! I know quite a few people who got rid of their gaming stuff back in the day, which is one of the reasons it's worth so much now! I can certainly share more about the Quintessential Aristocrat. I'll try to figure out a format that will be interesting to folks. I have heard good things about Faiths & Pantheons. As I mentioned in the video, I didn't really play 2E so there are quite a few books I'm unfamiliar with from that era. Thanks again!
@@daddyrolleda1 Yup. At some point I thought I'm not going back so why keep so many books filling very limited space. 😬 I didn't play 2e a ton but it was the game I got my wife started in ttrpgs. I kept the Complete series and FR and Dark Sun campaigns luckily. And I kept BECMI! Maybe there's a place for 3e video or just a short one on the Aristocrat? You'll get around to it I'm sure. Cheers!
I can certainly do that! It's a bigger story than that I rushed through here, so I can put that on my list of potential future videos. It'll probably have a smaller audience, but I think it's a fun story about how I "broke in" to D&D related writing. Thanks!
When the PHB came out...despite current info, it came out before the DMG, and finally the MM...We used the PHB with original DnD small book rules. For that brief moment, we players had a breather in that it was a little easier to survive.
At $0.25 a page for a print back in the 80s... it would have been less expensive to find a copy 😂 Had a buddy who did the same with the basic rules for James Bond.
Yeah, that does make sense. It *seemed* like an economical option at the time, and of course we were using the copy machine at my dad's work so we weren't feeding it with quarters (of course it was using company property for personal business, so that's a whole other can of worms...!). Thank you for watching and commenting!
Your first 3 items would be the same as mine but different reasons. Saltmarsh and it's secret's was the module I restarted playing D&D with back in 2018, (after 30+ year gap). The Gazeteer books look really interesting now I know what they are about, may be influenced by the products being put out by ICE at the time. I have seen another review of the Wylde book and it looks like my sort of book, still looking for a copy. And Dragon Magazine; was available in the UK but I tended to buy White Dwarf, which at the time gave a wide coverage of many more games than just D&D. Another 45+ minutes of ideas and theories to try out on my unsuspecting players,.... Great stuff.
Check out YeOldeGeek who is doing a review of White Dwarf from issue 1 onwards (amongst other things). WD also was my main read in the day until it went Warhammer only..
Y O G, IS ONLY interested in AD&D at the exclusion of anything else except CoC, and any discussion is closed down if it does not follow his or his clique's views.@@GMDM78
I've been working on a way to incorporate it into a "larger" video topic that should be releasing somewhat soon. I hope you enjoy it, and thank you very much for your support!
1) DM guide 1st edition 2)2nd edition phb 3) forgotten realms grey box 4)City of grey hawk 5) monstrous manual 6) red box d n d rules 7) five shires gazette 8)magester 9) dragon magazine 10) advanture pack I &,II Bonus (non tsr) City state of the invincible overlord (Mayfair edition that everyone else hates) Best of whitedrawf 3 (great small town)
That's a great list! And, I wasn't aware that people hated the Mayfair edition of the City State of the Invincible Overlord! I'm considering trying to get a copy of the Forgotten Realms grey boxed set myself. Oh, and I'm not familiar with Magester - can you tell me a bit more about that one? Thank you very much for watching and commenting!
@@daddyrolleda1 it's fra4 from memory has 64 pg and is a list of new magic items there is a later book providing the history of the the people that had that title and the pages from the mages book and dragon articles grew out of it , it's was also one of the first books I bought for myself
I was surprised to learn (via Internet) the term "Drag Mag" was a Hudson Valley/ Catskill Mts NY thing. Every gamer knows exactly what Im talking about as soon as I mention it. We'd had been using that term since the '80s, I just assumed everyone did.
I always called it by the full name of "Dragon Magazine" but I know folks who called it "TD" or just "Dragon" but I have heard "Drag Mag" before, but it wasn't as common. Maybe it's more of a regional thing? In any event, I hope you enjoyed the video!
Thank you so much for watching and commenting! I'm so glad you found that interesting! You can see a few examples in this post I made back in 2015: daddyrolleda1.blogspot.com/2015/05/campaign-setting-anniversary.html
I disagree about S4; I thought it was unplayable and the new monsters eventually became redundant to the MM2. I much preferred I1 Dwellers in the Forbidden City, which introduced Yuan Ti and Tasloi. The part where the party is climbing down a vine-covered cliff being buzzed by Giant Wasps is such fun! I played the original Dragon Bard in one campaign; it was a little overpowered. The version in Best of Dragon 3 is really good. Speaking of Bards, I would include the Complete Bards Handbook in any list of great sourcebooks. The class variants it introduced were almost complete new classes, and they have largely become lost in the newer editions.
I1 is a great module, too! I unfortunately missed it in its day but I'd heard such good things about it so I finally acquired a copy a few years go and have really enjoyed it. I'm hoping to work it into the campaign I run for my daughter and her friends. I really liked Best of Dragon I - III but once you get to IV and V, the articles were starting to overlap with my personal collection of Dragon Magazines. And yes, totally agree on Complete Book of Bards! That was one of my favorites of the Complete Handbook series.
Ha! I can certainly look into doing that. I'm just trying to figure out a way that will make it interesting for other folks as well. It's very immersed in 3.5 mechanics, but there is a lot of useful non-mechanics information (at least, I think so).
I do! They are all bagged and in magazine-size "short boxes" similar to comic book boxes, and they're out in the garage, which I hate, but I just didn't have room for them in my office. I'm thinking of after the holidays trying to reorganize my office so the magazines can fit in here. Over the past ~30 years, I've gone back in forth with having them in nicer magazine boxes that fit on my shelf (look good but take up a lot of space and I keep getting more stuff which necessitates needing all the space I can get), boxing them in the office (looks tacky and I can't get to them as easily), storing them in the garage and just looking at PDFs (but I prefer reading physical copies...). It's a challenge for both my comics and my Dragon magazines. I had to go dig out the box that had these two magazine in it (luckily they were labeled and both were in the same box).
![Lp. Сердце Вселенной #60 РОЖДЕНИЕ ЛОЛОЛОШКИ [Финал] • Майнкрафт](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/YoR0pAV9FVQ/mqdefault.jpg)
your love of Dragon Magazine is infectious. I loved it too.... and I remember reading these back in the day. I played that game, File 13. lol
2e MM is one of the few books i still own from my youth. One of my favorites because I loved the goofy art and have a ton of nostalgia for it.
Nice to meet another fan of that book! Thanks for sharing, and for watching! I appreciate it.
I still have my Monstrous Compendium binder. It also has the second volume additions, and both of the first Forgotten Realms and Ravenloft additions. I liked it when it came out but if you used it a lot, the punch holes would wear out and then you had hanging sheets. 🤷♂
Yes! This is a problem with pretty much any 3-ring anything I've ever owned, and I had a feeling that would happen over time. I did like the idea that you could alphabetize the newer monsters in with the old, and also take out the sheets you needed for a specific game, but I still prefer the book format.
Thanks for watching and commenting!
That and the ability to insert and organize was ruined by anything new that came between the monster on the front of a page and the monster on the back of the same page. Would only have worked if they limited it to full page (front and back) per monster.
@@b.s.864 Totally agree. It was made even worse considering my borderline OCD. The frustration was very real.
Top TSR era stuff: RulesCyclopedia, the Gazetteers, Realms of Horror & In Search of Adventure, AD&D 1E DMG, AD&D 1E Unearthed Arcana, AD&D 1E Oriental Adventures, AD&D 1E Deities and Demigods, Revised AD&D 2E PH, the AD&D 2E Player's Options and GM's Options, the AD&D 2E Spell Compendiums, the AD&D 2E Complete Handbooks. Honorable mention: Dragon Magazine #127 just for Tucker's Kobolds.
Top WotC era: The SRD.
Absolutely love the Complete books for 2e! I'm very very happy I kept them at least when I threw out my 2e books.
@@paavohirn3728 Yep. Basically everything colloquially referred to as AD&D 2.5E is the best extensions of the core I've personally ever seen. I was the house rules guy in my playgroups when young, and those books cover basically the same ground in a better way.
@@chiblast100x Yeah me too! With 3e as well. Now I mostly hoard OSR stuff. A big portion as pdfs.
Great list, and nice call on the SRD (and associated Open Gaming License)!
Thanks for watching and commenting! I just dug Dragon #127 out of my collection from a box in the garage for another purpose, but I forgot that Tucker's Kobolds were in that one!
I quite liked the 2E Complete Handbooks myself, but I know a lot of folks at the time thought they were unbalanced.
Saltmarsh was the 2nd module I bought in the early '80's. I fell in love with it right off the bat. It was the first adventure that I tried to DM. Four players got started at a friend's house. I was excited as hell. Fifteen minute in, the players start to learn about a "haunted" house. That's when my "friend" decided this was stupid and haunted houses weren't real adventures. I tried to convince the group to give it a chance, but nevertheless the game was blown. Sigh.... I never got to run it.
Sadness. Wonder if they ever found out the truth and realized they blew a chance at a series of fun sessions.
@@WayneBraack Unfortunately, I don't think anyone in that group ever went on to play it. In hindsight, I should have known that a haunted house setup would be a tough sell in 1982. It may have been better to frame it as a ruined castle that a vagabond alchemist had been squatting in recently. The townspeople could speak of strange occurrences at the castle without explicitly calling it haunted.
@@brautigan217 Can't say I see it as your fault for choosing a setting. Perhaps it's just they weren't the kind of people who would find an RPG fun and where going along with an idea a friend had because he wanted to and took an easy out rather than just tell you it wasn't a thing for them. Possibly. Anyway I do hope you kept on and are still enjoying the hobby
@@WayneBraack Thanks! I have been enjoying the hobby. Interestingly, the guy who opposed the Saltmash adventure does have a love of fantasy literature and the idea of TTRPGs. We got in touch with each other a year ago after being out of touch for a couple decades. We decided to get a game started with a group of other people that were mostly new to the hobby. The party ended up in a TPK after 10 or so sessions when they got into a bad situation with most of their resources drained. He got mad over that and quit. The rest of us have continued, with the TPK probably being something of a bonding experience. So yeah, some people just aren't really wired right for this game.
I loved Dragon 72. I started with #58 and had a subscription. I lost all my old mags but once upon a time I had all those, including best of #1
I think I might have a copy of #58 as well! I need to get them out of my garage and back in the house. Over a decade ago, I had to get them out of my office because they took up too much space and I was be overrun with comics. Now it's the comics that are moving into the garage, as I've found, with the exception of trade paperbacks, I don't often go back to revisit them, whereas I would love to have my physical copies of Dragon available to skim through from time to time. So many great ideas in there.
So sorry to hear you lost all your magazines! I got the CD-ROM collection back in the 90's that had all of Strategic Review and issues #1 - 250 which was very cool, but I still prefer reading physical copies.
Mingus ah um is such a classic. When I started getting into jazz a friend recommended that album as one of the first to listen to and he wasn’t wrong.
Fantastic! Thanks so much for watching through to that part. I always record it right at the end of the videos, and it's kind of when I "relax" a bit after the anxiety of trying to make sure the first part of the video is as good as it can be, so I'm much more chill during the bonus content. I appreciate that folks watch all the way through!
Martin. I watched this a year ago. But your recent video made me want to go back and watch it again. Truly appreciated this video ❤
I could've sworn I wrote back on this but I'm not seeing my comment. Thank you SO MUCH for your generous support, and for going back to watch one of my old videos! I really appreciate it. Cheers to you!
@@daddyrolleda1 Absolutely, Brother - I will happily support you and your hobby work for as long as I can. :)
I loved Dragon Magazine too. Loved getting it in the mail.
I really miss it!
I'm trying to catch up on your story! I didn't forget! Just a lot going on with regular work stuff right now. My clients are planning for next year so that keeps me busy!
Yup. BX + AD&D mishmash starting in '81. A whole generation that basically house ruled everything. I still run games that way using Swords & Wizardry.
Excellent! I'm running B/X for my daughter and her friends, but I do include some stuff from AD&D and also from time-to-time I'll throw in stuff from 2E, 3E, or 5E!
Cool stuff. I was never much into adventures when I was younger, didn't see the point of them. I'm rediscovering a lot of classic modules these days, and Saltmarsh is one of my favorites I've ran. As for my list of 10 TSR products I love I'd probably say:
1. The Rules Cyclopedia. I only discovered it recently, like in 2020, and I had been going through a long funk with D&D because I was really put off by 5e and the Rules Cyclopedia honestly rekindled my love for D&D. I know a lot of people say it's a boring reference tome, but there's a lot of little things in there that just grabbed me.
2. The Dark Sun box set. What's there to say? Dark Sun is arguably one of the best settings ever made for D&D. It's so good I own two copies, one to play one, and one for collection purposes. I also have the revision box set, and almost every book published for Dark Sun.
3. Planescape box set. The "arguably" above refers to Planescape. An amazing setting, so much good stuff.
4. The 1e Monster Manual. This is almost purely nostalgia, the 2e Monstrous Manual is pretty much better in every way. But the cover of the 1e MM is, to this day, my favorite D&D book cover. When I saw it at my friends house I was sold on D&D before I even knew what it was.
5. Principalities of Glantri. The only thing I'd add to what you said is that the outlaw of clerics instead of magic-users is a great deconstruction of the typical witch-hunter/witch dynamic.
6. Dawn of the Emperors. Great box set for Mystara. The country of Alphatia is so interesting to me. A literal magocracy of alien humans from another world. Much as I love planescape after the multiverse becomes a big idea everything is another plane, and other planets seem to be largely forgotten about (except for in spelljammer, arguably).
7. The Fiend Folio. It's weird, it's wild, it's quintessentially British. Gotta love it.
8. Dune Traders. A dark sun supplement with a focus on trade in the harsh world of Athas, even has a Dune Trader class. It's cool to see non-combat options given more love than the optional half-baked non-weapon proficiency system.
9. Metamorphosis Alpha. I've never owned a physical copy, but I just love mixing sci-fi and fantasy, and to do it in such a novel way. You could probably still surprise players with the Starship Warden to this day.
10. The PC Series for BECMI. It made a ton of playable monster races, and added a lot of interesting ideas to Mystara. If I had to pick one it would probably be the Sea Peoples, but Top Ballista is too funny not to love. Who doesn't want to have dog-fights between dragons and bi-planes?
Yes! Dawn of the Emperors was the thing that forced me to really learn English eventually paving the way for getting into 2nd ed 😄 Dark Sun really fired my imagination but unfortunately never got to playing in it. Still got the neat box and a couple of extra books so perhaps one day yet..
People may say the Rules Cyclopedia is a boring reference tome but they're player minded. You are of a DM's mindset. So it grabs you. Most people who play RPG's are not of the DM/GM mindset. Luckily for them there's people out there who are and read these boring reference tombs so they can have fun being players. Keep on creating good sir. The hobby is nothing without people like you.
Dragon+ was canceled last year.
I can't speak on its earlier issues, but it became a glorified collection of ads for upcoming products by the end of its run.
I read through 3.5 era Dragon and Dungeon mags to get tips, because I started running that edition recently.
I was really surprised by the quality and amount of content in them at first.
Since so many people online parrot a handful of advice for running the game (with some less talked about advice thrown in rarely), I didn't expect to see the variety of advice that they have.
Makes me wish I were old enough to play the game in that era.
You're never too old (or young?) to go back and read stuff from the past to help the games you run now! I spent so much time running 3E/3.5 (and still am running a game that started in May 2001 with 3E rules, then switched to 3.5 and later Pathfinder 1E) and I still find those old Dragon (and Dungeons) helpful, especially with NPC creation.
Thank you so much for watching and commenting!
WOW! That was a lot of stuff that I had never used or played with.
As far as using different "brands", why not. If it helps with ideas for the campaign or module then it's a definite plus! You can always modify, change, alter or abolish as you see fit. You are after all the "god" of your campaign.
Oh yeah, I use "third party" and indie published stuff all the time. There is so much creativity out there, and once the corporate shackles are removed, it's fun to see what people come up with. Plus, a smaller publisher can take a chance on a niche product that might not be as appealing to a wider audience served by the big corporations.
The lists of names sorted by Race in the back of the Hero Builders Guide I still use to this day!
It's a great resource for NPCs, I think!
One of my favorites would be the box setup in the star which redid the principalities of gallantry and glitch city which retreaded a lot of that stuff but one of the secret ones was the secret magical thing of rad
Very cool. Love the stories too
My dad also did a lot of photocopying for me - hex sheets, graph paper, character sheets, dragon articles when I borrowed them from friends, and even made me plastic see through hex and graph sheets to lay over hand drawn maps.
That is so awesome! I *also* have a folder full of photocopied graph and hex paper that my dad copied for me at his office. I like the plastic overlays, though! Great idea!
I have a similar story to your B6 story. When I was a kid I was looking at S3 at the hobby store, and I must have been holding it for a long time because as we left my stepmother unexpectedly bought it for me. I was only in 6th grade so I rarely had more than a dollar or two for the arcade or candy. And as it happens S3 Expedition to the Barrier Peaks has always been my favorite TSR product.
Watched a lot of role game videos, take a bow, you did a great job on this one.
Thank you so much! I really appreciate that! I hope you stick around, but in the meantime thanks for watching and commenting. Cheers!
i still have a soft spot for Saltmarsh, an early one for me. The thing is I have no memory of running it.
For whatever reason, it stuck with me, even more than Keep on the Borderlands (as a player). It's been a lot of fun to reinterpret it for my daughter's group.
Oh man, martini and Mingus Ah Um. Can't go wrong with that combo. I think I'll make one of those myself tonight. Thanks for the inspiration.
Suggestion for a cocktail: French 75. Suggested music pairing: Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers Ugetsu.
WEEKEND PHOTOCOPYING! My dad was also awesome like that and would go into the office on weekends and copy for me - over my young/middle teen years probably hundreds of pages of old Dragon Magazine articles, character sheet blanks, maps...and the occasional entire 80 page book from RuneQuest... 😊
If I was going to pick a single issue of Dragon Magazine it would have been Issue #106 with the famous (infamous?) "Plethora of Paladins" article - one paladin for each of the other 7 alignments since the PHB Paladin was LG and the CE Anti-Paladin had already been written in Dragon years before (Issue #53 - one of those articles photocopied by my Dad).
That was the first issue of Dragon I ever owned.
I wasn't around for the heyday of Dragon Magazine, sadly. I've managed to collect a handful ranging from the high 60s to the low 150s.
(I know this is a bit late but I keep forgetting to leave this comment)
I've been meaning to check out all of the books in this video, but I can tell you I did seek out that Hero Builder's Guidebook from 3.0, and that was quite a fun read. I really enjoyed that it went through every race and every class (in the PHB at least), one by one, and breaking down the vibes of each possible race/class combination. That seems so helpful for a new player to just give you a foothold to operate on, and it helps bring forth the idea that anyone can be anything, the only limit is your imagination. It was a lot of fun! It's great for character concepts even if you're not specifically playing 3.0, the skillsets it suggests are pretty general purpose. This one almost passed me by despite having quite a 3.X collection due to nostalgia, so thank you for shouting it out! It was a really fun read!
My group once photocopied DMG, now that took some time i can tell you.
Early part of this video is just the same as my path. Had no idea ADnD was a different game at all. We briefly played DnD, then expert (Dread) and quickly into Advanced.
U1 and S4 are two of my favorites, as well. I remember S4 being crazy deadly, but we all still had a ball. As for playing an amalgam game of B/X and AD&D 1e... yup, our group did the same. Heck, we STILL do it 40+ years later! lol :-D
It's the best way to play! (In my opinion)
Nice to see we have some overlaps with our choices! What else would be on your list?
@@daddyrolleda1 Oh wow... if I made a list, it would crossover with you quite a bit, actually. I also love B2, B4, B10 and X2... I really enjoyed the UK2-3 modules... The green and blue covered 2e splatbooks... White Dwarf magazine (1st 10 years, when it was still about TTRPGs... mainly D&D)... and Dungeon magazine, which was good for little adventures to slide into my games from time to time. :-)
I still use the FR supplements of Pages from the Mages, Magic of Faerun, and Volo's Guide to All Things Magical. Terrific stuff from that era for most of my fantasy games.
I use a bunch of my old stuff from various editions in the B/X game I run for my daughter and her friends! A good idea is a good idea, regardless of edition!
I would definitely put Manual of the Planes in my top books.
The original from 1st Edition or the 3E version? I have both, but only recently acquired a copy of the 1E version - the last 1E hardback I didn't have. A kind viewer sent me his extra copy after he saw me mention that I didn't have it.
Thanks for watching and commenting!
@@daddyrolleda1 First edition, although third edition is probably good too.
The AD&D Manual of the Planes is the last book I don't have...
Dragon #80 was the wakeup call. So that is how you do a small city adventure.
Nice trip down memory lane. I love playing The Sinister Secret of SaltMarsh. 5E did a good job of updating the adventure.They also fill out the town. If you don't own it, amazon has it for a good price.
Thank you for posting dude. Without me mentioning the mods that I enjoy I will say I still enjoy the hard backs , Fiend follio , monster manual, deities and demigods(original) , players handbook and unearthed Arcana . They are still a lot of fun to go through just for kicks. One of my favorite mods is ruins of the undermountain . There are several video games that are based on different parts of that mod. Thanks again dude.
I love the Monstrous Manual. I just found out I failed my subscribe check.
I made my save against disappointment and subscribed.
Ha! Thank you so much for your support! I really appreciate it!
A great video. I really enjoy hearing your experiences.
Thank you so much! I appreciate you letting me know. Cheers!
I was scoping out those ads while you were flipping through the magazines, boy howdy I spent a lot of time looking at those back in the day. I wanted to order every dice set from The Armory. My group also got some chainmail dice bags from a Dragon ad, we all still have them. Held your dice AND good for killing mice in the garage (drow level reflexes from my cousin, long story).
So if you were out of college in 1993 then you are probably 4 years older than me. You outed yourself 🙂Also explains why you have some stuff that I never saw in stores but always wanted. All my older stuff I found in games stores in the "used" section and it was always a lot more used than I would have preferred, and the REALLY good stuff was hard to find.
Thanks for sharing your list. I really dug the Complete Series and the Historical Campaign books of AD&D. Dragon/Dungeon Zines were goldmines for game materials. 5e does this "big" campaign books and I think we are missing out with lower price point, adventurers that we can just drop into our games like the days of old.
Thank you so much! I'm glad you enjoyed this. And I totally agree - all of the new published stuff are these big hardback books that are mostly intended as "adventure paths" versus smaller toolkits to help DMs learn how to run games.
I suspect there must have been some kind of market research done and people answered by saying they didn't know how to begin or run a campaign, so these campaign-sized adventures became the norm, as they include pretty much everything you'd need to run a group through multiple levels of adventures. So, it was probably answering some kind of need, but I agree with you that something's been lost along the way in terms of the sheer variety, creativity, and lower price-points of the materials produced in the past that were more intended to help DMs figure out how to run their own ideas/adventures instead of an entire pre-packaged campaign.
I love the anecdotes! It's so cool to hear about the actual experience of gaming back then. The differences and similarities tuo how it was for me a few years later in Finland.
I'm with you on the Monstrous Manual! I really digged that same artist particularly. But man it hurts to think I threw mine away. 😭
Ooh! And the 3rd ed FR setting! Probably my favorite ever WotC book. I remember browsing it without having had any intention of getting into 3rd ed. Of course I did 😅
Wow! So cool you wrote the Quintessential Aristocrat! Would be super fun to hear more! I did have the Quintessential Fighter.
Oh! There's one book I never hear mentioned (it's a little obscure): Faiths and Pantheons for 2e FR. It's a gem!
Correction: the 2e book is Faiths and Avatars. Simply amazing. 3e book Faiths and Pantheons is really good as well.
As always, I really appreciate your support watching and commenting!
I'm so sorry you got rid of your Monstrous Manual! I know quite a few people who got rid of their gaming stuff back in the day, which is one of the reasons it's worth so much now!
I can certainly share more about the Quintessential Aristocrat. I'll try to figure out a format that will be interesting to folks.
I have heard good things about Faiths & Pantheons. As I mentioned in the video, I didn't really play 2E so there are quite a few books I'm unfamiliar with from that era.
Thanks again!
@@daddyrolleda1 Yup. At some point I thought I'm not going back so why keep so many books filling very limited space. 😬 I didn't play 2e a ton but it was the game I got my wife started in ttrpgs. I kept the Complete series and FR and Dark Sun campaigns luckily. And I kept BECMI!
Maybe there's a place for 3e video or just a short one on the Aristocrat? You'll get around to it I'm sure.
Cheers!
It'd be super cool to hear about what went into the quintessential aristocrat.
I can certainly do that! It's a bigger story than that I rushed through here, so I can put that on my list of potential future videos. It'll probably have a smaller audience, but I think it's a fun story about how I "broke in" to D&D related writing.
Thanks!
When the PHB came out...despite current info, it came out before the DMG, and finally the MM...We used the PHB with original DnD small book rules. For that brief moment, we players had a breather in that it was a little easier to survive.
Great Video ❤
At $0.25 a page for a print back in the 80s... it would have been less expensive to find a copy 😂
Had a buddy who did the same with the basic rules for James Bond.
Yeah, that does make sense. It *seemed* like an economical option at the time, and of course we were using the copy machine at my dad's work so we weren't feeding it with quarters (of course it was using company property for personal business, so that's a whole other can of worms...!).
Thank you for watching and commenting!
Your first 3 items would be the same as mine but different reasons. Saltmarsh and it's secret's was the module I restarted playing D&D with back in 2018, (after 30+ year gap). The Gazeteer books look really interesting now I know what they are about, may be influenced by the products being put out by ICE at the time. I have seen another review of the Wylde book and it looks like my sort of book, still looking for a copy. And Dragon Magazine; was available in the UK but I tended to buy White Dwarf, which at the time gave a wide coverage of many more games than just D&D.
Another 45+ minutes of ideas and theories to try out on my unsuspecting players,....
Great stuff.
Check out YeOldeGeek who is doing a review of White Dwarf from issue 1 onwards (amongst other things). WD also was my main read in the day until it went Warhammer only..
Y O G, IS ONLY interested in AD&D at the exclusion of anything else except CoC, and any discussion is closed down if it does not follow his or his clique's views.@@GMDM78
Listens to Mingus. Subscribed!
Let’s get a review of the Quintessential Aristocratic!!!
I've been working on a way to incorporate it into a "larger" video topic that should be releasing somewhat soon. I hope you enjoy it, and thank you very much for your support!
yay!
I hope you enjoyed it!
1) DM guide 1st edition
2)2nd edition phb
3) forgotten realms grey box
4)City of grey hawk
5) monstrous manual
6) red box d n d rules
7) five shires gazette
8)magester
9) dragon magazine
10) advanture pack I &,II
Bonus (non tsr)
City state of the invincible overlord (Mayfair edition that everyone else hates)
Best of whitedrawf 3 (great small town)
That's a great list! And, I wasn't aware that people hated the Mayfair edition of the City State of the Invincible Overlord!
I'm considering trying to get a copy of the Forgotten Realms grey boxed set myself.
Oh, and I'm not familiar with Magester - can you tell me a bit more about that one?
Thank you very much for watching and commenting!
@@daddyrolleda1 it's fra4 from memory has 64 pg and is a list of new magic items there is a later book providing the history of the the people that had that title and the pages from the mages book and dragon articles grew out of it , it's was also one of the first books I bought for myself
I was surprised to learn (via Internet) the term "Drag Mag" was a Hudson Valley/ Catskill Mts NY thing. Every gamer knows exactly what Im talking about as soon as I mention it. We'd had been using that term since the '80s, I just assumed everyone did.
I always called it by the full name of "Dragon Magazine" but I know folks who called it "TD" or just "Dragon" but I have heard "Drag Mag" before, but it wasn't as common. Maybe it's more of a regional thing?
In any event, I hope you enjoyed the video!
Do you have any examples of your calligraphy? That sounds so cool.
Thank you so much for watching and commenting!
I'm so glad you found that interesting! You can see a few examples in this post I made back in 2015: daddyrolleda1.blogspot.com/2015/05/campaign-setting-anniversary.html
@@daddyrolleda1 Wow, this is gorgeous! I love that armour detailing too. Thank you for sharing!
I disagree about S4; I thought it was unplayable and the new monsters eventually became redundant to the MM2. I much preferred I1 Dwellers in the Forbidden City, which introduced Yuan Ti and Tasloi. The part where the party is climbing down a vine-covered cliff being buzzed by Giant Wasps is such fun! I played the original Dragon Bard in one campaign; it was a little overpowered. The version in Best of Dragon 3 is really good. Speaking of Bards, I would include the Complete Bards Handbook in any list of great sourcebooks. The class variants it introduced were almost complete new classes, and they have largely become lost in the newer editions.
I1 is a great module, too! I unfortunately missed it in its day but I'd heard such good things about it so I finally acquired a copy a few years go and have really enjoyed it. I'm hoping to work it into the campaign I run for my daughter and her friends.
I really liked Best of Dragon I - III but once you get to IV and V, the articles were starting to overlap with my personal collection of Dragon Magazines.
And yes, totally agree on Complete Book of Bards! That was one of my favorites of the Complete Handbook series.
Oh you tease us, come on you know we're going to want to know more about your book The quintessential aristocrat 🙂.
Ha! I can certainly look into doing that. I'm just trying to figure out a way that will make it interesting for other folks as well. It's very immersed in 3.5 mechanics, but there is a lot of useful non-mechanics information (at least, I think so).
You said you had a subscription to Dragon from issue 90 to the end. Do you still have all those copies? That's got to take up a lot of room 🙂.
I do! They are all bagged and in magazine-size "short boxes" similar to comic book boxes, and they're out in the garage, which I hate, but I just didn't have room for them in my office. I'm thinking of after the holidays trying to reorganize my office so the magazines can fit in here. Over the past ~30 years, I've gone back in forth with having them in nicer magazine boxes that fit on my shelf (look good but take up a lot of space and I keep getting more stuff which necessitates needing all the space I can get), boxing them in the office (looks tacky and I can't get to them as easily), storing them in the garage and just looking at PDFs (but I prefer reading physical copies...). It's a challenge for both my comics and my Dragon magazines. I had to go dig out the box that had these two magazine in it (luckily they were labeled and both were in the same box).
And I always thought it was interesting like you can make radiation nuke something with rad
That was a fun twist. Thanks for watching and commenting!
I want to hear about your Aristocrats!
I’d like to hear what all your top favorite modules are.
Thanks! I can consider that for a future video!
Thanks for the idea, and for watching and commenting!