Pyramid #3/89: Alternate Dungeons II

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Steven Marsh

Did you have any thoughts about the nature of this issue as discussed in the "From the Editor" (three mini-supplement-sized articles versus a larger handful like we usually do)?

I liked that. It allowed better development of the ideas.

Speaking purely personally, a lot of Pyramid articles have a few ideas, and their implementation, packed into a fairly small space. If the core idea isn't something I can use directly, the article isn't very interesting to me. Allowing more space for development and variations increases the odds of me finding the article useful quite rapidly.

I don't know if many people feel this way, but maybe we'll find out.

[Steven Marsh]

Originally Posted by Humabout

Well, I said I'd review this properly once I had read it, and now that I have read it, I feel comfortable in saying that the most alternate and interesting part of the issue was the Random Thoughts Table.

Woo-hoo! (Oh, wait... that may not be a good thing in this context...) :-)

Eidetic Memory was kind of a result of my request to David, to have an article that straddled between "alternate" and "traditional" Dungeon Fantasy. The premise is pretty far out, but it can also be dropped into a large number of campaigns. My hope was that even if someone didn't want to do a completely new campaign, there'd still be something in here that would prove of interest to Dungeon Fantasy gamers.

I'm a bit surprised at your thoughts about "Eastern Adventures." Perhaps I was just too steeped in my AD&D Second Edition nostalgia, where Kara-Tur was a separate product sub-line, similar to Ravenloft, Spelljammer, etc. Again, this was one where I suspect how it's played will do a lot to determine how "alternate" it is; I know 12-year-old me strip-mined the original Oriental Adventures hardcover for ideas for traditional crypt-crawling, but the line was clearly designed for adventures that were pretty darn different from standard dungeon fantasy.

It's interesting that you specifically mention Legend of the Five Rings, since that RPG, the Second Edition Oriental Adventures from 2001, Sengoku, etc. were on my mind when I considered it... and all of those are (to my way of thinking) Pretty Darn Different from traditional Dungeon Fantasy. I think the absence of more hooks, guidance, and ideas for how Eastern adventures differ from their Western counterparts might've hurt its "alternate" cred. Of course, size-wize, this article already pushed the boundaries of what we could normally consider for a Pyramid article, and whole hardcovers and product lines have been devoted to getting Eastern gaming right, so it might've been pushing the limits of what we can do.

Overall, I'm disappointed with this issue. I don't see anything that knocks my socks off like Pointless Looting and Slaying or Dungeon Fantasy Video Gaming. It's a shame because the Alternate issues have always been reliably awesome. This is probably one of the issues I won't really ever use and I'll forget I even have.

It's always a struggle to try to figure out how "alternate" to make these issues; if we're too "safe" then it doesn't feel like we've earned the "alternate" title, but it's too easy to make things too crazy and unusable for large swaths of the audience. ("Hmm... 30% of this issue is a setting where the heroes are machine-gun-wielding leprechauns doing battle against cybernetic ferrets, and that doesn't interest me, so I guess I can skip it.") I'm sorry this issue didn't quite work for you, but -- as ever -- I do appreciate your comments and thoughts!

[cbower]

Originally Posted by Steven Marsh

Thanks so much for your comments!

Did you have any thoughts about the nature of this issue as discussed in the "From the Editor" (three mini-supplement-sized articles versus a larger handful like we usually do)?

I thought it worked really well. While they weren't as directly useful to me as some issues have been in the past, the articles made excellent use of the extra pages.

[Turhan's Bey Company]

Originally Posted by Steven Marsh

I'm a bit surprised at your thoughts about "Eastern Adventures." Perhaps I was just too steeped in my AD&D Second Edition nostalgia, where Kara-Tur was a separate product sub-line, similar to Ravenloft, Spelljammer, etc.

I'm with Humabout here. "Eastern Adventures" is a perfectly fine article, but I had to shrug at its "alternativeness." My dungeon crawls have promiscuously combined global tropes since forever, and note the distinctly non-western trappings of Mirror of the Fire Demon.

[Dammann]

I think a whole issue could be composed of Dungeon Fantasy set in non-quasi-European fantasy lands. It doesn't feel quite so alternative to me, either. But I do think that an Arabian flavored article like Eastern Adventures, an African article, a Precolumbian Americas, and a Gothic Horror background article all seem like settings that might call for tweaks to the vanilla DF templates and adventure tropes. It might be a comfortable fit for more odd planes-type adventures, too, where the graduates of the goblin mines go to fight some goblin gods. All this might be bordering on a more specific campaign world than you guys want to promote, but I feel like it would be an apt categorization.

Regarding the article length, I like some longer articles, but I feel like it is risky. I feel like most Pyramids have something I can be immediately interested in, but having fewer articles makes that seem less probable. This time, it was for DF, which is all I have played for a couple years, so it worked out well enough for me. If the issue were focused on Monster Hunters or modern day Action type stuff, I doubt I could be so interested in a few longer form articles. I think a mix is most appealing.

[Imion]

Originally Posted by Steven Marsh

(...)
Did you have any thoughts about the nature of this issue as discussed in the "From the Editor" (three mini-supplement-sized articles versus a larger handful like we usually do)?

I'd have to say that, generally, I sort of dislike the fewer-but-larger-articles approach. The problem is that with only two or three articles per issue the probability that none of them is of use to me is increased. If some ideas warrant a more extensive treatment then perhaps it is worth thinking about giving them an 8 to 10-page supplement of their own (Collegio Januari comes to mind).

That said, the article with the highest chance of me using bits and pieces of it in this issue was Eastern Adventures, since I like new building blocks to play around with. Havens and Hells was an interesting read but nothing that I, personally, would pursue any further in actually playing in the setting. However, I got some inspirations out of it. The Titan's House, unfortunately, falls right in the middle of my no-use-to-me territory since I am not particularly fond of the everything-and-the-kitchen-sink approach to Dungeon Fantasy that would allow me to easily throw the location into any campaign.

[RogerBW]

Originally Posted by Steven Marsh

Did you have any thoughts about the nature of this issue as discussed in the "From the Editor" (three mini-supplement-sized articles versus a larger handful like we usually do)?

I like it, even though none of them was of use to me; I'm not really interested in dungeon bashing anyway, so that's not the fault of the articles. (The RTT comes closest to being useful.) I wouldn't want it every month (and not only because the articles I write tend to be relatively short ones), and I'm happiest with a mixture of lengths in an issue.

[Humabout]

Originally Posted by Steven Marsh

Woo-hoo! (Oh, wait... that may not be a good thing in this context...) :-)

Don't let the context diminish the praise. I really liked your article. I kept thinking, "Why hasn't this ever ocurred to me?!"

Originally Posted by Steven Marsh

Eidetic Memory was kind of a result of my request to David, to have an article that straddled between "alternate" and "traditional" Dungeon Fantasy. The premise is pretty far out, but it can also be dropped into a large number of campaigns. My hope was that even if someone didn't want to do a completely new campaign, there'd still be something in here that would prove of interest to Dungeon Fantasy gamers.

In this, I think it delivers. It was thought provoking and had me thinking, "I need to have an oversized dungeon at some point. Or maybe a really, really small one (imaging trying to read an aspirin-sized spell book). Playing with size is cool, and I'd have liked to see more on the size aspect, but this was an adventure, so not in the scope.

Originally Posted by Steven Marsh

I'm a bit surprised at your thoughts about "Eastern Adventures." Perhaps I was just too steeped in my AD&D Second Edition nostalgia, where Kara-Tur was a separate product sub-line, similar to Ravenloft, Spelljammer, etc. Again, this was one where I suspect how it's played will do a lot to determine how "alternate" it is; I know 12-year-old me strip-mined the original Oriental Adventures hardcover for ideas for traditional crypt-crawling, but the line was clearly designed for adventures that were pretty darn different from standard dungeon fantasy.

I feel I might not have been completely clear. I don't see DF as being anything like AD&D, D&D 3e.x, etc. DF is too stripped down and spends all of its time on the killing and thieving aspects of the game. D&D's various incarnations (AD&D forward, at least) had plenty of room for the social adventure-y parts of adventuring, making it pretty firmly Fantasy that happens to take place largely within dungeons - not pure hack and slash. So one of my main quibbles is that if I am to take the sentence and half a page that suggest I should do social stuff as the alternate bit, that suggests this is a fantasy article, not a hack and slash article. Thus not even in the wheelhouse of anything DF, alternate or otherwise.

Originally Posted by Steven Marsh

It's interesting that you specifically mention Legend of the Five Rings, since that RPG, the Second Edition Oriental Adventures from 2001, Sengoku, etc. were on my mind when I considered it... and all of those are (to my way of thinking) Pretty Darn Different from traditional Dungeon Fantasy. I think the absence of more hooks, guidance, and ideas for how Eastern adventures differ from their Western counterparts might've hurt its "alternate" cred. Of course, size-wize, this article already pushed the boundaries of what we could normally consider for a Pyramid article, and whole hardcovers and product lines have been devoted to getting Eastern gaming right, so it might've been pushing the limits of what we can do.

Here, I see enough Asian influence in DF already for "being Asian-flared" to not really be alternate, and heck, my last DF game, in which CR played, was set in an Asian jungle full of Vanara horde ninjas and (unfortunately undiscovered) bad puns involving Martial Artist minotaurs guar-ding things. DF 2 has asian-inspired monsters, and so do other books, including...ehem...Ninjas. So being Asian alone isn't very alternate, but it DF. Spending more time discussing how to play a LotFR-with-the-serial-numbers-filed-off game as opposed to how to tweak templates or make a samurai from a Knight would have done wonders making this more alternate. (Also, I'd pay for DF XX - Eastern Dungeons. I'm looking at you, Peter!)

In the end, all of this comes down to personal preferences and interpretations, really. And I should note that Eastern Adventures is a really good DF article, but it doesn't turn any assumptions on their heads, really. That hardly means it won't get used in my games, and I want that to be clear. My main contention with this issue was and is that it isn't particularly alternate, not that the articles are lacking in and of themselves.

Originally Posted by Steven Marsh

It's always a struggle to try to figure out how "alternate" to make these issues; if we're too "safe" then it doesn't feel like we've earned the "alternate" title, but it's too easy to make things too crazy and unusable for large swaths of the audience. ("Hmm... 30% of this issue is a setting where the heroes are machine-gun-wielding leprechauns doing battle against cybernetic ferrets, and that doesn't interest me, so I guess I can skip it.")

Yeah, I can see where the "how far to go" thing is difficult to gauge. I'm a vocal proponent of don't-hold-back-and-blow-my-mind, but others want something that fits more gaming styles. Maybe part of the problem, if you want to call it that, is that by only including four articles, if any one is "too safe", 25% of the issue is "too safe". I'm kind of armchair quarterbacking here, but maybe such a tricky-to-balance issue wasn't the best test run for throwing all your eggs in one basket. After more thought, I might not mind seeing this treatment done to a less demanding and potentially contentious issue.

Again, telling you your own business...I could totally see this sort of thing being done as a Pyramid special edition issue that subscribers can buy at discount above the usual subscription fee, and everyone else pays full cover cost for. I see that sort of thing for Mind and Scientific American all the time. If you offered a "Kromm, PK, CR, and Doug go nuts writing about Stuff!" issue for an extra $foo, I'd be hard pressed not to buy it. And you could probably charge more than the usual $7.99 to non-subscribers. Just a crazy thought.

[Rindis]

Originally Posted by Humabout

I feel I might not have been completely clear. I don't see DF as being anything like AD&D, D&D 3e.x, etc. DF is too stripped down and spends all of its time on the killing and thieving aspects of the game. D&D's various incarnations (AD&D forward, at least) had plenty of room for the social adventure-y parts of adventuring, making it pretty firmly Fantasy that happens to take place largely within dungeons - not pure hack and slash.

Going off-topic a bit, I generally agree with this view of DF, which is why it remains low in the 'to get' pile (though parts of it are too obviously useful to ignore). DF is stripped down to Basic D&D where everything is in the dungeon, where I'm more interested in the Expert & Companion level stuff.

Now, on-topic....

In general, I like the issue, and I'm fine with the three large article format. I think it needs to be kept a little rare, though I wonder if two big articles and a couple small ones would work, and keep a little more variety.

"Havens and Hells" is a very interesting setting idea that makes use of video game tropes from the likes of Diablo and Everquest. I'm tempted to run something there. I probably won't, as I have plenty of such temptations, but the temptation is enough for a good article. I do wish some thoughts on how the havens are to expand had been included. The only thing in there right now is that maybe some of the leftovers from the first Game could do something, but that's certainly not what what the gods had in mind.... Basically, it presents clear short-term goals for players (survive, and bring in enough to keep up on maintenance in a haven), with some moderate-term goals (bring in enough for smiths etc to make better gear), but long-term goals are lacking.

Not having any DF, and not having a big desire for fantasy orient adventuring, "Eastern Adventures" isn't horribly useful for me, and it seems a bit bare-bones. That said, I happily hoovered up the Hengeyokai and Tengu racial templates.

"The Titans House" was okay. Pulver has had a few 'adventure setting in a bottle' pieces that I've seen, and this is probably the one I'm most likely to use so far. Playing with scale is something I'd like to see more of, but it felt a little underserved here. (Humabout is right that it's probably about as good as can be done in the space.)

The Random Thought table was very good, and really only stands behind Kromm's much longer piece in quality. My only disappointment was not even mentioning the thought that immediately came to my mind: treating this peace something like the Cold War, where both sides view an actual outbreak of hostilities as too costly and damaging to be worthwhile, but they keep poking around looking for weakness.... (Maybe the good guys don't want the devastation of a war, and the bad guys realize they'd all have to get behind one overlord to win... and that probably isn't them.) Or, instead of the adventurers going into dungeons clandestinely, they're part of a guard that protects The City from similar groups from the dungeons raiding them. i.e., the party is a 'wandering monster' result for groups goblins, orcs, etc., going into civilization to kill things and take their stuff.

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Rindis

The Random Thought table was very good, and really only stands behind Kromm's much longer piece in quality.

For what it's worth, Steven, your article has been incorporated in intent in my ginormous D&D project. I love the idea of a house of cards just waiting for a bunch of adventurers to knock it down.