Off the Road Adventures
In The Isle of Mordol, I mentioned that the isle turned the player group Evil, and when they returned to Specularum I had no adventures for them; so I wrote up a quick “evil quest”, Evil Quest for the Gem of Kerouac.
I’ve got that up now on Tractor Feed Adventures, along with The Petrified Forest. I’ll probably get one or two more up during the holidays. I’ve got the scans done, and they’re short enough it won’t take long to retype them.
As I said in Isle of Mordol, these aren’t really playable, but if you’re interested in what a group of Michigan gamers nearly completely cut off from the rest of the gaming world did, dig in.
The only contact we had with other gamers was through the pages of Dragon Magazine, and that only sporadically. There was no place to buy any gaming books in our town. Our cousins in another town about 20 miles away played D&D as well (I can’t remember if we introduced them or if they found it independently of us) and convinced their parents to give them a single rack in their variety store. So when we visited, and were able to visit the store, and they hadn’t sold out, I’d pick up the latest Dragon. The first was Dragon Magazine 57• from January 1982; we’d been gaming since October 31 of 1981. I didn’t get another Dragon until the July issue, Dragon Magazine 63•. Those magazines were a window to the wider gaming world, and fascinated me. And I mined them mercilessly for ideas for my own adventures, because we had no idea what we were doing
After that, it’s hard to tell. That might be it for magazines in Michigan. The next one I picked up was, I think, the January 1983 issue, which would have been in November at college. Finding a group in the dorms wasn’t difficult: I found one on the first day, simply by leaving my door open as I unpacked; someone walked by and noticed the AD&D books and asked if I wanted to join their group. I still game with two of those folks regularly. Went to see The Warrior’s Way with one of them last night.
As usual, you can download a PDF of them, and I haven’t reproduced the oddities of my home-brew word processor, but I have included a sample original page. In the case of the Evil Quest, I’ve provided all pages—there were only two.
- Dragon Magazine 57• (magazine)
- This was the first issue of Dragon Magazine I’d ever seen. And it’s the best cover Dragon ever had combined with one of the best adventures Dragon ever had: The Wandering Trees. And the articles are among the classics: Modern monsters, History of the Shield. This issue, for me, set the bar for every gaming magazine since.
- Dragon Magazine 63• (magazine)
- This was the second issue of Dragon that I saw, and the second that I ever owned. These two issues were the best Dragon magazines, and the best magazines, ever. Issue 63 contained one of the best adventures TSR ever published: The Chagmat. It also expanded on the humanoid creatures that adventurers love to fight, and it told us about “Coins through the ages”, one of the most-reread Dragon articles in my collection.
- Evil Quest for the Gem of Kerouac
- I wrote this adventure because all of the characters had turned evil and I had no adventures that would entice them. So I wrote a quest adventure using evil instigators.
- The Isle of Mordol
- An island a thousand miles from Specularum, filled with monsters and superstitious townfolk.
- The Petrified Forest
- The entire forest has turned to stone—and people seem to randomly turn to stone, too! Can you re-open the valley and make the village of Ashton profitable again?
- Tractor Feed Adventures
- Old adventures, not worth converting to Gods & Monsters. I haven’t played these since the eighties.
- The Warrior’s Way
- This was a good movie. A bit simplistic storyline, but very, very nice design.