Mad Max Fury Road is predictably
jamming my nerd circle frequency on Google Plus. Naturally thoughts
run to things post-fall-like and discussions around
post-apocalyptic gaming are breaking out here and there. An
interesting thread on Big Purple has resurrected an old school line of
exploration: the apocalypse of D&D's implied setting.
That thread dovetails nicely with my
blog indexing push, so let's run a circle back to two series of
interlocked Talmudic ruminations that started with the
post-apocalypse of AD&D's original flagship setting Greyhawk and
led to analysis of the implied domain-level play in first edition.
If you read one post out of this list,
I would suggest “What Rough Men Tell Us About AD&D's Implied
World,” one of my personal favorite posts (and I usually hate with
a passion the things I write). If you read a second check out the
“Howling Emptiness of the World of Greyhawk” or the last post
“AD&D's Apocalypse and Hereafter.” Do make sure to read the
comments, they are half or more of what makes the threads interesting
and the posts bounce dialectically from them.
Post-Apocalyptic Greyhawk
Some seriously nerdy number crunching
around the population density of the Greyhawk gazzeteer revealed a
very interesting fact: that world is much crazy empty compared to
medieval Europe. Rumination on that wildness and its implications
launches the series. “...Even the wildest places of Europe at the
time are orders of magnitude more settled and prosperous than Veluna.
Those wide light green clearings on the Darlene map turn out not to
be dull vast tracts of farmland peopled by plump, happy yeoman, but
barely held little bastions.”
Analysis and historical comparisons
supporting the previous post.
Emptiness comparisons between the
Wilderlands and Greyhawk and the two apocalypses of each setting.
A full exploration of the post-apoc
dimensions of Greyhawk and encounter tables in the DMG.
Domain-Level Play in AD&D
A second branching thought train starts
here. The first edition hardbacks support a wide and robust (but
horribly organized) range of domain-level play guidelines and rules
with implications for game play that are more interesting at points
than recent attempts to implement “domain games.”
What the DMG actually lays out for
domain play and how that differs from later attempts.
Another one of my personal favorites
despite the long awkward header. The weird gonzo beauty of what
happens when you use the DMG encounter tables for demense recruitment
(as suggested by the book).
In which I try to figure what the hell
is going on with all the name-level characters and large bands of "human monsters" the Monster Manual
prescribes and the implications of that.
Taking the previous thought and
comparing to the near-apocalypse/collapse of 14th century
France. Many of the previous thought trains come to together and
reach climax.
Some further postscript analysis about
NPC, hirelings and production of goods by the book.