Dangerous Journeys

If you take the notion that the court took "any fantasy game by Gary Gygax is D&D" then Dangerous Journeys and Lejendary Adventures aren't just islands unto themselves they are superior addons outweighing even classic Judges Guild authorized supplements. Well, that is the way I use them anyway and have been for years. So perhaps while it does seem like an unspoken truth against Gary, it instead makes me raise my eyebrows about bogus laws that deprived the fans of what they wanted: more unvarnished Gary.

 

Luke, I would love to have you belly up to the table! And if you can’t make that I would certainly be available after the game. (I signed up for the Fri. 9 A.M.-1 P.M. & Fri. 1 P.M. 5 P.M. slots (if available))

I have taught the system to about 20 Players and so far the most difficult thing to teach them was the initiative system.

I use the individual initiative system set forth by E.G.G. in M.M.M. It is not the math of the system that gets people it is the concept. The concept is a bit different than you find in most systems. The initiative system in any RPG is usually a debatable thing in and of itself. :?:

Other than that the system is very user friendly, and it does not seem to make a difference if people have played a RPG before or not.

I ran a hotel game with 3 of my Players, Greg Timm (who worked with E.G.G. on DJ) and his friend Tony (whose last name I do not know) at GC I off the top of my head just for fun. I had the chance to correspond with Mr. Timm for some time before GC I and he was a wealth of information and solid advice.

The only down side to the system is that it was largely unfinished and what was published by GDW had a rush editing job leaving many, many typographical errors, left out information, and reversed formulas.

For an example, if you have a Mythus Core Rules book, turn to page 317, under the ‘Statistical Detail’ area it lists the ratings of the Supernatural Vampire’s Traits in Mental as 160 with an Effect Level of 32*, Physical as 170 with an Critical Level of 17*, and Spiritual as 170 with an Effect Level of 34*

Then below all that data- * At Effect Level or Critical Level, the vampire is forced into PMP (mist or smoke) and must flee to the place its Soul Object is kept.

So fine and well one might say but under such a rule your big bad Supernatural Vampire will take only 32 points of Mental damage, or 17 points of Psychical damage, or 34 points Spiritual damage before beating a hasty smoky retreat back to its Soul Object.

The rule (on pg. 70) states that one’s Effect Level is 80% of either the Mental or Spiritual Trait and the Critical Level is 90% of the Psychical Trait.

So surely the Effect-Critical-Effect Levels should read 128, 153, and 136 respectively. They just reversed the math.

This means the vampire could now take 128M, 153P, or 136S before going PPM.

And yes I know above I wrote PMP which is what the book says but they meant PPM. i.e. FPM (Full Physical Manifestation), PPM (Partial Physical Manifestation), and NPM (Non- Physical Manifestation). This last from pg.412 and throughout the books.

It would be difficult at best to notice this when reading and learning all that data.

It would have been the most amazing thing if E.G.G. would have had years to guide this multi-genre system, if he could have overseen groups of others working in tandem, but that was just not in the chart. :cry:

 

Since my AD&D campaign came to such an unceremonious end recently, I’ve been thinking about running a short DJ campaign as a change of pace. I would like to run an Unhallowed game, but with my home computer still down it would be tough getting additional copies of the rules for the players. So maybe running Necropolis for Mythus will work.

 

Your dad told me some 'horror' stories about the early Unhallowed gaming. Most of the HPs ended up having their souls devoured by a demon, or some similar fate.

 

Ah, Dangerous Journey's (nee Dimensions). I remember it well.

I wished we got to see more of it. While I am not hostile to TSR/WoTC staff, I really think Lorraine engaged in the lawsuit for personal reasons, as there really was no reasonable cause other than to prevent Gary from creating a competitive game system. That just hurt everybody.

I have mixed feelings about this. On the one had, this system gives you so much control over characters, akin to gurps or a big system like Rolemaster. If you really want to make a nice unique character with some specializations, this is key.

But on the other hand, it can get a little rough crunching the numbers, and I learned quickly trying to create new creatures is a mess of stats work. And the sad thing is the way the game was released, we had a famine of monsters, and the only book to get released was animals. Even with the "Bootleg" Phaeree beasitary, you don't have a lot of undead, or the creatures from other planes.

Epic of Aerth is great. To me, it's the best fantasy campaign setting released out of the three Gary released--I liked the way it was kind of our world but yet not, had a massive underground/inner realm, and the Phaeree realm. I like it better than Oerth and Learth (Learth seems a bit too sketchy for my tastes, and while I love Gary's cosmology for Oerth, I think Aerth has better opportunites to adventure). I really wish TSR would have released it as a PDF as they did with the two core Mythus books--even before this year's termination of PDFs, at some point in the convert to PDF system they stopped this.

I really liked Changeling. It was a great way of making a multi-genre game work within the same "universe".

Even if you don't play the system, there's a lot of good gems in there to mine. Lots of inspirations that might have gotten into D&D. It's probably the closest thing to getting any hints to what might have been forthcoming in EGG's work before things changed. Things like dimensions (as opposed to planes), creatures, what a Demiurge is meant to be, etc.

The most bittersweet thing for me was the fact that Gary never got a computer game out of this. There was supposed to be a computer game version of DJ based on Necropolis. We never got to see that. All of Gary's computer games never saw fruit--LA was originally a draft for a computer game and would have had an MMO (if that market wasn't saturated), Hunters of Ralk (which Luke playtested in "paper" format), and the DJ NEC/JVC license. The closest thing to a computer game Gary got was ToEE, albeit designed for 3e and was not something Gary had direct creative control or profit participation from. (And sadly, as faithful as it was, it was a relative "bomb" in the marketplace).

I'm glad there are still fans of this. Unfortunately, Gary himself really washed his hands of this. He didn't really like to look back, even though he ended up doing that a little with OD&D. This was a brief conversation I had with him that sets this up.

So I think in a way Gary had to more or less "disown" this from his mind. :|

The only names I really remember from the old days are Greg Timm and Alan Kellogg. Kellogg is one of the few devotees of DJ, but he's more or less today mining all of it and creating a DJ/3e D&D hybrid. GT is I believe still around but a bit quieter.

(In fact, half the guys credited in the original LA book have sort of disappeared. Such is life. Man, I feel old.)

 

Shalaban, would you be happy to share the game files (pdf, Word, etc.) that you have so painstakingly put together for like-minded players?

I have dabbled with Mythus since it's first outing in the UK back in the early '90s and am always looking out for new source material and rules that I can access digitaly. For a lot of our games now the DM has a laptop instead of a huge pile of books! Having said that there is a lot to be said for taking time out to leaf through the old masterpieces.

Finding this forum (never heard of Gary Con before now!) has been a breath of fresh air, as most stuff on teh net about Mythus is very old or a dead-link.

 

Welcome Cledhevor! I hope you find the Gary Con Forums to contain many active users actively pursuing a horde of ‘old school games’, especially E.G.G. games!

As well on the offhand chance you did not know, the Gary Con Forums is a part of the annual Gary Con the second of which will be in March 2010 in Lake Geneva WI. It is spearheaded by Luke (Melf) Gygax and details can be found through further perusal of this site. So check it out, love it if you could make it!

Yes I would be happy to spread the goodness that is DJMGRPG! Always! Just PM me and give me your E-Mail address and I will send you what I have!

 

Thanks Shalaban. Wow, to travel to WI for Gary Con now that would be a blast, if ever time and cash would allow :lol: !

Dangerous Journey players are a rare breed over here but the ones I do know will certainly get to hear of your forum. We have spent years on and off trawling for additional material and updates but never found you until yesterday. It’s a shame that so many of his labours went unfinished.

Unhallowed was one we really looked forward to when Mythus first came out but we never found it. Original DJ stuff in the UK is often very difficult to source.

I hope we all keep on exposing more and more folk to this simply fantastic RPG system: it should have gone so much further!

 

I have a small DJ section on my message boards as well if you'd care to check it out:
http://doomsdaygames.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=dj

 

Yes, check out Doomsday, it was the first (and at that time only forum I could find that was active in terms of DJMGRPG) place I found people that not only discussed DJMGRPG, but had people that had files that I did not and were kind enough to pass them my way so that I could do the same.

ScottyG & GT (Greg Timm) post there regularly (ScottyG runs it) and both are a wealth of information on DJMGRPG, Greyhawk, and RPGs in general, and both are nice chaps and are very approachable.

As well GT (and perhaps ScottyG) as some material that is exclusively theirs alone that I could not give out or discuss without their express permission.

 

Ok Ok Ok you have no idea how great it is to find all this stuff! :lol: It's like we have been wandering the Grey Wastes and suddenly found a portal

As an aside we have tried out Mythus in different settings including Wheel of Time (bit weird but it kind of worked), Forgotten Realms (sorry I know that's TSR hiss) as well as AErth of course (though we never ventured beyond Avalonia). Converting to Mythus never seemed too difficult and the rewards far outweighed the pain :lol:

 

I love the Information Age! :mrgreen:

 

Now I just need to persuade my wife to drop Cthulu for Halloween in favour of Unhallowed! :twisted: Have you guys tried Unhallowed much?

 

Not much. It's hard getting a DJ game together, and when I do, it's usually been Mythus.

 

Has there ever been a pdf version of the Mythus Bestiary?

 

I have only seen PDF copies of the CORE RULEBOOK, the MYTHUS MAGIGK BOOK, and the JM SCREENS, legal or otherwise. :shock:

Although without all the corrections the PDFs are worse than useless as they can be misleading. A physical copy is your best bet so you can tear it apart and build it back up with all rules incorporated as in my picture above.

It is sort of like a DIY RPG. If the pieces can be found, if you want to make the effort, you can have a system few have and I think is the best!

You are well on your way… :ugeek:

 

Hey now, let's not knock the Rules Cyclopedia, 'cause them be fightin' woids. My copy is so well used that I had to tape the spine and the edges of the cover to prevent further damage (further fraying of the paper layers). As for your DJ collection, I soooo wish I had all that material beyond rulebooks 0-5.