Subject: MYSTARA-L Digest - 29 Dec 2003 to 30 Dec 2003 (#2003-301) From: Automatic digest processor Date: 31/12/2003, 19:01 To: Recipients of MYSTARA-L digests Reply-to: Mystara RPG Discussion There are 5 messages totalling 270 lines in this issue. Topics of the day: 1. Backgrounds 2. THE CREATION OF MYSTARA 3. THE CREATION OF HOLLOW WORLD (2) 4. THE CREATION OF RED STEEL ******************************************************************** The Other Worlds Homepage: http://www.wizards.com/dnd/OtherWorlds.asp The Mystara Homepage: http://www.dnd.starflung.com/ To unsubscribe, send email to LISTSERV@ORACLE.WIZARDS.COM with UNSUB MYSTARA-L in the body of the message. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 30 Dec 2003 19:30:29 -0800 From: Joaquin Menchaca Subject: Backgrounds Hi, I wanted to take a moment to consider the backgrounds, reasoning, and development of Mystara and its different components. There have been arguments and opinions about what is and isn't Mystara. Perhaps some of these backgrounds can help shed some light on the developments. The part that caught my fancy, is that there was an active attempt to install real world cultures into Mystara, which I think adds a lot of flavor. I will send out stuff from the Dragon Magazine in some other letters... - Joaquin __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Find out what made the Top Yahoo! Searches of 2003 http://search.yahoo.com/top2003 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 30 Dec 2003 19:32:42 -0800 From: Joaquin Menchaca Subject: THE CREATION OF MYSTARA Hi. This is a side bar article, no author mentioned, from 315. Enjoy. - Joaquin ------------------------------------------------------- THE CREATION OF MYSTARA According to Bruce Heard, the Mystara campaign setting started accidentally. It is not a world that was built from the ground up. Rather, it is a mosaic of pieces designed by many different people. "There was a nucleus of a setting in the original D&D Basic and Expert boxed sets." He says. "You know, back when there was a difference between D&D and AD&D." But it hardly constituted a world-just a dozen or so nations described in the barest detail without any context, support, or even a proper name. It was referred to only as the Known World. At that point, the in-house design staff was writing all the AD&D products, while the D&D jobs were being handled by freelancers. Heard was in charge of supervising the freelancers. "By default that made me the keeper of the setting." At first, the only products being produced were adventures, and each one added a little bit to this nameless world. Over time, a great deal of detail emerged for the setting, but without a written guide, this caused a great deal of difficulty for Heard and his freelancers. In response, he was able to get the management to put the first of the D&D Gazetteer products on the schedule. The idea was to create a definitive background for all the D&D adventures to be set against, but the group was able to do much more. First, they were finally able to give the setting a name. MYSTARA, they decided, had an appropriately grand feeling and still bespoke of the unknown lands and adventures yet to be discovered in the world. Next, Heard was able to slip in a bit of European flavor into MYSTARA. "I was born and raised in Europe, and I am a bit of history buff," he says. So it's not very surprising that eh thought the "old country" would make a good basis for the D&D setting. "Of course, I've learned a lot more about history since then," he says and laughs, hinting that MYSTARA might be a very different place if he was working on it today. "MYSTARA really is a hodge-podge, and there were some very awkward moments in its development," Heard recalls. "But who knew at the time that we had the who's-who of 1980s game designers on the team? Ed Greenwood, Aaron Alston, Ken Ralston-if I knew I was working with the future legends, I'd never have worried at all." __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Find out what made the Top Yahoo! Searches of 2003 http://search.yahoo.com/top2003 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 30 Dec 2003 19:33:41 -0800 From: Joaquin Menchaca Subject: THE CREATION OF HOLLOW WORLD Hi. This is a side bar article, no author mentioned, from 315. Enjoy. - Joaquin ------------------------------------------------------- THE CREATION OF HOLLOW WORLD The HOLLOW WORLD setting began development in 1989, according to Bruce Heard. "It was mostly freelancers like Aaron Allston and Anne DePuis," he says. The interesting thing is that It was developed at the same time as the Known World setting. "We were simultaneously developing the inside and outside of the world. So instead of one product line, we would up with two for the same world." The premise is that the world of MYSTARA is hollow. The interior has glowing red sun at the center so that there is no night. "The center of the world served as a sort of museum for the gods," Heard explains. "It was where they stored all the ancient races, cultures, and creatures after their time on the surface was done. HOLLOW WORLD was like Arthur Conan Doyle's Lost World, with dinosaurs and everything running around." Despite this premise, HOLLOW WORLD never sold as well as the Known World of MYSTARA products. "Whish is a shame," Heard says. "I think we made a mistake by separating them too much. We should have promoted them as one big world. People playing in MYSTARA should have had adventures in the HOLLOW WORLD every now and then." According to Heard, Steven Schend was the "hidden hero" of both the Known World and HOLLOW WORLD. "When Steven put together the RULES CYCLOPDEIA," eh says, "he made it possible to play a big campaign using basic D&D rules. You didn't have to carry around four or five boxed sets anymore-it was all in one book. I still think that's one of the best game products ever." __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard http://antispam.yahoo.com/whatsnewfree ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 30 Dec 2003 19:34:26 -0800 From: Joaquin Menchaca Subject: THE CREATION OF RED STEEL Hi. This is a side bar article, no author mentioned, from 315. Enjoy. - Joaquin ------------------------------------------------------- THE CREATION OF RED STEEL "The campaign actually got its start in DRAGON magazine," says Tim Beach, designer of the RED STEEL boxed set. "The series was called 'The Princess Arc,' and it was Bruce Heard's way to spell out a little more detail on the Known World-what would eventually become MYSTARA." That particular region of the setting had been briefly described in a module entitled The Savage Coast. "But Bruce thought it was a great place to develop societies that had their roots strongly in read-world history, even more strongly than in the Gazetteers." The articles were so popular that, in 1994, TSR decided to give the setting its own boxed set. The big difference between the Known World material and RED STEEL was that up to this point the world of MYSTARA was only used for basic D&D. RED STEEL was supposed to bring the campaign to the AD&D audience. "At first I was just supposed to help Bruce," Beach recalls, "But things got really busy for him. So he handed me a pile of notes and source material. From that point on, it was pretty much my baby." RED STEEL was the first AD&D setting where firearms played a major role. Guns had been introduced in other settings, but were oddities and often unreliable. "It was also the first setting build to take full advantage of kits for character development," Beech says. "Anyone could be a Swashbuckler. It didn't matter if you were a fighter or a rogue or anything-as long as you met the prerequisites, you could use the kit. They worked very much the way prestige classes do in the current D&D rules." The only real controversy in the process came over cinnabryl. "In RED STEEL, cinnabryl was originally a type of metal that was touched by the gods." Beech explains. "Anyone using it could gain incredible powers for a period of time." However, TSR management thought this seemed too analogous to taking drugs- something they did not want D&D to promote in any way. "We never intended that," Beech says. "So we changed it so that anyone who lived ion the Savage Coast came under a magical curse. Cinnabryl became a substance that had the power to halt the curse for a certain period of time. So now, instead of being like illegal drugs, it was like medicine." __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Find out what made the Top Yahoo! Searches of 2003 http://search.yahoo.com/top2003 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2003 15:10:33 +1100 From: shawn stanley Subject: Re: THE CREATION OF HOLLOW WORLD At 07:33 PM 30/12/2003 -0800, you wrote: > Hi. This is a side bar article, no author mentioned, > from 315. Enjoy. all the sidebars do have authors mentioned. Someone called Stan! shawn stanley what have you done for me lately ... more to the point what have i done for me - mightyfew, "i can't wait" ------------------------------ End of MYSTARA-L Digest - 29 Dec 2003 to 30 Dec 2003 (#2003-301) ****************************************************************