Where did Mystara go wrong? Why did it die?
It seems to me that Mystara died an unusual death, for unlike other worlds, it didn't just fizzle out: it died in its prime. At what I consider to be the peak of its life, Mystara suddenly keeled over and died.
But why? Well, at the time I thought the move over to AD&D was an extremely bad idea. The only article I always read in Dragon was the Princess Ark. I enjoyed every part of that article - story, gazetteers, extra rules, letters. When it changed to the Known World Grimoire, I enjoyed that too. Then came the change to AD&D, and the one almost constant source of new info, the monthly Dragon article, disappeared. This was the first nail in Mystara's coffin.
Next came not just the fact that they were transitioning to AD&D, but the way they did it. Reprints of old material without significant changes, packaged with a new and expensive gimmick (the audio CDs), and worst of all associated with beginning players. The new sets were expensive, and largely unappealling to Mystara's existing fans.
The Almanac series continued as is for one volume, then, in my opinion, took a sudden dive in quality. Perhaps some people liked Joshuan's Almanac, I don't know.
In the end, I think TSR wanted to convert Mystara for the simple reason that they didn't want to have to support two versions of the Dungeons & Dragons game. In other words, the conversion was not necessarily in the best interests of Mystara, but rather in the best interests of AD&D, as far as TSR saw it. I believe that they saw D&D as somewhat of a ball and chain, and thought to get rid of that while keeping the best bits for AD&D. Unfortunately they only succeeded in killing both.
Well, that's my opinion. There are a few more points, but for now I'd like to hear everyone else's opinion.
Another problem IMO, was that many of the people who loved Mystara probably played D&D for a reason, that reason being that they didn't like AD&D. So bringing it over to AD&D may not have been a good idea anyway.
Yep, I definitely fall into this group, as described by Havard on that other forum. I never understood the appeal of AD&D over D&D.
I thought Havard's other comments there were very good too.
Yep, I definitely fall into this group, as described by Havard on that other forum. I never understood the appeal of AD&D over D&D.
I never switched over to AD&D either. There was something about it that kept me from using it. Can't put a finger on it though. When I did finally start using 3E, it was directly from using the Rules Cyclopedia.
Perhaps some people liked Joshuan's Almanac, I don't know.
Actually, I did enjoy it somewhat. The Poor Wizard's Almanacs were great, but each one had a vast amount of reprinted material in the same format, so it was nice to read about Mystara from a different perspective.
What I *was* disappointed with was all the other AD&D products. Like Havard said, they were targeted straight to new players of Mystara without anything new to entice the veterans of the setting to make the change.
Although It would be cool to see Mystara revitalized, the stuff that the fans are pumping out is top quality (and free). AND the material created for Mystara is so varied and flexible; just check out the Vaults!
One thing I will note, and Thorf touched on this a couple days ago when he suggested that the AD&D version should have released a World sourcebook (like Eberron, FRCS, etc.) rather than individual nation sets- James "Mystaros" Mishler has noted before that that was originally the plan. He learned from Jeff "Kingdom of Karameikos" Grubb that Jeff wanted to do a world book of sorts of Mystara, with a lot of overall coverage, but that the "Powers-That-Were" at TSR changed their mind and the format after the fact, and released the nation boxes instead. It's really too bad, because not only were the boxed sets too much repackaged info on what had come before, IMO, but that the designers who worked on them were mostly wasted. Jeff Grubb, from what I understand, was going to shake up Karameikos- using the death of Alfric Oderbry for one thing- and do other interesting changes, but was told essentially to maintain the status quo. Monte Cook as well, I feel was wasted on a largely repackaged Glantri- from what I've seen and read of other products he's done since, I know that he's a very talented and imaginative designer, and I suspect he may have been "hamstrung" in many ways, and wonder what the Glantri set might have looked like otherwise.
To be fair, though, there are still some good bits and pieces in those boxed sets. In particular, I think K:KoA was a pretty good product, and I know that certain people, like Beau Yarbrough, really liked the boxed sets better than the gazetteers- getting rid of all the "tongue-in-cheek" humor of Gaz3 for instance.
It seems to me that Mystara died an unusual death, for unlike other worlds, it didn't just fizzle out: it died in its prime. At what I consider to be the peak of its life, Mystara suddenly keeled over and died.
I think Mystara died commercially simply because it was too marginal with respect to TSR's flagship (Forgotten Realms). More or less, it anticipated the fate of the other settings -- Ravenloft, Planescape, Dark Sun, etc.
It died earlier because it is more ``mainstream'', so to speak, than those other worlds, and at that time TSR still considered genre-focused settings as viable -- which apparently was an error, since those world were discontinued as well, and nowadays WotC seems to focus on fewer, generic fantasy worlds.
On a different line of thought, I think most of the settings died at their peak -- think Ravenloft, which was closed when it had finally reached some independence as a setting (it originally was thought as a short-lived diversion from standard campaigns).
1. The campaign material quality dipped greatly beginning in about 1991. Really the only great products to show up after the RC was published was the HWR3/HWQ1 Milenian books and PC4 Night Howlers. I am conviced the reason for this was because Bruce Heard wasn't getting the creative control he had in the past. We all remember the Mystara "what if" list of all the products that were in the pipe-line that never happened.
2. The shift in 1991 of D&D to the really dumbed-down intro set, the realization that Mystara simply didn't work with that set, and the creation of the Thunder Rift setting. After 1991, there were as many Thunder Rift products as there were Mystara products. The corresponding split in the D&D buying market fractured an already niche group.
3. The shift of Mystara to 2e. By 1993, I think TSR finally realized that with the RC version of D&D and 2e, they really had two redundant systems. It was probably a smart move to phase one out, and they chose the more popular of the two to keep around. (Now all of the silly decisions from the previous ten years that led to 2e and RC D&D being redundant, and whether 2e was the better of the two systems are topics for another time...) This would have been fine if they had simply continued to produce Mystara products as they had before, without interupting the stream, such as they did with the 3rd almanac. Instead they re-engineered Mystara as the beginner's 2e setting, re-did Karameikos and Glantri and divorced the Savage Coast from the rest of the setting (I still hear "Red Steel was part of Mystara?") and changed it significantly from its appearance in VotPA.
What you got was a fractured fan base being asked to buy redundant products that were inconsistant with prior products. A recipe for disaster. In retrospect, you have to wonder whether TSR understood what it had with Mystara. So much of the Known World was created by freelancers (one of the reasons I think the GAZ's were so much better than everything TSR did in-house in the late 80's), that I don't know if the people running TSR were familiar enough with it to make the right decisions for it.
R.A.
Hands down.
Worst. Move. Ever.
A massively destructive event that negated all the prior developments and moved the whole setting ten years forward, making much of the information in the Gazetteers (and thus the product itself) obsolete could ONLY do harm the whole line. And they sunk Alphatia! ALPHATIA! Perhaps the coolest of all countries in all the various settings, and they sunk it and stuck a wussified version of it in the Hollow World. Blech. Not to mention the destruction of Alfheim, the creation of the Great Crater (which, albeit, was cool, but unnecessary), and a whole host of unnecessary and overly dramatic changes...
I like most of Bruce's work, but the whole WotI idea was just plain wrong. It wasn't "Wrath of the Immortals" so much as "Mystara Jumps the Shark." The AD&D editions were simply the nail in the coffin.
Of course, Mystara had it easy compared to Krynn and Dragonlance fans. Good lord, how many times have they destroyed and rebuilt that setting since it was introduced? Five times?
Of course, Mystara had it easy compared to Krynn and Dragonlance fans. Good lord, how many times have they destroyed and rebuilt that setting since it was introduced? Five times?
Is it just me, or did TSR do a lot of that 10-15 years ago? I mean, FR had the Time of Troubles and Greyhawk was subjected to massive wars only to rise in the "From the Ashes" boxed set. It seems to me the game designers wanted to "shake up" all of the settings...
:-) Jesper
Is it just me, or did TSR do a lot of that 10-15 years ago? I mean, FR had the Time of Troubles and Greyhawk was subjected to massive wars only to rise in the "From the Ashes" boxed set. It seems to me the game designers wanted to "shake up" all of the settings...
:-) Jesper
Well, in some ways such a move might have some sense in it: It gives players the opportunity to play in some "epic" context, taking part in the most earth-shaking events, being part a narrative with mythical qualities - or something like that.
I remember myself as a teenager reading the DragonLance Chronicles and wishing to be a part of that. Mystara never had THAT sort of epic atmosphere. WotI might have done the work.
Of course, Mystara had it easy compared to Krynn and Dragonlance fans. Good lord, how many times have they destroyed and rebuilt that setting since it was introduced? Five times?
Four. War of the Lance (but you can't really count this one...its what launched the setting!), the Blue Lady War, Summer of Chaos, & War of Souls.
Basically, you might say that all of the settings are "captured" at the times of great change & upheval. Unfortunately, quite often here's the problem: author turnover. Radical changes are made to a setting, but there's a switch in authors, so that down the road, everything gets choppy, plot elements get lost (example: stuff like Philidor the blue dude from GH "From the Ashes"). There's nothing wrong with having a setting change, but when you have too many cooks in the kitchen, the end result doesn't taste too good.
... the Blue Lady War ...
What's that? Is that when those huge dragons invaded Krynn? (If not, then there's ANOTHER world-shaking event.)
The problem with the switch to AD&D was what other people have said, but also something people so far have missed so far as I can tell (oh and the switch from a system's only campaign world to just one of the extra worlds was not good).
The Introductory CD-rom boxes were a very stupid idea, even by TSR's standards at the time - whatever marketing person came up with it was a fool!
Yes this is harsh, but Mystara was deliberately marketed at new players. The one thing a new player is not likely to want to do is pay more than they have to for something they are only going to try - so why put the atmosphere CDs in, making the product aimed at new players the most expensive way to try the game? Very few people other than serious Mystara or TSR fans will have wanted to pay extra for a CD on a product they did not know if they would like. 
Introductory + Expensive format = No sales = Dead campaign worldAdd this to the trouble TSR have always had with lines aimed exclusively at new gamers (with the expectation that people will switch when they get mroe experienced) and it stood zero chance of success.
I think TSR could have made the CDs work, but only in a product aimed at committed gamers. I think they could have made Mystara work for AD&D as a new-gamers line (though it would have been hard to keep it's flavour). I think TSR could have made Mystara work as just another AD&D campaign world rather more easily (but there was no reason to do so).
When you add in the points raised above about the AD&D line being re-worked old material Mystara never stood a chance.
The above said, I do greatly appreciate the way WotC have made these boards (and a Wiz) available for us to keep discussing my favourite campaign world. The mailing list is good, but this is better for me, so WotC are giving us support. Not much, but a lot more than nothing, and I don't think they could really justify any more than they are doing...
What's that? Is that when those huge dragons invaded Krynn? (If not, then there's ANOTHER world-shaking event.)
That's from the Twins trilogy; in a nutshell, Kitiara got ahold of a flying citadel, and used it to transport an army over the High Clerist Tower to invade Palanthus. It was a relatively brief war, most noted for the death of a somewhat major character.
Wrath of the Immortals.
Hands down.
Worst. Move. Ever.
Say this in the voice of the Comic Book Store Guy from the Simpsons and :heehee
(Not meant to make fun of Mystaros!)
Actually you got me thinking. It's too bad that TSR didn't make more use of the extensive timeline that Mystara has, and more purposefully show how the game can be played in different time periods. They actually did this in Gaz 3 (only place I remember them doing that). They had the PWA countinuing the timeline, but they could've also had other products that occur (or could occur) in 1000 AC, or even before that!
When the PWA came out for 1012 AC, it didn't mean you had to start every game in that year. It would have been nice to support the 1000 AC period as well. Imagine single products that supported a twenty-year span of the game world. Well, there's my mental blabberings anyway.
I like WotI for the most part, and like others have said, it's nice to use as an epic type game. But you don't always have to play that part of time. I think it could be interesting to play a game during Stefan's invasion of Traladara or the the time of Glantri's Battle of Braejr. The possibilities are endless to have the PCs change the very course of time! (I really had no idea I was going to say this stuff when I hit the reply button
)The above said, I do greatly appreciate the way WotC have made these boards (and a Wiz) available for us to keep discussing my favourite campaign world. The mailing list is good, but this is better for me, so WotC are giving us support. Not much, but a lot more than nothing, and I don't think they could really justify any more than they are doing...
True! Who says WotC doesn't support Mystara (a bit)? I know Mike does! ;)
Back on Topic... The move to 2e killed at least one part of Mystara: the Faerie tone of the Elves. With classes and races seperated, Elven Thieves without magical talent could be found in Alfheim. I've instituted a rule that in my Known World 2e setting, Elves are always multiclassed mages. Elven magic-user/thieves are not allowed. Elven fighter/mages account for 99% of Elven society (not just adventurers). Some elves (Treekeepers) are magic-user/clerics. I do similar things for Dwarves and Halflings. When these rules are in place, albeit more restrictive than standard 2e, the traditional Mystaran feeling emerges. Players view Elves as mystical beings, not long lived humans with pointy ears. Ah yes, almost forgot: Half Elves do not exist, even in my savage coast campaigns.
What killed the whole line? WotI did change a lot, and several things in unecessary ways (Alfheim), but it's only an adventure, safe to ignore. Instead, what really killed Mystara (and other later settings) was TSR's bad business model of introducing source book after source book. They were more profitable than adventure models, but once one person bought a source book in a role playing group (usually the DM), that was all that was needed. So, to keep making a profit, TSR kept making "The Complete X's Handbook" where X was any Class, Race, Subclass (already did thieves'? let's do ninja's!) or monster.
So, instead of producing 2e Gazeteers for other regions of Mystara that hadn't been detailed completely, TSR was really focusing on core 2e, or rather the fringes of core 2e. Palladium kept the Rifts line alive for quite some time detailing their rich world(s). TSR also kept Planescape alive awhile with the great descriptions of the outer/inner planes. TSR spent years detailing one continent on one world that would later be named Mystara, then wasted a great effort by creating an undetailed Hollow world within it. If the HW had been put together slowly just as the KW, then we would have bought every module. If Davania and Skothar and been redone like Brun (especially Blackmoor era, pre-tech), we would have bought the slow drip of those books too, making TSR a little more money. Luckily for WotC though, TSR wanted quick cash.
I remember getting the WotI boxed set, and one of the first things I looked at were the maps, and seeing this blackened area where Alfheim was and reading "Aengmor" and going, "Oh, lord. I don't think I'm going to like this..." (not to mention the Alphatia thing, which I agree was such a waste).
Yet, to me, the PWAs are such a solid source of ongoing campaign material, not to mention convenient "atlas" entries and everything else. If only they could have done the PWAs without giving us the whole Wrath mess. How amazing would that have been? PWAs for the time period from 1000 AC-1010 AC.
Hmm...
I never switched over to AD&D either. There was something about it that kept me from using it. Can't put a finger on it though.
My feelings precisely. I could never understand how exactly AD&D was a step up from D&D. :P
Actually, I did enjoy it somewhat. The Poor Wizard's Almanacs were great, but each one had a vast amount of reprinted material in the same format, so it was nice to read about Mystara from a different perspective.
My problem with Joshuan's Almanac compared to the Poor Wizard's Almanac is that I'm not a big fan of in-character descriptions. In-character introductions, a la GAZ3 or PC4, to list but a few, are great. But put everything in-character and it just irritates me.
Although It would be cool to see Mystara revitalized, the stuff that the fans are pumping out is top quality (and free). AND the material created for Mystara is so varied and flexible; just check out the Vaults!
I have to agree there. As it is now, Mystara is entirely in our hands, and it has to be said that as a community we are an intelligent, talented group of people who know our world very well. The only thing lacking from the picture is a monetary incentive to allow us to work on Mystara full-time. :D
To be fair, though, there are still some good bits and pieces in those boxed sets. In particular, I think K:KoA was a pretty good product, and I know that certain people, like Beau Yarbrough, really liked the boxed sets better than the gazetteers- getting rid of all the "tongue-in-cheek" humor of Gaz3 for instance.
Absolutely there are some good bits about the boxed sets. I recently bought the Glantri ESD, and it seems like a nice product. The Karameikos one was pretty good too. Although I don't like their mapping systems very much...
As an aside, what is the best thing about the AD&D boxed sets?
...
...
...
The boxes themselves are nice and sturdy, and one box is perfect for storing your collection of all the Mystara maps that were published. ;)
As far as I'm concerned, there were two main problems with them, and neither relates to their actual content. The first was that they were essentially reprints, so existing fans would not be interested in them. The second was that the sets were for AD&D. D&D playing fans weren't interested, and felt betrayed by the adandonment of D&D. AD&D playing fans already had their own AD&D conversions of the Gazetteers anyway, and so weren't interested either.
One last point - don't forget that there was a "world book" for Mystara: the Poor Wizard's Almanac. Admittedly it's not what you might consider a primary campaign sourcebook, but it does include a lot of the information you might want. And given the existence of the Almanacs, you can see why TSR might have been reluctant to start with another general book. However wrong we might now consider that decision to have been, we can at least see their logic, I think.
Assuming they used logic, of course...
1. The campaign material quality dipped greatly beginning in about 1991. Really the only great products to show up after the RC was published was the HWR3/HWQ1 Milenian books and PC4 Night Howlers. I am conviced the reason for this was because Bruce Heard wasn't getting the creative control he had in the past. We all remember the Mystara "what if" list of all the products that were in the pipe-line that never happened.
Let's see, there's also Wrath of the Immortals, Champions of Mystara, and the Poor Wizard's Almanac I & II. Of course, whether you consider these great or not is a matter of personal preference. For me, I enjoyed Wrath of the Immortals immensely (more below on that), and the Poor Wizard's Almanac was one of the best products for Mystara ever. I did enjoy Champions of Mystara too, although I didn't like how much of it was effectively just reprints of old material (the actual stories notwithstanding, that is), and I had hoped it would cover the Savage Coast a bit too - at least in a map or two.
No, as far as I'm concerned, the point where Mystara went wrong was after this, when they tried to AD&D it. Up until then things seemed to be going strong. The list of "in the pipeline" things seems to support this too, because everything got put on hold for the re-release.
2. The shift in 1991 of D&D to the really dumbed-down intro set, the realization that Mystara simply didn't work with that set, and the creation of the Thunder Rift setting. After 1991, there were as many Thunder Rift products as there were Mystara products. The corresponding split in the D&D buying market fractured an already niche group.
Yeah, this was a definite mistake. To be honest, the set you refer to is not really dumbed down that much, though. The rules are the same, and the rulebook included in the set was pretty good, making changes such as providing details of levels 1-5 instead of 1-3, which seems more logical to beginning players. They just put a little more thought into teaching people how to play the game and making the learning curve less steep. All in all I liked that set.
But yes, Thunder Rift was a big mistake. To be honest I can't see any reason why Mystara wouldn't fit with the new basic box. Karameikos was good enough for the original sets, why wouldn't it fit the new one? Just because there is a lot more beyond the borders already detailed doesn't mean it has to be used from the start.
3. The shift of Mystara to 2e. By 1993, I think TSR finally realized that with the RC version of D&D and 2e, they really had two redundant systems. It was probably a smart move to phase one out, and they chose the more popular of the two to keep around. (Now all of the silly decisions from the previous ten years that led to 2e and RC D&D being redundant, and whether 2e was the better of the two systems are topics for another time...)
In definite agreement with this one. It seems clear that TSR realised, probably rightly, that D&D was not good for AD&D. Mystara, entwined in D&D as it was/is, was an unfortunate casualty that they obviously misunderstood and weren't able to save.
What you got was a fractured fan base being asked to buy redundant products that were inconsistant with prior products.
Nicely put.
A recipe for disaster. In retrospect, you have to wonder whether TSR understood what it had with Mystara. So much of the Known World was created by freelancers (one of the reasons I think the GAZ's were so much better than everything TSR did in-house in the late 80's), that I don't know if the people running TSR were familiar enough with it to make the right decisions for it.
I think you've probably hit on another major reason there.
Wrath of the Immortals.
Hands down.
Worst. Move. Ever.
I'm really not sure I agree with this. Now don't get me wrong, I supremely disliked the perversion of Alfheim and the destruction of Alphatia. But it certainly made for an interesting read, and an interesting game. I guess it all depends on how you look at things, but I thought it was an excellent product, with some great ideas that inspired lots of other ideas for my campaign.
And of course there's no reason why you had to use it at all if you didn't want to.
A massively destructive event that negated all the prior developments and moved the whole setting ten years forward, making much of the information in the Gazetteers (and thus the product itself) obsolete could ONLY do harm the whole line.
I don't see how it negated the prior developments. Maybe it went in a different direction from what you had been expecting, but then all of our campaigns were probably like that.
I can see how you could dislike it because of its effect on the products that came after, but there were so few of them anyway...
As for its effect on the Gazetteer information, I don't think it's as bad as you're saying. Mostly the Gazetteers can be used pretty much as-is - especially if you have an Almanac to update you on recent history.
I like most of Bruce's work, but the whole WotI idea was just plain wrong. It wasn't "Wrath of the Immortals" so much as "Mystara Jumps the Shark."
IYHO. Enough said.
Basically, you might say that all of the settings are "captured" at the times of great change & upheval. Unfortunately, quite often here's the problem: author turnover. Radical changes are made to a setting, but there's a switch in authors, so that down the road, everything gets choppy, plot elements get lost (example: stuff like Philidor the blue dude from GH "From the Ashes"). There's nothing wrong with having a setting change, but when you have too many cooks in the kitchen, the end result doesn't taste too good.
But in Mystara, this was arguably one of our advantages: we had a number of great people contribute to the setting over the years.
Also, in the case of Wrath of the Immortals, the changes were made by longtime Mystara veteran Aaron Allston, under the "product management" of Mystara godfather Bruce Heard. You could hardly say that this was a case of "too many cooks in the kitchen".
What killed the whole line? WotI did change a lot, and several things in unecessary ways (Alfheim), but it's only an adventure, safe to ignore.
I agree that Wrath of the Immortals was safe to ignore.
But about this Alfheim change being unnecessary thing - are you sure? It's basically just a natural progression of GAZ5 and GAZ13's "Shadow Elf Invasion" theme. Sure, it was a surprise seeing it happen so soon, but surely it wasn't a surprise seeing it happen at all.
To sum up all these replies: it seems clear that Wrath of the Immortals is a thorny issue for us, and not surprisingly given the massive changes it included. But I'm not sure exactly how it can be considered as the point where Mystara started to slip. Opinion is clearly divided over it, but a lot of people seemed to like the products that followed.
My biggest argument against Wrath being the beginning of the end is difficult to argue, because it involves the feeling at the time. For me, Mystara was going from strength to strength, and it was definitely the announcement of its re-release for AD&D that came as the biggest blow. Up until then, Bruce Heard appeared to have things going well, with new products planned and the ongoing Dragon article. It was the AD&D conversion that made all that come crashing to an end.
But yes, Thunder Rift was a big mistake. To be honest I can't see any reason why Mystara wouldn't fit with the new basic box. Karameikos was good enough for the original sets, why wouldn't it fit the new one? Just because there is a lot more beyond the borders already detailed doesn't mean it has to be used from the start.
I've never read any actual Thunder Rift products (except the "Escape from Thunder Rift" adventure that came with the DM Shield, which wasn't bad but was pretty thin - but that's expected when it's packaged with a DM shield). However, I love the concept of the setting - I like the name, I like the idea of setting a campaign in a pocket universe, and I like the idea that it's surrounded by mountains beyond which are... nothing. (At least, that's the impression I've gotten of the setting, although ISTR reading somewhere that it was actually just an isolated valley somewhere on Mystara, which is substantially less cool.)
I'm really not sure I agree with this. Now don't get me wrong, I supremely disliked the perversion of Alfheim and the destruction of Alphatia. But it certainly made for an interesting read, and an interesting game. I guess it all depends on how you look at things, but I thought it was an excellent product, with some great ideas that inspired lots of other ideas for my campaign.
I was okay with them. I always thought Alphatia, while cool, was pretty overpowering and I never bought the idea that Thyatis could compete or the explanation that zzonga juice held them back. Sinking the main continent of Alphatia but putting it in the Hollow World has a lot of upsides:
- There are still enough remnants around - Floating Ar, Seashield, Bellisaria and all the islands - that you can get a pretty powerful nation of wizards if they all get together. You just don't have "a Grand Council of 1,000 36th level mages" which aren't even all of the high-level wizards living there.
- The Floating Continent of Alphatia is prevented from interfering too badly with the other Hollow World cultures by Immortal fiat, so they haven't just transferred the overwhelming political power to the other setting.
- Because Alphatia still exists in the Hollow World, the continent description in DotE doesn't suddenly become useless. You can still set adventures there even if you don't set your campaign pre-WotI.
The problem here is that there's no major opposed power to challenge Thyatis anymore. The Heldannic Knights don't have enough territory to be credible, and they're similar to Thyatis in many ways (which makes for an interesting dynamic, but not exactly the same dynamic). The other Known World nations are established as not being expansionist. The best idea is probably to put a new rival empire on the southern continent, with the Hinterlands replacing the Isle of Dawn as the flashpoint, but of course that's a lot of work to make up compared to just using DotE.
Let's see, there's also Wrath of the Immortals, Champions of Mystara, and the Poor Wizard's Almanac I & II. Of course, whether you consider these great or not is a matter of personal preference. For me, I enjoyed Wrath of the Immortals immensely (more below on that), and the Poor Wizard's Almanac was one of the best products for Mystara ever. I did enjoy Champions of Mystara too, although I didn't like how much of it was effectively just reprints of old material (the actual stories notwithstanding, that is), and I had hoped it would cover the Savage Coast a bit too - at least in a map or two.
I would actually point to those four products (WotI, Champions, and PWA I & II) as part of the downward trend. While they aren't particularly bad, they don't add anywhere near as much to the campaign as the pre-1991 products. In all three cases, it's not what was good, but that it was buried under so much bad/redundant.
The PWA's were a bit redundant, both with the GAZ's and with themselves. While some of the plot hooks and the extra information about Davania and some of the other places were nice, it was buried in with a lot of information we already had and really wasn't much more than what could be covered in one of Bruce Heard's Dragon Magazine article.
WotI was divided into three parts - 1. the immortal information, which was very good, bordering on essential, 2. the rules for playing immortals, which was quite esoteric and of questionable value for most, and 3. the adventures, which IMHO not very good and changed the campaign in an unfortunate way. A 32 page source book at half the price, let's call it AC12 Immortals and would have been much nicer.
CoM had the same problem as Mystara, three parts - 1. The abreviated Gazetteers of Sind, Graakhalia and Yavdlom were again very good, bordering on essential, 2. the flying ship rules were nice, but not really special, and nothing that couldn't be extrapolated from other sources such as the RC and the DoE boxed set, and 3. the re-print of the VotPA was a rip-off, with none of the rules, stats, errata, and asides that came with the original Dragon articles. Again, a half price GAZ15 The Western Lands would have been much nicer.
These really set the tone for the 2e products, where the little that was good about them was basically buried in creative efforts from 7 or 8 years prior. Like a number of people have said about the 2e products, if they'd have simply put out something that wasn't redundant, like a Hule boxed set, 2e Mystara would have stood a much better chance.
R.A.
*checking various reasons why not.... "redundant" being the most recurring answer.... ignoring results and proceeding...*
Okay, IMHO it was obviously a good mix of facts that brought Mystara down the sink.
1: Rules system. Despite the great product that the Rules Cyclopedia was, we have to face it: TSR didn't want to support Classic D&D anymore. This way, Mystara was doomed since the first years of the 90s to either be closed or switch to AD&D.
2. AD&D failure. The AD&D transition was likewise poorly done, period. They just took a bunch of very talented writers and gave them a very limited freedom of movement without a Team Editor to coordinate their efforts. The result was a rehash of the old material, only bulkier and MUCH more expensive than the old gazetteers. They should have been a little more foreseeing and create a campaign worldbook, but instead they stuck with TSR's trend at that time: boxes and audio CDs. This brought us KKoA and GKoM, plus some other insignificant adventure (I think the best products of the whole AD&D line were Mark of Amber and PWAIII). And they obviously put the "End" word to the already mistreated Mystara line.
3: Campaign style. Sure thing Mystara is unique, but NOT THAT UNIQUE in comparison to other settings (say Planescape or Dark Sun). Probably the TSR head honchos thought that Mystara was too similar to FR and GH to be supported with good margins, so they closed it once the transition to AD&D revealed that the fanbase wouldn't follow it anymore and that it didn't attract as much buyers as FR. IT was probably a (bad) marketing strategy to leave FR as TSR ONLY ship of the line in the High fantasy area.
4. Too many drastic changes. I personally liked Wrath of the Immortals, but I reckon that so many changes in a short period may have alienated a good portion of the fanbase. So WotI can be described as a bad way of handling campaign changes. If WotI had left a broken and divided Alphatia and a crumbling Thyatian empire, maybe it would have been more enthusiastically accepted. It would have changed the superpowers' real strength to a more acceptable level, making the KNown World a "free for all" arena where the international politics could have been influenced by many nations (as opposed to the "2 blocks" former situation).
5. Thunder Rift. Another big flop, this was the introductory campaign that accompanied the 4th edition of the Classic D&D rules (which later became the Rules Cyclopedia). Instead of creating it from scratch and publishing a couple of adventures with a new and unknown brand, TSR should have stayed true to Mystara and the KNown World. This way, TSR only annoyed the old timers and didn't catch as much newbies as they could have by presenting a whole campaign worldbook on Mystara.
6. Lack of coordination. As much as I liked Bruce's work, I must add that there was a poor editing behind many of the gazetteers and other source books like WotI. I have noticed it more and more frequently after reading in depth and taking notes to compile reference books for Mystara. The lack of attention to details (both historical and cultural) is sometimes astounding. This way we find ourselves with conflicting versions of the same events or characters and no clear way out. Also, because of this we are stuck with Mystara AND Savage Coast, listed as if they were TWO SEPARATE campaign worlds!! (I often read the question "Savage Coast is part of which world?)
This is obviously the Campaign Editor's fault, whose duty is precisely to keep consistency inside the books that deal with his campaign world. I would also go a bit further and say that maybe Bruce wasn't able to wrestle from the Powers that Be at TSR enough power and freedom of action to impose his own views on the campaign. Rather he probably had to obey the orders and couldn't defend Mystara's right to exist. This is also why probably we saw KKoA and GKoM instead of a world sourcebook or other gazetteers detailing the lost nations and continents of Mystara: because the Editor had not enough strength to back up these choices.
Finally, I want to say that I believe the PWA are some of the BEST products for ANY campaign world. Their concept is simply beautiful because they contain all the info you need to understand the style of play in a campaign and the different cultural systems to be found. It also gives the reader details on the most important NPCs, economics, even weather and religions, plus many adventure ideas thanks to the yearly almanac. Unfortunately this is also its greatest limit: it's pure fluff and zero crunch, so it would technically be "useless" if considered with 3E standards. Take a look at the common sourcebooks today and tell me if you can find anything similar to the PWAs or the Gazetteers. The only things that look similar are the Ravenloft Doomsday Gazetteers (which mix 70% of fluff with 30% of crunch in a very sensible way) and the FR regional books (Silver Marches and Unapproachable East). That's it: 4 titles over hundreds! PWAs wouldn't be big sales today and I don't think they hit big numbers even in the past, because they're mainly a DM's tool.
Mystara was not nurtured well from the early 90s, and like a withered plant, it obviously stopped producing blossoms and flowers.. no wonder they chose to cut it in the end!
But if you don't water and cure a plant, it's not the plant's fault if it dies ;)
Luckily we didn't forget our duties through all these years
Luckily we didn't forget our duties in all these years
Beautifully put!
:-) Jesper
It's pure fluff and zero crunch, so it would technically be "useless" if considered with 3E standards.
I personally like "fluff" to be in my gaming books. Anybody that has read threads on the "What's a DM to do?" forum will quickly see that 3E books need more Fluff! Fluff is one of the things I love about Mystara - you might say it is fluffy :D
You could say fluff brings the crunch to life!
(Good to have you back, DM! Where's Havard lately? I've missed his input.)
One question, though: what specifically do you mean by "fluff" and "crunch"? Can you give me some examples with Mystaran products?
I would have thought that the division between fluff and crunch would be a rather personal one, depending on what you want out of the product.
5. Thunder Rift. Another big flop, this was the introductory campaign that accompanied the 4th edition of the Classic D&D rules (which later became the Rules Cyclopedia). Instead of creating it from scratch and publishing a couple of adventures with a new and unknown brand, TSR should have stayed true to Mystara and the KNown World. This way, TSR only annoyed the old timers and didn't catch as much newbies as they could have by presenting a whole campaign worldbook on Mystara.
While it's certainly true that Thunder Rift wasn't well received by the old timers, I doubt that a campaign worldbook would have been the right choice to catch the newbies.
I think the TSR people wanted to go back to the origins, using the same approach for 4th ed as they had done with the Red Box: not a campaign book, but a set of adventures that would slowly introduce a campaign world.
Probably, TSR thought that people who would buy a campaign book would also buy AD&D rather than the introductory OD&D box.
IMO, the best approach would have been to develop a small sub-setting of Mystara instead of an independent setting -- say, a Borderland area of Darokin, or a isolated colony in Norwold, in order to make the transition to Mystara easier.
The terms "fluff" and "crunch" started to appear with 3E books, and they basically mean in the first case "more history-less gaming stats" and vice versa in the second.
All Mystara products were IMO nearly always 90% fluff and 10% crunch, which means they were tailored specifically FOR MYSTARA. If you bought for example GAZ1 and tried to use it in Forgotten Realms, it's pretty clear it would be a hard if not impossible feat, because there are so many Mystara-specific things (setting) and less generic ones (rules).
So Mystara was more fluff than crunch, even if you have some books which allow for more crunch (rules), like GAZ3 with the Seven Secret Crafts and Radiance powers, GAZ9 and 11 with the Merchant class and all those rules for commerce, GAZ10 with the rules for playing Humanoid PCs, GAZ12 with the rules for Spirit Plane and shamans, and to a lesser extent even GAZ13 with all the rules on Shadowelf Shamans, Life Crystals and the same info on Radiance of GAZ3.
All of the PC -Creature Crucible books (Wee Folk, Top Ballista, Sea People and Night Howlers) were a great example of books designed to be "crunch-centered" (proposing new classes & races to play, similar to 3E splatbooks for classes) but wonderfully tailored to the Mystaran campaign. The PC line is the best example of how a stats heavy book (we're talking about 60% crunch at least here!) can become an interesting book to read, full of campaign info and hints to use it in play.
Now go out and buy Sword & Fist or Complete Warrior for 3E now, and tell me if you can find ANY info about a campaign, any info about how to use this or that PrC in a specific setting. You'll find none. Because these are books designed to be used primarily by PLAYERS! Hey, WotC discovered that the majority of RPG fans are not DMs, they're players, so they're the best customers! Hence nowadays we rarely find books with too much fluff, because they don't sell well enough.
I believe the best compromise are Ravenloft's Doomsday Gazetteers, as I already said. THey're modeled after the Mystara GAzs, but they're thicker (170-190 pages), don't focus on a single nation but rather a group of 3-4 states, have sidebars with interesting adventure hints, and have a final appendix with stats for major NPCs (VERY IMPORTANT in 3E, more than in previous rules system), new monsters and Prestige Classes, and the occasional new feats and magic items. This way they produce a book that is mostly directed at DMs, but has 70% of fluff regarding the campaign and 30% of crunch which DMs can throw at eager players!
That's the difference between now and then. WotC produces more books filled with stats and game rules, and less "campaign" books properly. Probably because they already wrote everything for Forgotten Realms, the only setting they're still supporting.
I think we're going to see a different trend set now that Eberron has been launched, since they'll need campaign books to flesh out that world. So fans of Eberron may get the better deal in the end
But there's one thing I'm still a bit confused about. It seems to me that fluff and crunch basically comes down to game world and game, setting and rules. Right?
The choice of the words "fluff" and "crunch" implies heavily that setting is bad while rules are good. Is this what was intended? Fluff is basically just another word for rubbish, after all, while crunch usually means the best part of something, the part with real substance.
If "Third Edition" is all about the crunch, it would certainly explain why I've been so unimpressed with the books I've had a peek at so far...
That might explain why I still enjoy reading my GAZs - although I'm not playing anymore.
So for me, paradoxically, the fluff actually helped the setting to survive...
By the way:
... major NPCs (VERY IMPORTANT in 3E, more than in previous rules system) ...
Why is that?
Okay, I understand. Thanks for the explanations.
But there's one thing I'm still a bit confused about. It seems to me that fluff and crunch basically comes down to game world and game, setting and rules. Right?
The choice of the words "fluff" and "crunch" implies heavily that setting is bad while rules are good. Is this what was intended? Fluff is basically just another word for rubbish, after all, while crunch usually means the best part of something, the part with real substance.
If "Third Edition" is all about the crunch, it would certainly explain why I've been so unimpressed with the books I've had a peek at so far...
Correct. Fluff = setting material, history, etc, crunch = rulez, rulez, rulez. I think the choice of these words started with the FR at the start of 3e to deride certain 2e books, and snowballed from there. You can pretty much pinpoint the time when WotC went "all crunch" with the "Silver Munchies" story (Reynolds wrote a piece at the time of the release of Silver Marches which basically stated, once you got past the poetry, that if the sales of Silver Marches didn't equal X, "fluff" was to be killed in favor of "crunch").
Interesting observation, DM!
That might explain why I still enjoy reading my GAZs - although I'm not playing anymore.
So for me, paradoxically, the fluff actually helped the setting to survive...
From what they're saying, the fluff *is* the setting.
But if fluff is so bad, how is it that there is any setting at all now?
For people like me and Lost Woodrake, who love the setting but no longer play, so-called "crunch" has almost no value. Heck, even when I was playing the rules were there only to service what is now being called the "fluff".
I can't help but think that maybe roleplaying is being turned into another storyless hack and slash game, similar to the situation with computer RPGs and MMORPGs.
When I think back, there was one reason why I subscribed to Dragon magazine: the Princess Ark, and then the Known World Grimoire. The Grimoire provided rules on occasion (crunch?), but they were rules for governing and creating more fluff. The Princess Ark was probably almost all fluff. And yet this is supposed to be bad?
Nowadays I can pick up an issue of Dragon and I won't be even slightly tempted to read a single article, because they have apparently given up on setting-specific things. And let's face it, that was the only thing I really ever cared about. Then again, my setting is dead, so it's nothing new. :P
By the way:
"... major NPCs (VERY IMPORTANT in 3E, more than in previous rules system) ..."
Why is that?
Well, simply put: with all the technical options you've got with 3E, you cannot build an NPC from scratch in a jiff anymore.
With OD&D, I could come up with an NPC during an encouter and flesh it on the spot if the need occurred, even making him a challenging encouter. In fact, I admit I did just that in many occasions where I didn't have the time or inspiration to build one before the gaming session.
Now with 3E you cannot do it. There are SO MANY variables that can be added to a PC that you won't be able to make it competitive on the spot, especially agaisnt beefed up PCs. You need to take your time to build solid NPCs with good skills, feats and class-combo that may prove challenging to the party AND in line with the story and the setting.
What could simply be a 7th level dwarf in OD&D, now with 3E could be a dwarf with 5 levels in Fighter, 2 in Rogue, or 5 in Fighter and 2 in Dwarven Defender for example, and you need to pick all the feats and adjust the skill points before the game starts to put him up against/with the PCs.
That's why having fully statted pre-made NPCs becomes SOOO important with 3E rules.
And the point it's just that: 3E is so rules-heavy that it distracts the players from the ROLE PLAYING if they're not sufficiently skilled or motivated. Nowadays people talk more of min-maxing and Prestige Class-building rather than the cultural roots of a certain setting.
Okay, don't take me wrong: people did just the same even with AD&D... but not with OD&D! That's why I've always praised it! It is so simple that it really doesn't have much to toy with when it comes to min-maxing your PC :P
Anyway, it's not that 3E books are more prone to roll-play and powergaming: they simply offer more rules than setting information, and for this reason they seem to me so much more "sterile" and less compelling as a reading.
That's probably why I only bought the 3 D&D3E core rules books and a bunch of others (3 adventures, the fabulous Skull & Bones setting rulebook from Green Ronin for campaigning in the Caribbeans, and a couple of rules' options books like Advanced Players' HBK and Fields of Blood) : the other rules-heavy books are not attractive to me as much as a narrative book can be.
We must probably take into account also the fact that we are veterans, so we already know how to run our game... but then, if you don't give inputs on how to roleplay, create a campaign and run adventures to newbies, how do you think they can become enamoured of this setting?? I often hear kids HATE maths (it's the most hated subject all over the world): how can they love a game that has basically been reduced to a bunch of math operations???
I genuinely feel that I'm too old, from a different generation...
I was okay with them. I always thought Alphatia, while cool, was pretty overpowering and I never bought the idea that Thyatis could compete or the explanation that zzonga juice held them back. Sinking the main continent of Alphatia but putting it in the Hollow World has a lot of upsides
I have some thoughts on that...give me a second...
Geoff
I was okay with them. I always thought Alphatia, while cool, was pretty overpowering and I never bought the idea that Thyatis could compete or the explanation that zzonga juice held them back. Sinking the main continent of Alphatia but putting it in the Hollow World has a lot of upsides
Well, there are a number of reasons out there why the empires did balance each other off for so many years, beyond the whole zzonga thing. Dawn of the Emperors provides a number of explanations...
Basically, Alphatia is a society run by individualistic mages, for individualistic mages. Many of them want nothing more than to be left undisturbed to conduct their research and other projects. As such, the empire, while formidable when finally spurred to go to war, takes a lot to actually get to that point - and also, because Alphatians as a whole are generally chaotic in inclination, it's probably more likely that individual commanders might "do their own thing" during the war.
Thyatis, on the other hand, is more disciplined and unified (though it has its own problem areas, obviously), and because of its more militaristic bent, would probably outperform a similarly-sized Alphatian army in the field. Thyatis also had its share of mages (though not as many as Alphatia), and it should be remember that its population isn't *that* much smaller than Alphatia's (3.5 million or so versus 5 million or so - does anyone have the figures handy). At any rate, the difference isn't nearly as drastic as between, say, Thyatis and Karameikos.
Anyhow, those are my $0.02.
Getting back to the original topic however, my thoughts have always been similar to DM's as to why the Mystara line did not survive.
Geoff
The choice of the words "fluff" and "crunch" implies heavily that setting is bad while rules are good. Is this what was intended? Fluff is basically just another word for rubbish, after all, while crunch usually means the best part of something, the part with real substance.
The phrases were coined, IIRC, by Sean K. Reynolds, and came out around the time of his "Silver Marches" book for 3E. At the time, WotC had undergone a number of layoffs in the game development section (a number of long-term developers), and books like the Silver Marches- high on "fluff", relatively low on "crunch", were being earmarked for less development as well. "Silver Marches" became, in many ways at the time, a gauge for whether consumers wanted more books of that nature or not (the Number Crunchers at WotC seemingly assumed otherwise- that consumers wanted books that had tons of Prestige Classes, rules, etc.- Crunch).
Thus the coinage of the terms- I think Sean used the term Fluff and Crunch in response to how the two strategies were viewed by the Powers What Were- ie, Fluff for any non-rules stuff (which they thought- I dunno, maybe due to their demographics studies and such?- that players weren't interested in), and Crunch (for the rules that they wanted). There is a story-like anecdote on the ENWorld boards that I can't find at the moment- which is where all of this comes from.
[EDIT] Found the story.
Also, it seems that Fluff wasn't coined in that article. I know it came about as a result of that article, but probably was coined by gamers on the EN boards as the "opposite" of Crunch, without (I imagine) taking into account that Fluff, as Thorf points out, often has a negative connotation of lacking content. (IE, they meant "fluffy bunnies" sort of fluff, to counter Crunch, instead of "lacking any useful meaning" fluff.)
That's just a guess. In any case, it's become pretty entrenched in the lingo now. Just read any number of reviews of RPG products on ENWorld and you'll probably note how many start off with something to the effect of "if you're looking for crunch, this isn't the book; if you want fluff..." etc.
In any event, it seems that the Fluffers (ooh- I didn't really just say that did I?) won out in the end, as can be gleaned from, IMO, the amount of "fluff" that can be found in most products from WotC now. Even the Prestige Classes have a lot more fluff than ever before.
With OD&D, I could come up with an NPC during an encouter and flesh it on the spot if the need occurred, even making him a challenging encouter....
What could simply be a 7th level dwarf in OD&D, now with 3E could be a dwarf with 5 levels in Fighter, 2 in Rogue, or 5 in Fighter and 2 in Dwarven Defender for example, and you need to pick all the feats and adjust the skill points before the game starts to put him up against/with the PCs.I agree with you, DM, many players seem to probably rely very heavily on the numbers to define what your character is (feats, skills, etc., abilities often akin to video games, IMO). Though many of these feats and skills are often based on cultural backgrounds, even when lumped together in the same sourcebooks (The Complete Warrior, etc.), my impression is that most players (yes, "younger" ones) just want the best skill selections that allow their character to win, and that's it. Maybe we're coming full circle from the early TSR (Tacticul Studies Rules) days, in which wargaming was the simple pleasure that those players enjoyed.
The "crunchy," rules-heavy approach distracts from the focus of role-playing, IMHO, but I digress.
Well, simply put: with all the technical options you've got with 3E, you cannot build an NPC from scratch in a jiff anymore.
Now with 3E you cannot do it. There are SO MANY variables that can be added to a PC that you won't be able to make it competitive on the spot, especially agaisnt beefed up PCs. You need to take your time to build solid NPCs with good skills, feats and class-combo that may prove challenging to the party AND in line with the story and the setting.
Some people can and some people have methods of dealing with such situations. I do agree, creating NPCs in 3e is really the same amount of work as creating a whole new monster. And I'm not one of those that can do the work on the fly; anything over 1st level, and I'm looking at a good half-hour chore per NPC. One reason I have no desire to run a 3e game.
On a bit of a tangent, one thing that struck me the other day while reading the latest Dungeon (I was after the GH map). I was reading the "high" level adventure (for 13th level PCs), and what struck me was that for as many pages it took up (13), it really wasn't much of an adventure to look at. A total of 20 monsters and a compound of maybe 20 rooms (mostly empty). To a party of that level, it'd amount to a side-quest. It kinda struck me as an adventure for 2nd level PCs and everything was just scaled up to 13th to meet the "high level" quota.
Anyways, what I was thinking was that in any other edition of D&D, the adventure would have more "meat" to it, for that many pages. Less setup, more monsters, bigger compound, less reliance on templated creatures, etc, all with roughly the same pagecount. It sometimes amazes me that 3e quite often provides much more in wordcount, but manages to say less. Anyways, I'm not trying to knock the adventure too much; I do like the concept, but for what it has, it seems a bit over-leveled and underwhelming.
Some people can and some people have methods of dealing with such situations. I do agree, creating NPCs in 3e is really the same amount of work as creating a whole new monster. And I'm not one of those that can do the work on the fly; anything over 1st level, and I'm looking at a good half-hour chore per NPC. One reason I have no desire to run a 3e game.
Personally, I rarely do any preparation for games I run anyway, stat-wise. I just completely wing it when it comes to NPC abilities. (Although I try to keep it consistent - the first time players roll to hit somebody and don't roll either amazingly high or amazingly low, I decide on the AC, then I try not to change it.)
So I don't think 3E is gonna be any different to run for me than any other game. And yet, for some reason I don't like rules-light systems much - go figure? I think it's cause I like to know exactly what the players can do so I can more easily judge what to give the NPC's.
Add to that 3e's ultra-whatever artwork.
I genuinely feel that I'm too old, from a different generation...
Don't be so sad, LW! You're not alone here! I feel the same way.
I may use 3E, but I have 0E experience! (now I feel old...) What I mean by that is I use some old tricks of the trade to lessen the load the rules placed on a DM, while not actually lessening the rules. Like Joe Mason said, you don't always have to have the stats pre-made if you understand how things work and take notes (I wouldn't wing a major character though, that's just wrong).
And yes, crunch is dominate in WotC books to intice players to purchase books. It's a shame really, Mystara's "fluff" is what really got me hooked on D&D; got my mind really thinking. The gazetteers took D&D from a game of dice and paper, to another world where people lived and breathed.
I agree with you, DM, many players seem to probably rely very heavily on the numbers to define what your character is (feats, skills, etc., abilities often akin to video games, IMO). Though many of these feats and skills are often based on cultural backgrounds, even when lumped together in the same sourcebooks (The Complete Warrior, etc.), my impression is that most players (yes, "younger" ones) just want the best skill selections that allow their character to win, and that's it.
I am SO glad my players know how to roleplay and "think the way their character thinks". One of my (youngest actually) players is soon to have his rogue introduced into the campaign, and he has NO COMBAT anything!
I sometimes wonder about the state of roleplaying today.
Like Joe Mason said, you don't always have to have the stats pre-made if you understand how things work and take notes (I wouldn't wing a major character though, that's just wrong).
Pfft. I sometimes make up the campaign's final nemesis at the moment of climax.
(It's because I'm very lazy. Quite often the night before a game I'd sit down to make up stats, get distracted, and then the next day be forced to go in with nothing. For a while I figured I'd do it, "Just this once, and then tomorrow I'll make up all the stats so that it's consistent next week." But it always worked out just as well, and I don't think my players even noticed the difference, so I stopped even trying.)
Joe
It's because I'm very lazy. Quite often the night before a game I'd sit down to make up stats, get distracted, and then the next day be forced to go in with nothing.
LOL! What I am doing right now is my distraction from preparing for tomorrow's game! And there was some sarcasim in that "just wrong" statement ;)
And yes, crunch is dominate in WotC books to intice players to purchase books. It's a shame really, Mystara's "fluff" is what really got me hooked on D&D; got my mind really thinking. The gazetteers took D&D from a game of dice and paper, to another world where people lived and breathed.
Same here - it made roleplaying "real".
Pfft. I sometimes make up the campaign's final nemesis at the moment of climax.
(It's because I'm very lazy. Quite often the night before a game I'd sit down to make up stats, get distracted, and then the next day be forced to go in with nothing. For a while I figured I'd do it, "Just this once, and then tomorrow I'll make up all the stats so that it's consistent next week." But it always worked out just as well, and I don't think my players even noticed the difference, so I stopped even trying.)
Joe
I don't know how I feel about this. Some of the most memorable moments in my games were created "on the fly" and made players weep or shout with joy. But I often find that a well-prepared NPC is MUCH more interesting than one made up on the spot.
An example: If I make up an NPC fighter bad guy, I am not well versed enough in 3E that I can remember all the clever combinations of feats and magical items to make him one tough mother... So instead he just hacks away at the PCs with a sword or something
A while back I created a priest of Leptar with a magical whip with nine tails that each had a magical effect such as paralysis, level drain etc. Now THAT was an interesting encounter, because the players had to come up with a clever way to defeat her. And she had henchmen etc. to make it a tough battle.
What I am trying to say is: making up NPC stats on the fly (IMHO) makes for a boring fights, while making up NPC personalities or situations on the fly is the source of some of the best experiences in the game.
JesperWhat I am trying to say is: making up NPC stats on the fly (IMHO) makes for a boring fights, while making up NPC personalities or situations on the fly is the source of some of the best experiences in the game.
Well put, Jesper!
I completely agree that it takes much longer to stat out a mid to high-level NPC than it used to. There are, however, a few time-savers available.
1) There are a number of programs available that can assist in creation of PCs and NPCs. One of my players swears by PC-Gen, which is a free download, and can be customized by selecting which rulebooks you are using for your game.
2) There are the NPC tables in the Dungeon Master's Guide, which can be helpful if you need a NPC on-the-fly. You can make minor changes to the stats as you go, just make sure to note them for later use.
3) My favorite time-saver happens to be the plastic, pre-painted D&D Miniatures. The miniatures all come with abbreviated stat blocks on a notecard (one side is used for the skirmish rules, the other for D&D 3.5). I regularly use these for "throw-away" NPC encounters, such as the main villain's henchmen. It also works for many of the monsters. By using the pre-generated stat cards for things like henchmen, wandering monsters and such, I can spend that much more time fleshing out the really important NPCs.
Inconsistency - More than any other setting, Mystara has a serious "canon" problem. It started as Dave Arneson's "Blackmoor Castle" campaign, evolved into the "Known World" of OD&D and, out of the blue, it was renamed "Mystara" and was given new rules (AD&D 2nd Edition).
Price/Value - The Audio products were innovative and could have brought Mystara a glory of its own. Unfortunately, the products were expensive due to this novelty, and the CD wasn't really helpful in-game (for several reasons).
Feeling/Flavor - How many Medieval Fantasy settings do you need? The fact is, with Greyhawk, DragonLance and Forgotten Realms as competition, Mystara was just "one-more" for the list. Combine this with the two points I described above, and you get the weakest link.
Support - This is more of a result from all of the above, but it goes without saying that there was very little Mystara material produced in comparison to other setting. From novels to Videogames, both DragonLance and Forgotten Realms got more support from TSR. Greyhawk was pretty much neglected too, but it held "historical value" which Mystara never had, or simply was never credited for.
Despite all of the above, I love Mystara, and it's one of the settings I want to recreate and make as solid "canon-wise" as other settings out there. It's hard work, and I currently have my hands full with Greyhawk, but I *will* do it.
Thank God for PDFs... I can *finally* read all that old material for reasonable prices! ;)
A while back I created a priest of Leptar with a magical whip with nine tails that each had a magical effect such as paralysis, level drain etc. Now THAT was an interesting encounter, because the players had to come up with a clever way to defeat her. And she had henchmen etc. to make it a tough battle.
What I am trying to say is: making up NPC stats on the fly (IMHO) makes for a boring fights, while making up NPC personalities or situations on the fly is the source of some of the best experiences in the game.
But if you've got the idea for a priest with a magical whip, you don't have to sit down and look up an equivalent spell effect for each tail, and worry about whether they've got the "Exotic Weapon - Whip" feat or whatever. Just write down your vague ideas for magical effects, and then apply them during the encounter. Most of the complexity from 3E is because they've gone to great effort to balance all the spell effects, so if you use the rules as written you should get a balanced encounter. If you just write down "paralysis 2d6 rounds", that might be too long or it might be too short to be balanced, but I can decide during the fight and adjust things like duration or saving throw based on my judgement.
I'm not saying to go in without any idea of a character's magic powers or fighting tactics, I'm just saying that if you've got a good concept, you don't have to jump through all of 3E's hoops if you're used to fudging the rules during the game anyway.
(Besides which, I thought we were talking more about making up NPC's suddenly for when the players do something unexpected, like attack the good guy's guards instead of the bad guy's. With OD&D, you can send the players out to buy more pop or something while the DM rolls up some new opponents real fast, but that's a lot harder with 3E - but in both systems, you have the option of making them up on the fly.)
...you don't have to jump through all of 3E's hoops...
Well put!
Back to the topic at hand though, one thing that came to mind is the "tongue-in-cheek/sillyness" that was included in many of Mystara's products. If it was targeted at youth, I doubt that's what the youth was necessarily looking for. I for one just looked beyond it to get all the other great stuff. I could see it being a turn-off for many people looking for a more serious RPG setting, which by this time, many D&D players were getting older.
Don't be so sad, LW! You're not alone here! I feel the same way.
IMO, what brought Mystara down was a mix of the following factors (apologies if anyone already mentioned these):
Inconsistency - More than any other setting, Mystara has a serious "canon" problem. It started as Dave Arneson's "Blackmoor Castle" campaign, evolved into the "Known World" of OD&D and, out of the blue, it was renamed "Mystara" and was given new rules (AD&D 2nd Edition).
Think of it as your knowledge of the world is increasing and evolving, the more you know, you realise how little you actually know. By the way played ODD and 1E, anything 2E I purchased, was converted. I like Fluff
Unfortunately girlfriends, children and marriage stopped my purchase the 2E Mystara/CD stuff, the most draining and timeconsuming hobbies of them all.
Digging out my "TSR PRESENTS The World of Greyhawk" with it's 32 page booklet and 2 maps, and my expert set with the known world. These were the 2 worlds where the group I played with used. My copies of both are annotated in different hands as we each took an area in each world as our own to DM. What were these 2 worlds to our group, they were areas ready for us to detail and expand on, and when 'canon' did not fit, it was ignored. Most of the time our adventurers spent more time trying not to get involved in the local politics, as it usually ended up with us leaving town/city/country as quickly as possible.
Greyhawk was invaded, defeated and risen long before the 'ashes'.
Karameikos was based on the Norman conquestn scenario, but where the thyatians only just won, and enough anglo's escaped to make life interesting.
Obviously my latest DMing of Mystara for the Kids is far more 'canon'. But there are still great areas unexplored and ready for my ideas.
Why did Mystara die, simply put 2E and the rationalisation of product lines to best support it.
If I could spell, I'd be a navelist.
Support Greyhawk was pretty much neglected too, but it held "historical value" which Mystara never had, or simply was never credited for.
I am wondering if Mystara doesn't have more of a "historical value" in Europe than Greyhawk. At least in Scandinavia, Menzter D&D was the first RPG to be translated from english, and so Mystara is regarded as the classic setting that everyone has fond memories of. Unfortunately, the RPG industry, being based mainly in the US always considers the European market secondary...
Håvard
Europe was introduced to D&D through the Mentzer's edition of Classic D&D, therefore I have always had the feeling it was more attached to Mystara than Greyhawk. I seriously doubt there are more Greyhawkers than Mystarans in Europe , even if both capitulate in front of the Realmsians, even here in Europe! :P
That's why I said "historical value" which Mystara never had, or simply was never credited for (emphasis mine).
Anyway, due to the fact that current D&D has Greyhawk as "core setting", I think it just edges out Mystara among European fans these days. That, and the fact that we may yet see Greyhawk material published, while Mystara is officially discontinued.
On a side note, THIS is exactly what I had in mind and what I would have liked to see as a Mystara Campaign World:
http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/11/11157.phtml
It shows that it's still possible to produce books that are ripe with fluff and are INTERESTING and worth buying! (it will soon be mine!) :D