Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 thorf Jun 13, 2005 21:49:54	Congratulations everyone! With this thread, we have just hit the 500 thread mark. Well done everyone! :bounce: Over in the "catching up with Ravenloft" thread, some of us have been discussing what we could do as a sort of special topic to commemorate this achievement. The best we could come up with was sharing our experiences of Mystara with each other. So, please share with us all your best memories of Mystara in this thread. It can be your first memories of the setting, your favourite character, adventure or campaign, the most dreaded, scheming or funniest villain, etc. Whatever you like! Here's to Mystara and our wonderful, friendly community - and here's also to our continuing efforts on this board! I look forward to posting in the 1000th thread in the not too far future. Cheers!
#2 RPGpundit Jun 14, 2005 1:30:59	My earliest memories of Mystara are the Keep on the Borderlands and Isle of Dread; running D&D from the original basic set way back in 6th grade. It was the first real RPG I'd ever owned. At the time I got the rules completely wrong, but it was still some of the best fun I'd had. But my "best" memories of Mystara are really what I'm running right now. check out my "OD&D" thread, to see what I'm running and what's happening in my campaign. Its the first time I've run a long-term Mystara campaign in about 14 years, and its the first time I've had ownership of all the gazeteers and boxed sets. Its a blast. RPGpundit
#3 spellweaver Jun 14, 2005 9:24:11	My very first memory of Mystara was from reading the old blue expert set and looking over the maps of the Known World and Karameikos. We played an adventure with my friend Jens as a DM, and we averaged age 10-13 back then I don't recall much of the adventure (it was in 1990!) except that we were hired by a taxidermist in Threshold to capture some monster and instead we ended up robbing the local pharmacy and got away with a wagonful of magical potions (which of course had all sorts of unexpected effects when we proceeded to drink them! :D ) Oh yes, those were the days :-) Jesper
#4 zombiegleemax Jun 14, 2005 10:13:39	Ah, the Isle of Dread. I remember my character trying to capture a brontosaurus after someone convinced him it would be valuable if we could get it back to the mainland. Devastated half the party through what should have been a peaceful encounter. But it sure was funny.
#5 thorf Jun 14, 2005 12:22:04	Way back when I originally got into D&D and Mystara, I had two characters who stood out above all the rest. Both definitely had megalomaniacal leanings. The first was an Alphatian mage: Quint, Entreprenuer Extraordinaire. This character never really adventured as such; he was basically a character that I played with when I had spare time by myself. I spent many a late night doing stuff with Quint, although to be honest I don't remember what it was that he did to get to such high levels. I do remember, though, that Quint's passion was trading. A large portion of his time was definitely spent at sea, carrying expensive cargoes from port to port. Trade was probably one of the major contributors to his experience, and of course after a while he had amassed a fortune larger than all the gold in the Known World. (I was only 12 or so, after all. :P ) What did he do with all this money? Magic research, of course! Following the trend of using Quint to play with side rules I would otherwise never get to use, Quint embarked on a magic item and spell research career that rivalled and surpassed any other mage. It all culminated in his skyship fleet, which was ludicrously vast, and cost an absolute fortune to make. The last thing I remember about Quint is that, in need of a dominion, he requisitioned the Imperial Territories of central Alphatia! :D This I remember fondly, although I can't for the life of me remember what he called the area, or the cities he built there. Hey, I did say I was only 12! :P ;) The other character, my all time favourite, was Branwys Skyratchet, Skygnome Hero. I really loved PC2, especially the skygnomes, and I just had to have my own skygnome PC. I decided he would be the son of the NPC Branwys Skyratchet in PC2, and kept the same name since I liked it too. Always forced to be the DM among my friends, I pleaded with all my friends to DM Branwys for me. Thus he actually ended up having about five different DMs, all with completely different styles. My favourite DM was my brother, and we had a few really cool one on one adventures with him, culminating in his visiting the Dimension of Myth. However, when Branwys wasn't adventuring - which was probably often, since no one wanted to DM for me - he was of course inventing. He was both a shaman and a wicca, and I immensely enjoyed designing and building wild inventions with him. Branwys' fortune came from his shop of inventions, Gnomecrafts and Inventions. Eventually he ended up having a chain of them around the Known World, selling things such as fire elemental-powered jetpacks, water elemental-powered dishwashers, and so on; unfortunately I've forgotten the more interesting inventions. But he wasn't earning all this money for nothing - oh no. ;) Secretly, Branwys used his fortune to fund research into even wilder inventions, eventually creating a large fleet of gnomish submarines and "skyrocopters". (Yes, the skyrocopters fitted inside the submarines! ;) ) These he used to found a secret underwater gnomish empire - a place where gnomes could be free of the persecution and ridicule that often follows them on the surface. Branwys later turned up as an NPC patron in one of my later campaigns, providing the PCs with interesting toys and transportation. I once used him to save my players from a Tyranosaurus Rex on the Isle of Dread, which had just ripped one character in half. Branwys, their patron at the time, teleported in on his jetpack and single-handedly swatted the T-Rex as if it was just a little fly. :D Both these characters might seem rather generic, not to mention melodramatic, but for me they are forever entwined with Mystara and the Known World, and that period when I was discovering everything through the Gazetteers. As such, they hold a special place in my heart, right next to the world of Mystara.
#6 zombiegleemax Jun 14, 2005 13:28:21	All I remember is DMing "The Lost Seneschal" from PC1, and one of my players - a sprite (which was rather spritish in Real Life as well) - set the poor peasants' cabin on fire, and ruined the rest of the adventure. Well, not such a fond memory - but I continued to love Mystara nonetheless! :D
#7 hihama Jun 14, 2005 13:50:11	First time I encountered Mystara, although it wasn't named yet, was in 1982 when I started high school and there was one year older guy there who has been as exchange student in USA. He was reading some red cover english booklet and me and two other guys made a mistake of asking what it was... Next evening we were playing B1 adventure and I have never got out there since. I don't remember anymore the character I played, except that it was a fighter. But what I remember was how scared we were when we encountered the troglodytes first time. Anyway I just realised that it was 23 years ago, funny how time flies.
#8 zombiegleemax Jun 14, 2005 20:08:14	Wow, where to begin. I started playing D&D when back in 87? I can't remember, maybe before that. Actually I have rarely played D&D, I am 99% of the time the DM. Some characters I remember, well. I remember one of my first players. He played a magic user. He wanted to have a chaotic character and he was the only one in the group. He played it perfectly, and led the other players to believe he was nuetral. He stole from them and eventually gained enough power that we had an adventure, to be our last and he abandoned the other players to become an Immortal, which never happened. This made the other players upset because they needed his help to recover the ultimate artifact the DragonSlayer (Yes I stole the idea of it from the movie of the same name and made it a powerful magic sword against dragons only). I can't remember much else about the adventure, most of the ones back then I made up out of my head. Mystara was a world I made up as I went, mostly. His name was Balzat. I have no idea where he came up with the name. Anyway, I allowed my players characters to gain too many levels too fast so we started over. I made them remake their characters as the children of their former characters. Of course they all played different types so they were still the children of, but not of their own original characters. Anyway the guy who played Balzat and has played with several of my campaigns didn't want to have Balzat having kids. So we agreed to make him the villian and that he came back at the beginning of the campaign and finished off his partners in adventuring to make himself the villian to the new characters who hunted him down. Eventually I got my hands on the WotI and read about the Radiance and decided that was exactly what Balzat was looking for and he began tormenting the players as they hunted after him to stop him from using the Radiance for himself and then he planned to destroy all the Immortals and claim himself to be GOD! He was crazy afterall. In later campaigns he was a little less outright with his cause and would hire the players to help him recover clues. He could do the deeds himself, but wanted to hide himself from the Immortals till he was ready to become one. So he is my most memorable PC. My most memorable campaign would be my first as well. The part I remember most is the Keep on the Borderlands. My players played it till I couldn't put anything else against them there and they had to begin traveling. They completely emptied the Caves of Chaos several times and finally they dug out some of the caves and created their own lair to hide their treasures and then made some newer characters so they could alternate and leave some behind to guard their treasure. We had to make a folder for all their treasure just to keep it organized. Now a days I make the campaigns more realistic and tougher. More pc's die and less treasure. What's the fun if you become too strong too fast? :angelhide :evillaugh