Okay, enough dunking on Conventional Play and the Cargo Cult.
Let's make this easy. You want a proper tabletop adventure game. Time to short list with links; no you're not getting them by Christmas unless you buy PDFs or you pay out the nose for overnight shipping.
Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st Edition
You may well have to buy new copies, in which case you have to go through DriveThruRPG. I took the liberty of linking directly to a Print-On-Demand search for AD&D1e, which has the three core rulebooks- and that is all you will ever need, as the Bros proved. Unearthed Arcana can also be had new in POD. Oriental Adventures, Deites & Demigods, Manual of the Planes, and the Fiend Folio all have their fans but are not essential in the least. The rest? Not so much, and needed even less.
Gamma World 1e
Again, you're going to have to hit up DriveThru for the rules if you buy new. Jeffro has a series talking mostly about GW3e, but a lot of those demerits go away with the original version of the game. Do keep in mind that any pop culture references will reflect the date of original publication, same as with AD&D1e.
Classic Traveller
Guess what? DriveThru again for new product. The best start is The Traveller Book, and that's enough to run entire campaigns for decades on end; you don't need the later books or other supplements at all, but you may want what they offer. The same caveat about GW applies here.
Buy Used When You Can
Half-Price Books, Books-a-Million, Abebooks, Noble Knight Games, Alibris, and Ebay are all good places to go hunting when the local game store turns up empty. I would also pay attention to garage sales, estate sales, and similar owner-run used product sales; you can score some treasure that way.
My Substack account--the Lakeside Clubhouse--is now live. Please subscribe.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Anonymous comments are banned. Pick a name, and "Unknown" (et. al.) doesn't count.