D&D 2E Jakandor

R_J_K75 said:

comes out to 78 that year, which is a lot.

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From 1992-1995, I was 100% out of D&D but game mastering Top Secret/SI, Boothill 2e, RECON, and West End Games Star Wars.

In 1996, I got back to D&D and made the easy choice to use the version I and my players (except one who never played before) were super used to. So used to it, I had some tables memorized. That was AD&D (1e). I started collecting old modules I didn’t have, mostly from the Compleat Strategist in NYC and mail order from BadMike.

I also began using MERP books and just converting things, and saying Middle Earth is to the West of Greyhawk: Sea of Dust is eastern Mordor, Plains of the Paynims is eastern Plains of Rhun.

I did look at the 2e stuff, but the volume was overwhelming. I’m guessing not a lot of new (or returning drop out) players were saying, “Ooh, great, 78 books this year alone to choose from.”

I remember thinking it’s like opera - maybe it’s cool if you’re into it, but where could you even make a start.

So I stuck to the old time rock’n’roll. My players loved Tsojcanth and Lake-Town.

And I fell down the AOL Greyhawk message board rabbit hole, and am still doing 3.5e rules with 1e, 3x, PF1, Harn, or 5e modules in Greyhawk, and still thinking about what on Oerth is beyond the Flannaess.

haakon1 said:

I did look at the 2e stuff, but the volume was overwhelming. I’m guessing not a lot of new (or returning drop out) players were saying, “Ooh, great, 78 books this year alone to choose from.”

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From 1992 until 1995 I didn't play either. I do recall going into a hobby store in sometime between 1990 and 1993 and seeing all the new and strange campaign settings and thinking this isn't the D&D I remember. But when I got back into the hobby 1995-1996 or so, a friend of mine had played in the Forgotten Realms prior to playing with us so we bought the box set and that became our default setting for a long time, even though we did stints in Ravenloft, Dark Sun, Planescape, Spelljammer, etc. Yeah there was a lot to choose from and could be overwhelming but at that time, I always looked at the many products as a good thing. Most of it was pretty unique. Nowadays in 5E besides the MtG settings (which feel half-baked and under supported to me), I can't really think of anything that's really new setting wise. Most is just a rehash of older editions settings. A far as I can remember the last real new setting was Eberron. If I had my way I'd want WotC to create a truly new campaign setting, one which they actually support beyond its initial release.

R_J_K75 said:

A far as I can remember the last real new setting was Eberron. If I had my way I'd want WotC to create a truly new campaign setting, one which they actually support beyond its initial release.

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I'm OK with their focus on Forgotten Realms. It seems to be what everyone (5e people, BGT3 people, and HAT watchers) think is "the" D&D setting.

I don't like "moving the timeline" forward approaches as has been done in FR (and in From the Ashes for Greyhawk). I prefer the approach in Harn - everything is written about a single year, individual games can move forward but the setting is point-in-time.

For that reason, I'm OK if they do very little with Greyhawk - "Ghosts of Saltmarsh" is a good book, and the 2024 DMG section I haven't read yet, but where anything changed for them, it didn't for me unless I like it.

I'm slowly reading every issue of Dungeon magazine, and I agree with the letter writers who say most FR and Greyhawk and Known World (Mystara) and non-setting specific modules are usable in most campaigns, as they were not too exotic during the 1e/2e/3e eras that Dungeon was in print. Whereas Spelljammer, Dark Sun, and Eberron adventures mostly only work in those settings. (Ravenloft is in between, and if other settings were covered in Dungeon, I haven't read those adventures yet.)

haakon1 said:

I'm OK with their focus on Forgotten Realms. It seems to be what everyone (5e people, BGT3 people, and HAT watchers) think is "the" D&D setting.

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Pretty sure this is by WotC own design just based on the fact that not many other settings that have seen a 5E release has gotten much support after.

haakon1 said:

I don't like "moving the timeline" forward approaches as has been done in FR (and in From the Ashes for Greyhawk). I prefer the approach in Harn - everything is written about a single year, individual games can move forward but the setting is point-in-time.

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I like advancing the timeline within reason but skipping a whole hundred years I didn't like. Though I'm not a fan of the world-shaking events that come with each new edition. I'd be cool with them doing a hard reboot back to the initial 1E timeline, but I don't think that's likely.

haakon1 said:

For that reason, I'm OK if they do very little with Greyhawk - "Ghosts of Saltmarsh" is a good book, and the 2024 DMG section I haven't read yet, but where anything changed for them, it didn't for me unless I like it.

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I stopped incorporating timeline changes in my FR game, I haven't used anything since the end of 2E. Actually, I don't even use much of any timelines in FR anymore except what I make up. I just don't have the inclination to read and remember all that stuff anymore and my players could care less.

I never played Greyhawk in the 80s or 90s. I read the section in the new DMG or at least a good portion of it. It left me with the same opinion I had about it after playing in a Greyhawk campaign and reading the Greyhawk Gazetteer and the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer in the early 2000s for 3E. I'm not going to say it's a bad setting; it just didn't wow me and almost seems kind of sterile IMO. Maybe it's because I didn't play a lot of the early 1E modules set there. I'm just guessing but I think the appeal for a lot of the fans is nostalgia for the setting as opposed to the setting being really good.

R_J_K75 said:

To this day I have never met anyone who ever owned, DM'd or played this setting.

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I owned a copy. Bought it, like so many other products, to mine for useful material for my own campaign. I don't think I opened it more than twice before I sold it a few years ago.

Whizbang Dustyboots said:

Complete Book of Necromancers has a small setting, creatively called Isle of the Necromancers, as I recall, that's meant to be just off the coast of Al-Qadim (I have no idea if it appears on the Al-Qadim map).

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It actually does. Sahu appears on the big Zakhara map included in the Land of Fate box set, and even on the map on page 13 of the original Arabian Adventures book.

Steve Kurtz wrote the Ruined Kingdoms and Cities of Bone sourceboxes for Al-Qadim, as well as the Complete Book of Necromancers, which I assume is why all three products are linked together.

Dioltach said:

I owned a copy. Bought it, like so many other products, to mine for useful material for my own campaign. I don't think I opened it more than twice before I sold it a few years ago.

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Yeah, I know the feeling all too well. I purchased many RPG books over the years with good intentions and plans for them, but they ended up sitting on a shelf unopened, unread only to eventually be sold.

I never bought the Jakandor books, nor have I felt much of a need to pursue any pdfs of it. I have thought of it as an interesting approach for a self-contained campaign, rather than the excesses of peak 2e. I think a more modular approach to subsettings would have been better for TSR, and more useful for DMs. But TSR's business model was all about the big boxed sets with adventures, splats, and most importantly to them novels. And the basic premise of necromancers vs. barbarians with the usual tropes turned on their heads isn't bad either.

I do have Tale of the Comet and it's more of a mini campaign than an actual setting. It's explicitly 2e's answer to S3 - Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, and it can probably be quickly described as D&D meets Stargate with Replicators as the big bad with some Borg and Skynet thrown in for bad measure. And in this setting, the evil AI utterly has the upper hand where technology is concerned, but has no means whatsoever of dealing with magic.

R_J_K75 said:

I never played Greyhawk in the 80s or 90s. I read the section in the new DMG or at least a good portion of it. It left me with the same opinion I had about it after playing in a Greyhawk campaign and reading the Greyhawk Gazetteer and the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer in the early 2000s for 3E. I'm not going to say it's a bad setting; it just didn't wow me and almost seems kind of sterile IMO. Maybe it's because I didn't play a lot of the early 1E modules set there. I'm just guessing but I think the appeal for a lot of the fans is nostalgia for the setting as opposed to the setting being really good.

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Greyhawk's appeal generally tends to be that it's a standard kitchen sink setting that's open enough for a DM to customize. It's kind of for the DM that wants a framework to build on, without having the level of detail that something like the Forgotten Realms has.

Ath'kethin said:

It actually does. Sahu appears on the big Zakhara map included in the Land of Fate box set, and even on the map on page 13 of the original Arabian Adventures book.

Steve Kurtz wrote the Ruined Kingdoms and Cities of Bone sourceboxes for Al-Qadim, as well as the Complete Book of Necromancers, which I assume is why all three products are linked together.

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Kurtz wrote all three, and some of the material from the Complete Book of Necromancers is a sequel to an adventure from Cities of Bone.

Orius said:

Greyhawk's appeal generally tends to be that it's a standard kitchen sink setting that's open enough for a DM to customize. It's kind of for the DM that wants a framework to build on, without having the level of detail that something like the Forgotten Realms has.

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I read the Greyhawk section in the new DMG and ran the "Fouled Stream" adventure. I didn't want to put too much time in reading and prepping an adventure if we weren't going to continue to play the new 5E revision. At this point we've decided to continue playing the sample adventures and set the game Greyhawk for simplicities sake. It succeeded if it's meant to a bare bones setting, even if it feels a little generic to me. This is something I can always change and elaborate as the game progresses, which is the point I suppose.

R_J_K75 said:

I never played Greyhawk in the 80s or 90s. I read the section in the new DMG or at least a good portion of it. It left me with the same opinion I had about it after playing in a Greyhawk campaign and reading the Greyhawk Gazetteer and the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer in the early 2000s for 3E. I'm not going to say it's a bad setting; it just didn't wow me and almost seems kind of sterile IMO. Maybe it's because I didn't play a lot of the early 1E modules set there. I'm just guessing but I think the appeal for a lot of the fans is nostalgia for the setting as opposed to the setting being really good.

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Disagree, but everyone has a right to an opinion.

I think the reason Greyhawk is popular is, yes, because it had the best adventures and the iconic characters and their spells and artifacts and all that. Because it was the first setting published. It can't really be separated from AD&D (1e).

I also like it because it has a played-in feeling - it was Gygax and Rob Kuntz sharing their home campaign with us, and TSR sharing their office/play testing games.

And because there's so much blank space, with fan-created alternatives to maybe do this or that over there, inviting each DM to make it their own.

FR strikes me as sterile, because it's written by committee to sell a bazillion setting books and everything else. "And Here There Be Dragons" has been filled in with a Domesday Book counting every candle in every room in every building in every city, or it seems to my semi-outsider self.