Continuing our series of english language interviews, we are honoured to greet Trent Foster Smith, once maliciously described as the Khmer Rouge of the OSR. We talk about his recent five-star module, Fractious Mayhem at Melonath Falls, his Heroic Legendarium, a most scholarly collection of conversions, errata, house rules and expansions for the 2nd Edition of AD&D that never was. We further discuss the state of the hobby, the Riddle of Basic and its link to the „older/younger sibling“ dynamic. Many thoughts are shared about Gygaxian module writing, what was lost in the 80s and the faults of the Temple of Elemental Evil. Most importantly, though, we talked about the „locked“ grand Gygaxian-1e Module: Necropolis, how he played it with EGG himself and how YOU can experience the same by doing it the Trent/Gygax way. Sadly, we forgot to talk more about Fraggle Rock, but we hope we can remedy this in the future.
The host was settembrini in this one.
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Hättet ihr nicht mal Lust, den Pundit in den Podcast einzuladen und euer Rindfleisch direkt auszusortieren?
Kann ich mir aktuell nicht vorstellen. Er kommt mir sehr politisch verbohrt und gelinde gesagt rechts-tribalistisch vor, UND er macht alles zum Politikum, weswegen man das nicht ignorieren kann. Ich meine, alleine diese Proskriptionsliste, uff.
Und rollenspielerisch interessiert uns/mich das alles nicht groß, was er die letzten Jahre macht.
This was a fantastic interview, but the besmirching of B2 is unforgiveable. My rage is untethered and boundless. You will face my fiery wrath.
Very interesting interview, well done both.
Melonath Falls cries out „this map represents a battleground“ in the same way the lairs in G1 to G3 do. An unskilled party is going to get ambushed and attacked from multiple directions.
Settembrini, you can pick up JB’s Hell’s Own Temple directly from his B/X Blackrazor site whilst we are waiting for No Artpunk volume 2. I think a play from those skilled in handling high level characters would be illuminating: JB has not nerfed any PC abilities, relying on the power and special attacks of the devils to challenge them; I suspect the 2 fire giants need reinforcement to 4 (or even 6). High level adventures are harder to judge from just a read through, as experienced parties will have clever combinations, making use of precast spells and magic items. If your group does attempt the module, a playtest report is expected!
Ah yes, I forgot he published it on his own! I recently started running a group through another Artpunk-Contest entry (Vault of the Warlord), a playtest report is forthcoming there, and for Hell’s Own Temple once played, it will be done. I cannot restate how much I think the high level play is were 1e shines the most and how only actual play can give you experience in that. We will hopefully soon-ish finish the big Huso-Module (Nether Prince), I have lots of thoughts on that one.