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Merric Blackman
Australia
Waubra
Victoria
Ramping up my reviewing.
Happily playing games for many, many years.
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I've been spending some time recently on ebay scouring for reasonably-priced classic games that I don't own. To be fair, there aren't that many classic boardgames that I want. There was one I really wanted, but most of the others (a few early GBoH games) I want more from a completionist point of view rather than anything else.
Slightly more extensive is the list of classic D&D modules I don't have, but recent purchases have done a lot to trim that list.
The newest ebay acquisition I have, and the one I'm most excited about, is Magic Realm. This has become something of a "grail" game for me recently. For the better part of thirty years I've been an avid fantasy gamer, most commonly through Dungeons & Dragons, but also through boardgames. My first such game was Talisman, but in recent years - as my boardgaming interest has grown - I've investigated such games as Prophecy, Runebound (second edition) and Return of the Heroes. All of those three have massive problems just being enjoyable games, and Talisman is rightly noted as being extremely random.
Will Magic Realm break the poor fantasy adventure game trend? Well, it's a bit early to say. At this point, I've played one game of Magic Realm, which didn't even include half the rules. We moved around and fought monsters, but things like Treasure, Natives and Magic didn't enter into it. With any luck, we'll start including some over the weekend.
For someone like me, who began back in the days of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (1st Edition), elements of Magic Realm are very familiar, even if in my 1st edition copy they're still optional: weapon speed, weapon length: ah yes! If you actually deciphered the AD&D DMG, both worked in similar ways to how they work in Magic Realm. However, there are other elements that are quite dissimilar. And then there are the bits and pieces of it being a boardgame: "warning" and "sound" chits give you clues as to what monsters might be lurking...
It does seem a fairly open-ended game. Return of the Heroes has been compared to it, but the comparison is mostly because of the paths leading from clearing to clearing on a random board. Otherwise, the games are quite dissimilar: you don't have the pointless travelling from spot to spot that you do in Return. Magic Realm is a game that looks like you begin to identify the threats and locations with repeated play, and the strictly competitive nature of other fantasy adventure games is lessened by the difficult of fighting monsters by yourself: teaming up with other players is encouraged by the game, but alliances may not be that permanent.
I'm very much looking forward to becoming more familiar with it. At some point I'll swap over to later versions of the rules, but the 1st edition rules seem much, much easier to learn than the 2nd edition ones - and the 3rd edition ones exist as a reference for people who already know how to play!
The other old games I've been picking up have of the old D&D variety. My AD&D and Basic D&D collection has been growing steadily over the past few years, but the last month has seen me getting a few rarer or more expensive items. I was delighted to win an auction last month for the H1-4 series of AD&D modules: the Bloodstone Pass series. This series was the highest level that AD&D ever covered, with the final adventure being for levels 20-100! I've actually owned H4 for a while, but it wasn't the really difficult one to find. No, that was H1, which I've regularly seen on ebay for around $80 and up. There's currently one listing for $156!
My set of the complete H series? $100. I'm feeling very happy about that. Certainly it then took another $20-30 in postage, but even so I'm feeling like I have a bargain.
When I first started playing in a D&D campaign, our DM had this plan of running all the super adventures: we'd start with the Temple of Elemental Evil, then go onto Scourge of the Slavelords, go to fight the Queen of the Demonweb Pits, and finally emerge back in the real world to play through the Bloodstone Pass series.
As it turned out, we never reached Queen of the Demonweb Pits, and Bloodstone Pass was likewise never achieved. That campaign is still the basis of a lot of my D&D gaming today, and it's nice to finally own all the component parts of it.
The other part of my D&D acquisitions has been getting more of the old Basic line of adventures. These were adventures that I never paid much attention to in the old days. Certainly I had copies of B2: The Keep on the Borderlands and X1: The Isle of Dread, but little else. Well, now I own a few more of them, and the latest shipment included a few Companion and Master level adventures. I've written a review of the first Master adventure - M1: Into the Maelstrom, and it was very interesting to see how it was (gasp) part of an adventure path.
Yes, a lot of the early CM and M series modules link together, telling the story of the adventurers who come to Norwold, forge dominions, and then incur the wrath of Alphaks, a Chaotic Immortal. I've got a feeling that not all that many D&D players are aware of this early story arc, coming as it did in a series of adventures that haven't really been played that much. High-level D&D never got that much support: there are nine companion-level modules, five master-level modules and only three immortal modules! (Not counting the Wrath of the Immortals set).
After reviewing Into the Maelstrom, I realised that I was coming into the middle of the story arc. So, I went back... and reviewed B1: In Search of the Unknown, the very first Basic adventure module. I'm hoping to go and review all of them in publication order... though, of course, I need to pick up a few first. I do have most of the missing ones in PDF, but it'd be nice to get the missing ones.
Of course, the ones I don't have will be expensive to acquire. And it requires me to stay interested in the reviewing process. We'll see how it goes.
For those interested in the list of 1st edition AD&D and Basic D&D adventures I still don't have, it's as follows. It's a remarkably short list. 
AD&D:
C4: To Find a King
L3: Deep Dwarven Delve*
N4: Treasure Hunt
N5: Under Illefarn
DL15: Mists of Krynn
DL16: World of Krynn
OA1-3, 5-7 (various Oriental Adventures)
D&D:
B9: Castle Caldwell and Beyond
B10: Night's Dark Terror
B11: King's Festival
B12: Queen's Harvest
X6: Quagmire
X7: War Rafts of Kron
X8: Drums on Fire Mountain
X10: Red Arrow, Black Shield
X11: Saga of the Shadow Lord
X12: Skarda's Mirror
X13: Crown of Ancient Glory
CM5: Mystery of the Snow Pearls
CM8: Endless Stair
CM9: Legacy of Blood
DA1: Adventures in Blackmoor
DA2: Temple of the Frog
DA3: City of the Gods
DA4: Duchy of Ten
M5: Talons of Night
IM3: Best of Intentions
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Ramping up my reviewing.
