travel to Pittsburgh possible....

[grodog]

I may be offered a new job that will require travel to Pittsburgh with some frequency, so I may get to meet Scott and Gary in person finally

Speaking of which, are any of you going to GaryCon this year?

Allan.

[Scott]

That would be cool, Allan.
I want to go. I always want to go, but like always, it will be last minute.

[GRWelsh]

I'd also like to go to GaryCon, but I don't have any plans for it. I always say I'll go with Scott if he wants to plan a trip, but we've never done it. Maybe this year.

And yeah, if you come to Pittsburgh let us know. We should definitely get together and have a beer and/or a game.

[grodog]

Well, I accepted a different position than the one that would have included travel to Pittsburgh, so we're back to seeing each other at GaryCon

Allan.

[Scott]

Ahhh well. Hope it's better for you. We'll make the same con one of these days. GaryCon 2016 is still a possibility.

[grodog]

Glad to hear it =)

This year I'm running two different levels from my Castle Greyhawk, and two sessions of Tom Moldvay's CH-1 The Morandir Company (the unpublished prequel to CH-2 Seren Ironhand).

[GRWelsh]

Allan, have you reviewed CH-1 and CH-2? What are they all about? I've never seen them before.

[grodog]

Yes, I own copies of all 3. Moldvay published CH-2 Seren Ironhand in 1986, but never 1 or 3. I just posted a quick summary of the two on FB, here's the info:

It's the unpublished prequel to CH-2 Seren Ironhand, which you can see some good summary info @ tomeoftreasures.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=959

Some details on CH-1 The Morandir Company and CH-3 The Mountain King: both are complete adventure modules, in corrected typescript form, and include a number of new creatures (some created by Lawrence Schick). The maps in CH-1 are the originals, while those in CH-3 are original photocopies (Tom apparently copied his maps to spruce them up with stippling transfers of some sort, and to clean up errors, etc.; CH-2 includes similar styling on its maps, and CH-1 includes a pair of clean map photocopies too). Both are over 150 double-spaced typed pages long (and I haven't OCR'd them yet, so I don't know their word counts). There are a few scattered references to Known World nations in the mss., too.

I owe Håvard Frosta some additional summary details about them for his Blackmoor blog @ blackmoormystara.blogspot.com/2016/01/mystara-tom-moldvays-lost-known-world.html and am planning to work on that this weekend. I'll post the details to my site, once I've compiled them.

That help?

[GRWelsh]

Thanks... but I meant moreso the details about the adventures, and your opinions on them, rather than manuscript/publishing details.

[grodog]

Ah, gotcha.

I haven't written a formal review of them yet, but probably will eventually.

CH1 is a simple lower level dungeon (PCs = 3rd-5th) where the dungeon sections are connected by an underground river, so PCs will need to navigate throughout via water, which is a nice change of pace (similar to S4 in the manner). The encounters include a number of quite original tricks/traps, but the monsters that aren't new (and there are 12 new ones in CH1) are standard goblins, orcs, gnomes, etc. The non-standard ones beef up goblin-kind races, however, and include a number of magical, illusionist, and/or psionic types, in addition to better combat opponents than standard goblins and orcs.

CH2 is published, but I didn't find any good reviews online (it's relatively rare). It continues the adventure deeper into the mountain using the underground river, and pits the PCs against duergar, derro, spriggans, drow, and other underdark monsters (and its 15 new monsters). A variety of interesting other monsters too---hydra, rakshasas, demons, etc. It's for levels 4-6 PCs, and the drow have a demonic citadel that's pretty cool (it's the image on the cover).

CH3 is also unpublished, and features 5 dungeon levels of encounters, and a total of 38 new monsters (2 of which also appear in CH1). So lots of new stuff in this one! The PCs try to recover the lost dwarven artifacts of Morandir Mountain. An average, adult red dragon also lairs in the dungeon, along with the usual mix of Moldvay stuff.

The maps are all relatively simplistic for my tastes, but again the aquatic route does mix things up quite a bit, and there is some play to the vertical here and there.

That help?

Allan.