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Post by Scott on Aug 3, 2016 10:35:36 GMT -5
Another wonderful find making the rounds, excerpts from the pilot broadcast, set in Greyhawk. youtu.be/N74fRQkqAJE |
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Post by GRWelsh on Aug 3, 2016 10:46:18 GMT -5
You beat me to it -- I was listening to that yesterday, but hadn't finished it yet. It wasn't clear to me where on Oerth it is supposed to be set. Northending? Where is that? Frank Mentzer's Aquaria?
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Post by Scott on Aug 3, 2016 10:55:17 GMT -5
No idea.
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Post by geneweigel on Aug 3, 2016 11:19:23 GMT -5
Interesting. It remind sme of the Lord of the Rings and Star Wars radio programs of the time. That modern age commentary is like ear cancer though. Jon Peterson needs to hire a voice over if he wishes to continue to venture in real D&D stuff. He needs to be commenting on Elminster's haute couture fur and feather collection!  |
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foster1941
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Post by foster1941 on Aug 3, 2016 12:34:20 GMT -5
Interesting! My guess is that Frank Mentzer wrote it - the place-name from his modules is a give-away, as well as the (IMO) pretty cheesy nature of the adventure. It's lame that Peterson keeps interrupting with his commentary, rather than just doing a 2-3 minute intro and then letting the recording play out on its own.
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Post by GRWelsh on Aug 3, 2016 12:48:19 GMT -5
I like Peterson's commentary but I would also like to be able to hear the full show.
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foster1941
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Post by foster1941 on Aug 3, 2016 12:51:59 GMT -5
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Post by GRWelsh on Aug 3, 2016 12:56:32 GMT -5
"We just randomly encountered the Man-Thing!"
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Post by geneweigel on Aug 3, 2016 14:39:51 GMT -5
There was a Willingham mag ad series that was different from those that ran in color mags in 1982 and its crap compared to his initial forced style. Once he is is in his groove you start to him ripping off Dr Strange's costume for the magic-user and awkward shadowing to cover mistakes.
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Post by geneweigel on Aug 16, 2016 22:40:10 GMT -5
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foster1941
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Post by foster1941 on Aug 16, 2016 23:59:07 GMT -5
Jon Peterson is consistently anti-Gary, claiming, essentially, that Gary always lied so nothing he said or wrote should be trusted and other people's accounts should always be favored over his. For example, he rejects the entire notion that Gary was rendered powerless by the Blumes and insists he was calling the shots at TSR the whole time.
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Post by grodog on Aug 17, 2016 0:07:06 GMT -5
You beat me to it -- I was listening to that yesterday, but hadn't finished it yet. It wasn't clear to me where on Oerth it is supposed to be set. Northending? Where is that? Frank Mentzer's Aquaria? Per the radio show, the PCs are seeking a missing person in a cave in mountains near "Northending" (and the mountain itself is named Vulture's Spike, if I heard it correctly). Northending isn't a settlement in Greyhawk that I'm aware of (although someone on Canonfire! suggested the Yeomanry??), but such a town is mentioned in the mid-'80s module R3 Egg of the Phoenix, by Frank Mentzer, which is obviously set in Frank's Aquaria campaign. Part one of the two-part tourney module occurs in the "Caves of Northending" (and Northending itself is set in a mountain chain in Aquaria), so it seems like it's an Aquaria setting rather than a Greyhawk one to me.... |
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Post by grodog on Aug 17, 2016 0:11:33 GMT -5
Jon Peterson is consistently anti-Gary, claiming, essentially, that Gary always lied so nothing he said or wrote should be trusted and other people's accounts should always be favored over his. For example, he rejects the entire notion that Gary was rendered powerless by the Blumes and insists he was calling the shots at TSR the whole time. Hmmm. I'm not sure I'd go quite that far: in my recollection, Peterson's Ambush at Sheridan Springs @ medium.com/@increment/the-ambush-at-sheridan-springs-3a29d07f6836#.q3i0rqbzn sounded like a fairly neutral rendition of Gary's relative state of control over the company to me (but I've also not re-read it since it was first posted last summer either). Or, are you thinking of PatW vs. some of Peterson's pieces published afterward, Trent? (I know Rob dismisses Peterson out of hand, but that's because he doesn't like Peterson's approach of relying on document sources vs. first-hand accounts). |
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Post by Scott on Aug 17, 2016 7:33:16 GMT -5
You beat me to it -- I was listening to that yesterday, but hadn't finished it yet. It wasn't clear to me where on Oerth it is supposed to be set. Northending? Where is that? Frank Mentzer's Aquaria? Per the radio show, the PCs are seeking a missing person in a cave in mountains near "Northending" (and the mountain itself is named Vulture's Spike, if I heard it correctly). Northending isn't a settlement in Greyhawk that I'm aware of (although someone on Canonfire! suggested the Yeomanry??), but such a town is mentioned in the mid-'80s module R3 Egg of the Phoenix, by Frank Mentzer, which is obviously set in Frank's Aquaria campaign. Part one of the two-part tourney module occurs in the "Caves of Northending" (and Northending itself is set in a mountain chain in Aquaria), so it seems like it's an Aquaria setting rather than a Greyhawk one to me.... Well, since the plan was to make Aquaria part of Oerth it's both. |
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Post by geneweigel on Aug 17, 2016 8:11:15 GMT -5
The module featuring Northending was R3 EGG OF THE PHOENIX (1982) by Frank Mentzer. In 1983 it was retconned into World of Greyhawk with R4 DOC'S ISLAND. Both of these modules were only directly sold to RPGA members but I think they were readily available at cons.
A later version fused all R RPGA modules together in I12 EGG OF THE PHOENIX in 1987 by Paul Jaquays without Mentzer (which I thought was terrible by the way!)
Here is the first, and Greyhawk relevant, paragraph from the history of DOC'S ISLAND which continues for a few pages:
Jaquays must have raped...AHERM... developed it like Hammack's AKBAR was done the year before to tie up all that was left.
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foster1941
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Post by foster1941 on Aug 17, 2016 10:31:24 GMT -5
Jon Peterson is consistently anti-Gary, claiming, essentially, that Gary always lied so nothing he said or wrote should be trusted and other people's accounts should always be favored over his. For example, he rejects the entire notion that Gary was rendered powerless by the Blumes and insists he was calling the shots at TSR the whole time. Hmmm. I'm not sure I'd go quite that far: in my recollection, Peterson's Ambush at Sheridan Springs @ medium.com/@increment/the-ambush-at-sheridan-springs-3a29d07f6836#.q3i0rqbzn sounded like a fairly neutral rendition of Gary's relative state of control over the company to me (but I've also not re-read it since it was first posted last summer either). Or, are you thinking of PatW vs. some of Peterson's pieces published afterward, Trent? (I know Rob dismisses Peterson out of hand, but that's because he doesn't like Peterson's approach of relying on document sources vs. first-hand accounts). The "Ambush at Sheridan Springs" article was where I first noticed it (note: I haven't read Playing at the World). Throughout that article, describing all the mismanagement and bad business decisions that occurred at TSR in the early 80s, his narrative makes Gary complicit, if not primarily responsible, for all of them (the overhiring, the ill-advised expansions and acquisitions, etc.). When I pointed out to him that Gary's own account of those years was very different - pointing out the "Ultimate Gygax Interview" that matches, in all pertient details, the account I heard from him personally in 1988 as well as other sources, such as Bill Silvey's phone interview, he dismissed all of it out of hand, saying that anything Gary said after-the-fact couldn't be trusted because it was too inconsistent with the contemporary documentary evidence (primarily articles from TSR's internal company newsletter). When I suggested that perhaps those newsletter articles were the fabricated story and Gary's version was the true one he completely rejected the idea on the grounds that, essentially, he didn't consider Gary's account to be trustworthy (IIRC one of his bits of evidence for that was that Gary slandered one of the outside TSR board-members as being incompetent when Peterson says he was a prominent Milwaukee lawyer and not incompetent at all). It became clear to me (and has become clearer with subsequent articles, like the ones Gene linked above) that Peterson is biased against Gary and Gary's narrative of those years, to the point that flimsy counter-Gary evidence is given much more weight than strong pro-Gary evidence. This is problematic because he frames his version of the story as being the objective truth, when it's really his personal spin based on which evidence he has accepted into his narrative (contemporary documents) and which he has rejected (after-the-fact recollections - even when those recollections specifically state that the contemporary documents were false, as with the case of Gary and the TSR company newsletter articles (where he admitted that the struggles between him and the Blumes, and his powerless position, were deliberately kept out of the public eye and he was only free to discuss them after-the-fact)). He also seems to be biased towards his own non-public sources that are impossible, or at least very inconvenient, for other people to independently review, which feels suspiciously convenient to me. We, basically, have to take his word that he's accurately representing what all of these sources say without being able to review them ourselves. Perhaps if we were, we might come away with different conclusions than he does. I also have something of a personal animus against him because when we were discussing this stuff he repeatedly "pulled intellectual rank" on me in a very condescending manner, lecturing me about how real professional historians operate at a higher standard than I was, apparently, able to understand. While it's true that I'm not a professional historian (I only studied history at an undergraduate collegiate level), AFAICT neither is he (IIRC his background is as a software developer), and even my undergraduate study was enough to tell me that his claims are total bullshit. Professional historians (at least good ones) when faced between contradictory primary-source accounts don't just decide which one they trust more and declare it to be the objective truth and completely ignore the other. Instead, they investigate, figure out why the accounts contradict each other, and what that tells us about both of them. The study of history is, largely, the study of those contradictions and attempting to make sense out of them. I gave up trying to argue with him about it, because it was taking too much of my time, I was getting too mad over it, and it was clear that he wasn't taking me seriously, but I still strongly disagree with his methodology and that what he's doing bears any resemblance to what "real" historians do. That said, when he posts new articles and videos I always pay attention to them, because he has access to tons of primary-source stuff that the rest of us don't and seeing and hearing about that is always interesting, as long as you're able to strip out his framing and commentary. |
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foster1941
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Post by foster1941 on Aug 17, 2016 18:08:49 GMT -5
As another example, here's Peterson's article about an aborted D&D screenplay from c. 1982: www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/tabletop/features/14604-Inside-Lost-1980s-Dungeons-Dragons-Movie-Gary-Gygax-LovedPeterson gives a bunch of quotes from Gary talking up the prospect of a D&D movie and promising that any D&D movie that was made would be great or he'd apologize for it, gives a summary of the screenplay that puts a lot of emphasis on how cheesy and un-D&D-like it seems, and then concludes with some snickering about how if this apparent stinker of a movie had actually gotten made that Gary probably would've owed the readers the promised apology. The tone of the whole piece is mocking and sarcastic, and seems to be based on two premises: 1) that Gary was a fool because he "loved" this terrible screenplay that was totally un-D&D-like and exactly all of the things he said it wouldn't be; and/or 2) that Gary was lying to the fans because and knew the screenplay was bad but praised it anyway, playing them for suckers. The possibilities that aren't explored are 1) that taken as a whole the screenplay isn't actually as bad as his summary and snippets make it appear (the guy who wrote it was an Oscar-winning screenwriter, and all we have to go by to judge its quality are Peterson's summary and five very short excerpts), and/or 2) that Gary did recognize that it was bad, which is one of the reasons why it was never produced and why when he got out to Hollywood he and Flint Dille wrote a different/replacement screenplay, and it was their screenplay, not the one Peterson reviewed, that Gary was shopping around Hollywood c. 1984 and drew interest from John Boorman and Orson Welles. |
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Post by geneweigel on Aug 18, 2016 10:59:29 GMT -5
Gary had told me that everybody and everyone wanted to do documentaries and books about him so the idea was old hat to him when I joked about how I was going to write a book about him and Rob called "NO ONE GETS OUT OF THIS DUNGEON ALIVE: The Real Story Behind D&D". Of course, I was joking, I can't even finish these damn modules that I've been working on (COMING SOON... Liar!!! ), but the intensity that he answered that was that it was irksome as if there were people not listening to him and wanted to hear something negative over the truth. The truth is that D&D is all about making nothing into something. Only Gygax had this ability to make others do this with great appeal others fall short in the thinking that its solely them. Case by case from top to bottom its still the Gary that is the interesting part of any fantasy game. This is grinding to the mind of any gaming fantasist who wants to escape the Fantastic Worlds of E. Gary Gygax and make "Jourth", "Goblin World" and "Dracor Realms" into their own thing especially if they want to make some bucks off it. If I had a dime for every boring drip who told me that their fantasy world was original I'd have a shitload of dimes. They just have to accept his influence and move on. Leiber, Smith, Lovecraft, Howard, Vance, Tolkien, Merritt and Gygax are the top shelf S&S names and thats that. You start idolizing Arneson and your fantastic ship is not getting too far. |
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