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Post by davegibsongreyhawkdm on Aug 21, 2018 13:19:05 GMT -5
I remember buying the Fiend Folio when it came out, and being disappointed by a lot of the lame monsters.
If Gary had been allowed his edits to stand, would all of the FF entries by these people have made it through EGG's cuts:
Albie Fiore Jean Wells Stephen Hellman Neville White Charles Stross David Taylor Peter Korabik JD Morris Simon Eaton Louis Boschelli Nigel Morgan Peter Brown Stephen Home Underworld Oracle (these are Frank's creations?)
Would most of the other stuff have been cut by EGG, and replaced by monsters later published in MM2?
What monsters are worth keeping from FF, and what should be disposed of?
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Post by geneweigel on Aug 21, 2018 15:25:12 GMT -5
I think the whole was approved and Gary even worked toward integration with World of Greyhawk products with many of the monsters. As for Underworld Oracle, I believe its a fan magazine from Britain but that is about all I know. Here is a link to it on RPG GEEK. Each issue entry lists the contennts but it only says "new monsters": rpggeek.com/rpgperiodical/2463/underworld-oracle
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Post by geneweigel on Aug 21, 2018 15:28:32 GMT -5
I think the MM2 two years later was a response to say this is how it should done more cleanly but we se how that "clean" shit ended up with the "Monstrous Compendium" endless pullouts years later.
MM2 while its chockful of gems also has some duds. Like the Polar bear. I actually brought up the polar bear with Gary and he said it seemed weird as if he had zero to do with it.
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Post by geneweigel on Aug 21, 2018 15:40:10 GMT -5
Specifically my bear issue was with the Cave bear being so much better than a brown bear then the polar bear comes in like a dinosaur bear without blinking an eye when we all know that the brown and polar might be evenly matched in reality despite size variance.
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Post by davegibsongreyhawkdm on Aug 21, 2018 15:40:35 GMT -5
I think the whole was approved and Gary even worked toward integration with World of Greyhawk products with many of the monsters. As for Underworld Oracle, I believe its a fan magazine from Britain but that is about all I know. Here is a link to it on RPG GEEK. Each issue entry lists the contennts but it only says "new monsters": rpggeek.com/rpgperiodical/2463/underworld-oracle He used a lot of FF monsters in FToT....however he said on line that 1/4 he rejected and gave replacements before publication but Schick published anyway with no changes.
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Post by davegibsongreyhawkdm on Aug 21, 2018 16:09:09 GMT -5
Perhaps Gary rejected some Schick and Moldvay creations along with others like he mentioned - the Needleman, Kenku, Disenchanter...maybe that's why Schick completely blew him off?
I was looking at the Hellcat and thinking about setting up an encounter with that beastie...
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Post by geneweigel on Aug 21, 2018 16:59:06 GMT -5
I can't speak for whatever happened with FIEND FOLIO and Schick. All I know was he had a major falling out with Gary because before Gary died I was asking him who would be good from his era of TSR to locate and invite to convention and he said Schick was good at the start but he soon joined a movement within TSR that was leaning away from adventure and more towards peaceful stories, etc.
I was unaware of the replacement monsters but I had thought that it had to do with the encounter matrix.
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foster1941
Warlock
Duke of California, Earl of Los Angeles, Knight Bachelor
Posts: 475
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Post by foster1941 on Aug 21, 2018 18:29:18 GMT -5
In Dragon #58 (Feb 1982) in his introduction to Len Lakofka's article with all the new cleric spells that would eventually appear in UA, Gary talked Len up for a couple paragraphs and mentioned that one of the projects he was working on with Gary was a "revised" edition of Fiend Folio (which is noteworthy because at that point the book had only been out for a few months). That, of course, was never published, so we don't know how extensive the revisions would have been - whether it just would've been changes to the encounter tables (which we know Gary complained about in the pages of Dragon a couple other times) or clean-up and modifications to the existing write-ups (there's some weird non-canonical White Dwarf-isms that sneaked into a few entries, like the references to anti-paladins in the githyanki description - the long list of alternate names for FF creatures in the MM2 index also looks like Gary trying to shift that book's contents closer to the AD&D aesthetic baseline), or if it actually would have actually gone so far as dropping some creatures and added others (Gary mentioned in later years not liking some of the monsters in the book but never AFAIK specified which ones). And of course there's the question of whether a FF re-edited by Len Lakofka would've turned out better or worse than the original...
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Post by geneweigel on Aug 22, 2018 9:07:32 GMT -5
In Dragon #58 (Feb 1982) in his introduction to Len Lakofka's article with all the new cleric spells that would eventually appear in UA, Gary talked Len up for a couple paragraphs and mentioned that one of the projects he was working on with Gary was a "revised" edition of Fiend Folio (which is noteworthy because at that point the book had only been out for a few months). That, of course, was never published, so we don't know how extensive the revisions would have been - whether it just would've been changes to the encounter tables (which we know Gary complained about in the pages of Dragon a couple other times) or clean-up and modifications to the existing write-ups (there's some weird non-canonical White Dwarf-isms that sneaked into a few entries, like the references to anti-paladins in the githyanki description - the long list of alternate names for FF creatures in the MM2 index also looks like Gary trying to shift that book's contents closer to the AD&D aesthetic baseline), or if it actually would have actually gone so far as dropping some creatures and added others (Gary mentioned in later years not liking some of the monsters in the book but never AFAIK specified which ones). And of course there's the question of whether a FF re-edited by Len Lakofka would've turned out better or worse than the original... You can actually measure the Lakofkaism. In L1 it features two monsters that don't have upfront hit dice a beholder and a stone golem as a "spectator" and a "stone guardian". Lakofka assigned the first obvious number in the Explanatory Notes under Hit Dice for both of their "missing" hit dice (which there was confusion amongst players as to where are the HD for those): Its like he was like YEAH WHATEVER then forgot that he did a "Tommy Flanagan" and said YEAH THATS THE TICKET, THEY'RE "NEW".
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Post by grodog on Aug 22, 2018 10:26:03 GMT -5
My first issue! Curiously, that intro also features another mention about progress on ToEE. in his introduction to Len Lakofka's article with all the new cleric spells that would eventually appear in UA, Gary talked Len up for a couple paragraphs and mentioned that one of the projects he was working on with Gary was a "revised" edition of Fiend Folio (which is noteworthy because at that point the book had only been out for a few months). I asked Lenard about the revision project, and he said that So perhaps Gary was intending to do this revision but it never materialized, or he was thinking more about it than he let on with Lenard, or perhaps he was just thinking out loud while writing the column Allan.
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Post by davegibsongreyhawkdm on Aug 22, 2018 11:31:50 GMT -5
My first issue! Curiously, that intro also features another mention about progress on ToEE. in his introduction to Len Lakofka's article with all the new cleric spells that would eventually appear in UA, Gary talked Len up for a couple paragraphs and mentioned that one of the projects he was working on with Gary was a "revised" edition of Fiend Folio (which is noteworthy because at that point the book had only been out for a few months). I asked Lenard about the revision project, and he said that So perhaps Gary was intending to do this revision but it never materialized, or he was thinking more about it than he let on with Lenard, or perhaps he was just thinking out loud while writing the column Allan. That's good criteria to remove poor FF entries: ridiculous, sci-fi, overpowered/unbalanced. There are at least 40 FF entries that fall into at least one of these criteria, some fit more than one of these criteria... Most poor FF entries seem to fit the 'ridiculous' criteria at a minimum...some I have to think about if the monster is truly ridiculous, or if only the specific FF monster art is ridiculous?
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Post by geneweigel on Aug 22, 2018 11:44:33 GMT -5
That is totally what I would expect from Len!
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Post by geneweigel on Aug 22, 2018 11:48:07 GMT -5
I think the githyanki is wearing what the artist thought was "banded armor" as "bandaged armor". Its a nice monster image but it needs to be altered to fit somehow.
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Post by geneweigel on Aug 22, 2018 11:53:16 GMT -5
Oops sorry I meant "splint" as in wearing splint with bandages.
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Post by geneweigel on Aug 22, 2018 11:55:32 GMT -5
I would fix it by perhaps saying they're automatically way less than liches (9HD) and they have mummy AC (3) and those dingleberries explode with some kind of rotting spores.
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Post by geneweigel on Aug 22, 2018 15:10:20 GMT -5
Its interesting that there wasn't any attempt at fixing the name "githyanki" in any way. What would be a better MM2 take for an alternate name? Astral Lich Mummy?
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Post by geneweigel on Aug 22, 2018 15:15:23 GMT -5
My brother had used the hell out of the gith types but I think thats why I overdeveloped the astral with other groups because they were too precise and world specific feeling.
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Post by grodog on Aug 27, 2018 19:26:41 GMT -5
Do we know any more about Gary's concerns specifically with the random encounter tables in FF?
I've generally preferred using those to the MM2 tables, since the MM2 tables were so short and non-comprehensive in approach, in comparison.
Allan.
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Post by geneweigel on Aug 28, 2018 6:50:04 GMT -5
From DRAGON #66 (OCT 1982)FROM THE SORCEROR'S SCROLL:
I asked Gary who the hell was he talking about? Don Turnbull?
He said Lawrence Schick. I noticed afterwards he wasn't plainly credited but if you read Turnbull's foreword in FIEND FOLIO (1979):
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Post by geneweigel on Aug 28, 2018 7:04:52 GMT -5
In that same conversation Gary also said that they had to ratchet it up because it needed more and thats where I assume the non-TSR UK staff came in.
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