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Post by geneweigel on Oct 9, 2021 13:26:11 GMT -5
I finally got around to reading, saw a copy at a thrift store for a dollar and I gave up once he said let's play Joust. Should I continue?
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Post by GRWelsh on Oct 9, 2021 13:54:28 GMT -5
Come on, you should at least read until he gets to the Tomb of Horrors! I enjoyed the book a lot but possibly due to how it leaned pretty hard into 80's nostalgia. I've always wondered how it would read to someone who didn't know any 1980's trivia. That would be the real test of if it is a decent novel or not.
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Post by geneweigel on Oct 10, 2021 8:14:21 GMT -5
Yeah, that is the part after I stopped reading.
Its weird its like Tomb of Horrors played by a bad DM who didn't read the adventure through with a cheat as the way to "beat it". The semantics while I don't really care just irked me as someone who prepared the adventure a few times.
Instead of the writer having to grok the challenges of Tomb of Horrors its almost as if its told second hand to them and D&D is reduced to gobblety gook that can only be handled by ignoring playable detail. Hence Acererak playing JOUST instead of combat.
For example, the writer mentions the cover (Area 18 FALSE TOMB with magically prepared zombie) in a different section (Area 25 PILLARED THRONE ROOM) then describes Acererak as looking exactly like he does on the cover when Acererak's fake Acererak zombie didn't look anything like Acererak in all 3 depictions (2 covers pastel and green, and #16 handout) but he accurately describes the gems of the demi-lich on the "cover Acererak". It seems almost as if the writer consulted with your typical low IQ Gygax-hating D&D fanatic to arrive at their standard false Gygax digs (I.e. Gygax couldn't get it right so why bother? etc.).
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Post by GRWelsh on Oct 10, 2021 11:05:24 GMT -5
Yeah, a lot of the cultural references -- including to D&D -- are superficial at best. I felt the same way watching STRANGER THINGS when they're playing D&D and have to fight 'the Demogorgon.' The DM asks Will for his action and Lucas says, "Fireball him!" and Will says, "I'd have to roll a 13 or higher!"
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Post by geneweigel on Oct 10, 2021 11:57:02 GMT -5
Sometimes shit that doesn't fit right comes off like its a copyright dodge but some are just cheap and lazy.
Especially in film, like the Transformers movies. How many so far? 6? I'm a fan of the entire 1980's series/toys and its like a completely new (pre-developed?) robot fantasy merged to a Transformers theme. I guess the same can be said about THE HOBBIT live action films. They spent all this dough in development hell with booger-picking Guillermo Del Toro, probably making Gandalf have eyeballs on his buttocks, until it was commandeered by Jackson back in an attempt to meet LOTR levels. This is where cheap and lazy came in because they had zero choice. The money was spent already (on god knows what) and we had all these patch up jobs to make it seem as reasonable as the trilogy films.
In contrast, I think this writer is coming at this from an honest but tangential connection to D&D.
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