Once upon a time there was an Englishman sitting in an office in Ichigao, Yokohama. It was a boring office and he was a very bored Englishman, so approximately once an hour he would visit rpg.net in an attempt to get some sort of creative and intellectual input into his life. What he mostly found were a lot of very pretentious people talking about 'doing' Cyberpunk 2020 with Spirit of the Century using ORE mechanics. But he also discovered that there was a large and silent majority of very interesting people indeed.
The bored Englishman noticed that every so often somebody on rpg.net - usually on the DandD Spotlight forum - would post a "Let's Read" thread. These threads, often insanely long, usually halted before ever reaching their goal, consisted of a single poster 'reading' an RPG text and posting their thoughts as they went along, with other posters chiming in and a dialogue developing. The bored Englishman liked these threads. He thought there were a capital opportunity to pontificate at length with ready-made starting material, and the Englishman was fond of pontificating.
He had also recently got his hands the ADandD 2nd edition Monstrous Manual from a fellow ex-pat fleeing Japan and heading back to Canada, and overcome with feelings of nostalgia and childish excitement (because it was the first RPG book he had ever bought - from a shop in Tel Aviv, no less) he decided to write one of these threads. Every day he would post a new 'entry' - a comment on one single monster entry - and invite readers to offer their thoughts. He was expecting perhaps one or two people contributing their thoughts each day. What he got was something entirely different: over 5000 posts spread over 5 separate threads, spanning nearly 2 years. Those 5000 posts are quite literally some of the best bad craziness that RPG geeks can offer, a smorgasbord of creative, unique, and often silly ideas that no self-respecting DM should be without.
The threads are here: 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. But the Englishman is currently undergoing the arduous process of editing them all into one big fat PDF file for the enjoyment of the reading public. Watch this space for details.
Ah, fond memories. I look forward to seeing the pdf!
ReplyDeleteYou, sir, are a giant among men.
ReplyDeleteKelvingreen: I have the raw text. It's just a matter now of deciding on layout and how fancy I want it to look.
ReplyDeleteLiza: Well thank you, but actually the thread contributors (Kelvin, the above commenter, among them) were absolutely great and did 99% of the work.
Congrats on seeing it through! :D
ReplyDeleteThis is insanely awesome.
ReplyDeleteWow, wish I had known about this before I did my monster manual thing. wouldve made it better to see what you;d said.
ReplyDeletetrollsmyth: Thanks. I've been meaning to post something about it on the blog for ages because it was finished almost a year ago, but kept forgetting.
ReplyDeleteR. W. Chandler: Thanks. Again, mostly that's down to lots of rpg.net people and their cool ideas.
Zak: Reserve judgement until you've read it...
What a brilliant project! Looking forward to seeing it in PDF form (I'm too lazy to read through huge forum threads ;)
ReplyDeleteI am so excited. I want to build a setting using a lot of the alternate views on the various monsters.
ReplyDeleteIncidentally, I was Lugh on rpg.net. I contributed a few posts in the early parts of the thread.
Gavin: It's a chore, but I'm getting there.
ReplyDeleteMarshall: Yes, I remember you. It might be a few weeks yet before it's finished, just to warn you...
Unreal. I loved those threads and can't wait to see the final PDF.
ReplyDelete