Thursday, April 14, 2022

I was interviewed for a Podcast!

This is sort of old news now (since it was posted on three days ago) but in case anyone hasn't already heard, German AD&D (and other old-school wargames) uberfan Settembrini did a 3 hour interview with me for his podcast, which is now available for your listening pleasure. I've heard from people who've listened to the whole thing (or at least claim to have) that it's not totally boring and incomprehensible, so yay! 

I haven't listened to it (because I don't think I could stand to listen to my own voice for 3+ hours) but from memory we talked about (in no particular order and tending to ramble back and forth between topics) why we like AD&D better than BX D&D, my inspirations and methods for creating The Heroic Legendarium (and the bootleg "AD&D Companion" that preceded it), what makes for good adventures and why Temple of Elemental Evil isn't one, my games with Gary in the 80s playtesting Necropolis (and my attempts at leveraging that experience to create an accurate AD&D conversion of it), using miniatures vs theater of the mind, why I like wargames but am not actually very good at them, why and how OSRIC needs to be updated, whether it's possible to make the Upper Outer Planes a location for interesting adventures, and probably some other stuff that I'm forgetting. 

It was fun having a nice long conversation with someone who shares my enthusiasm for this stuff. Maybe it will also be fun to listen in on that conversation... 

5 comments:

  1. I listened to it and it was very entertaining, even the second time around!

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  2. Wow...can't wait to give it a listen. I find Settembrini's stuff great, it's just that I speak so little German that I need to wait for his conversations with English-speakers.

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    1. Settembrini called out your "No Artpunk" adventure for praise during the interview. Alas, in the heat of the moment we both blanked on your name...

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    2. Ha! And here I work so hard at being unforgettable...
      ; )

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    3. All right, found a couple-three hours to give this a listen. As I hoped, there was plenty of good insights to be gleaned. The stuff about AD&D, the value of the original books (as a window into the thinking/mindset of Gygax, more than just a "rulebook"), the limitations of OSRIC, and the difficulties new 1E players have of adapting to the paradigm was all great.

      [the discussion on the popularity of B/X-OSE in comparison was also interesting; for what it's worth, I think your thoughts/suspicions on why it is what it is...as well as how it's developing...are pretty close to the mark]

      Also: very interesting the bit about Gygax using d10s for initiative. Interesting because I've never heard that...and, yet, my friends and I adapted the same system for our AD&D campaign (at my behest) back in the mid-80s.

      Anyway: thanks for doing the interview, and letting us know about it.

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