Quote
Until AD&D there was not a comprehensive rewrite of D&D. AD&D was a superset of house rules, aimed at creating a uniform experience. The Holmes Basic set was a medical doctor explaining to Gary that having done a textbook, and being a doctor, he could do "it" right. That was an interesting flop, but led to D&D Basic-Advanced (and Master and Immortals -- the last of which is pretty sharp). Then, with both the Arneson flap (Dave may have been quick to point out in print that Gary got everything wrong, but he was even quicker to realize that there was money to sue for) and other issues, TSR decided to do a D&D that was a return to the tradition, which led to Moldvay doing the first book of the D&D, I did the second (the Expert Set) and Frank Metzer did the Immortals.
One neat thing was that Judges Guild predicted the appetite for material that kids playing 24/7 would have. No one believed that there would be a real market for scenarios until JG proved it.
Runequest has been interesting, as is the on-line Yahoo group and playtest. Chaosium slipped up, in a way, as did Avalon Hill, when the trademark registration lapsed, which led to Greg Stafford getting it back. Though RQIII/IV/Stormbringer --> Delux Basic Role Playing without Glorantha vs. more RQII/revisted/Glorantha -- > Mongoose Runequest hits a marketing riff off of RQII and what they can add to it, that should be an interesting market, if it has any impact at all.
Years ago, I played with things in that line myself. You can see the stuff in an on-line archive at http://adrr.com/hero/norns/ .
In addition, the old drafts of the original elemental planes for D&D finally surfaced and I auctioned them off through Paul Stormber. Actually, what got auctioned was an editor's copy. The original documents are still missing (but being looked for). If anyone knows what happened to them at Mayfair, I'd love a line at getting my things back.
Some day, if I ever get enough time, I'll have to go through, outline everything I've got on-line, and redraft it to be coherent and consistent, rather than reflecting different stages of flux.
I did get started writing a bit when I was contacted about Starstrands, but the guy who contacted me dropped out of touch again. He got the original documents at TSR and has been running a Starstrands campaign on and off since the late 70s or early 80s and Gary got us together. Don't know what happened to him (last I heard was a couple years ago), but you can see what the result was for me at http://adrr.com/story/sketch.htm#StarStrands and http://adrr.com/story/project.htm
I've a pdf a friend burned for me of the Mistworld proof of concept rough draft. Anders was going to do some scenarios for it and I was going to rewrite it to fit the "current" Basic Role Playing when it was rewritten ... but the project underneath it (BRP with Magic World, Superworld, Futureworld, Demonworld, etc.) fizzled out.
If anyone is interested, I'll be glad to e-mail you a copy of it. Just drop me an e-mail. My co-writer was supposed to do some scenarios, that never happpened, alas. I may yet rewrite it all when BRP Delux is finished.
Just some misc. quotes and comments.
Steve
http://adrr.com/story/ (for my artwork)
http://adrr.com/hero/ (for my heroquest stuff)
http://adrr.com/hero/scenarios/ (for some scenarios)
http://adrr.com/hero/norns/index.htm (for setting/rules materials)
http://adrr.com/hero/wildhunt/index.htm (for more misc. scenarios)
http://adrr.com/story/project.htm (etc.)