GameDaddy,

Thanks for sharing that. And I envy you your chance to meet Bob!

Sherlock,

Indeed they did. I’m surprised to hear they’re hard to find; for nearly two decades the Mayfair City-State releases cluttered up back stock boxes at every game store I hung out in.

Which was unfortunate — I thought they did a great job with them. Gygax contributed a fond introduction to the first one, if I remember correctly.

Jeff,

I think that’s part of what I was trying to communicate above (although not very well). A true love of JG products demands a high level of nostalgia, I think. You had to be someone who cherished it at a time when there was almost no other RPG products being written to understand.

That’s not to say that there weren’t some outstanding JG products (Caverns of Thracia, Dark Tower, and City State of the Invincible Overlord come to mind). But JG’s standards were several degrees lower than TSRs, and they produced some genuinely goofy products.

To love them as I do requires that you appreciate the bad with the good. If you weren’t a 16-year old gamer in 1980, desperately looking for a dungeon to run on Friday night, you probably won’t understand why I’m just as fond of some of their weaker products as I am of their acknowledged classics.

Bob was generous and really wanted to get back into publishing RPGs towards the end of his life. I was glad I had an opportunity to thank him, for many fond memories of my youth, as well as sit on on a game he ran.

Bill Owen is alive and kicking. Currently he is in Belize working as a adventure guide leading tourists through the ancient Mayan ruins of Tikal. When he is Stateside he still games from time-to-time, mostly historical Navy miniatures.

Sherlock,

Indeed. It encouraged two things, I think: an independence on the part of the game master, who naturally took ownership of the material, and adventures that took place over a vast landscape, since the players were encouaged to explore instead of arming up to delve into a dungeon.

When two game masters got together to compare Wilderlands sessions, it wasn’t about who managed to hew closest to the storyline. It was about who had shown the most creativity in responding to the unexpected directions their players took.

> If you enjoyed Tegel Manor (which Necromancer had contracted to redo, but then JG
> pulled the plug on products), Frog God’s The Black Monastery is very much like it.

You read my mind — I was just prepping a follow up article on the revised edition of TEGEL MANOR, which was announced but never published.

THE BLACK MONASTERY deserves a write-up all its own, though. I just read Bill Webb’s wonderful tale behind its release, which I think captures the communal experience of early D&D better than anything I’ve read in a long time:

http://www.talesofthefroggod.com/black.html

Thanks for the tip! Definitely need to check this out. And invite Bill to write for us someday.

They were for use with AD&D and TSR sued Mayfair for copyright infringement. Apparently Mayfair won and TSR bought the rights from them. Mayfair went under a few years later, resurfaced and is currently thriving as the English-language distributor of the Settlers of Catan franchise.

I’ve been through a few JG modules on the player side, but they were heavily modified. (The Tegal Manor my PC lives in looks almost nothing like the original Tegal Manor.)

In the recently released (and OUTSTANDING) Kobold Guide to World Building, Wolfgang Bauer includes the following statement in the opening essay:

‘If everything is defined (somewhere), the GM has no latitude to invent his own material. If everything is documented, the GM needs to know and master those huge reams of material just in case the party goes there. There are no mysteries, and there is no room to maneuver.’

“No room to maneuver.” I love that! Don’t fill in every bit, as fun as it might be to think about and write.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but I do now: THIS principle was the genius of Judges Guild’s Wilderness setting. The guide books had very short descriptions of different places and left if up to the GM to flesh out and use. JG created a sandbox with limitless opportunities. They gave you the crayons and a bare bones map and said, “Go color it yourself.”

Frog God Games is run by Bill Webb, co-founder of Necromancer Games. They have a Necromancer feel to them. And, to a lesser extent, a Judges Guild vibe.

If you enjoyed Tegel Manor (which Necromancer had contracted to redo, but then JG pulled the plug on products), Frog God’s The Black Monastery is very much like it.

And Frog God has a product line called Hex Crawl Chronicles: it’s more than a spiritual successor to the Wilderland’s approach.