Even though I had a well-worn Palladium Fantasy RPG rulebook sitting right there on the bookshelf, complete with graphic descriptions of wizards' cauldrons filled to the brim with the blood of human sacrifices, giant undead centipedes made from dozens of human corpses sewn together, and voluptuous necrophiliac lesbian demon assassins with asphyxiation fetishes (not to mention honest-to-god drawings of devil-summoning circles and the magic words needed to activate them)... it was this module that finally got my parents to sit down and have "the talk" with me about RPGs:
Yep, that's a psychic dominatrix cage fighter any way you slice it.
It just goes to show you - you can write about whatever messed-up stuff you want in the interior of your book, as long as you slap a goofy cover illustration of a knight riding a pegasus on it.
"giant undead centipedes made from dozens of human corpses sewn together"
ReplyDeleteThat thing is so awesome! I had to buy a copy of PFRPG 1e just for that -- they cut that adventure from the second edition.
I got into PFRPG during the heyday of AD&D 2nd edition and loved it. It was just nasty... I mean, it had all the dark, twisted stuff people claimed was in AD&D (but wasn't actually there) in spades. It was pretty metal.
ReplyDeleteI still think the original PFRPG was as good as or better than the D&D of its time. Too bad the 2nd edition was a mess.
Agreed, Blizack. Did anyone really *need* to play a coyle?
ReplyDeleteYou must have missed out on that big "I want to be a coyote-man!" gaming movement.
ReplyDeleteCoyles as PCs were fine by me, I just didn't think they needed to be in the core rulebook. (You could play one in the 1st edition, too - they were in the Monsters & Animals book.)
The main problem was adding a bunch of Rifts rules (personal SDC, physical skills, RCCs, PPE, etc.) for no real reason. That and ditching all the cool Hand-to-Hand skills for generic stuff like "HTH Expert". Lame.
perhaps your folks were alarmed at the impressive thighs of the figure on the cover, and her terrifyingly toned quads... they must have had a hard time accepting that you were *their* "dark son." (though i guess Chris was pretty into that stuff too).
ReplyDeleteChris was pretty into AD&D as a kid, but didn't actually own any of the books and played at a friend's house. The fact that it was him that got me into RPGs in the first place didn't click with my parents, for some reason.
ReplyDeletein fairness to your parents, they probably wern't aware of the "giant undead centipedes made from dozens of human corpses sewn together, and voluptuous necrophiliac lesbian demon assassins with asphyxiation fetishes" and so forth. i imagine if there were pictures of the above-mentioned on the cover of a book, they might have sat you down for a talk.
ReplyDeleteand which author came up with that crazy shit anyhow? it was Siembieda, wasn't it?
Siembieda mostly, yes. Wujcik wrote the adventure with the corpse-centipede.
ReplyDeletei imagine if there were pictures of the above-mentioned on the cover of a book, they might have sat you down for a talk.
That's actually what I was getting at with the comment about the goofy knight riding on a pegasus (that's the cover to the Palladium Fantasy RPG).
Whee, the Gersedi tombs! The MANFRO beast! The Ultimax Deathstone! More vampires than you can shake a pointed stick at! And if you take a specfic not-so-obscure route through the dungeon (through a single secret door) you can pretty much walk straight to the room containing the Stormbringer-ripoff sword that "ecstasies" you to death!
ReplyDeleteYou're talking about Deathkiss, which, while awesome, wasn't quite as fun as The Doubling Sword of Chaos (which used a backgammon die for damage).
ReplyDeleteWhat an awesome little dungeon.