Knee deep in monster frogs: A Judges Guild history
A sample page from Judges Guild’s Bob & Bill; the book is 12.75 inches by 10.75 inches, 80 pages.
I was on the Acaeum boards a few weeks ago and saw this announcement from Bill Owen:
I have gotten around to uploading the long-awaited coffee table edition of the JG history originally published 3 years ago with 36 pages. With 127% more pages (each over twice as big) with lots more pictures and text and most of the original pictures larger… this is a blockbuster!
Leads off with an embarrassing correction of the first edition! INCLUDES the original, full-size versions Tegal Manor and City State maps. This is a hard-cover, premium paper, case-wrap, full-cover, double-swanky edition.
It’s apparently a full-color book from Lulu.com. Today he uploaded a preview of the book. You’ve got to go look at it. At over a hundred dollars, I’m probably not going to get the book, but after looking at that preview I’m tempted. There’s also a PDF closer to my price range.
It’s filled with old-school ephemera, such as photos of hand-drawn maps of Tegel Manor, the City State, and many others I don’t recognize in the preview, as well as photos of other original documents and memories of gaming in the mid to late seventies.
The Bill Owen Q&A thread at the Acaeum is also an interesting read.
We and a lot of customers liked the classic, olden look of the maps. And I think it’s important to remember how our level of quality may have impacted customer usage. What I mean is that if we’d provided extremely high quality (printing wise) materials especially if on slick, glossy paper, how many people would have felt comfortable or even able to mark them up with their own personalization.
Rob Conley also pops ups with mapping tips and questions. It’s an amazing time travel expedition.
If you’re tempted, too, take a look now: he’s discounted the book during the “launch”, and of course Lulu.com is running almost non-stop sales over the holiday season.
- Bat in the Attic: Rob Conley
- “A blog on 30 years of gaming and sandbox fantasy.”
- Bill Owen Q&A at The Acaeum
- “As a very occasional lurker here, I wanted to fill some blanks because I was there at the beginning… and I thought JG fans might enjoy the context of the time.”
- Judges Guild’s Bob & Bill: Bill Owen
- “Background of Bill Owen as an early wargamer in the 60’s & 70’s—Meeting Bob Bledsaw, our D&D campaign days—false start with the forgotten roleplaying game system that was out of this world—Personal pictures and scans of one-of-a-kind play aids—wild ride on the JG tiger particularly from 76-78… updating with more text, photos and multi-page full-scale maps of the original color Tegel Manor drawn by Bob in ’75 & the oldest remaining blueprint draft of City State.” Note: the PDF version is not a real PDF. It requires special software to view. Which isn’t the end of the suck. The Adobe Digital Edition e-reader is the same quality as most Adobe products, which is to say, it doesn’t work. None of the great images visible in the preview show in Adobe Digital Editions.
More Judges Guild
- Quick-and-dirty old-school island script
- Here’s a Python-based island generator using the tables from the Judges Guild Island Book 1.
- Island Book 1 and old-school tables
- Judges Guild Island Book 1 is a fascinating playground on which to place a sea-going adventure or campaign. It’s also a great example of the usefulness and wildness of old-school encounter tables.
- Skin a module 3: Thracia to The Lost City
- The Judges Guild module Caverns of Thracia is one of the classics of the old-school. It’s also eminently reskinnable by changing the names of gods and expanding on some of the magic items hidden inside.
More Lulu.com recommendation
- Do not miss Petty Gods!
- This is a tome worthy of the gods—and that’s what it is. A tome of gods usable much as a tome of monsters, placing these petty gods—what Gods & Monsters would call spirit gods—around your sandbox’s map.
- T is for Tower… of the Elementalist
- Random tables can make your design process faster when you’re thinking too hard about inconsequential things; it can also make running a game faster when players ask questions you didn’t anticipate in places you didn’t imagine.
- Revised Lost Castle of the Astronomers in print!
- I’ve just re-opened my Lulu store with a 9x7 Lost Castle of the Astronomers.
- Villains and Vigilantes at Monkey House Games
- The best superhero game of the old-school, and possibly still, V&V is an easy game to read and play.
- Fight On! old-school gaming zine
- An amazing new resource for old school games—and that includes Gods & Monsters.
- One more page with the topic Lulu.com recommendation, and other related pages
More old-school
- Island Book 1 and old-school tables
- Judges Guild Island Book 1 is a fascinating playground on which to place a sea-going adventure or campaign. It’s also a great example of the usefulness and wildness of old-school encounter tables.
- Tractor Feed Adventures
- Old adventures, not worth converting to Gods & Monsters. I haven’t played these since the eighties.
- Old School Cool
- Since I first made Gods & Monsters public over ten years ago, there’s been a groundswell of support for “old-school” D&D games. Since Gods & Monsters is compatible with adventures for original D&D and AD&D, it’s also compatible with adventures for most of these new games.
January 6, 2012: Arghh! As cool as this book sounds, I can’t recommend the “PDF” version. First of all, it isn’t a PDF. It’s some sort of proprietary e-reader format from Adobe. Second, even after installing Adobe’s Adobe Digital Edition software, very few of the great images show up, and those that do show are practically unreadable.