[RK] Development History

[Mr Darke]

  I'm a child of the late 80 and early 90s (born in 75 so I am talking about the years leading up to my discovery of D&D). I grew up with the last days of Atari and the beginning of Nintendo. Arcades were still popular, Marvel was still producing the Conan comic, fantasy movies were still being produced and Time-Life was still selling its book series. It was right after the release of AD&D 2e that I got into the game. The first campaign I ran had been influenced by games like The Legend of Zelda, Faxanadu, Dragon Warrior; comics like X-men, G.I. Joe and Conan provided some inspiration and I had also been reading books about Arthur, Robin Hood and Greek Myths. Needless to say that first campaign was overpowered and really bad. However it would provide the basic framework for what would become Raven's Keep and its world.

  After a break in the mid to late 90s I picked up the revised 2e books and began plotting a new campaign. I decided that it would be a sequel of sorts to the last campaign after the wars that tore through the world at the end of the first campaign. The world was darker, war torn, and the effects were felt everywhere. One part of the campaign was an unnamed city with ruined siege engines, picked skeletons of soldiers and an abundance of crows, rooks and ravens living there that had picked the bodies. The proto Raven's Keep was born.

  I had also been playing Final Fantasy III (now VI) and liked the idea of some higher magical elements. I decided that the war ended up producing things that would become what is now called magitech. With this and the discovery of Wild Magic it would serve as an explanation for the devastation and higher amount of monsters in the world. With the world set the first adventure was written and play began. It lasted three sessions before the game collapsed.

  With AD&D loosing popularity and there being less and less players (thanks Vampire) there was no play until 3e released and some new blood came in. The game played off and on with the whole world being revised and the timeline moved forward. However I still worked on it as a hobby and begin writing some stories set in the world. World building became a hobby but no play came.

  Then came C&C and I ran the world for a while with it. This was the first successful run with the setting and there was a fair amount of development that came from it. The proper campaign ended with a street gang known as the Black Mollies winning a street war against the rival Razor Angels gang. The area saw a series of one-shots, two to three session games and pick ups but no real campaigning.

   Now the setting is being revised again and ran in a split S&W and 2e game (two groups). The idea of this revision is to add in a bit more logic to the setting, file off some burrs and fix some rough points. So far it is doing well and I am much happier with the results. The timeline is set back to after the wars; now know as the Wars of Ascension.

   This is possibly the final major revision of the setting and the version I am the most proud of.

[Admin Pete]

Way different from me, I turned 4 in 1960, never played any Atari or Nintendo and most of the relevant movies either had not been made yet or I saw them on TV by 1974. I had not played any arcade stuff either. But I had read a lot. Makes for two completely different experiences.

[Mr Darke]

If you think about it you can track the evolution of D&D with the evolution of society. What I mean is that you hear of a lot of D&D players that were influenced by writers like Vance, Howard and Lovecraft as well you had a fair amount of engineering and tech students (Look at CalTech and Warlock for an example). Later with AD&D you still have that but Tolkien had more influence, the first Conan Comics were coming IIRC, the first few fantasy movies come and you also have games like Rogue and Angband trying to simulate the D&D experience.

When 2e comes video and computer games are now common, there are and has been many fantasy movies as well as novels and new takes on the game. Some fantasy comics like Elf Quest, Conan and Groo are popular and TSR then goes to producing or licensing its own reading material and games. By the end of 2e you have the first online RPG's the popularity of console games are higher and anime has become a fad.

3e comes during the rise of MMO's, alternate takes on fantasy, and a new blending of fantasy and sci-fi (some of this started at the end of 2e). Players become more concerned with character builds thanks to many of the computer games and games like Final Fantasy influence the higher damage and HP totals you saw in it.

By 4e WOTC has to do something to keep up with the rise in MMO's and its effect on table top. They do attract a few of these players and up the ante of the game. It obviously fails but those that are attracted it are those that are fans of anime, MMO's, Manga and similar genres. As and aside I tried 4e but it wasn't my cup of tea.

5e is still to early to tell who it is attracting. I have seen many old-schoolers go to it as well as many of the above groups. I've not played it but my initial response was that there was nothing in it I couldn't do with what I already have. It will be interesting to see who the game attracts.


So basically, in my humble opinion you have the experience changing by generation but it remains relevant for the target audience. Which, sad for us, is around that 12 to early 20's range. It's kind of like Mad Magazine in a way. When I read it the mag was funny, witty and sharp. Then it became less funny. But my kids have been reading it and they find it hilarious however, I find it not as good as it was.

Now, what's my point? It is basically that while the experience may be different the game is still attracting the same basic types of people and creating long term fans. And there is enough similarity that an OD&D fan could talk to a 3e fan and share some great stories. While the rules have changes the experience has stayed relatively the same with using popular media sources for inspiration and the imaginative crowd the game attracts.

[Admin Pete]

That target audience is one of the differences since OD&D was not targeted towards children, it was targeted towards well-read adults and it was after OD&D that the other versions were targeted towards younger audiences and that is one of the disconnects between OD&D and the later versions.

[tetramorph]

Interesting, Mr Darke, we are very close in age.

I was born in 1974. Yes. That is right. My birthday will now forever track with the anniversary of my favorite game!

That said, I had a sister who was 6 yrs older than me, and a cousin older still. So the pop culture that influenced me the most was pretty early on in my development. Some people were listening to Sesame Street. I was listening to Blondie.

I watched a WHOLE LOT of the Third Eye on Nickelodeon which aired these crazy British and I think new Zealand sci-fi / horror "for kids." Freaked me out but forever affected me.

I've always liked stuff from right around the time I was born and very young. So, for example. In music, I like post-punk and new wave (the "real" new wave, like the Talking Heads, Wire, the Pretenders, Tom Petty, etc. not the later synth-dominated stuff (not that I don't like synth, heck, I play synthesizer, I just don't like it when it dominates)).

So I guess it is no surprise that I just jive the most with '70's D&D.

Also, I like getting back to and finding the roots of things, when things were born: what was there that led to it? What was new about it? What was the same? What elements did it draw from? What new direction did it take. So "Old School" gaming is kind of a "no duh," for me.

Thanks for posting this good stuff.

[Admin Pete]

Whereas I spent my earliest years listening to 40's and 50's country music. (Trivia - the first non-country song I remember hearing on the radio was in late 1960 when I was 4 years old "Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini"}. At four years old growing up out in the country on a farm I had no idea what a bikini was but I loved that song. We did not get a TV or running water until 3 years later.

[Mr Darke]

Apr 1, 2015 15:42:59 GMT -5 Admin Pete said:

That target audience is one of the differences since OD&D was not targeted towards children, it was targeted towards well-read adults and it was after OD&D that the other versions were targeted towards younger audiences and that is one of the disconnects between OD&D and the later versions.

Now that I think about it you have something there. OD&D seems to assume that the players and DMs are not only well read in fantasy but also with some history and at least one war game. Considering the time and that D&D came out of miniatures games the game was aimed at a much different set of players than it is today. Of course there was money to be made and aiming at a younger audience as the game gained popularity was a given.

This also may be why OD&D and the clones can be hard to grasp for newer players, especially those coming from newer D&D editions. While you can clone the rules you cannot clone the assumption that a player or DM would have a working knowledge of the Hundred Years War, Howard's Conan tales or know how medieval weaponry worked. This is something to think on and something I think those that make the clones need to consider.

[Admin Pete]

I have always assumed that everyone was aware of the difference in the intended audience and the basic assumptions about that audience that existed between OD&D and everything that came later. Not being aware of those assumptions makes a huge difference.  It also explains why those that started with B/X or later think OD&D is essentially the same as B/X or later, while I see it as being radically different.


Mr Darke, I hope you don't mind that I quoted you in my blog a few minutes ago. Let me know if you want it removed.  OD&D - The Original Intended Audience & Basic Assumptions

[Mr Darke]

Cool, I'm quote worthy.

[Mr Darke]

From unnamed to Raven's Keep

 The evolution of Raven's Keep from an unnamed city took time. As the years drew on there was no D&D games around and I eventually sold my books as I did not see the game coming back for me. I then went into attempting to write some short stories with some based in a similar fantasy world and others based in an extra-dimensional city known as Piedmont. The first set of stories came out of an idea I had while on a float trip where I saw things that could be ruins of a former kingdom. The questions of what that kingdom was and how it fell fueled these stories and would contain many elements of what the game world would later hold.

 The Piedmont stories were an attempt at a surreal city, shrouded in eternal night, with strange happenings and creatures. If you would think movies like Dark City and The City of Lost Children you would be on target. Of course this was before I had seen those films and afterwards I felt I would just be copying what I saw so I laid them aside. However, this city would give ideas to what would become RK when I started playing again.

  I really don't know where the name came from but I feel names like Rookroost (Greyhawk) and The Citadel of the Raven (FR) had some influence. I do know it came to me when I was building my 3e setting based on the earlier setting I had ran. I needed a name for a base city and the name came to me. I linked it to the unnamed city from years ago and made a few changes. Somewhere in there the idea that the city was built on a Ley Line nexus came to me and that would serve to explain the strange nature of the city.

  It was from this that I felt that the idea of dark cults, a prison of an eldritch entity and an underworld gate was appropriate. The city took shape and I introduced players to the city. The first bits of play were light on the supernatural elements and involved a gang war and a campaign made up of rogue types. This ended with the discovery that one of the gangs was a front for a cult of Morrigan (to be detailed later) their eventually decapitation by the party.

  The first chapter of RK as a city had been written.

[Admin Pete]

Good stuff!

[Necromancer]

It's always interesting to read these "behind the scenes" stories. Great work, Mr Darke!

[Mr Darke]

Building the Environs

Every city needs something around it, right? The next phase was to build the immediate area around the city so that it would not exist in a vacuum. I decided that the city was best served by merging it with existing areas that I had already worked on. Thus I merged the Karstlands and the nation of Evervale with the idea. The Karstlands were part of an idea where I was working on a fantasy version of the Ozarks much like Gygax had done with placing Greyhawk where Chicago is. Thus the lands were placed at the southern shore of the lake and Evervale being west across the river.

The Karstlands and Evervale are cousin nations with many Karstlanders migrating from Evervale. The people are of a Scottish-Irish type breed with some Germanic thrown in (similar to the Scotch-Irish and Germans that settled the Ozarks). Both nations share a culture which includes a fierce desire for independence that worked to form a confederation of regions, tribal areas and proper counties. Taking from some modern day events I wanted to account for the Latino and Filipino migrations that seem to have begun about 20 or so years ago. This gave birth to the Celestials, an oriental type, and the Jhadir a mix of Central/South American natives with some Arabic blood. I had the migrations begin with the onset of the Wars of Ascension and an unnamed event in southern regions.

Instead of going the Ed Greenwood route and making everyone get along I decided that there would be tension between them. The Karstlanders who are attached to the land and these new settlers would have a distrustful and sometimes hostile relationship. As well there would be tension between the humans and demi-humans over this. The Elves would be more accepting of the new people, the dwarves and gnomes would side with the humans on this and halflings would remain neutral. This adds to some elements to the setting that are often glossed over in others. A sad reality of the world is that getting along harmoniously would be hard at best and an unattainable pipe dream at best.

With that set, the environs would be built around the Ozarks area with some towns and cities renamed and locations would be added with a fantasy twist. Thus my new home became Greenhill, my old home town would become Corinth and the town of Hart's Grove was born from a local ren faire and another close town. State parks became adventuring sites, conservation areas took on the idea of campsites and few places I lived became enclaves and bases of operations for NPCs.

One unintended consequence of this was that I got out more for scouting areas, learned more of local and regional history and reconnected with my heritage. All in all it proved to be a great experiment in in creativity and learning.