Old adventure seeds & scenarios

[ReHerakhte]

There were some adventures hosted on this site many years ago that don't seem to be available anymore.
It doesn't help that I can't remember any of them or even how many there were (it was only about 2 or 3 I think) but one of them was called the Drowning Pool and it was written by Linden (that's all the detail that I remember).
I'd like to get copies because the CD-ROM I had them stored on seems to have gotten lost over the years.

So the question is, are they still available and if so, where can I download them?

[Marcus Bone]

I was going to say that everything I've ever had for DC is already on this site... but then I recall the content here is really built on the bones from when I had the DC licence (2006/7).

I have an archive somewhere of that old site and will take a look see!

... oh but I did find a copy on Scribd *sigh*

[ReHerakhte]

Thanks for the tip Marcus. I hadn't thought to check on Scribd.
Fortunately Lee had it archived and sent me a copy last night, so I now have a copy again of The Drowning Pool again

In the emails between Lee and I last night, I mentioned to him that I've been on a bit of a kick this week to try and compile and archive all the DC material I can find on the net. With the demise of various websites over the years and the situation with DCIII and now DC4 I have developed something of a compulsion to try and gather all the various bits and pieces I can.

One of the best aspects of the net regarding DC has been the longevity of the DCtRPG website. It has let me keep in touch and share news/info with other fans and it has been one of the few 'constants' for what is admittedly a game with a small audience (and a game seemingly overshadowed by some bigger names in the genre and the industry).

[Morthrai]

In the emails between Lee and I last night, I mentioned to him that I've been on a bit of a kick this week to try and compile and archive all the DC material I can find on the net. With the demise of various websites over the years and the situation with DCIII and now DC4 I have developed something of a compulsion to try and gather all the various bits and pieces I can.

Yeah, I have some stuff saved from various old sites that I don't think anyone even remembers except us! Mike LaBossiere's Opifex zines are worth looking up too. I know he recycled some of the material for later endeavours, and I'm not sure they are available for download any more but I have the full set

[ReHerakhte]

That's good to know Lee because LaBossiere's site was one I was going to search for. At least now I know that his material has been saved.
I've got all the Challenge magazine articles because I bought the DC CD-ROMs from Far Future some years back (plus I've got all the Demonground, Protodimension and The Dark TImes issues) so I have LaBossiere's published scenarios (well, published by GDW or the ezines that is).

As an aside, I had a peek at DCtRPG through the Internet Archive Wayback Machine and the "other adventures" I was trying to remember were not adventures after all. They were titled Dark Plots and consisted of a briefing for use by the Referee detailing certain Minions.

The three Minions examined were: -
1. Charon and their Servants
2. Storm Wraith
3. The Wailers.
I downloaded the PDFs from the Wayback Machine, here's a link for those that want it but I advise letting the page open and then downloading the PDFs from that page rather than trying 'right click + save as'. For some reason when I did that the files were corrupted.
https://web.archive.org/web/20070111235 ... Dark_Plots

But while the Dark Plots docs can be downloaded, Linden's The Drowning Pool adventure, located appropriately enough under the Adventures tab, has not been archived by the Wayback Machine

[ReHerakhte]

And now that Lee provided LaBossiere's website name, I did a check on that through the net, got the full site address and posted that into the Wayback Machine.
The scenarios he wrote can be downloaded as PDFs from the Wayback Machine but the zip.file doesn't appear to have been archived.
Looking through them, they're all the ones that he had sent into Challenge magazine (he mentions that on the page itself but I remember quite a few of these from the titles when I read them in Challenge).
Here's the link for those that want them (and it seems all his Call of Cthulhu scenarios can be downloaded too, see second link below)
DC - https://web.archive.org/web/20050206105 ... dc/dc.html
CoC - https://web.archive.org/web/20050206134 ... cocadv.htm

Seems the good doctor was fond of writing scenarios and then adapting them to other games. A number of the DC scenarios look to be his CoC scenarios ported over for the GDW rules.
Even his sci-fi game scenarios appear to all be available under the Worlds of Science Fiction tab.

But anyway, thanks Lee for jogging my memory. Now I can be confident that I'm not missing any of LaBossiere's DC scenarios.

[Morthrai]

Seems the good doctor was fond of writing scenarios and then adapting them to other games. A number of the DC scenarios look to be his CoC scenarios ported over for the GDW rules.

If memory serves, I believe he wrote them as Challenge submissions for DC and when GDW went south he compiled them into his own zines and converted some of them later for Cthulhu. He still posts new CoC stuff on the Miskatonic Repository as well as doing the occasional D&D thing

A couple of my mates have said in the past that they're not too impressed with the way Mike was always creating his own monsters, particularly for Cthulhu. Horses for courses I guess.

[Linden]

A couple of my mates have said in the past that they're not too impressed with the way Mike was always creating his own monsters, particularly for Cthulhu. Horses for courses I guess.

At the risk of dredging up some old moans, it's not so much the invented monsters per se, it's that they're so contrived and/or risible. I've had some good games with the scenario Thin Jack but I've always used a different antagonist to the one offered by its author: The eponymous Thin Jack is sort of like a Cthonian, but it's sort of like a vampire as well. Oh, and it's scared of gold. Well, what's it doing living in a region with a history of gold mining then? As for the Finger Biter - dear oh dear.

In fairness to the Doctor I thought The Drooler in the Dark was a piece of warped comic genius.

[ReHerakhte]

Some interesting info there Lee, I had assumed he had written them as CoC and then converted them to DC... and we all know that old saying about 'assuming'. And I never even thought to do something like check the adventure article for dates to see if the DC version was written before/after the CoC version.
So in my haste to collect DC material, I wasn't just guilty of assuming what LaBossiere did, I was a bit slack in the fact-checking department as well!

[Morthrai]

Hmm, reading back my previous post it seems a bit smart-arsey although thankfully it wasn't taken that way - I'm not clever enough for smartarsery!

Regarding Mike LaB's works I seem to recall that Geoff Skellams wasn't a fan of his style, and his monster-creating habit was a topic of conversation once amongst the UK-based Chaosium members at the ConTinuum convention.

As mentioned in my email exchange with Kevin I have some DC stuff that possibly nobody else still has, including a lost video interview with Lester but I've been told by the owners that it isn't for public consumption. If we did share it we'd have to keep it offline

[ReHerakhte]

In regard to your post Lee, it didn't come across as smart-arsey to me.
I assumed that your intent was to share the info so I never took it as anything else.
But on that subject of monster creation, while I did like the basics behind many of the scenarios LaBossiere wrote, they did tend to feel like "monster of the week" episodes because of that new-monster-for-every-adventure approach.
At one point I was going to run one of his adventures, if I remember correctly it was The Thing on the Bike Path, but I was definitely going to change the monster to something that was in the Dark Minions book.

I have a copy of Lester Smith Speaks from Mike Marchi's old site but the site is still kickin' on so it's not lost yet, it was interesting to read Lester's thoughts on the game design. Looking through what I have, I don't think I have anything that you folks don't already have except possibly all the Challenge articles (I was able to collect all the issues in dead tree form but also have them on the DC 1st Ed. CD-ROM from Far Future Enterprises).
I do have a collection of dead web links that I have just started checking via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine so I may be able to dig up something useful from that lot.

[Linden]

At one point I was going to run one of his adventures, if I remember correctly it was The Thing on the Bike Path, but I was definitely going to change the monster to something that was in the Dark Minions book.

I ran that one using The Ravager. It came across as quite grim and bleak with the PCs unearthing the well chewed remains of the monster's victims (only a slight variation in the actual scenario set up as I remember). We were all a bit subdued after playing it. Not meant as criticism, but I probably wouldn't be in a hurry to run it again.

[Morthrai]

I still have a bunch of stuff from various DC Webring sites that I saved off back in the day. There's some home-brew stuff and some monster conversions from other systems including a load from TORG. As for Thing on the Bike Path, I ran that once for my old Saturday group and I also swapped the Thing for a Ravager with (I think) slightly tweaked stats to make him tougher. Seemed to work

Funny thing - I have been berating myself recently for spending too long stuck in the past and not looking at a lot of newer games, but it's such a long time ago now that it's actually fun to look through this stuff again. Let's see what else we can rescue! Might even put a call out on the social channels and forums and see if anyone else has a DC stash or if we're the only ones left

[ReHerakhte]

Ha! My first thought for The Thing on the Bike Path was to use a Ravager.
Seems like we all had the same feel from that particular scenario and the Ravager seems like the best fit from the canon list of Minions.

Lee I understand the enjoyment of looking at some of the games from the past - admittedly I get a major nostalgia kick out of it as well
For myself, I find a lot of the newer games don't make the mark and I have no interest in playing them let alone running them. They leave me dissatisfied with rules or settings (and often both) so like many other forms of entertainment e.g. movies, I find myself going back to entertainment from before the 2000s because I find it's typically better than what's on offer now.
There's always going to be something that stands out from the masses that gets my interest so I'm not about to dismiss every new game or movie etc. etc, that comes along but for my tastes, most of the latest rpgs just don't deliver good role playing (yeah I admit I'm being very subjective).

As for putting a call out for old DC material, I very much believe that it's worth doing (and obviously for other games as well). That's part of what drove me to start this thread in the first place. For instance, while I did remember The Drowning Pool, it was only when talking with Linden that I remembered the scenario where an Animator takes possession of a tank and goes on a bit of a joyride.
I see all of this as being in the same vein as keeping the DC movie database alive so I think it's well worth asking people if they have any old game material stashed away, even if it just prompts people to think/talk about the fan-made material that was out there.