Trade & Turpitude

 

GAME 2: "Roads Hold the Gold" - so, you are going to be a worker on the trade roads? Well, keep in mind, they still building the southern shire portion of The Great Tanmoorian Highway. For 20 years the queen been paving trade roads and promoting the highway. It's not all fine stone and slurry. When going south it won't be long past River Town that the paving stops and you start to see the kingdom's best road workers taking long lunches and holidays off where the pavement meets the country soil. Don't fool yourself. The Kingdom doesn't care where the pavement starts and stops. When it comes to the Southern Shires, it's profit that moves the maps..."

-Overheard from a seasoned caravan worker...

(above: campaign front page blurb for next weeks game)

So just like that I'm running a campaign again. 

After a handful of years working non-stop in health care, including a major regional hospital during the deepest parts of the pandemic, I decided to take a few months off from work. I live in a beautiful mountain area, known for plenty of outdoor activities. So I want to smell the roses, NOT have to get up early, be able to do some things during the week, and chill out. But this also makes me wish I had some extra gaming to do outside my XBOX. 

So on a lark I posted a "want to start campaign" comment in the Roll20 forums. I didn't have much hope. I have had only moderate success sourcing from the forum.  It's a place rife with Critical Role wonks and people who are looking for games where members are all into "alternative lifestyles" and require you to learn a list of ways they need to be referred to. Not that I'm biased against anybody. The first person to call me when I moved to a new city to see how I was doing was a transgender neighbor of mine. I'm good with anybody who is a good person. But the general populace of that particular forum are very particular about what they want in a game, and what they want you to refer to them as (and god help you if you get it wrong). 

I was clear about my background and how I go about DMing. Long and short of it, I eventually had 4 great sounding players wanting to be in a new campaign all within a week or two. It happed very fast. The first person I was contacted by was a gal (who I will call "M") who as it turned out was in my very same neck of the woods! Most of the rest are actually in different time zones. I rounded out the group by of course inviting my long time player and one of my best old friends, "T", to come in and play. Though not exactly a techie, T seems to enjoy the Roll20 stuff I did in the past. Once she gets up and running at game time she's loving it. 

My interactions with most of the folk in the days before the game made me hopeful. Flakes abound off of the forums. But man, everybody showed up. 

I ran Roll20 games very low rent in the past. Throw some maps up, move tokens around. Maybe a little jukebox music. But M was very helpful with some basic stuff. Helping me use scripts to set up a player welcome package which shows them the fillable character sheet right away. 

It had been awhile for both me and T in the format. The usual opening night technical issues slowing things down a bit. When T went into Roll20 she was confused to see herself still in the old campaign pages haha. 

Everybody had cool characters. Nothing too outlandish. I did expand on the material I was going to allow as far as characters (I still only own the PHB and Monster Manual. Oh, and the DMG which in 5th ed is next to useless. Summer reading material maybe). There was a shadow elf dude, a halfling druid with some dream connection thing, T ran a female dwarf, and there were two young commoners who decided they would be from the same local village. A male fighter and a female paladin. The paladin was outside the usual form you expect a paladin to take (at least in old school). Just simple townie clothing and a sword. No real deity. Just a connection to the cosmos. Maybe because she is, in part, one of those Assimer(sp) semi-angel people.

So there were no Cyborg Ninja Minotaurs, which was nice. But everybody had way more 5th ed experience than me (and also Roll20 experience, which is a little intimidating to a noob). But for their sake I had to start allowing going out in the weeds a bit with character gen.

I had this campaign idea for a long time, one where after a few games I would have the characters arrive at my D&D version of Runequest's Apple Lane, one of my favorite old modules. Get them all caught up in the pawnshop attack and eventually to The Rainbow Mounds. 

But I figured a caravan thing for the first couple of games. My style has evolved to where I like the first couple of sessions to just be "settle into our characters games," and caravan guard situation is kind of perfect for it. 

 I decided to focus on the trade season atmosphere for the entire campaign. Late fall where the last caravans of the year are getting in some last of the year travel. The towns and roads busy with profiteers. I can fit in flavor for this all over the place, in many situations. And make the characters want to earn more and more money by letting them see cool, expensive stuff to buy.

And while my urban city games might have a lot of Tarantino and action movie influences, I like to go with a David Lynchian vibe for the country. You know, everything looks nice and innocent, so the odd and terrifying things are all the more so. "Look at that lovely field of grain; oh shit, and Ankheg just popped up and ate that farmer!" 

That, and some things I was planning had me land on what I think is kind of a unique (if not clever) campaign name. "Trade and Turpitude." 

They all started in River Town, "the gateway to the southern shires." It's the next largest community after the main city, and in the decades of my game I have grown it bigger and bigger. 

The couple of commoner characters are on a quest to find a friend of theirs who ran away months ago based on dreams of a beautiful woman he felt was actually out there somewhere. So as they got to know the characters (the ones who were at the table anyway, The shadow elf lurker in a balcony nearby) they also inquired around about their friend. 

When I had the obligatory tavern fight go down, it was a table full of locals who were arguing over the towns bid to have the Queen of Tanmoor declare it a sister city to the capitol. A portrait of the queen was above the fireplace, and a single derogatory remark about her got the fight going. 

Even in campaigns where characters are never going to meet the queen, I like to get some lore in about her. Even minor mentions. This was an NPC in my game going back decades. She was around player characters since childhood (her father, the late King, tapped into player characters frequently for secret missions). Even my pal "T" has history with her. She has an old high level druid character who is Queen Libertines best friend going way back. 

Anyway, these days I like to have a tavern brawl act as one big, possibly growing creature, and I use a cartoon fight cloud to represent it. 

PC's can interact with it in various ways as it rolls around and endangers others. It will grow if others dive into the brawl, or it will shrink as parts of it are knocked out or brawlers removed from it. It always seems to get a hearty chuckle out of the players who see it for the first time. 

Caravan leader, Marge (who T's dwarf had already hooked up with) got the characters together to offer them a job. She took them to a secluded upper area to eat, drink, and makes some deals to work for her small caravan concern. 

I got my second chance to have another fight here. A mysterious figure who I won't go into in this post was at the bottom of the balcony area and started playing a spooky flute. There was a big stuffed bear up there with the characters (it just so happened the tavern map I sourced had it there!) and it very atmospherically (the wood and plater frame creaking and rubbing as a disembodied bear spirit was heard growling) animated to attack them.

 It was of course less deadly than a real full bear, but the characters were nicely freaked out by the sudden situation. Very out of place in a nice, busy inn. David Lynch, yo!

We ended the night with that crazy stuffed grizzly fight.

As I stayed on Roll20 to work on a few things, and hearing from some of the players seems to have us locked in for a second session next week. So far so good! I always figured that if you make it past a 1st session ionto a 2nd one then you know you have a campaign. If I do what I usually do, that is to try to top each previous game, it should be in the bag. 

But man. It's interesting how a group and a campaign can come out of almost nowhere in online formats. Sunday early Mary is doing some one shot thing with some of her regular players and I'm invited to join in for the day, so I'm going to get a chance to finally see Roll20 working from the players side of the screen. I feel not having done that is a major weakness in my own use of the format. The more I learn, the better I can be. 

Cheers

The True Enemy of Game Groups - Attrition

 

Player attrition. It happens. It happens to all of us who put a group together. No matter how long it lasts, it will eventually fall apart, either by losing players faster than they can be replaced, or the GM moves on and nobody else wants to take the mantle. 

It can start slow. A player or two has life events that make them busier. They still clearly want to be a part of things. But missing every 4th game will usually lead to missing one out of three, and soon its "sorry, I just can't play on a regular basis anymore because this and that."

Or maybe they just out and out have to quite without a slow bleed out. Its extra tragic when its one of your best players. 

Back in my teens and 20's we seemed to have long campaigns that saw little in the way of lost players. Mostly it was friends I was playing with though. This was most of my experience from childhood up until the late 90's. I played with friends I already had. That is what usually made up my groups. We played as friends. We had long campaigns that at some point just fell apart fast because two or more of us were getting hit by life stuff. Though it often started as only being able to play one day a month. Then longer and longer between games. Momentum loss is a great foe of regular groups. Go a couple of months without a game and that group is likely through. Though I should say that by the late 90's some campaigns I had with regular life friends might seem done for, then after 3 or 4 months a long since flaking friend who kind of helped slow things down will be all "hey, when are we going to play D&D/Call of Cthulhu/Champions again?" Uh..whenever you are available.

And even that is all good, really. In that case above I was indeed having infrequent games with about 3-4 players at the time, but those games were 6-8 hour affairs that let me throw in everything and the kitchen sink in that one day. Hell, in those long D&D games a character might level up twice in that single day. But that too finally had to end. And it was the last time I would have a group made up of real life, long time friends. 

So in later adulthood, well into the 2000's, it was less groups of my friends and it became maybe one longtime friend, and a handful of strangers. It was not just a huge dynamic shift in general, but now it was folks who were devoting time to strangers, away from their usual life. After decades in the workforce, and relationships/marriages, people just place more of a value on their leisure time. Often not even in a hugely conscious way. But there are important things in life. Sure, go to a forum like Dragonsfoot.net and you'll find a bunch of older people who seem to want D&D to be the be all and end all of life. But for most folk hitting or going beyond middle age free time gets sucked dry by a million things other than tabletop gaming. I'm personally not ready to retire from my professional life; and even if I did I'm not sure how much of that I would want to be spent on tabletop. 

Yeah. This. 

My longest group went from around 2009 to 2019, but that group saw a lot of players coming and going. The entire time the long-time host was always there, then there was my long time friend "T," and then players who stuck around for a couple years, and those that played for some months before a life thing got in the way. That dynamic kind of worked for me. There were enough people who stuck around here and there that lead to nice year long multi-genre campaigns with 4-5 players. That all ended when I moved out of my native city, though I often think about how I was fairly burnt out towards the end. For me running campaigns on a weeknight, running out of work at a fairly professional job and driving 15 minutes in rush hour traffic, wore me down. Getting to the hosts house, eating fast food as I drove, then slamming a couple beers and puffing a doob to get the day shrugged off so I could get into a fantasy mood wasn't all that conducive to a peaceful DM persona. All that week in and week out made me fairly easily annoyed by dumb player things during a game. And an annoyed DM is the last thing a party wants. 

In my new town I ran for a new group, started by my soon to be local besties (B and L, a younger couple who kind of adopted lonely old me because I didn't know anybody in town. I bring them up in every boardgame post I make because I mostly play with them and sometimes a couple others). But after several months they decided to take up a somewhat nomadic existence that only had them in town a few short months of the year and that group fell apart (I didn't mind, one of the other players, a female no less, was a cheat and I think on opiates or something). 

I then discovered Roll20 and did around a 12 game campaign with Los Angeles Bestie "T" and a couple of folks I met in the local game shop Facebook page (it was a couple games before I learned one of them worked at the same hospital I did). It was going really well, but one of the guys had a new baby that was taking up a lot of time, and the other guy was going back to school. They would still be able to play now and again, but with the precious momentum going the way of the dodo I more or less nixed things. 

Most recently, for a few months last year, I was tapped by yet another local couple, plus a couple other folk they found on local meetups. We had several games, and things were sailing along and all seemed to be having fun, but then the male host messaged us saying that his elderly mother had been found to have a severe illness and were having to move her in. We were going to be starting up again when the mom got settled in, but it has been awhile now so that may not be back.  

I certainly have long since learned to manage my expectations with game group longevity. And to be honest, I love to GM games, and often get into a zone where the hours just fly by. But it can also be a bit of a hassle, even with long since losing my habit of putting hours into game prep. Setting things up then being the center of attention for three or more hours has lost a certain amount of its luster. 

I forgot the battlemat..

So, with no current RPG group, and most of my boardgame pals out of town for months now, I think I'll be settling in for a Spring where the majority of my gaming will be on my XBOX. Grand Theft Auto 5, Elder Scrolls Online, and some other games new and old (Jedi Fallen Order, Dead Rising). It can be super relaxing to just let yourself get immersed in those worlds. Don't have to go anywhere. Don't have to set anything up. Don't have to worry about being down a player and cancelled sessions. Nothing to do but work on my carpel tunnel and zap my eyeballs from sitting too close to the big screen. 

But then again, I'll be chomping at the bit to run games before long. And even if something doesn't come up locally, "B and L" want to check out Roll20 gaming when they settle into where they are going for the summer (to manage a high-end RV park halfway across the country). If they got the internet for it, LA pal "T" will want to jump in, and the gaming will be on again. And the highway of gaming will be as it always has been, for me anyway. On again. Off again. On again. Off again. 

Formula D - the boardgame

 On a nice long boardgame night got to do a bit more Formula D. We started with Eldritch Horror, which I haven't played in months. It's a great game, but it can be grueling. I don't think we have beat the game yet. After almost 4 hours of play, with some epic moments but still kind of a slog when you can see your doom coming a mile away, you can sometimes wish you had played something else.  So Formula D was a nice, breezy and exciting thing to play afterwards. 

In the basic set, you have the choice of playing identical divers, or special personality street racers. Last week we started with the Formula D drivers and cars, but last night we wanted to try out those personalities. I like to kind of think of it as they are all pro formula drivers as a career, and our street races are us on our off hours in our personal cars. They are meant I think to primarily used on the road race board on the other side (Chicago, I think?) but last night we went ahead and raced in Monaco. 

The mechanics are fairly simple, and well researched, I think. They cover the starts, the gears, the maneuvers, and especially those tight Monaco turns around the resorts and the marinas. You try to get off to a good (or at least not disastrous) start, gear down when approaching corners (if you don't handle them properly, you can take damage to tires and brakes), and gear up in the straightaways. 

I think for the most part, when running basic Formula cars and drivers, this game probably simulates reality more than any other boardgame I know. You FEEL like you are in a legit race despite some abstractions. For example, ending your turn a prescribed number of times in a curve zone to simulate you taking the turn properly, or the pit stop only delaying you ever so slightly if you need a tire change. But otherwise its reality based. 

Reality goes a little fantasy in a street race out of your Formula 1 suits.  Though in a street racer everybody can use a brief nitro boost each lap, there is more to them than meets the eye. You have all these unique racers who each have a special ability.

 My character from last night, cosplayer Li Tsu, forces any other driver to slow down one space when passing her due to how eye catching she is. Something about her reminds me vaguely of my favorite Destruction All Stars character, Twinkle Riot. 

Handsome Spaniard Montoya can do an extra nitro boost. Tupac look alike Washington can pull his radio out and toss at you to damage your tires.

"Thug life ain't no joke"

 

Race cars are dainty, and the possibility of a variety of damages can happen due to getting to close to each other, or improperly taking a dangerous turn. Those curves can be hell, and mimic the actual layout of the city, its resorts and casinos and beaches. It really kind of puts this kind of race, and a visit to Monte Carlo, on my bucket list. 

Though you have to imagine 
city traffic is hell during the races.

The game is very exciting, and I really appreciate how the feel and play is very different from all my other games. Though my pool of people I know to play games with is somewhat small (3-5 of us), I can see a larger group of board gamers having tournaments and maybe even adding some kind of role-playing element. Kidnapping attempts. Bar room brawls during a post race bar hopping celebration. Maybe fighting each other.

I just knew I would easily find a pic of two guys
in Formula 1 gear brawling. What a
wonderful time we live in. 

OK, probably not. But this is a fun game, and well worth the around hour and half or less to play. The bang for your buck factor is high (though the game tends to go up to 60 bucks for the regular edition). 

Race fans watch in hopes to see this. And we
should maintain verisimilitude and play for this..

"You probably should not have gone
 into 5th gear right before this corner.."

Since I'm trying to limit my board game collection this might be my last purchase for a good while, though I have my temptations. It is a great game to maybe introduce to non-gamers who are turned off by dragons and zombies and what not. A straight forward game that simulates a real life thing. 

And we can all relate to this,
 especially those of us from Los Angeles.

You can have a little fun with it outside the box. I had a habit of doing announcer blurbs during the first game we played. "Lets have a round of applause for the blue car as it takes the lead." Trash talk outside the game as well is perfectly acceptable. Sports fans are dipshits, and this IS a sport. Oh yeah, doing shifting gear, burning rubber, and acceleration noises should be mandatory. 

I never thought I would have interest in a racing game until I saw this a few years ago on Wheaton's Tabletop show. But I hesitated at first because, really, I like fantasy and whimsical man-child stuff. I likes me dragons and zombies. But I think I'm a real world Formula 1 fan now too.

Cheers

Gilbert Gottfried - a bigger loss than you think

My second RIP post in a matter of weeks, but what the hell. This is important for me, and the two people who read this blog. 

Gilbert Gottfried died this week. People know the raspy voiced New York actor/comedian from a million little things, but most of the world would know him as the voice of the parrot in Alladin and appearances in both Problem Child film. But his unique, chalkboard delivery has gotten him work in lots of cartoons, and many oddball live action roles, such as Abraham Lincoln in A Million Ways to Die in the West, and many 90's sitcoms. As far as cartoons, my favorite was Mxyzptlk in the 90's animated Superman series.

And the definitive pronunciation of a name I 
had struggled with all my life "mixy spit lick"

Gil's no-holds-barred humor got him in a lot of hot water. His family claims his early 90's appearance at The Oscars where he rattled off several Pee Wee Herman jerking-off references resulted in a partial blacklisting in Hollywood, where only directors and writers who were steadfast fans tended to give him character actor work. 

In the 90's he made many appearances on The Howard Stern Show, where "Woke" had yet to exist. There was a multiple appearance segment where Gilbert donned a Dracula costume, and went down to the bustling Manhattan streets to ask passersby questions about the OJ Simpson case ("do you think OJ has a black heart? As black as the darkest caves of Transylvania?"). Pretty nutty. 

"Do you believe Chris Darden 
shtooped Marcia Clark?"

And doing a Dracula voice had already been part of his act for many years. See, GG was a fan of old movies. Especially horror movies of the 30's through 50's. But not just Horror. Abbot and Costello, Three Stooges, all the Universal stuff. I remember long ago reading about how Gilbert would do stand up at colleges, and nobody would know any of his ancient references or voices. Only when doing something like a Mickey Mouse joke would he get laughs. 

But if you are a certain age, say well over 40, you may well have grown up where one of the few local off channels showed old movies in the afternoon, and sometimes all day on the weekend. All the Universal horrors, Dead End Kids, Bogey, Stalag 17. King Kong, Godzilla, and here and there some old Hammer horror films. And you probably had a weekend horror host, such as Elvira and various local "ghoulish" personalities, like in LA we had "Seymour" a mustachioed Gomez Adams wanna be in a cape and fedora. These had the real treats. 

This is what Gilbert grew up on in New York, where the force was strong with old movie marathons apparently. So this was a large part of his stand up. And this love of the old and often obscure led to him starting the podcast that is the subject of this post: Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast. 

Along with co-host, writer and fellow old film buff Frank Santopadre, they discussed old films, actors, and conducted many interviews, with Frank keeping the agent of Chaos Gil on the straight path. They worked hard to bring on old guests who were in the last years of life, to preserve their memories and words. Staggering old actors (it was mostly women in their 90's who still lived) from Frankenstein films or old musicals would come in and share tales of sad old Hollywood while Gilbert cracked wise and howled with laughter. Discussions about moments in time that would never be spoken of again where the order of the day. Deep, deep dives. 

And raunchy stories were some of Gilbert's favorites. He was an old Hollywood gossip machine. He would ask old celebrities if they knew about Cesar Romero's fetish for having orange wedges tossed at his naked ass, or about how Tony Curtis was in a limo in the 70's, saw Walter Matthau walking down a New York street, and rolled down his window to Brag about having just slept with Yvonne Dicarlo of the Munsters. 

More modern comedians would often come on to tell their own tales of Sad old Hollywood fandom, such as Patton Oswalt, or voice actor Billy West (Stern Show, Futurama, Ren and Stimpy) who much like Gil was influenced by old celluloid, being well known for impersonations of Grandpa Al Lewis of the Munsters, or Larry of the Three Stooges (basis for Stimpy). 

There are other great podcasts about old film, such as another fave of mine You Must Remember This. But the amount of stories, and heavily sought after interviews with the barely living, that made the podcast special. A treasure, in a way. 

And that is as much a tragedy maybe as the loss of the man. His work, though sometimes crass, cast a light on the forgotten but not all gone. How many tales still hanging in there will not be told? 

The podcast will probably be retooled by Santopadre. I'd like to see it be rotating hosts; Billy West, Patton, Seth MacFarlane. Any old movie fan with a sense of humor may not replace Gil, but they can carry on his important work. Important to a fan of, I'll say it again, Sad old Hollywood. 

that well again...

But for now, go take a look at the archives. I think much older ones are behind a paywall, but that might change. Give some props to Frank and dearly departed Gilbert if you grew up on stuff that was already decades old. Goodbye Gil, I hope you are an angel with a dirty face (old movie reference, 'natch).

Cheers.

 

Goddamn - it's Outdoor Survival!

 Last night was board game night at my place. I had been looking forward to it all week. Eldritch Horror, Dead of Winter, and maybe Call to Adventure were the likely favorites. But since my newest game was Formula D, that demanded a trial run. It was an immediate new favorite game. We played two full Moracco races. I didn't do so great, but that my besties loved it brings me the most joy. Playing a cool game with friends that are so close they are like family.

I was going to post about that today, but something else happened that demands attention. So my post of Formula D must wait. I simply cannot skip the headline. 

"L" has started a new hobby. She is going around yard sales and swap meets to find old/beat up board games, intact or otherwise. She has been planning other things to make out of those games. I'm not real sure what all that is, though it sounds like it could be anything from game-themes wall art to game-themed handbags. I'm not creative in that way, but it sounds pretty cool. And she has been picking games up for next to nothing. 

So they show up and  L has a pile of games she got that morning for around 3 bucks all together, and she wanted to show them to me. OK, cool. 

But when they walk in, I'm on the big screen playing GTA 5. I was actually playing tennis in the game, and this court happened to be right across the street  from the 'Vespucci Beach" canals, a loving recreation of the place I was born not long after my parents immigrated to Los Angeles. So with great pride I was able to run across the street and show them my childhood stomping grounds.

So then cool things of the night number 2. L's score of old games.

Hmm..I think I've heard of these. Especially Last Night on Earth, which I think is a zombie game with minis. That's maybe a good one. Hope its intact.

I hope this is just a zombie cosplayer
and not a homeless guy fucking with
somebodies game

Then there was Wizards, with a cover I recognized right away. I know that cover, but don't remember the game. But I feel I at least played it way back in the day. I'm having vague childhood memory flashes. Maybe Gary at Aero had it stocked.  

Then of course is the main course. I saw it and exclaimed "Goddamn! It's Outdoor Survival!!!

Poor L. Though she and hubby B have been fairly enthusiastic boardgamers prior to meeting me, L didn't play D&D until the campaign I was tapped to run for them and a few other locals. We became best friends during that campaign, while most of the other players were more or less asses in seats. But now more than two years later they are like family to me. But I guess I mention them and their importance to me since I moved to a new city where I didn't know anybody, in a lot of my posts.

Yet another well I
maybe go to too much.

But anyway, she (along with B) had no knowledge of these games. Which is even more exciting, because she is into lots of boardgames. Lots of them discovered in recent years at a local brew pub that has hundreds of games. Many abstract ones I have no interest in (I just want action along with my whimsey). But she it into it enough that she sometimes will don dollar store costuming that goes with  particular game themes, such as in King of Tokyo..

Run for your lives, 
it's Gigazuar!

But she did not know these. She was thrilled to see my reaction to this stuff, all of which she got for next to nothing. And on first glance most look like they have the minis and stuff. But I backed off. I always have after-guilt when we play something like Eldritch Horror, and some satanic force makes me start going on about things they are unaware of. I end up explaining what shit like Mi Go and Hounds of Tindalos are all about. They are usually interested in the things I suddenly geek out about though. I'm kind of their pop culture guru. But they were especially eager to learn what (little) I knew about Outdoor Survival. 

L is so clueless as to deep gaming pop culture she can't even get her terms right. Last week she referred to me in a text messge as a nerd. So I of course corrected her. I'm a "geek", dammit. Nerds are what Fonzie used to beat up.

Pictured: Fonzie, a nerd, and
whatever the hell a Chachi is.

So I began my long tale. Naw, not really. What I knew could fit in a thimble. But as I started gaming with the little OD&D books I was exposed to the couple of blurbs about some mysterious board game you added to the mix to do outdoor adventures. I certainly didn't seek it out back in the day. At first my games were primarily city based, first with City State of The Invincible Overlord (the city had dungeons, and you just had to exit the front gates to be in a wilderness so who needed a world map?) and not long after my own homebrew city of Tanmoor and environs. 

But remembering Outdoor Survival from my childhood to this day might have been possible because of a couple shortish OD&D campaigns I did over the last decade or so. The existence of the OSR and my exploring it online a little over 10 years ago is why I probably had the box cover in my mind and all this stayed in my memory banks. 

So I mostly tell them right off that it was mentioned in Original D&D and suggested that the map at least be used for wilderness stuff. And of course I later learned that many back then and even more recently used the map as their campaign map. Hell, if I had it back in the day I for sure would use it. I used maps back then from old SPI WW2 games for local terrain and stuff. Outdoor Survival's map seemed to have a wide variety of terrain, making it useful for all types of adventures. And maybe the most cool of facts about it, that outdoor enthusiast shops stocked it. That it was maybe getting a lot of play on camping trips. 

..and grab a copy of that boardgame so
we don't get lost and die of thirst

But yeah, the simple but bitchin' map is what maybe helped keep this timeless. 

So my pals got a kick out of all this. And I did to. I'm not sure which, if any, L will be cannibalizing for her projects, but I'm thinking of talking her into keeping it. Not just because it seems she could get anything from 50 to 100 and something online for it (it seems to only have a little box wear - whoever she bought them off seemed to have respected the games). But most importantly I've been trying to talk her into being a dungeon master, and the OS map would make a good campaign starting place. But all in all it was a really outstanding geek-out night thanks in part to a neat discovery. 

Oh, and we played some Formula D. Very exciting game. I'll post about that soon. 

Cheers.