TOPIC: Trent Tokens Presents: True Dungeon History

Fiddy wrote:

Trent wrote:

Jeff Martin wrote: I wrote that in the mid-80s for the RPGA at Gen Con.

archive.org/stream/Polyhedron155/polyhedron%20039_djvu.txt

Jeff is correct!



FYI - this was an eBay find a while back I got from Matt Forbeck. It was in a group of Marvel Super Heroes RPG Tournament Modules From Gen Con.

I would really hope Jeff would be correct!

LOL, me too!

these are great. love when this pops up

Thanks for bringing this to light.

Who knows what these are?

I will take what is part of a TD volunteer costume.

A Rakshasa and a Rous obviously.

Matt wrote: A Rakshasa and a Rous obviously.

Quite right!

I believe the Rakshasa was a VIP passenger on our astral ship and end boss in Astral Journey Into the Bliss. It had an insanely high initiative, could turn invisible, but you could slide a puck at a certain square to hit it with ashes from it's fireplace to negate that.

The Rous I believe conveyed a scroll of protection to the party if you solved a puzzle in her room - although I forget what dungeon that was - maybe the swamp dungeon?

Matthew Hayward wrote: The Rous I believe conveyed a scroll of protection to the party if you solved a puzzle in her room - although I forget what dungeon that was - maybe the swamp dungeon?

E1 - Abyssal Swamp with the big 1-10 puzzle box with the key in it (avoiding spoilers)

Just to follow up on the UV light/detect magic thing. We used to have two different reveal techniques. Early on there were two different colors of ink (green and purple) purple was for magic clues and green for poison clues. The UV light (held by the DM) worked to reveal both, provided you had the token or spell. Initially the DM would kind of point the player in the area of the hidden text or symbols, but later on we would hand the player the light and let them look around for them. At that point the detect poison ability kind of went away since both would be revealed by the same light. I always remember it being a last minute dungeon build task... "did anyone go around and add the UV magic clues?"

We did look into different inks and different UV wavelengths to try and keep the two separate but had a lot of frustration with matching them up and consistency with lights and inks. Maybe as Jeff suggests, with newer pigments and lighting that can be brought back as a game mechanic.

You example of the darkvision ball reminds me we also had a "sunrod" token that got you an additional light source as well.
Early on the magic user had a light spell as well, and there was a token. We used to say that the magic user used the light spell to light the torch, but the scroll of light token also gave you a second light source, similar to the sun rod.

Most of those original wooden tokens were snapped in half and disposed of on site (consumable tokens that were turned in), which is why there are so few left floating around.

Your pictures of the "bag of holding" folder also included an early version of the token guide. I need ot go back and look through my files, but I think I still have all the old electronic versions. I originally did the "guide" in 2004 as a quick reference for the DMs. I do not remember if it was Jeff or player demand that led us to publishing a player version (text only), which then started featuring images shortly thereafter.

dbradical wrote: Your pictures of the "bag of holding" folder also included an early version of the token guide. I need ot go back and look through my files, but I think I still have all the old electronic versions. I originally did the "guide" in 2004 as a quick reference for the DMs. I do not remember if it was Jeff or player demand that led us to publishing a player version (text only), which then started featuring images shortly thereafter.

All of the info you just added is VERY COOL! Thanks for those awesome tidbits of info!