Time has made AD&D Monster Manual a bit of a farce

When growing up, I played a fair amount of Dungeons & Dragons. I had the Monster Manual pictured below which is wildly derided in Stupid Monsters Someone Was Paid To Make.

Even if you still love and play D&D, it’s hard not to at least smile with passages like this:

The “Gas Spore” is a monster that looks like a Beholder…only when you attack it, it explodes and infects you with deadly spores that will kill you. So we’ve got a monster that is a monster you have to fight as well as monster that exists only to look like a monster you have to fight. This brings up the first issue I have with D&D: There is no hope for you if you exist in this world. Nothing can be trusted. If the game master wants to kill you, you’re dead. Think I’m exaggerating? Wait until I show you the monster that kills you by becoming your pants and tricking you into putting them on.

We’ve covered D&D online at VTOR which I played for a couple months and then lost interest because it was a bit too repetitive. One of the strengths of D&D is when it involves imagination from both the Game Master and players. D&D online doesn’t have that type of interaction. Neither does the most popular MMORPG out there: World of Warcraft.

Second Life, although not a game, offers more of the D&D free range exploration and creativity. After writing about the D&D Animated TV series, I learned that people play D&D inside Second Life. Still haven’t been able to catch up with a session of D&D played inside SL, but it sounds intriguing.

I’d like to play an MMORPG where players take a more active role in the storyline. Something more involved than your character choosing which quests to take like many MMORPG. Something where you actually participate in changing quest outcomes based on party decisions or the ability to create your own quests. Ever played an MMORPG like this? Recommendations?

Update 2:00pm PST: Poking around a bit more after publishing, I learned that Wizards of the Coast who owns and operates D&D these days pays six cents per word for accepted D&D article submissions. If we convert that out in Linden dollars:

1,000 words = $60 USD = L$15,900

Not bad. Exclusive rights though, so if you’ve blogged about something D&D oriented brilliantly, that doesn’t apply.