Right O. Seems like an opportune moment to post an update on Vol 2 (Delving & Exploration) progress.
98% of the text has been written for years now. It is mostly lying around in a bunch of individual text files. The remaining challenge is: how to organise the text in a manner that best respects the original and is also somewhat more practical to use. I've had a long-term case of analysis paralysis in this department, for sure.
The issue is that OD&D's volume 3 (Underworld & Wilderness Adventures) is essentially organised around a stream of consciousness. The content is all over the place, including some in the other two volumes.
I have recently tried (once again) to get a handle on how I am going to organise DD5 Vol2.
I started by (once again) printing a physical copy of the 3LBBs and manually cutting it up into sections, and re-organising all the sections on a paste-board into something that might be a DD5 layout. My principles in this exercise were to:
1. Separate player and referee material more clearly (moving player stuff into DD Vol1 and referee stuff into DD Vol2)
Then, within Vol2,
2. Separate the referee material into:
a) Preparation (building content before play) versus: Moderating play (running the game), while also separating:
b) Campaign, Town, Wilderness, and Dungeon material.
This is not as straight forward as may sound. The source material often addresses the player and the ref simultaneously, or mixes phrases relevant to either together in a single sentence or para. There are also gaps (i.e., town and wilderness content generation, combat); repetition; material required in more than one context (i.e., monster tables, reactions); and material that's a bit less relevant to the contemporary, character-based concept of D&D (i.e., ship to ship battles).
Most of the gaps can be filled from other sources (esp. Dave Arneson's FFC for wilderness content; GD&D, CM and/or WoM for combat), but how much additional material should be dragged in? My thinking is "not much", and that any extra material should go in the appendices.
The other big deal is that by re-arranging the material into anything "more sensible" implies a sense of structure and wholeness that simply isn't there in the original. This is really the main issue. How to maintain the original's sense of explosive, unstructured creativity, while at the same time trying to put some semblance of structure around it? These two objectives don't easily fit together
For all that hand-wringing, I am currently, more-or-less, sitting on this for the DD5 Vol2 layout:
Ref's Intro
Preparing for Campaign
--Town
--Wilderness
--Underworld
Moderating the Campaign
--Time
--PCs
--NPCs
--End Game
----Baronies
----Artifacts
Moderating the Adventure
--Monster Reactions
--Underworld
--Wilderness
----Aerial/Naval exploration
Appendices
--Combat (GD&D, CM, MM/UWA)
----Aerial combat, ship boarding (UWA)
--Wilderness generation (OS, FFC)
--Ship-to-Ship Combat (UWA)
I am also considering pushing all the Appendices into a separate "Vol 4" so that those who just want Vols 1--3 can have them without the additional pollution of unwanted appendices.
Happy to hear any thoughts on the above... there is plenty of time
