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From: "Thomas A. Miller" <[e-mail]>
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Subject: REFERENCE:  Adventurers FAQ
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Date: 24 Oct 1995 20:39:26 -0400
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Adventurers FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) List
  Thomas Miller, author of "The Adventurers"
  [e-mail]
  last updated 23 October 1995



Table of Contents:
A.  QUESTIONS ABOUT THE PLAYERS AND THE SESSIONS
    a1.   Tell us about all this gaming you did - when, where, how?
    a2.   Who did the gaming and which character(s) did they play?
          What were their majors?  Where are they now?  Do you still
          stay in touch with them?
    a3.   Do you still play (with others, since obviously the group
          has disbanded)?
B.  QUESTIONS ABOUT THE WRITEUPS
    b1.  How many stories are there?  Are there any more coming?  I
         don't understand all this about "Epic I" and "Epic II" and
         real stories and made-up stories and...?!?
    b2.  How long does it take to do all the writing?
    b3.  How extensive were your game notes?
    b4.  How many pages/K/characters/lines are there total?
    b5.  Did you glamorize the actions and behavior of the players
         in your writeups?
    b6.  Please name all the official TSR modules that the party has
         been through.
    b7.  Where do you do all this writing?  And what is cimmeria?
C.  QUESTIONS ABOUT THINGS WITHIN THE GAME WORLD
    c1.  How exactly are the names of the characters pronounced?
    c2.  Whatever happened to Belgar, the thief who buried the party
         alive back in part 7 or so?
    c3.  Are there any other "loose ends" that we should know about?
    c4.  Why did Bosco have two lines in the part of episode #197
         where he was supposed to be aboard the _Victory_ while the
         bulk of the party explored the ruined ships?
    c5.  How did Belphanior survive/come back to life in episode #203?
    c6.  While Belphanior was on Earth, did he manage to snag any
         firearms or other cool stuff, to bring back to Oerth?
    c7.  What the heck IS the wispy thing anyway?
    c8.  Is Ged's fire wand supposed to be a Baklunish or a Sueloise
         artifact?
    c9.  Bosco once drank two magical potions at the same time.  Did
         they mix, are they permanent, etc?
    c10. How many times has Peldor "died" where his sword saved him
         via its nine lives power?
    c11. Whatever happened to Peyote's artifact, the Rod of Life and
         Death?
    c12. Exactly how resistant are the drow to sunlight - and what
         happened to their innate drow powers?
    c13. What year (Greyhawk time) did the adventurers begin their
         adventuring ways?  It's not clear, since you didn't put any
         dates on the first few dozen episodes.
    c14. Over the years, you've revealed various origins for the
         characters.  Who's left, and when will you do theirs?
D.  QUESTIONS ABOUT STATS AND RULES
    d1.  What kind of stats are these characters running around with?
         In most combats, they seem to hit opponents with ease, and no
         one ever dies anymore...
    d2.  Do players in your campaigns roll up their characters straight
         from the book, or are their stats tweaked to what they want?
    d3.  What rules/guidelines did you use for Rillen's martial arts
         abilities?
    d4.  Why does time get warped during extra-dimensional adventures?
E.  MISCELLANY
    e1.  Do you endorse any other stories/sagas?
    e2.  Do you think it's ethical/right/justified to continue making
         up stories after the ones that were actually played are over?
         Do the players agree with you on this?
    e3.  Where in the world do you get all those cool quotes from,
         the ones you put near the top of the stories?
    e4.  Which episode holds the record for size?
    e5.  We want stats!  Monsters especially, but also PCs and NPCs.
         Will you ever post any of them?
    e6.  What's this about TSR and copyright infringement anyway?
    e7.  How many readers do you have, anyway?  Is there a mailing
         list?  Ftp site?  Web page?  Collected books?





(A)  QUESTIONS ABOUT THE PLAYERS AND THE SESSIONS:

a1.  Tell us about all this gaming you did - when, where, how?

  We played starting in April 1989, and the campaign lasted
until early 1991, when several players graduated and moved
away at once.  I began writing in November, 1991.
  A one-time reunion occurred on Saturday, October 9, 1993 -
we finished about two-thirds of the adventure I had designed
specifically for the reunion.  All of the then-current
characters' players, except Alindyar, were there.  Further
reunions are, however, highly unlikely - most of the players
are settling down, buying houses, getting married...
  This all happened at the Georgia Institute of Technology,
where the engineers of tommorrow are created today   :)  This
place is in Atlanta, Georgia, USA.  For the record, much food,
drink, and alcohol were consumed during most of these games.
  We played for just under 2 years.  Each adventure was usually
played out in one night, typically from about 8 pm to about 3
am but sometimes later.  We played about every other weekend
during active school quarters, less often at other times.

a2.  Who did the gaming and which character(s) did they play?
  What were their majors?  Where are they now?  Do you still
  stay in touch with them?

  Ged, aka Ashley Bone, got his B EE in '93 and is currently
working on his MS EE at Georgia Tech.  He is in the graduate
co-op program, and fabricates microelectronics on his work
quarters.
  Belphanior, aka Rick Glotzbach, got his B CS in '91 and is
currently living and working in Atlanta.  He writes all kinds
of software programs, and recently bought a nice house.
  Halbarad, aka Andrew Hackett, got his B PHYS in '91 and is
currently working somewhere in Atlanta.
  Rob, aka John Robert Kenneth Lefebvre III, is one test away
from his B EE, and has been since '90.  He is married, has a
little girl, and works and lives in Atlanta, doing computer
programming.
  Peyote, aka Kenneth Lightner, got his Sociology degree from
Georgia State in '91.  He works for the CDC, doing computer
programming.  Ken is married and has a house, but no children.
  Alindyar, aka Marc Lindsell, got his B ARCH in '90, and then
moved out to San Francisco to do drafting work.  I hardly ever
talk to him these days.
  Mongo, aka James Morse, got his B CS in '91 and currently
lives and works in Atlanta, doing computer support and maybe
a bit of programming.  He is married, and now owns a house.
  Rillen, aka Mark Rillen, got his B ChemE in '92 and has been
working in Rome, Ga. since then.
  In September 1995 he moved north, to attend graduate school
at the University of Michigan.
  Peldor, aka Marc Robert, got his B AE in '92 and his MS ME in
'94.  He moved to Winston-Salem, N.C. in March 1995 to pursue
full-time employment, and is very happy now.

  The DM (me) aka Thomas Miller...I got my B EE in '93, and then
accepted a job at Georgia Tech.  To find out more about what I
do, see my WWW page or else finger [e-mail]
  As with any good friends, we all still try to stay in touch.
Of the core group, only Belphanior, Ged, and Mongo's players are
still close at hand in Atlanta.

a3.  Do you still play (with others, since obviously the group has
  disbanded)?

  Occasionally...but not often.  I'm more of a creator than a
player.





(B)  QUESTIONS ABOUT THE WRITEUPS:

b1.  How many stories are there?  Are there any more coming?  I
  don't understand all this about "Epic I" and "Epic II" and
  real stories and made-up stories and...?!?

  As of September 1, 1993, the stories which adapted the many
adventures that we played are done.  It took 125 episodes and
22 months.  That was Epic I.
  More began appearing in October 1993, after the reunion was
played.  Since the reunion has been adapted, I've been taking
readers' suggestions and running the characters through them
myself, with input from the original players.  This body of
work will make up Epic II, and it's pretty much played in my
head, not by players.
  Ideally, Epic III will come in the 300s and will detail the
later periods in the adventurers' lives (marriage, families,
kingdoms, godhood, etc.)

b2.  How long does it take to do all the writing?

  On a good day, I produce 15K of quality material in about two
hours.  Proofreading takes up more time, especially if I use more
people than just myself to do it (and I do.)  An important point
to note is that, now that I'm a full-timer, I don't deal with the
stories at all during working hours (whereas before, I could write
them during the day on a terminal or at home) - time is too short
to write every night, or else we'd be on part 400 by now.  I also
have other interests these days, and rarely seem to be at home.

b3.  How extensive were your game notes?

  Fairly extensive.  It's important to keep in mind, though, that
I knew all the players and thus am now able, after the fact, to
know what they would say and do in a variety of situations.  Much
of the dialogue is made up on the fly, while keeping to the basic
events that actually happened.  To put it simply:  the combats in
the stories are probably not identical to those that actually
happened, but the outcomes of those combats are.

b4.  How many pages/K/characters/lines are there total?

  Through book 13 (which ends with 275) :

book 1           296696
book 2           421811
book 3           233664
book 4           384965
book 5           432659
book 6           330624
book 7           503050
book 8           353091
book 9           551713
book 10          399972
book 11          448415
book 12          603739
book 13          612605

TOTAL           5673004 = 5.67 Mb

  Currently, a full printout of all the parts takes up about
eight inches of 8.5" x 11" paper, with printing on both sides.

b5.  Did you glamorize the actions and behavior of the players
   in your writeups?

  Yup.  It's extremely hard not to.  Specific examples include:
Rillen wasn't nearly as law-abiding as I make him out to be;
Ged may have been even more arrogant than I make him out to be;
Belphanior was a good bit more bloodthirsty than you see in the
stories.  Looking back on it, I've done a fairly good job of
representing the characters/players as they were, while making
the party mesh well from outsiders' points of view.

b6.  Please name all the official TSR modules that the party
   has been through.

  Okay...in chronological order, here they are:

  A1-A2-A3-A4 (Slaver series)
  "Terrible Trouble At Tragidore" (mini-module that came with
     the 2nd edition DM screen; only the land group did this)
  WGR1 (Greyhawk Ruins)
  S1 (Tomb of Horrors)

b7.  Where do you do all this writing?  And what is cimmeria?

  In the early days, I came to my office at night to write.
Much later, I borrowed an old PC from Mongo's player.  When
he needed that back, I had to write after-hours again, for a
while.  Nowadays, I do all my writing on a PC at home, which
I also use for work via a PPP dial-in connection.
  Cimmeria is a NeXTstation turbo; besides being its own mail
server, it is used as a launchpad to mail, post, and store
all stories.  Of course, its primary function is to assist me
with unix support at work.





(C)  QUESTIONS ABOUT THINGS TOTALLY WITHIN THE GAME WORLD:

c1.  How exactly are the names of the characters pronounced?

  a-LIND-yar (flat a, as in "bad")
  AR-nold (or AH-nold if you prefer)
  bel-PHAN-ior
  BOS-co
  ged (active g, as in "go")
  GOR-in
  LYR-a (LYR as in "leer")
  MON-go
  NEN-ya
  OTT-o
  PEL-dor
  RILL-en
  TAN-ya

  and let's not forget these people:

  flint
  HAL-ba-rad (dead ba, as in "buh")
  krug (as in "bug")
  pey-O-te
  rob

c2.  Whatever happened to Belgar, the thief who buried the party
   alive back in part 7 or so?

  An oversight; this chronicler, being human, simply forgot to
tell the world of the fate of the wretch known as Belgar.  One
dark and stormy night, somewhere on Oerth, Belgar was lynched by
a small mob of people whom he had wronged.  Let's just say that
death was quick.

c3.  Are there any other "loose ends" that we should know about?

  They're also known as "future plotlines"...like the fate of
Bosco's soul was.  But no, there aren't any as blatantly bad
as the Belgar business.  Basically, any hostile NPC who appeared
at some point and didn't get killed by the party has a chance to
bother them again.
  Then again, there are things like Bosco and Peldor's benefits
that they never got while using the deck of many things, years
ago.  Peldor has a keep somewhere in the world, and Bosco has
several wishes waiting for him to use.  Both of these were finally
addressed in episode #249, and I'm trying to avoid missing others
in the future.

c4.  Why did Bosco have two lines in the part of episode #197
   where he was supposed to be aboard the _Victory_ while the
   bulk of the party explored the ruined ships?

  That was Peldor, disguised as Bosco!

c5.  How did Belphanior survive/come back to life in episode #203?

  Basically, I added a regeneration property to the eye artifact
because it suited the story at hand.  Now, though, I like the idea
quite a bit - Belphanior has become something more (less?) than
elven.

c6.  While Belphanior was on Earth, did he manage to snag any
  firearms or other cool stuff, to bring back to Oerth?

  You really just have to ask yourself, "Would he do that?" and
the answer becomes clear.  Also remember that Peldor had his own
little jaunt through a police station's evidence room...!  I'd
prefer to address these questions after episode #250.

c7.  What the heck IS the wispy thing anyway?

  I haven't really decided.  Perhaps it's better if I never do.
We know the little guy's magical (proven, essentially, in episode
#224) and that he doesn't count as a person/being for spells that
move people great distances.  Then there was the incident with
the banshee in episode #215.  I don't have any real explanation
for you, though.
  Starting with episode #219 or so, I've made an effort to have
the wispy thing's words be consistent with its mood.

c8.  Is Ged's fire wand supposed to be a Baklunish or a Sueloise
    artifact?

  I've said that Ged's fire wand was a Sueloise item, but as
loyal Greyhawk fans everywhere know, it was the Baklunish who
brought down the Rain of Colorless Fire upon the Sueloise.  The
Sueloise brought the Invoked Devastation down on the Baklunish
(I can't remember the exact order here but that's about the gist
of it all...)
  From here on out, consider it to be a Baklunish artifact that
the Sueloise captured during the conflict.  It then stayed in
their city for countless centuries until Ged and the others
found it.

c9.  Bosco once drank two magical potions at the same time.  Did
    they mix, are they permanent, etc?

  The potions in question were storm giant strength and speed.
I decided that either/both being permanent would unbalance the
character, and thus concluded that it was a non-eventful mix of
potions.  Admittedly, it would have been interesting, but...

c10. How many times has Peldor "died" where his sword saved him
    via its nine lives power?

#1:  Peldor was eaten while fighting the giant alligator, in
     Ged-2's fortress' sewers, on the alternate Oerth (episode
     #138)
#2:  Peldor was smashed while backstabbing the tarrasque (episode
     #250)

c11. Whatever happened to Peyote's artifact, the Rod of Life and
    Death?

  That item was ill-defined from the start, and didn't really
mesh well with a druidic character.  Thus, I took the liberty
of doing away with it after he and Halbarad left the party.

c12. Exactly how resistant are the drow to sunlight - and what
    happened to their innate drow powers?

  Over the last five years of game time, both Alindyar and Lyra
have become significantly more accustomed to the sun's light.
This was not without cost, though - all of their inherent drow
powers, with the exception of the 120' infravision, no longer
function.  Conceivably, if they spent any great amount of time
in the lands beneath the earth, their racial powers might return.
  It is still necessary for both dark elves to wear robes and
hoods when under direct sunlight, and they tend to weaken in very
hot weather.

c13. What year (Greyhawk time) did the adventurers begin their
    adventuring ways?  It's not clear, since you didn't put any
    dates on the first few dozen episodes.

  Ah, a good question.  After researching everything, and making
decisions as to what's canon and what's not, I've created a mini
timeline.  One caveat:  in the re-published episode #1, I gave
the date of the party's initial formation as 11/4/570 C.Y.  but
that was incorrect.  The correct date is 11/4/569 C.Y. - this is
when the Adventurers began their mayhem.
  The timeline appears as a separate file, due to its size.

c14. Over the years, you've revealed various origins for the
    characters.  Who's left, and when will you do theirs?

  Here's a complete summary:

    Character        episode where origin was revealed

    Alindyar        043
    Belphanior        043
    Bosco            268
    Ged            043
    Gorin            268
    Halbarad        043
    Lyra            not yet revealed    <a>
    Mongo            044
    Otto            not yet revealed
    Peldor            044
    Peyote            044
    Rillen            275            <b>
    Rob            044
    Tanya            288

<a>  Although we don't know Lyra's exact origin, we do know a lot
     about it, from various conversations over the years.
<b>  Rillen's origin was shown through flashbacks, unlike any of the
     other Adventurers.





(D)  QUESTIONS ABOUT STATS AND RULES:

d1.  What kind of stats are these characters running around with?
   In most combats, they seem to hit opponents with ease, and no
   one ever dies anymore...

  Remember that mine was a pretty high-magic campaign.  To show an
example, let's take Mongo at 10th level.  His thac0 was 11, -2 for
Str, -1 (or was it 2?) for specialization, -4 for the hammer bonus.
That's at least a thac0 of 4, not counting the fact that he's
wearing a girdle of giant strength.  Also, you may note that the
party's foes, in general, don't have ACs far below 0.  I think all
the warriors in the party were specialized in their main weapon, too.

d2.  Do players in your campaigns roll up their characters straight
   from the book, or are their stats tweaked to what they want?

  At the outset, I gave them 90 points to divide up among the 6 stats
as they saw fit.  I'm a firm believer in the school of thought that
player characters are heroic exceptions to the general populace, as
opposed to being typical members of fantasy society.  Incidentally,
Halbarad was the only one who didn't assign himself any 18s.

d3.  What rules/guidelines did you use for Rillen's martial arts
   abilities?

  I used to have some written down somewhere, but they're long gone
(not to mention obsolete) - now I just kinda do whatever I want,
since I'm able to write more freely these days.  I will tell you
that his attack rates are:  punch/kick 4/1 OR quarterstaff 5/2 OR
fire arrows 2/1.

d4.  Why does time get warped during extra-dimensional adventures?

  Just because that's the way I think.  In 126-143, six months
passed on Oerth for about three days on Oerth-2.  In 200-212,
five months passed on Oerth for about 2.5 days on Earth.  Seems
that I was (unintentionally) consistent.
  While I'm at it, I'd like to say that I consider the time/
dimension warping phenomenon to be a useful one, but also a very
powerful one.  I find myself having to be careful not to overuse
it.  Really, though, Oerth-2 was more of an alternate dimension,
a caricature of Oerth.  Our Earth was another, totally different
dimension entirely.  I think of it as a "level" scheme, thus:

                         [infinite]
                             |
             (other unique dimensions/universes)
                             |
                          (Earth)
                             |
   [infinite] <--- (Oerth) <---> (Oerth-2) ---> [infinite]
                             |
                         [infinite]

  So, horizontally, we have parallel/alternate dimensions;
vertically, we have entirely different ones.  This is my own
personal vision of how it all fits together.





(E)  MISCELLANY:

e1.  Do you endorse any other stories/sagas?

  Of course.  Foremost in my mind is the Navero series, by Daniel
Parsons, both for its originality (it was the first of the great
net.sagas) and for its similarity to my own campaign (or my own
campaign's similarity to it, if you prefer.)  Also notable to me
are the Aristobulus and Hawn Ambrosius sagas, by Jeff Standish;
the Axe of the Dwarvish Lords sagas (there's one by Peter Frey, as
well as a different one out there too); the Wizard of Smaug series;
the Chronicles of Whitehand, by Allan Longley and others; Qelrik,
by Guido Robling.  Forgive me if I've missed any others.

e2.  Do you think it's ethical/right/justified to continue making
   up stories after the ones that were actually played are over?  Do
   the players agree with you on this?

  Good question.  Overall, my answer would be 'yes'.  I do think
it's okay to go on.  I have the approval of all major players, and
in most cases, I still consult with them for proofreading.  In Ged's
player's case, I even talk with him, often, about the castle that his
character is building.  Peldor's further exploits are often invented
over pitchers of beer at some local watering hole.  And so on.  While
sensitive to those readers who are bothered by made-up stories, I
feel that the players want it this way, as do I, as do most readers.

e3.  Where in the world do you get all those cool quotes from, the
   ones you put near the top of the stories?

  I have a library of 500 novels or hardbacks, 300 CDs, 3000 comics,
and 300 movies...I constantly seek new and interesting quotes (and
find them!)  Also, see Robert Byrne's series, "The 637 Best Things
Anybody Ever Said" (parts 1-5) - I use quotes from these a lot.

e4.  Which episode holds the record for size?

  There are seventeen episodes longer than 40K:

   1.    250  (107.6K)
   2.    175  ( 61.1K)
   3.    225  ( 55.2K)
   4.    125  ( 55.1K)
   5.     75  ( 53.2K)
   6.    200  ( 50.6K)
   7.    119  ( 48.7K)
   8.    150  ( 47.0K)
   9.    100  ( 46.7K)
  10.    197  ( 44.2K)
  11.    199  ( 43.4K)
  12.    143  ( 43.2K)
  13.    268  ( 42.4K)
  14.     90  ( 41.7K)
  15.    252  ( 41.6K)
  16.    101  ( 40.4K)
  17.     50  ( 40.0K)

  You'll note that I tend to make every 25th episode a pretty big
one - a personal preference.  Episode 250 was actually posted in a
two-part cliffhanger format.

e5.  We want stats!  Monsters especially, but also PCs and NPCs.
   Will you ever post any of them?

  I posted 13 of them in September 1994, and periodically post
others as the mood strikes.

e6.  What's this about TSR and copyright infringement anyway?

  On October 4, 1994 I learned that ftp.cs.pdx.edu was removing
all material that contained AD&D-oriented items.  Due to pressure
from TSR, no ftp site is now willing to carry such things, for
fear of legal action.
  Though TSR has set up a site that I can put the Adventurers on,
they want me to put their copyright notice atop each story.  It
seems that doing so might allow them to use my characters and
adventures, though, and they also want me to edit out violence,
profanity, etcetera.  Due to these requested constraints on my
writing, I can't use their ftp site anytime in the near future.
  This led to the stories from 205-250 or so not being archived
on any anonymous ftp site.  However, in June 1995 a fan offered
me the use of his site, and I accepted.  You can now get old
(and new) copies of Adventurers at ftp.digex.net along the path
/pub/access/dpm/rpg/stories/adventurers     The books, monster
stats, FAQ, index, and everything else are available here, too.

e7.  How many readers do you have, anyway?  Is there a mailing
   list?  Ftp site?  Web page?  Collected books?

  I'd estimate that about 800 different people have mailed me
over the ~4 years I've been writing these stories.  The only
continent that I'm not certain I have readers on is Antarctica.
  Yes, I do have a direct mailing list; if your newsfeed is
unreliable or sporadic (this seems to happen a lot outside of
the North American continent) and you want to get the stories
directly, send me email.
  The Adventurers Web page is at the following URL:
http://www.gatech.edu/oit/staff/ns/thomas.miller/adv.html
  The Adventurers stories have been collected as books. e.g.
"book1", "book2", etc.  I recommend these collected editions
because they're organized, with titles and page breaks, and
also because I tend to run a spell-checker on them (as opposed
to individual stories, which are never altered once I post
them.)  For reasons more specifically detailed in question e6,
I'm not supposed to archive them anywhere.  However, one never
knows what one will find, if one looks in the right place.  Or,
you can send me e-mail and I'll see what I can do to help you
get the collected books.





  (additions to this list are always welcome; mail them to me)