Obsolete Your Idols » raw data http://blog.manjusri.org Book Reviews and Blather Wed, 06 Jul 2011 18:46:43 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 A Long and Vestigial Tail http://blog.manjusri.org/2008/10/17/a-long-and-vestigial-tail/ http://blog.manjusri.org/2008/10/17/a-long-and-vestigial-tail/#comments Fri, 17 Oct 2008 12:44:51 +0000 binder http://blog.manjusri.org/?p=72 I’ve mentioned before that one of my favorite things is the Forgotten Realms setting for playing Dungeons and Dragons.  Since the first issue of Dragon magazine I picked up which had an Ed Greenwood article in it (#89, I think, a set of magical shields), I’ve been enamored by the complex creation, the places where layer upon layer of event and detail have built up across decades of play and publication, as well as the places which have been exposed only once or not at all.

The places which have been visited across editions (Waterdeep, Shadowdale, Daggerdale) and the ‘new’ places which we’ll be seeing for the first time in 4th Edition, they all hold a fascination for me.  To the point that I just spent two weeks indexing the collection of adventures I have which are set firmly in the world of Faerun.  This isn’t all of them ever, they’re just the ones I could get my hands on.  The list is in the form of Level of Party: Number of Adventures For It.

  • 0:  1
  • N:  5
  • 1:  19
  • 2:  23
  • 3:  21
  • 4:  20
  • 5:  26
  • 6:  37
  • 7:  39
  • 8:  29
  • 9:  23
  • 10:  21
  • 11:  12
  • 12:  11
  • 13:  5
  • 14:  4
  • 15:  3
  • 16:  3
  • 17:  2
  • 18:  4
  • 19:  3
  • 20:  3
  • 21:  1
  • 22:  1
  • 23:  1
  • 24:  1
  • 25:  1
  • 26:  1
  • 27:  1
  • 28:  1
  • 29:  1
  • 30:  1
  • 31:  1
  • 32:  1
  • 33:  1
  • 34:  1
  • 35:  1
  • 36:  1
  • 37:  1
  • 38:  1
  • 39:  1
  • 40:  1
  • 41:  1
  • 42:  1
  • 43:  1
  • 44:  1
  • 45:  1
  • 46:  1
  • 47:  1
  • 48:  1
  • 49:  1
  • 50:  1
  • 51:  1
  • 52:  1
  • 53:  1
  • 54:  1
  • 55:  1
  • 56:  1
  • 57:  1
  • 58:  1
  • 59:  1
  • 60:  1
  • 61:  1
  • 62:  1
  • 63:  1
  • 64:  1
  • 65:  1
  • 66:  1
  • 67:  1
  • 68:  1
  • 69:  1
  • 70:  1
  • 71:  1
  • 72:  1
  • 73:  1
  • 74:  1
  • 75:  1
  • 76:  1
  • 77:  1
  • 78:  1
  • 79:  1
  • 80:  1
  • 81:  1
  • 82:  1
  • 83:  1
  • 84:  1
  • 85:  1
  • 86:  1
  • 87:  1
  • 88:  1
  • 89:  1
  • 90:  1
  • 91:  1
  • 92:  1
  • 93:  1
  • 94:  1
  • 95:  1
  • 96:  1
  • 97:  1
  • 98:  1
  • 99:  1
  • 100:  1

Some fun things to observe:

  • yes, there really is an adventure for 0-level characters; an outgrowth of what I remember being a Greyhawk-based idea
  • 6th & 7th level seem to be the sweet spot for where many writers target adventure scenarios
  • these data points are cross all editions of AD&D and I haven’t done any correction for power [in|de]flation
  • that very long tail from 21-100 is, in fact, due to one adventure, H4 Throne of Bloodstone
  • on my system, `sort -n` thinks that N is between 0 & 1; the N adventures are ones which insist that they can be played by any level of party and generally are resolved by talking (for weak parties) or killing everything (the normal way)
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