Here is a test to your internet lore. How many of you know the origin of the Machine of Lum the Mad?

Post what you think here, and I'll tell you if it's that or not.

The first time I ever saw a refrence to it was in the first edition PnP dungeon masters guide under the artifacs heading. Yes I am old. :(

Well.. that's not the origin of it.

Some years ago, before BGII came out, there was a very popular Gaming website with a very "special" webmaster. The website was called The ranting of Lum the Mad, and you guessed it, his name was Lum the Mad.

That was a very popular gaming news website, and he wasn't effraid to piss off game devs by saying the truth. Lots of Devs and fans alike visited the website and the forum, including the BGII devs. But he quited working on his website when Mythic Entertainment, the maker of DAOC, hired him as a PR. But when BGII was made, he still had his website.

This whole quest is an easter egg for him.

Now that is respect!! Who else can say that they have a whole section of a game devoted to them?

I also saw it for the first time in my first edition DM's Guide. It doesn't say much about it's history. Gary Gygax created it himself or he apropiated it. He was rather notirious for using other people's material (Moorckock's Melnibone, Lieber's Newon and Cuthulu mythos). I have one of the early first edition Deities and Demigods with the said material. He was later sued and had to remove the material. There are other questionable cases. I am so greatfull for Gygax and his two college buddies (who he railroaded), for creating AD+D. I am still playing in two games after 25 years, but facts are facts. Since The Machine Of Lum The Mad has been in AD+D books all these years, I would have to say the creator was Gary Gygax.

I don't know where Lum the Mad got his name from. Probably from that old rulebook.

But I know for a fact that they made it for Lum the Mad (the webmaster). They teased him on his website.

It's sad that he quited his website, that was the best.

Interesting bit of trivia, though... Was unfamiliar with both explanations. [img]smile.gif[/img]
But did they just use this guy's name or were there more Easter Eggs referring to him, like some of the machine's effects or the way the notes were written?

Interesting, although now I'm wondering about that item in Shadowkeeper where the book is said to belong to Lium the Mad.....

I thought the Machine of Lum the Mad dated back before AD&D.

It was in the AD&D Book of Artifacts.

The way the notes are written are certainly to mock him.

Oh yea, honestly, the machine all in it's own is really powerful (I play 3rd edition with my uncle), but honestly I never really went to look as to where it came from. All I know is, is when I actually read about it, it was about 4 years ago in a very old AD&D 2nd edition book dating back in the early 80's. But in the actual game itself, I think the story goes that there was a crazzed wizard that had visions and spent most of his life greating a machine that would give someone god like powers and abilities.

Oh, and P.S.- It's spelt Lumm the Madd

[ 01-21-2003, 08:17 PM: Message edited by: Gangrell ]

This is the entry in the artifact section of my 1979 Dungeon Masters Guide.

Machine of Lum the Mad - Perhaps this strange device was built by gods long forgotten and survived the eons since their passing, for it is incredibly anchient and of workmanship unlike anything known today. The Machine was udes by Baron Lum to build an empire, but what has since become of this ponderous mechanism none can say. Legends report that it has 60 levers, 40 dials and 20 switches (but only one half still function). Singly or in combination, these controls will generate all sorts of powers and effects.

The Machine is delicate, intricate, bulky and very heavy (5,500 lbs.). It can be moved normally, and any serious jolt will set off and destroy 1-4 functions of the artifact which can never be restored. It has a booth of a size suitable for four man sized creatures (4'x5'x7') to stand inside, and if a creature or object is placed therein and the Machine's controls are worked, something might happen.

You must matrix the 60 levers, 40 dials, and 20 switches, showing which will preform what functions. You may opt to include powers and/or effects of your own devising.

In the back of this section there were three tables of powers and three of side effects, each table was more powerfull/devastating than the one before it. Under the entry for each artifact there were a list of how many powers and side effects each artifact posessed. There was a strange problem though, each table of effects were listed by letter (a, b, c....), and not by %. It was very dfficult to randomly generate the powers (one table had 27 entries, another had 34 and so on). Oh, Lum has ONE m.

*Looks back into his old DM book*
Hmm, thought it had two M's.

Long before there was D&D, there was **Drumroll** a game called Chainmail!

One of the mission packs involved taking out a Wizard that had captured The Machine of the Gods. It was not called the Machine of Lum the Mad, but, it does not take a genius to figure out the connections.

It is possible to move the machine with out damaging it. There was a quest pack put out, I can't remember the name, but, it was a high level quest series where you had to recover The Machine. (Same discription as the one in Chainmail) And you found out later it was the Machine of Lum the Mad. In the British versions of the same mission pack, it was The Machine of Lumm the Madd. You see, when activated properly, The Machine does not actually move. The universe moves around it. The Machine stays in one spot and the whole universe shifts around till The Machine is where it wants to be.

It is interesting to note as well, that Planar Spheres were created by Gnomes who stole the technology and modified it for their own version of space and planer travel. The Planar Sphere never actually moves. It always stays in a fixed location, the universe and the planes move around it until you arrive at where you want to be. It makes my head hurt trying to think about how the physics to this might work, I don't recommend to anybody trying to figure out if this is physically possible. However, the shortest distance is not from point A to point B. The shortest distance between the two points would be achieved if you folded them into each other creating a juxtaposition of the two points in the exact same space of each other. Somehow. Argh... Here comes the headache. Or most famous scientist Albert believed this was possible and could even be done with out breaking the laws of relativity. Stephen Hawkings disagrees mightily, thinking the only way to do this would be to create a wormhole effect, and, much like swinging a long flexible object, like say, a string or a lasso, grabbing the wormhole by one end and causing it to whip around and spin, making one end of it revolve much faster then the other end, warping time and space between the two points so much that eventually, the wormhole would collapse on it's self, one end sucking in the other until the two points coexisted in the same place of existance overlapping one another, causing time and space to break down and possibly creating something called a nether vortex, which is a lot like a black hole only far worse. This is a tear in the fabric of the universe it's self and God only knows what might happen.

Ouch... Stabbing pain behind eyes... Thankfully, we can do this in a Fantasy World with no real consequences.

Thanks Butterfingers, that's great stuff. Chainmail was a little before my time, but I'm still old. Talk about brain bending, Chainmail is where D+D got the wargame-like measurement system. It used to bother me that a RPG used a system that just didn't fit.

My god !!!!!

How old are you guys, I started pnp D&D when I was 11 or 12 , and the game was old then! Chainmail? holy smokes.

Good for you . Its a testament to the inherent quality of the game that it kepps peoples interest for such a lenth of time. But really, how old? come on you can tell us.

Well, I'm 15, and my uncle taught me how to play this game when I was 10, don't make fun of it! :D