Wednesday (yesterday) I picked Carson up and brought him over for gaming group. With Phil on vacation, instead of playing D&D we played Magic and Mordheim. I always have fun gaming (even a bad day gaming beats a good day at most other things), but after a few months without Magic or Mordheim, it was a refreshing change of pace. First, we played best two out of three at Magic, and stuck with the decks we each brought out first. His deck was classic, called "Tapdancer," with Instill Energy and related effects that allowed Llanowar Elves to provide extra mana, lands to untap and retap for extra mana, and big fatties to get bigger and fatter. One turn, he put three Rancors on a big fattie and took a swing. My standard deck, which I named "Not Again," takes advantage of the return of Terror and Fireball to the standard environment, along with Raise Dead, Gravedigger, Necrataal, Shock Troopers and similar creature destruction/damage effects of my creatures coming into play or leaving play. Theoretically, it's a good Sligh-type deck with a ridiculous amount of creature destruction, much of it recursive. But if it stalls for too long before getting to four mana (as it did in game three vs. Tapdancer), it has some real problems, because without Gravedigger and some of the other four-cost creatures and spells, it just doesn't go off very well. Also, I really miss Animate Dead and Dark Ritual , because when they were Standard legal I could bring out big enforcers quickly and dominate the board (unless the other guy had Disenchant handy). Game 1, Tapdancer looked like it was going to lose. I had such a big lead, I thought it was in the bag and then his deck went off and I lost. Game 2, I drew up 6 after having 1 mana in my first hand. I had 5 mana in my second hand, and kept it anyway. Then towards the end I drew a second Fireball, and it was all over; what seemed like a mana flush problem was no problem at all. Game 3 was close and a bit long, but I just couldn't draw that 3rd mana and got stuck with 5 or 6 cards in my hand that I couldn't play. Carson mana shorted too, but he was able to get 5 mana out of 2 lands pretty easily, and brought out his fatty. I chump blocked and stalled as long as I could, but that 4th land still just wouldn't come up, and in the end, it would have been to late anyway. So I lost in three. But it was fun. Carson's deck was really cool, and when I saw how many cards he had that worked into his combo/theme, I felt like "Not Again" was not up to my old level of deck design. But then my deck is Standard, which limits it a bit. Maybe I'll try a Classic version for friendly play. Or not. I don't know but it might be fun to build and modify some more decks.
So we still had time for a quick game of Mordheim. Carson had worked up a new group of Witch Hunters. There were three heavily armored, mounted heroes with 5 war dogs (the Witch Hunter version, with 4 Strength) for a total rating of 89. His models looked great. I used my Lizardman warband (I had built it a months ago from Town Crier rules). I dug through my big Lizardman Warhammer army and picked out the 8 figures that best matched my roster sheet, which included 5 heroes (4 Skinks and a Saurus, with the Skink leader being a Shaman) and 3 henchmen (a Skink, a Saurus and a Kroxigor the warband recently purchased) for a total rating of 129. Carson rolled for the scenario, and it came up Wyrdstone Hunt (or was it Treasure Hunt?) with 4 shards up for grabs. We set up the terrain fairly heavy, put the wyrdstone markers out, placed our minis, and Carson started play. He kept his band together, went for the closest stone (horses have good movement) and cursed about having to dismount to explore/pick up wyrdstone. On my turn, I scattered my guys a bit, sending about half of them to the base of a long building right in front of me with a shard on the second level, and about half the guys off to my right toward the other two shards. Skinks and Kroxigors have a 6" movement, while humans (unmounted, not a factor in this game) and my Saurus move 4" when not running. My Skink henchman was kind of exposed, but oh well. On Carson's turn, he shot a crossbow and missed, picked up his first wyrdstone shard, and sent one of his armored horsemen after my vulnerable, lone Skink henchman, but he came up about 1" short. On my next turn, 3 of my Skinks scrambled up to claim the second shard, my Skink Henchman scrambled away and up a ladder to escape the horseman, and my two Saurus warriors who had joined up next to my Kroxigor toward the middle of the board could see that they were too far away to reach his horseman. But the Kroxigor, with his 6" movement, charged and took him out of action. The next turn, 2 or 3 of the Witch Hunter wardogs charged the Kroxigor (I forgot about his Fear effect, so they ended up not needing to take their required Leadership checks) inflicting 1 wound on the big guy before being taken yelping out of action (Krox has 3 wounds, 3 attacks and a 7 strength (-4 to armor saves!), but he attacks last and only has a 3 weapon skill). Soon after, my pair of Saurus warriors found themselves taking out 1 or 2 of the remaining war dogs (a lightning bolt from my Skink Shaman had taken one war dog out earlier). After making their Leadership check to avoid routing after losing 4 of thier original 8 warband members, the Witch Hunters voluntarily routed after seeing my Shaman was about to loose another lightning bolt (Automatic Strength 5 hit, Strength 6 vs. armored foes). So my rating went up by about 14 points, I rolled The Lad's Got Talent for that lone skink henchman and I now have 6 heroes. The warband is sitting on about 5 shards of wyrdstone and something like 70 gold crowns, and has a rating of 143, I think. When I get a chance, I should really spend some time with the minis to get their equipment looking as WYSIWYG as it should (What You See Is What You Get) by gluing swords, shields and bows to those little guys. Anyway, even though this was a very one-sided victory for the Lizard Men, I know that on the whole they are as balanced as any warband, with a bunch of guys with 2 Toughness. I have seen them get their butts kicked a bunch of times. One thing for sure, that Kroxigor was expensive, a big sacrifice to save up over many games for a guy who counts as an animal and never gains experience. Another sure thing: he was worth it!
Thursday, December 23, 2004
Saturday, December 18, 2004
Jaramon, Transmuter and Escapist...
Robby, Roddy, Carson, Shane, Penny and Lance all played today in the monthly Saturday Aarde (+500) campaign. We picked up the session where things left off last month, in Moporia. Everybody did some individual stuff in the city, including reports by the Joseph and Revan to their respective churches. Revan, determined to rid the world of the threat of Jaramon, learned from sailors and traders in town that Jaramon could be on the Isle of Ancients, perhaps in Moonmist (one of the first and most highly populated Purple Order settlements). The theory went that Jaramon, like the party, would go to where he could lick his wounds and re-arm himself after battle, and that Moonmist would be the most likely place, since more high elves from the moon Sonaeed were there than anywhere (or so it was thought by a couple of sources). More importantly, a high elf ship by the name of Moonmist was in port. Though the odds were against success, Telpin arranged for a gnome illusionist friend to create and sell the party a hat of disguise each, and the party bought passage to Moonmist on the elven vessel. Telpin (gnome bard) and Henderson (lizardman fighter/rogue) are the only nonhumans in the party. Only Flegal and Telpin speak elven, but everyone wore the hats disguised as elves for the voyage at 10 gp per head one way.
Unfortunately, waiting for them at Moonmist on the Isle of Ancients was an elven horse-mace captain with a monocle of True Seeing who could see through the disguise of illusion and had his unit attack the party the minute they set foot on the beautifully ornate docks. The party fought their way through the encounter, and the captain was forced to retreat with only a couple of surviving soldiers from his unit. Along the seabank were great tree castles built into ancient knarled sea birches. Fearing the monocled horse-mace captain would return soon with greater numbers, the party hid in a sea-cave nearby and reset their hats to a new set of purple order high elves. Upon investigation within the cave, a sculpted archway was found exuding lilac perfume along with sewage from Moonmist. With nowhere else to go, the party followed the sewer deeper, to about the center of the elven (formerly dwarven) town. They waited quietly until nightfall.
Listening at the ornate eight-sided manhole cover, the party determined they were near an inn or tavern of some sort, as a couple were heard nearby talking. Everyone emerged unnoticed and went into the great ballroom of the dance hall smelling of lilacs. Dante Blackmorg (Lance played him) tried to dance with one of the elven maidens, and ended up embarassing himself, but the party was still not exposed. Nearly 100 elves were there at the peak hour of business, and the party kept mostly to themselves at their table, sending their only elf-speaking members to gather information. Telpin and Flegal learned indirectly from a group of wizards playing darts that Jaramon was expected to be dropping by to play later on. Eventually, an opportunity presented itself for the party to confront Jaramon for his earlier crimes, when he departed to the privy to relieve himself. Attacking him on his own, under cover of Joseph's Silence spell, Jaramon would not have had a chance, except for his ring of teleportatation, which he was able to activate without a sound and escape with a few hit points left.
Knowing Jaramon has many wizarding friends, the party unscrewed the privy, moved it aside, slipped back into the sewers and replaced it where it was on their way down. Within a couple of hours, Jaramon and three companions were in the sewers, launching 10d6 fireballs at the party from a distance. The party charged their enemy, running hard and launching spells and arrows to the best of their ability. Telpin went to -9 hp (cauterized by the flames, though, he remained stable). Dante was slain. Pressing the attack, the rest of the group forced Jaramon to teleport away again and abandon his entourage. The party defeated a small dragon-like creation of his, and captured his enchanting sorceress and war-sorcerer. I awarded the party 3,500 xp. We will resume next month, in the sewers below Moonmist. Later, I leveled up Henderson, Mick the Gangly and Telpin. For each of them, reaching 5th level was a pretty uneventful plateau.
Until next time, keep gaming... but don't obsess. Remember there's a real world out there too.
Unfortunately, waiting for them at Moonmist on the Isle of Ancients was an elven horse-mace captain with a monocle of True Seeing who could see through the disguise of illusion and had his unit attack the party the minute they set foot on the beautifully ornate docks. The party fought their way through the encounter, and the captain was forced to retreat with only a couple of surviving soldiers from his unit. Along the seabank were great tree castles built into ancient knarled sea birches. Fearing the monocled horse-mace captain would return soon with greater numbers, the party hid in a sea-cave nearby and reset their hats to a new set of purple order high elves. Upon investigation within the cave, a sculpted archway was found exuding lilac perfume along with sewage from Moonmist. With nowhere else to go, the party followed the sewer deeper, to about the center of the elven (formerly dwarven) town. They waited quietly until nightfall.
Listening at the ornate eight-sided manhole cover, the party determined they were near an inn or tavern of some sort, as a couple were heard nearby talking. Everyone emerged unnoticed and went into the great ballroom of the dance hall smelling of lilacs. Dante Blackmorg (Lance played him) tried to dance with one of the elven maidens, and ended up embarassing himself, but the party was still not exposed. Nearly 100 elves were there at the peak hour of business, and the party kept mostly to themselves at their table, sending their only elf-speaking members to gather information. Telpin and Flegal learned indirectly from a group of wizards playing darts that Jaramon was expected to be dropping by to play later on. Eventually, an opportunity presented itself for the party to confront Jaramon for his earlier crimes, when he departed to the privy to relieve himself. Attacking him on his own, under cover of Joseph's Silence spell, Jaramon would not have had a chance, except for his ring of teleportatation, which he was able to activate without a sound and escape with a few hit points left.
Knowing Jaramon has many wizarding friends, the party unscrewed the privy, moved it aside, slipped back into the sewers and replaced it where it was on their way down. Within a couple of hours, Jaramon and three companions were in the sewers, launching 10d6 fireballs at the party from a distance. The party charged their enemy, running hard and launching spells and arrows to the best of their ability. Telpin went to -9 hp (cauterized by the flames, though, he remained stable). Dante was slain. Pressing the attack, the rest of the group forced Jaramon to teleport away again and abandon his entourage. The party defeated a small dragon-like creation of his, and captured his enchanting sorceress and war-sorcerer. I awarded the party 3,500 xp. We will resume next month, in the sewers below Moonmist. Later, I leveled up Henderson, Mick the Gangly and Telpin. For each of them, reaching 5th level was a pretty uneventful plateau.
Until next time, keep gaming... but don't obsess. Remember there's a real world out there too.
Monday, December 13, 2004
Blogs, links and more blogs
I have been reading some other blogs, and want to improve this one by adding links to other blogs, and possibly creating a new one also.
Saturday, November 13, 2004
The (D&D) "Matrix" episode 11/13/04
Well, today was a great game. Phil, Carson and Robby, Roddy and Shane made it. P. had a bazaar so I had B. too (she's 3, but she behaved herself). It was about 4 already when I learned Robby and Carson would have to go at 4:45, so that was a bummer, since I wanted to wrap the "Matrix" plotline into the game today. First, the party was running a routine errand, picking up yeast from the Cliff Village lizardmen for a nice dwarf town baker lady. They met a lizardman who was the sole survivor of a patrol ambush, where the rest of his group was captured. Then, the party was attacked by 10 flying 4-armed "Violet Vultures," formerly lizard men, armed with +3 longswords (3 each), +3 shields, and +3 breastplate armor. It was a very tough encounter that k/0'd or killed all 4 npcs and all the pcs except for the paladin and the ranger. But the reward was very great. On their way to get the Taito (Carson's Monk), resurrected at Moporia, the day watch (they were in the black desert, travelling by night) spotted another group of Violet Vultures that turned back on seeing the party. Later, when just two party members were on watch, there was a white flash, blacking out the party members. When they came to, their captive bad guy was gone, but they resumed the trip (or so they thought). As it turned out, a lizard went behind a rock, then an identical lizard went behind the same rock... (yeah, I know, a dead giveaway from The Matrix). Eventually, Revan was able to make some amazing saving throws and woke up in a glass "coffin" crysallis, in a room with the ten of them arranged in a circle of crysalli. He broke out, attacked the elf mage (of the purple order) attendant, and eventually everybody was able to escape (there were thousands). But Jaramon popped away again at the first sign of trouble... Finally, everybody was able to recover their equipment, and Taito's body was found. A presentation is being made to St. Cuthbert's church in Moporia regarding the incident. I awarded 3750 XP, and once items were sold, each character racked in about 275,000 GP in treasure (Yeah, higher than usual, much higher...) But they earned it, they probably saved the world this day.
Sunday, October 10, 2004
B's First Barbarian, and module recycling
B's First Barbarian -- A couple of Wednesday nights ago, I was running Phil through what was going to be the first session of a new solo D&D campaign, this time set in Greyhawk. Phil is playing a half-orc fighter named Dracono Phoenix (yeah, cheesy name but okay), and he is considering multi-classing to some other class later on, perhaps bard. With this in mind, I had outlined three NPCs with the idea of multi-classing them later on as well: A human paladin, an elven ranger and a barbarian (race undetermined). For the adventure, see the notes on the previous session - I didn't have a whole lot of time to come up with something new, and since Phil hadn't been at that session I recycled that scenerio. If you have ever DM'ed on a regular basis, you know what I am talking about. So basically, there's this coastal town under attack by a bunch of evil elves (actually well intentioned high elves who have been seriously misled). It's mostly a peaceful human fishing village. Red Hand's orcish army is hired by the town to join in defending against the evil elves. My daughter B is three years old, and I ended up "babysitting" her that night (though you're not really ever a babysitter when you're a father). She really wanted to play, so I put her in the booster chair and had her play the barbarian. I decided the barbarian should be a female halfling, just to fit better. B had a great time, and she rolled really well, and since barbarians are illiterate and don't know what is going on, her roleplaying was perfect! It goes to show you that anybody can play a barbarian.
Module recycling - Saturday, it was a medium sized group. I had rearranged a bunch of stuff, and couldn't seem to find any of my session notes (one of the great reasons I use this blog) so I ran Tomb of the Overseer, a mini-module from AEG. It seemed to be going well, between Robby and Carson's out-of-game comedy (funny enough to be worth the distraction) and Lance (!) playing Zach's fighter-rogue Dante. Most of the players had been computer gaming pretty heavily before the session. Shane was there too, playing his ranger, though he would have to leave early, as did Lance. Yeah, the game was going well, until Roddy started paying closer attention to the game and remembered he had played in this module back when we had the shop, and he wanted to go to the room with the three crowns that turned the wearer into undead, and he liked the "grateful dead" ending where you give the undead paladin his stuff back. Carson chimed in that he remembered everybody was really bitchy at the shop that day (4 years ago!). I shouldn't have been surprised, these guys have pretty good memories, though I have a sneaking suspicion that it's no accident that these comments followed after I came back from going to the bathroom. So I need to go back to my old procedure of penciling in the player names of everybody who has been through a module, and also I need to carry my game materials with me if I leave the table for any reason. Or, I can just do what I did for the second half of the session and run everything right out of my head.
Jaramon the Transmuter, my new arch-villian had a small lab and sub-lair nearby, as it turned out. Revan, Roddy's paladin, detected "evil" on a 2"x 2" button, which opened a sliding stone wall, then the party fought giant lizardmen who shrunk to normal size after being slain and had two potions, one red, one green (polymorph, enlarge, though the party hasn't identified them yet). I haven't decided why the button radiated "evil," except that maybe it was an aura similar to Nystul's Magic Aura except for radiating evil instead of magic; Jaramon is so evil he might have found some strange comfort in this, and it might also have helped him find the button in the dark. One of my goals with Jaramon is to have him use magic in unique and unpredictable ways. The wall predictably rolled shut behind the party. The party fought a bridge battle against more of the 4-armed "Jaramonians" (really some of my WH40K Tyranid minis). Upon getting to the other side of the stone bridge (laid out across a chasm with Wall of Stone), the party entered a plain stone chamber and found a magical trap in the floor, which they avoided. In the next room, a similar one. As it turns out, the first one polymorphs any living creature into a Jaramonian, and the second returns any polymorphed creature to its original form. I had placed a couple of magic mouths here and there, mostly just to laugh at the party and rattle them. What fun for DMs. The first of the Magic Mouths said "what form would you like to be?" to which each of the party members said they wanted to remain as they were, except Taito, who said "I want to be Taito," and was turned into a potato for 4 rounds. The second Magic Mouth said "Rabbits rabbits rabbits!" in the second room, covering the entire floor in white rabbits, two layers deep and forcing Reflex saves just to move around. As it turned out, Jaramon had actually cast a spell of his own, flying invisibly in the room, as was discovered when Dante was throwing rabbits aside to clear a path and search the room, and a rabbit hit something in midair and went straight down, and an unseen voice said "Damn." A popping sound followed, as Jaramon teleported away just before Flegal started launching arrows and everyone started attacking where Jaramon had been. An area of rabbits over the second magical "trap" (the one that turns things back to what they were) was covered in ants instead of rabbits, and any rabbits that jumped over there were polymorphed back into ants, their original form. After some experimentation, the party discovered the abilities of the two glyphs in the floor of the rooms, and decided to destroy the one that changed things into Jaramonians. When Joseph (Robby's cleric) started pounding it with his mace, Flegal (?) was turned into a rabbit, and Jaramon's voice made an offer: "destroy my glyph, and I will destroy you, but if you wish to leave now, you may." After conferring with each other, the party decided to leave (after returning Flegal to normal on the second glyph). "Take the long passageway to the right, straight past the stone bridge, it will lead you out," said Jaramon. And it did. I awarded 3,000 experience points for the session (about 500 per hour, since there was a fair amount of combat). I've said it before and I'll say it again, this is a fun villian. So I'm going to be careful to keep him alive until the party gets to be, say... 20th level.
Module recycling - Saturday, it was a medium sized group. I had rearranged a bunch of stuff, and couldn't seem to find any of my session notes (one of the great reasons I use this blog) so I ran Tomb of the Overseer, a mini-module from AEG. It seemed to be going well, between Robby and Carson's out-of-game comedy (funny enough to be worth the distraction) and Lance (!) playing Zach's fighter-rogue Dante. Most of the players had been computer gaming pretty heavily before the session. Shane was there too, playing his ranger, though he would have to leave early, as did Lance. Yeah, the game was going well, until Roddy started paying closer attention to the game and remembered he had played in this module back when we had the shop, and he wanted to go to the room with the three crowns that turned the wearer into undead, and he liked the "grateful dead" ending where you give the undead paladin his stuff back. Carson chimed in that he remembered everybody was really bitchy at the shop that day (4 years ago!). I shouldn't have been surprised, these guys have pretty good memories, though I have a sneaking suspicion that it's no accident that these comments followed after I came back from going to the bathroom. So I need to go back to my old procedure of penciling in the player names of everybody who has been through a module, and also I need to carry my game materials with me if I leave the table for any reason. Or, I can just do what I did for the second half of the session and run everything right out of my head.
Jaramon the Transmuter, my new arch-villian had a small lab and sub-lair nearby, as it turned out. Revan, Roddy's paladin, detected "evil" on a 2"x 2" button, which opened a sliding stone wall, then the party fought giant lizardmen who shrunk to normal size after being slain and had two potions, one red, one green (polymorph, enlarge, though the party hasn't identified them yet). I haven't decided why the button radiated "evil," except that maybe it was an aura similar to Nystul's Magic Aura except for radiating evil instead of magic; Jaramon is so evil he might have found some strange comfort in this, and it might also have helped him find the button in the dark. One of my goals with Jaramon is to have him use magic in unique and unpredictable ways. The wall predictably rolled shut behind the party. The party fought a bridge battle against more of the 4-armed "Jaramonians" (really some of my WH40K Tyranid minis). Upon getting to the other side of the stone bridge (laid out across a chasm with Wall of Stone), the party entered a plain stone chamber and found a magical trap in the floor, which they avoided. In the next room, a similar one. As it turns out, the first one polymorphs any living creature into a Jaramonian, and the second returns any polymorphed creature to its original form. I had placed a couple of magic mouths here and there, mostly just to laugh at the party and rattle them. What fun for DMs. The first of the Magic Mouths said "what form would you like to be?" to which each of the party members said they wanted to remain as they were, except Taito, who said "I want to be Taito," and was turned into a potato for 4 rounds. The second Magic Mouth said "Rabbits rabbits rabbits!" in the second room, covering the entire floor in white rabbits, two layers deep and forcing Reflex saves just to move around. As it turned out, Jaramon had actually cast a spell of his own, flying invisibly in the room, as was discovered when Dante was throwing rabbits aside to clear a path and search the room, and a rabbit hit something in midair and went straight down, and an unseen voice said "Damn." A popping sound followed, as Jaramon teleported away just before Flegal started launching arrows and everyone started attacking where Jaramon had been. An area of rabbits over the second magical "trap" (the one that turns things back to what they were) was covered in ants instead of rabbits, and any rabbits that jumped over there were polymorphed back into ants, their original form. After some experimentation, the party discovered the abilities of the two glyphs in the floor of the rooms, and decided to destroy the one that changed things into Jaramonians. When Joseph (Robby's cleric) started pounding it with his mace, Flegal (?) was turned into a rabbit, and Jaramon's voice made an offer: "destroy my glyph, and I will destroy you, but if you wish to leave now, you may." After conferring with each other, the party decided to leave (after returning Flegal to normal on the second glyph). "Take the long passageway to the right, straight past the stone bridge, it will lead you out," said Jaramon. And it did. I awarded 3,000 experience points for the session (about 500 per hour, since there was a fair amount of combat). I've said it before and I'll say it again, this is a fun villian. So I'm going to be careful to keep him alive until the party gets to be, say... 20th level.
I am the greatest DM ever!
I have been pretty busy and haven't posted a few game sessions. I just read the Olaf unleashed blog, hence the title for today's entry (Olaf is Jim Carrey's Limony Snicket movie character). Since my last entry I have run two or three games. (just posted an old draft)
Saturday, September 18, 2004
Magic Day
I just got back from Old Town Hobby after a day of Magic: The Gathering. What a great game, what a fun time. It was just Shellah and Lance, Carson and me. Most of the games were really close in our round robin. We drafted the same as last time, except we switched out Darksteel for a pack of 8th Edition Core Set. With the first pack being 8th, a lot of really great cards were showing up early, and of course it's hardest to make those early decisions on what to draft. Nothing amazing caught my eye, but an early Dark Banishing was something I couldn't pass up on after last time. Big creatures didn't seem to be coming to me, but I saw a Pyroclasm early on. I ended up with mostly black and artifact with a splash of red and a smaller splash of blue. There was some decent green that I had to decide against using. We all noticed that lots of blue cards were not getting picked, and were the last to get drafted. My biggest creature was a 3/3 Serpent Warrior and my best artifact was a Crystal Shard. I had a lot of Equipment and creature removal too, but I wasn't feeling very confident at all about the deck, because I couldn't see anything cohesive about it, other than an overall fast profile with cheap creatures to be pumped by equipment and enchantments. No single standout card to get me excited, but hardly anything with a casting cost over 4. I can't think of when I've felt worse about a deck I was about to play in a tournament. Our pairings were up at noon.
First, I played Carson. He had the same kind of hodgepodge feeling about his deck as I had about mine, and there were some real similarities. Carson had a lot more creatures. He was playing 4-color from what I could tell, with a lot of green and black and blue, some white and a fair amount of artifacts. Game one was long, but my poor start (mana and creature short) eventually got the better of me. He had an Icy Manipulator that was really locking me down. I sideboarded more blue and more creatures in for game 2 and everything came up right and I won fairly quickly, then in game 3 the same thing happened for him, so I lost 1 game to 2.
Next up was Shellah, Lance's wife. She is a really good player, and I heard later about her success with a hasted Craw Wurm working really well in her red-green deck. The cards just seemed to come up right for me in game 1, though I think having a Diabolic Tutor and a couple of cards with Scrye helped a bit. That splash of blue for flyers and the Crystal Shard were good too. She had me down to 1 life in game two, but I came back and won thanks to the creature removal. Even though I came up as a 2-0 winner, the actual games were both a lot closer than that.
The final matchup of the round robin for me was our defending champion, Lance. He was ahead of me in the standings, and the only way for me to win the tournament today would be to beat him 2-0, which I doubted could happen. But I paid closer attention than I usually do to game play, especially late in a tournament. I discovered that with Crystal Shard and Ravenous Rats, I could make Lance discard a card every turn for 3 mana. Also, just from having played Lance a bit more in recent tournaments, I have been learning a bit more about how his mind works. He played a red-white deck with artifacts and some wonderful recursive removal in the form of the Minotaur Shaman, a goblin and some other new red guy. If he had had more Equipment, like John did last time, Lance would have made short work of me and my little creatures. But I had luckily drafted an Unholy Strength, and that, along with Cranial Plating and some of my other artifacts, made a difference. Another standout card for me was Somber Hoverguard. Each of the two games went back and forth, with a lot of removal from both sides, excellent defense from Lance's white creatures, bounce with the Crystal Shard, etc. At times there were fast effects and instants on the stack that went a bit deep and somewhat complicated, but when we got through those, stalemates were broken and the cards in play were a bit simplified. Not once today did my Blind Creeper (a 3/3 for 1B who gets -1/-1 until end of turn whenever a player playes a spell) go to the graveyard out of combat. The only artifact control I had was a Detonate, and I used it every time it came around. Anyway, when the dust settled, I had won 2-0. Bonesplitter, Magma Jet and Vicious Hunger were all helpful cards, but the stupid Serpent Warrior helped me the most today, along with the Ravenous Rats and what I consider to be the best card I used today, Crystal Shard, which let me chump block and bounce my creatures back to my hand.
After the tourney, Carson handed me all of his cards (what a guy!), and Richard gave me a couple packs for winning. It feels good to win, but I would have liked it a bit better if more people had made it today. Today was the 3rd of the three tournaments I planned. In the future, we might do a $5 draft tourney with 1 pack of the newest set and prizes (each player brings 30 nonbasic cards, commons recommended, to fill out the rest of the draft, with random start distribution of cards and seating order). Hey, it's a good idea, it could work!
Color Analysis for today: (8th, Mirrodin, Fifth Dawn draft 9/18/04)
Dave: Black/Red/Blue (1st), Lance: White/Red (2nd), Carson: Green/Blue/Black/White (3rd), Shellah: Red/Green (4th).
First, I played Carson. He had the same kind of hodgepodge feeling about his deck as I had about mine, and there were some real similarities. Carson had a lot more creatures. He was playing 4-color from what I could tell, with a lot of green and black and blue, some white and a fair amount of artifacts. Game one was long, but my poor start (mana and creature short) eventually got the better of me. He had an Icy Manipulator that was really locking me down. I sideboarded more blue and more creatures in for game 2 and everything came up right and I won fairly quickly, then in game 3 the same thing happened for him, so I lost 1 game to 2.
Next up was Shellah, Lance's wife. She is a really good player, and I heard later about her success with a hasted Craw Wurm working really well in her red-green deck. The cards just seemed to come up right for me in game 1, though I think having a Diabolic Tutor and a couple of cards with Scrye helped a bit. That splash of blue for flyers and the Crystal Shard were good too. She had me down to 1 life in game two, but I came back and won thanks to the creature removal. Even though I came up as a 2-0 winner, the actual games were both a lot closer than that.
The final matchup of the round robin for me was our defending champion, Lance. He was ahead of me in the standings, and the only way for me to win the tournament today would be to beat him 2-0, which I doubted could happen. But I paid closer attention than I usually do to game play, especially late in a tournament. I discovered that with Crystal Shard and Ravenous Rats, I could make Lance discard a card every turn for 3 mana. Also, just from having played Lance a bit more in recent tournaments, I have been learning a bit more about how his mind works. He played a red-white deck with artifacts and some wonderful recursive removal in the form of the Minotaur Shaman, a goblin and some other new red guy. If he had had more Equipment, like John did last time, Lance would have made short work of me and my little creatures. But I had luckily drafted an Unholy Strength, and that, along with Cranial Plating and some of my other artifacts, made a difference. Another standout card for me was Somber Hoverguard. Each of the two games went back and forth, with a lot of removal from both sides, excellent defense from Lance's white creatures, bounce with the Crystal Shard, etc. At times there were fast effects and instants on the stack that went a bit deep and somewhat complicated, but when we got through those, stalemates were broken and the cards in play were a bit simplified. Not once today did my Blind Creeper (a 3/3 for 1B who gets -1/-1 until end of turn whenever a player playes a spell) go to the graveyard out of combat. The only artifact control I had was a Detonate, and I used it every time it came around. Anyway, when the dust settled, I had won 2-0. Bonesplitter, Magma Jet and Vicious Hunger were all helpful cards, but the stupid Serpent Warrior helped me the most today, along with the Ravenous Rats and what I consider to be the best card I used today, Crystal Shard, which let me chump block and bounce my creatures back to my hand.
After the tourney, Carson handed me all of his cards (what a guy!), and Richard gave me a couple packs for winning. It feels good to win, but I would have liked it a bit better if more people had made it today. Today was the 3rd of the three tournaments I planned. In the future, we might do a $5 draft tourney with 1 pack of the newest set and prizes (each player brings 30 nonbasic cards, commons recommended, to fill out the rest of the draft, with random start distribution of cards and seating order). Hey, it's a good idea, it could work!
Color Analysis for today: (8th, Mirrodin, Fifth Dawn draft 9/18/04)
Dave: Black/Red/Blue (1st), Lance: White/Red (2nd), Carson: Green/Blue/Black/White (3rd), Shellah: Red/Green (4th).
Wednesday, September 15, 2004
Vs. Bugs
Well, the Wednesday game included Rob & Alex, Mat & Ava, me, and Jon ran high-level Aarde (Phil couldn't make it). I'm going to have to cut back a character or have Phil play one, and that's okay. Tonight I left Glum in my book and played Sriko, Chantal and Gilgar. Over the course of the past week I updated them all to allow for the passage of time and experience since the party "retired" with the Fountain of Youth in their tower at Pavalos. Now that they're 20th level and have had some time, Sriko's many item creation feats are coming in pretty handy. I made a quick list of some useful items (lots of +5 weapons and armor, etc.) and passed it around the table. We are in the underdark on a quest to gain a favor from Moradin so he will forge an item for the party, and the quest entails getting holy symbols from a number of his enemies. Tonight, we had a big encounter with some very tough Formians and variants, basically a bunch of gigantic ant-people. I'm glad I levelled everybody up, and I'm also glad Sriko made those items. We didn't really have much to worry about though. Ava's mage got down to the low 40 range of hit points, and thought she was going to die, but we have plenty of high level clerics in the party. Sriko summoned an awesome celestial elephant and did a Holy Word, Chantal did a Fire Storm for 18d6, and rained arrows on bad guys, and Gilgar charged with her twin axes, then quick-drew her longbow and polished off the biggest enemy with 5d8 damage, each at +17 damage (counting one 3x critical). It was a faster moving session than last time, and we used miniatures, which was nice. Oh damn, I left my overhead projection markers. Ah well I'll pick them up next time.
I bought the new Scrye today and it seemed like Yu-Gi-Oh was all over it, but it has a lot of useful stuff about Magic:The Gathering, though I had hoped it would include more information about the new set, but it has some nice teasers and a poster. Saturday should be fun. I think I will do some more tournaments this winter, and maybe space them out January, February and... April, oh I don't know, 6 a year maybe. Anyway, 10 a.m. Saturday the 18th, Old Town Hobby, $10 for three booster packs and a day of draft fun. Hope I can find a sitter...
I bought the new Scrye today and it seemed like Yu-Gi-Oh was all over it, but it has a lot of useful stuff about Magic:The Gathering, though I had hoped it would include more information about the new set, but it has some nice teasers and a poster. Saturday should be fun. I think I will do some more tournaments this winter, and maybe space them out January, February and... April, oh I don't know, 6 a year maybe. Anyway, 10 a.m. Saturday the 18th, Old Town Hobby, $10 for three booster packs and a day of draft fun. Hope I can find a sitter...
Sunday, September 12, 2004
Yesterday
The Saturday group was pretty small yesterday (9/11/04), but we sure had a good game. It was just me, Roddy, Shane and Chaun, but Chaun wasn't there for the whole 12-6 session. We played upstairs at the kitchen table, and there was plenty of soda, chips and popcorn to go around with just the four of us. I ran Khadgar, Cedric and Kazalonian (Sorcerer, Druid, Cleric, all 20th level) and Gilgar (P.'s old 20th level dwarven fighter) through a short adventure involving the resurrection of Hurkendorn, a powerful enchanter bent on controlling Aarde through sheer charm, Geas, etc. Hurkendorn had managed to manipulate all the world leaders (including Lhevix, the city set up by the old characters in retirement) into signing trade treaties with his city state, Pavalos, along with military non-attack agreements. But the party learned of Hurkendorn's evil intentions. By 2:00 (and about half a round of combat) Khadgar had hit him with a Meteor Storm and Gilgar hit him on 4 out of 7 attacks, each at 1d8 + 17 damage. Cedric and Kazalonian didn't have to do anything, and Hurkendorn never had a chance, even though he was a high level character in his own right. It was fun to use characters from the old campaign, I'll have to do it again more regularly. It's nice that my new 3.5 DMG has Epic rules in it.
After that, we played in the newer, low-level campaign. My new villian is a powerful transmuter named Jaramon (the mad). Revan (Roddy's 4th level paladin) along with Shane's ranger and my NPCs (two fighters and a bard) rallied small armies of 80 lizardfolk and 80 dwarves to liberate a half-orc city from Jaramon's 200 mongrelmen, who had occupied it. Units of lizardfolk included 20 cavalry on giant lizards, 20 shortbow archers, 20 spearmen and 20 with hand weapons. The dwarves included a unit of 50 miners, and a special unit of 30 engineers with seige weapons such as catapault, balistae, battering rams, etc. Shane's ranger, Flegal, scouted ahead for the armies, and located the barracks building. The miners dug a trench in front of the seige weapons, and most of the units hid in it, while Revan joined the cavalry unit, who took cover behind a hillside. Once the seige weapons opened fire, small groups of mongrelmen poured out of the city gates to attack them, unaware of the units hidden in the trench, who overwhelmed them. After picking off mongrelmen from the city wall, the dwarven and lizardmen forces were able to liberate the half-orc city with only about 10% losses. The party then accompanied a small force to deal with a floating island with strange obelisks on it in the middle of the freshwater lake (the city's water supply, which was turning people into mongrelmen). The island was a giant floating eye, and the four obelisks were like eyelids, and the water, obelisks and eye somehow had the power to disfigure anyone who came near or failed a Fortitude save. People had the ears of cats, the "hand" of an elk, wood for hair, stone scales for skin, and one lizardman's buttocks was changed to that of a ferret. One dwarf's nose was changed into that of an elephant. There were a lot of changes, but eventually a lizardwoman shaman powerful enough to return everyone to normal was found, though it was a painful and lengthy process, and the stone scales are still grafted to Flegal's skin (reducing his charisma by 2 and raising his AC by 4). Everybody gained a level, treasure and magic were pretty good. It was a fun session, and next time I will try to remember to use the theatre-style popcorn maker with butter popcorn oil. :)
Remember, Magic booster draft tournament at 10 a.m.-4 p.m. next Saturday 9/18 at Old Town Hobby, 3 boosters and a day of fun for $10, not bad! It will be the last in a series of 3 booster draft tournaments, we'll pick up some more tournaments in the future.
After that, we played in the newer, low-level campaign. My new villian is a powerful transmuter named Jaramon (the mad). Revan (Roddy's 4th level paladin) along with Shane's ranger and my NPCs (two fighters and a bard) rallied small armies of 80 lizardfolk and 80 dwarves to liberate a half-orc city from Jaramon's 200 mongrelmen, who had occupied it. Units of lizardfolk included 20 cavalry on giant lizards, 20 shortbow archers, 20 spearmen and 20 with hand weapons. The dwarves included a unit of 50 miners, and a special unit of 30 engineers with seige weapons such as catapault, balistae, battering rams, etc. Shane's ranger, Flegal, scouted ahead for the armies, and located the barracks building. The miners dug a trench in front of the seige weapons, and most of the units hid in it, while Revan joined the cavalry unit, who took cover behind a hillside. Once the seige weapons opened fire, small groups of mongrelmen poured out of the city gates to attack them, unaware of the units hidden in the trench, who overwhelmed them. After picking off mongrelmen from the city wall, the dwarven and lizardmen forces were able to liberate the half-orc city with only about 10% losses. The party then accompanied a small force to deal with a floating island with strange obelisks on it in the middle of the freshwater lake (the city's water supply, which was turning people into mongrelmen). The island was a giant floating eye, and the four obelisks were like eyelids, and the water, obelisks and eye somehow had the power to disfigure anyone who came near or failed a Fortitude save. People had the ears of cats, the "hand" of an elk, wood for hair, stone scales for skin, and one lizardman's buttocks was changed to that of a ferret. One dwarf's nose was changed into that of an elephant. There were a lot of changes, but eventually a lizardwoman shaman powerful enough to return everyone to normal was found, though it was a painful and lengthy process, and the stone scales are still grafted to Flegal's skin (reducing his charisma by 2 and raising his AC by 4). Everybody gained a level, treasure and magic were pretty good. It was a fun session, and next time I will try to remember to use the theatre-style popcorn maker with butter popcorn oil. :)
Remember, Magic booster draft tournament at 10 a.m.-4 p.m. next Saturday 9/18 at Old Town Hobby, 3 boosters and a day of fun for $10, not bad! It will be the last in a series of 3 booster draft tournaments, we'll pick up some more tournaments in the future.
Thursday, September 02, 2004
9/1/04 Session at G's
Well, I packed up my player's handbook, character sheets for Gilgar, Sriko, Chantal and Glum, called Phil and we went to Jon's to play last night. Mat and Ava were there, as well as Rob and Alex. Jon ran the game, set in my old Aarde campaign world. It was strange that it wasn't more strange to be a player in my own campaign world for the first time, instead of running. Also, playing those familiar high-level characters really is pretty fun. Everybody was in good spirits, and we really did have a good time, with a lot of roleplaying and time in a dwarven lumberjack town in the middle of an oasis, where the characters bought a few magic items. Kalanas (Alex's mage/fighter) lightning bolted some shambling mounds, which pumped them up instead of hurting them. Glum (Steve's Lizardman fighter, played by Phil) drew his Hammer of Thunderbolts on some dwarves in a bar. Gilgar did enough damage to a bugbear to kill it about 20 times over. I had to leave before the end of the session, and even then I got home late. To just play instead of running the game was relaxing. It's a whole different pace. I need to update those characters and get a map to Jon in a couple of weeks. A week from Saturday I'll be running my game again and because it is an alternate version of "future Aarde" than the other future Aarde, it will be interesting input for ideas; Phil is the only player who has a character in both campaigns now. It's interesting, though it's also interesting to me that I almost stayed home and ran Phil through a solo adventure last night. I know I made the right decision, and Phil will become a better player for it.
Sunday, August 22, 2004
Magic 8/21/04
Magic Magic Magic! We signed up at 10 and got set up, and started at 10:30 Saturday. This time, instead of just being a judge, I went ahead and played in the booster draft tournament. Counting me, we had six players: Me (Dave), Lance, Shella, Ty, Sam and John. We drafted from Mirrodin, Dark Steel and Fifth Dawn, same as last time. My first pack had a decent black rare (Promise of Power), and blue seemed to be coming around pretty well, so I drafted black and blue, going for flyers. My strategy was to aggresively draft for as many flyers as possible, going for evasion over utility and removal. I actually got a bit of counter but made the mistake of passing up a couple of good black removal cards. The final deck had 44 cards, with 19 lands (counting Stalking Stones, 9 islands and 9 swamps) with the remaining cards divided pretty much in thirds between artifacts, black and blue--pretty much all creatures except for about 6 or 7 cards.
My first duel was against Sam. He played mono black with artifacts, and had much better removal than I did, and much better utility, and a surprising amount of life-gaining. But my fliers came up pretty well. After I had a few small creatures on the board that were starting to get picked off, I dropped the Desecration Elemental (3B, Fear, whenever a player plays a spell, sacrifice a creature, 8/8) which pretty much cleared the table of creatures in a few rounds. Sam played a black creature enchantment (I forgot what it was called) that made me pay 3 life during my upkeep just to keep that fatty on the table, so it cost my 9 life, but he chump-blocked his creatures away and eventually took the 8 damage. I ended up winning, two games to none, but the second game was very close (I was at 2 life at the end). Good fun games, and I definitely saw where all the good black cards had gone to. We shook hands and smiled.
Next, I played Ty, who is an outstanding guy and a great player, who was also 2-0 so far. He even brought donuts for everybody! His deck was green and blue with great utility and speed, and strong counter-ability. As usual, Ty had very smart gameplay but unfortunately nothing came up for him with any real size or power. My mana and fliers came up nicely, especially cards like Spire Golem (a 2/4 flier that would cost 6, except with Affinity for Islands, it usually cost me about 3). I won again, two games to zero, putting Ty at 2-2 and me at 4-0. I was feeling pretty good about my choices and my deck, but after seeing Sam's and Ty's decks, I could see that I had made a big mistake to pass up a couple of good black removal cards in the draft, and a bit more counter would have made my deck better.
My next opponent was Lance, who was 4-1 at this point. Another great guy. He was playing green-white, with heavy anti-artifact, equipment and big fatties, including a big anti-flier spider, playable as an instant. The first game was pretty long, considering his overwhelming dominance. His deck almost seemed custom-made to beat mine. I sideboarded eight cards and beat him quickly in game 2, everything just came up quickly for me, and didn't for him. I lost game 3, as his creatures just outmatched mine. So now I was 5-2. Lance went on to win the tournament, 8-2.
John E. was also 5-2, so I figured it might be an even match. Boy was I wrong about that. He was playing red-white with lots of fast weenies beefed up by useful equipment. The real surprise was all of the little red creatures with Prodigal Sorcerer-type abilities. They came up pretty well for him, and that kind of recursive removal made his deck dominate, by being able to deal from 1 to 5 damage to any creature or player. If I had had some anti-artifact, that would have helped, and so would some spot removal, since he was creature-short a couple of times, and just piled a bunch of equipment onto one or two guys and "Timmed" me to death. He beat me 2-0, and it wasn't even close. John took second, at 7-1, since Lance had beaten him (all that anti-artifact stuff did well). We finished the tournament at about 4:00.
I didn't play against Shella, but her deck was mono-red and artifact, and she ended up being 2-5 (Actually, 4-5, I guess, since Ty had to leave before we could finish the round robin, and Shella had a "bye" that round). A lot of her games were close, but I think another color or two would have helped her.
Analyzing the players and the colors they played is interesting. I could assign 1 point for each color used, 2 points if used as the only color in a deck, and total everything as follows:
Artifact: 6, Black: 3, Blue: 2, Green: 2, Red:3, White:2
My feeling is that black and red were weaker due to mono-drafting, but that in general everything was pretty even. Everybody played lots of artifacts, because there were plenty. By this logic, it makes sense that green-white won the tournament, but blue-green should have done better if you think of it that way.
We played one big five-player game after the tournament, using decks we had along. Sam had a really good idea for a format, where everybody writes down their names on pieces of paper, which are drawn out of a hat. You have to take out the opponent you draw first, then whatever name he or she had, and so on until there is one final winner. It seems to work pretty well. John won, with his deck of new beasts and elves. Everybody else used decks of mine, built mostly of older cards that were tourney-legal about the time of Invasion, about 2-3 years ago I guess. So maybe the newer cards are a bit more powerful, or maybe my deckbuilding needs improvement, but anyway a lot of those newer cards were pretty great, and John's a good, serious player.
After the tournament, Richard had prizes for first-third place (I won a pack for third in this case). All the losers (not just Sam, who finished last) got plastic bugs for consolation prizes, which was nice (I got a rhino beatle, which makes a great token creature). A lot of people, including me, bought stuff, and Richard said he had a good business day. I'm looking forward to the third Saturday in September to do all of this again, this time maybe with some Core Set to change things up a bit.
My first duel was against Sam. He played mono black with artifacts, and had much better removal than I did, and much better utility, and a surprising amount of life-gaining. But my fliers came up pretty well. After I had a few small creatures on the board that were starting to get picked off, I dropped the Desecration Elemental (3B, Fear, whenever a player plays a spell, sacrifice a creature, 8/8) which pretty much cleared the table of creatures in a few rounds. Sam played a black creature enchantment (I forgot what it was called) that made me pay 3 life during my upkeep just to keep that fatty on the table, so it cost my 9 life, but he chump-blocked his creatures away and eventually took the 8 damage. I ended up winning, two games to none, but the second game was very close (I was at 2 life at the end). Good fun games, and I definitely saw where all the good black cards had gone to. We shook hands and smiled.
Next, I played Ty, who is an outstanding guy and a great player, who was also 2-0 so far. He even brought donuts for everybody! His deck was green and blue with great utility and speed, and strong counter-ability. As usual, Ty had very smart gameplay but unfortunately nothing came up for him with any real size or power. My mana and fliers came up nicely, especially cards like Spire Golem (a 2/4 flier that would cost 6, except with Affinity for Islands, it usually cost me about 3). I won again, two games to zero, putting Ty at 2-2 and me at 4-0. I was feeling pretty good about my choices and my deck, but after seeing Sam's and Ty's decks, I could see that I had made a big mistake to pass up a couple of good black removal cards in the draft, and a bit more counter would have made my deck better.
My next opponent was Lance, who was 4-1 at this point. Another great guy. He was playing green-white, with heavy anti-artifact, equipment and big fatties, including a big anti-flier spider, playable as an instant. The first game was pretty long, considering his overwhelming dominance. His deck almost seemed custom-made to beat mine. I sideboarded eight cards and beat him quickly in game 2, everything just came up quickly for me, and didn't for him. I lost game 3, as his creatures just outmatched mine. So now I was 5-2. Lance went on to win the tournament, 8-2.
John E. was also 5-2, so I figured it might be an even match. Boy was I wrong about that. He was playing red-white with lots of fast weenies beefed up by useful equipment. The real surprise was all of the little red creatures with Prodigal Sorcerer-type abilities. They came up pretty well for him, and that kind of recursive removal made his deck dominate, by being able to deal from 1 to 5 damage to any creature or player. If I had had some anti-artifact, that would have helped, and so would some spot removal, since he was creature-short a couple of times, and just piled a bunch of equipment onto one or two guys and "Timmed" me to death. He beat me 2-0, and it wasn't even close. John took second, at 7-1, since Lance had beaten him (all that anti-artifact stuff did well). We finished the tournament at about 4:00.
I didn't play against Shella, but her deck was mono-red and artifact, and she ended up being 2-5 (Actually, 4-5, I guess, since Ty had to leave before we could finish the round robin, and Shella had a "bye" that round). A lot of her games were close, but I think another color or two would have helped her.
Analyzing the players and the colors they played is interesting. I could assign 1 point for each color used, 2 points if used as the only color in a deck, and total everything as follows:
Artifact: 6, Black: 3, Blue: 2, Green: 2, Red:3, White:2
My feeling is that black and red were weaker due to mono-drafting, but that in general everything was pretty even. Everybody played lots of artifacts, because there were plenty. By this logic, it makes sense that green-white won the tournament, but blue-green should have done better if you think of it that way.
We played one big five-player game after the tournament, using decks we had along. Sam had a really good idea for a format, where everybody writes down their names on pieces of paper, which are drawn out of a hat. You have to take out the opponent you draw first, then whatever name he or she had, and so on until there is one final winner. It seems to work pretty well. John won, with his deck of new beasts and elves. Everybody else used decks of mine, built mostly of older cards that were tourney-legal about the time of Invasion, about 2-3 years ago I guess. So maybe the newer cards are a bit more powerful, or maybe my deckbuilding needs improvement, but anyway a lot of those newer cards were pretty great, and John's a good, serious player.
After the tournament, Richard had prizes for first-third place (I won a pack for third in this case). All the losers (not just Sam, who finished last) got plastic bugs for consolation prizes, which was nice (I got a rhino beatle, which makes a great token creature). A lot of people, including me, bought stuff, and Richard said he had a good business day. I'm looking forward to the third Saturday in September to do all of this again, this time maybe with some Core Set to change things up a bit.
Thursday, August 19, 2004
Thoughts
Saturday was a good game. Roddy's paladin, Revan fought off four four-armed Jaramonians (16 attacks total). Good thing he has a decent AC, since he's only fourth level! Carson, Phil, Shane and Zach were also there (Aug. 14 '04, 12-6 p.m.) for the session. It was pretty fun. The idea of a powerful transmuter allied with the evil elven Purple Order invaders is fuel for a lot of creative ideas for me, as I've always thought Polymorph and variants have a lot of possibilities. The salt zombies in the Black Desert proved interesting, and I think I will tap into Dark Sun a bit for a while.
Wednesday, yesterday, only Phil showed up, so I sent him back home--again. No explanations were given, and in fact Penny said Jon told Debbie he planned on coming. What am I supposed to think or do? I guess I really need more reliable players to keep the Wednesday night game going, or maybe I need to join someone else's group, or be patient, or throw up my hands and give up on the idea of a Wednesday group altogether after about four years of a good campaign. Is this it, and if so I'd like to know. I always thought we were happy with our regular game session. If it's over I guess it's been a good run, but I'll miss it. What tears me up is not knowing what the problem is, whether it be the time scheduling, the place, the people or what. Did I offend someone? Now I hear Mat and Ava played at Jon's place with Alex and Rob. What am I supposed to think, and what can I or should I do next. Most of all, how come people just bail without letting me know they're not coming, or better yet, have the courtesy to call and tell me why they won't be here? I was really upset last night. Next time, I guess I won't send Phil home.
Saturday (Aug. 21), there's going to be another booster draft Magic tournament at Old Town Hobby from 10 to about 4:00. I hope lots of people show up.
Wednesday, yesterday, only Phil showed up, so I sent him back home--again. No explanations were given, and in fact Penny said Jon told Debbie he planned on coming. What am I supposed to think or do? I guess I really need more reliable players to keep the Wednesday night game going, or maybe I need to join someone else's group, or be patient, or throw up my hands and give up on the idea of a Wednesday group altogether after about four years of a good campaign. Is this it, and if so I'd like to know. I always thought we were happy with our regular game session. If it's over I guess it's been a good run, but I'll miss it. What tears me up is not knowing what the problem is, whether it be the time scheduling, the place, the people or what. Did I offend someone? Now I hear Mat and Ava played at Jon's place with Alex and Rob. What am I supposed to think, and what can I or should I do next. Most of all, how come people just bail without letting me know they're not coming, or better yet, have the courtesy to call and tell me why they won't be here? I was really upset last night. Next time, I guess I won't send Phil home.
Saturday (Aug. 21), there's going to be another booster draft Magic tournament at Old Town Hobby from 10 to about 4:00. I hope lots of people show up.
Wednesday, August 18, 2004
Sat. Aug. 14, 2004
Jaramon's Kingdom, a section of Aarde controlled by an evil elvish member of the Purple Order, the Transmuter Jaramon, at the other side of the Black Desert from the City State of Moporia. It was a fun session, starting where things left off last time in Moporia as the party decided for themselves what to do. They hired a merchant sandskiff to get there, fought sand zombies, an animated rock creature, and several four-armed transmutations called the "Jaramonians." Roddy's paladin, Revan did very well. Taito was full of surprises, Aelfprin was a bit of a nuisance, Zach was there to play Dante Blackmorg ( a human rogue), Shane had Flegal, and besides that it was just NPCs. There are a lot of cool possibilities with a county-sized area ruled by a chaotic evil transmuter, and I feel like I'm just getting started.
Sunday, July 18, 2004
Magic @ OTH Sat 7/17/04
I started planning the details for this about a month ago, when I got the itch to do something with Magic: The Gathering again. What I figured was that there would be some other people who would enjoy a booster draft, people who missed organized Magic games since Area 51 closed a couple of years ago. With Richard at Old Town Hobby (Shelton, WA) carrying gaming stuff now, I knew that was the place, since there's a meeting room upstairs. He's a great guy, and was all for it. Originally, it was going to be $12.50 and he dropped it to $10, with good prizes, did an in-house flyer and a couple of ads in the Journal. I called the guys two weeks ahead, a couple of days ahead and a couple of guys on the day of to remind them.
We had eight players, plus me to judge and score, armed with a fresh copy of Scrye. It took a little while to get going (sign ups began at 10, initial play at 11:15), but everyone seemed happy to be there and willing to wait a bit for a couple of guys. The boosters were Dark Steel, Mirrodin, and Fifth Dawn. Richard also threw in one free dice from his jar for each player. I randomly determined table seating and initial pass direction. Drafting took about 40 minutes or so, and deck assembly took about another half hour.
After 3 rounds (Swiss scoring) of intense competition, the rankings were pretty close to settled. The final four ended up as Zach, John, Carson and Ian. The 5-8 ranked players were Jon, Chaun, Beau and Sam. I had a great time, and there were very few occasions where anyone needed a ruling. I had John act as 2nd judge, since he has kept current with the new cards. Thanks to everybody, we all had a great time, see you on the 3rd Saturday in August and September! - Dave
We had eight players, plus me to judge and score, armed with a fresh copy of Scrye. It took a little while to get going (sign ups began at 10, initial play at 11:15), but everyone seemed happy to be there and willing to wait a bit for a couple of guys. The boosters were Dark Steel, Mirrodin, and Fifth Dawn. Richard also threw in one free dice from his jar for each player. I randomly determined table seating and initial pass direction. Drafting took about 40 minutes or so, and deck assembly took about another half hour.
After 3 rounds (Swiss scoring) of intense competition, the rankings were pretty close to settled. The final four ended up as Zach, John, Carson and Ian. The 5-8 ranked players were Jon, Chaun, Beau and Sam. I had a great time, and there were very few occasions where anyone needed a ruling. I had John act as 2nd judge, since he has kept current with the new cards. Thanks to everybody, we all had a great time, see you on the 3rd Saturday in August and September! - Dave
Monday, July 12, 2004
Second Saturday in July
7-10-04, 12-6 pm. Well, it must be summer. Of my 10 players (give or take), only 4 made it to the D&D game. A concert, work, no answer, a family vacation and life in general are happening this time of year, and I understand. But it was a great session. Roddy, Robby, Carson and Shane played Revan (3rd Lvl. H Pal), Joseph Prax (3rd Lvl. H Cler.), Taito (3rd Lvl. H Mnk) and Flegal (3rd H Rgr). The party had finished the previous month's session in Moporia, one of the biggest cities in my post-Tenneous Aarde campaign. For this group, I haven't driven home just how nasty the Purple Order (high elf invasion) can be, and I've still got a ways to go. Revan had the greatest suspicion of Priestess Tillaplum (The Plum Priestess) of the Amaranth temple when she offered to teach the party any crafts or skills they wanted for nothing more than a bit of help making things, since the elves there were few, but with lots of skills and much to do and make, just needing some extra hands. The party agreed to come with her, above Revan's initial impression. "She's a WITCH," he said for no apparent reason. But Taito wanted to learn about Brewing, Joseph was interested in Armory and Blacksmithing related skills. Flegal wanted to learn more about herbalism and apothacary supply. So Revan was convinced he would learn a skill, and he decided on Rope Use. The NPCs, Geena (3rd Dw. Ftr), Telpin (2nd gn. Brd) and Mick the Gangly (2nd H Ftr) went along with the rest of the party, into the temple. Everyone learned some skills, a rank or two, though it was more difficult for those without the Int bonuses, such as Taito. Only later, after a week or so, was the problem discovered. The elves would not allow their "indentured servants" to leave. And each of them was armed with wands of charm person, which they used repeatedly to keep gaining the benefits of free labor, the fruits of which were products being sold in several neighboring markets. Those who could resist were told they would be allowed to leave the next day (or anything they wanted to hear to keep them until they fell asleep), given beer and wine (and maybe a Forget spell or two), and the next day, they woke up in jail cells. From the jail cells, a few were taken (in their sleep) for experimentation by evil elvish wizards and clerics, or tortured. Revan was transmuted into a female elf, and unspeakable acts were done to her by at least one of the guards. Joseph Prax finally prayed for 3 shatter spells (his god is good, but also a god of vengeance and destruction and grants shatter). Three guards used their wands of charm person on him, but he resisted. He then cast sanctuary, an underrated spell. Now they needed to make saving throws to attack him. Because they had not yet stripped armor off of the prisoners (so as not to wake them when they put them in their cells) even the attacks that could be made on Joseph missed. He then shattered free 3 of the others, they fought the guards, took their maces and keys, and eventually battled their way to freedom. They captured the transmuter who had changed Revan into a female elf, and after some consideration of advantages and disadvantages, Revan was convinced to use the opportunity to change back into his original human male self. Telpin and Mick the Gangly are now 3rd level, and the party found multiple potions of undetectable evil, several wands of charm person, and monetary treasure that worked out to 900 gp per person.
My next session is the Wednesday group, in two days (Wednesday 7/14/04 6-9 pm). I need to put my brain back in underdark mode and get a good session ready. Until next time, keep hack'n & slash'n... - Dave
My next session is the Wednesday group, in two days (Wednesday 7/14/04 6-9 pm). I need to put my brain back in underdark mode and get a good session ready. Until next time, keep hack'n & slash'n... - Dave
Saturday, June 26, 2004
More June sessions
So Crom lived. Maybe you think he should be dead, being that he was at negative 14 hit points or something like that from the giant beetle. Well, Crom's g-d Io didn't want him to be dead. Crom was to stubborn to die, Jon didn't want Crom to die, and I didn't want the campaign to lose the only lizardman paladin it has ever seen. No, the party didn't have the money or connections to get him resurrected, especially in the underdark. I could have thrown a magic item their way that would take care of this little problem. Ultimately, because he had gained enough experience to level, and the new hit points would keep him from dying, I awarded XP early in his case, and told Jon that Io had refused Crom entrance into the kingdom of the dragons.
And I replaced the fallen Daybill, the halfling bard giant hamster rider, with Nightsong Sharpfang, a female kobold with very similar skills, including an uncanny ability to ride Lomax, Daybill's now-lonely mount.
The group is getting a bit bigger. For a long time, it was just me, Jon, Rob and Alex. Then Phil started coming. Now that school is out, Shane plays too. Most of the Wednesday characters are 4th level now. There's Crom, Nightsong, Aiko (Penny's dwarven monk), Shianji (Alex's dad Rob's monk, the only character besides Aiko to survive the campaign from the start), Alex's samuri and Phil's new character (a gnome sorcerer, I think) plus whatever Shane brings next Wednesday (I think he's working on a rogue). Sometimes Carson makes it, and he has a half-orc barbarian who is only 3rd level, but should hold his own.
Currently, the party is trying to locate and destroy a psionic artifact, a ballista of the mind flayers. Things are going to be tough for a while, especially with everybody in the underdark.
Every other Wednesday, Alex runs Star Wars, and he is an excellent gamemaster who knows the rules well, can put together a good story and spends time and hard work on mapping, npc's etc. My Twilek Scoundrel is no longer posessed by a Sith, and my Jedi Counseler, Quern Bomon just levelled to 11th. It's too bad Pieda died, but oh well.
The Saturday group keeps plugging along. Chaun brought a new player, Shawn. It's a good sized group that meets just once a month on the second Saturday. Since we started new characters just a couple sessions ago, the highest-level characters are 3rd level, I think. Roddy plays a paladin, Robby has a cleric, Penny has a dwarven archer, Carson has a monk, Shane plays a ranger, and Jesse replaced his wizard with an orcish barbarian, I think. I have a couple of NPCs, Mick the Gangly (a fighter) and Telpin (a bard). Phil plays a rogue, Chaun and Shawn play fighters, I think. I'm probably forgetting a bunch of stuff. Most of the party is human. The campaign focus is on an invasion of very motivated "moon" elves bent on taking over the Aarde.
I have talked to a few people about doing a Magic: The Gathering booster draft tournament at Old Town Hobby on the 3rd Saturday of July, August and September. 3 boosters and a 10 am-4 pm or so tournament with prizes for $12.50. I will run it and judge it (and play the "bye" games to keep people from getting bored). The perfect number of players would be 8. I have to go now, more later.
And I replaced the fallen Daybill, the halfling bard giant hamster rider, with Nightsong Sharpfang, a female kobold with very similar skills, including an uncanny ability to ride Lomax, Daybill's now-lonely mount.
The group is getting a bit bigger. For a long time, it was just me, Jon, Rob and Alex. Then Phil started coming. Now that school is out, Shane plays too. Most of the Wednesday characters are 4th level now. There's Crom, Nightsong, Aiko (Penny's dwarven monk), Shianji (Alex's dad Rob's monk, the only character besides Aiko to survive the campaign from the start), Alex's samuri and Phil's new character (a gnome sorcerer, I think) plus whatever Shane brings next Wednesday (I think he's working on a rogue). Sometimes Carson makes it, and he has a half-orc barbarian who is only 3rd level, but should hold his own.
Currently, the party is trying to locate and destroy a psionic artifact, a ballista of the mind flayers. Things are going to be tough for a while, especially with everybody in the underdark.
Every other Wednesday, Alex runs Star Wars, and he is an excellent gamemaster who knows the rules well, can put together a good story and spends time and hard work on mapping, npc's etc. My Twilek Scoundrel is no longer posessed by a Sith, and my Jedi Counseler, Quern Bomon just levelled to 11th. It's too bad Pieda died, but oh well.
The Saturday group keeps plugging along. Chaun brought a new player, Shawn. It's a good sized group that meets just once a month on the second Saturday. Since we started new characters just a couple sessions ago, the highest-level characters are 3rd level, I think. Roddy plays a paladin, Robby has a cleric, Penny has a dwarven archer, Carson has a monk, Shane plays a ranger, and Jesse replaced his wizard with an orcish barbarian, I think. I have a couple of NPCs, Mick the Gangly (a fighter) and Telpin (a bard). Phil plays a rogue, Chaun and Shawn play fighters, I think. I'm probably forgetting a bunch of stuff. Most of the party is human. The campaign focus is on an invasion of very motivated "moon" elves bent on taking over the Aarde.
I have talked to a few people about doing a Magic: The Gathering booster draft tournament at Old Town Hobby on the 3rd Saturday of July, August and September. 3 boosters and a 10 am-4 pm or so tournament with prizes for $12.50. I will run it and judge it (and play the "bye" games to keep people from getting bored). The perfect number of players would be 8. I have to go now, more later.
Thursday, June 03, 2004
5/26/04 and 6/2/04 Sessions
Things have been tough for player characters the past couple of weeks. A week ago Wednesday the 26th, Alex ran Star Wars and half of our characters were possessed by the Sith ghosts. We finally left the tomb of the dark siders, but Koyi Komon, my scoundrel, will unfortunately discover that when he returns to his senses, more than half of his considerable fortune (about 50,000 of his 99,000 credits) will have been spent on carousing and an old bounty hunter enemy who was hired by "Koyi" (actually the possessed Koyi) to wipe out rivals in a town on the mining world Selfor.
Then last night, I ran my Aarde D&D session. Happily, I have my new 3.5 edition DMG, and I was also armed with some good notes and ideas for the game. The party is in the Underdark now, and Ani (Alex's ranger) pushed the canoe off downriver. So they have been down there for about four weeks and run through their torches and rations. Most of the party are humans, but luckily they have a couple of magic weapons that give about 5' of light to see by. They're exploring deeper into the caves, mainly because they are tired of eating Hydra meat (see notes from the last sesssion). With lots of water everywhere, they focus on the drier caves. Jon's paladin, Crom, being a lizardman, has darkvision, which is helpful when the party encounters 5 Fire Bats, which they dispatch somewhat easily. Phil shows up late, and we hand him Xymo (a human fighter). Daybill (the npc halfling bard), Aiko (Penny's dwarven monk) and Crom uncover a pit trap which Shianji (Rob's human monk) jumps across with the party's only 50' rope. Daybill begins to cross and falls 30' onto spikes -- and lives! Ani falls while climbing to rescue Daybill, and also lives, then cuts open a boulder-sized egg sack with a giant beetle inside. Upon hearing other beetles making their way to him, Ani and Daybill scramble out of the pit. The 10' long Giant Rhino Beetles attack the party with a vengeance. At the end of the encounter, Daybill, Ani and Xymo lay dead. Aiko is unconscious, and Crom appears to be dead (but it turns out he isn't). More next time, gotta go.
Then last night, I ran my Aarde D&D session. Happily, I have my new 3.5 edition DMG, and I was also armed with some good notes and ideas for the game. The party is in the Underdark now, and Ani (Alex's ranger) pushed the canoe off downriver. So they have been down there for about four weeks and run through their torches and rations. Most of the party are humans, but luckily they have a couple of magic weapons that give about 5' of light to see by. They're exploring deeper into the caves, mainly because they are tired of eating Hydra meat (see notes from the last sesssion). With lots of water everywhere, they focus on the drier caves. Jon's paladin, Crom, being a lizardman, has darkvision, which is helpful when the party encounters 5 Fire Bats, which they dispatch somewhat easily. Phil shows up late, and we hand him Xymo (a human fighter). Daybill (the npc halfling bard), Aiko (Penny's dwarven monk) and Crom uncover a pit trap which Shianji (Rob's human monk) jumps across with the party's only 50' rope. Daybill begins to cross and falls 30' onto spikes -- and lives! Ani falls while climbing to rescue Daybill, and also lives, then cuts open a boulder-sized egg sack with a giant beetle inside. Upon hearing other beetles making their way to him, Ani and Daybill scramble out of the pit. The 10' long Giant Rhino Beetles attack the party with a vengeance. At the end of the encounter, Daybill, Ani and Xymo lay dead. Aiko is unconscious, and Crom appears to be dead (but it turns out he isn't). More next time, gotta go.
Thursday, May 20, 2004
Wed. Session Notes
Wed. 5/19/04 Dave, D&D
Last night's D&D game had a lot of action, with Red Trail and Applejack Brandy escaping the party's big finish, while Four-Foot Pete and Umatil Lou bit the dust. After exploring Anne's Grove village, the group bought a canoe and voyaged underground, where they defeated a 7-headed cryohydra. Aiko and Ani both levelled to 5th. Daybill almost lost Lomax, Xymo did some tracing for a scribe to pay off a debt to Ani, and also got robbed. Shianji's flurry of blows speaks for itself. Crom fought off hybernation and a short swim to make an impressive showing against the hydra. Now that the canoe is gone, it looks like an Underdark setting for a while...
Coming up:
Wed. 5/26/04 6:30-9:30 Alex, Star Wars
Wed. 6/2/04 Dave, D&D
Sun. 6/6/04 12-6 Dave, Mordheim (call to confirm)
Sat. 6/12/04 12-6 Dave, D&D
Wed. 6/16/04 6:30-9:30 Dave, D&D
Wed. 6/23/04 Alex D&D or Star Wars
Wed. 6/30/04 Dave, D&D
Sat. 7/10/04 12-6 Dave, D&D
Wed. 7/14/04 6:30-9:30 Dave, D&D
Wed. 7/21/04 Alex, D&D or Star Wars
Last night's D&D game had a lot of action, with Red Trail and Applejack Brandy escaping the party's big finish, while Four-Foot Pete and Umatil Lou bit the dust. After exploring Anne's Grove village, the group bought a canoe and voyaged underground, where they defeated a 7-headed cryohydra. Aiko and Ani both levelled to 5th. Daybill almost lost Lomax, Xymo did some tracing for a scribe to pay off a debt to Ani, and also got robbed. Shianji's flurry of blows speaks for itself. Crom fought off hybernation and a short swim to make an impressive showing against the hydra. Now that the canoe is gone, it looks like an Underdark setting for a while...
Coming up:
Wed. 5/26/04 6:30-9:30 Alex, Star Wars
Wed. 6/2/04 Dave, D&D
Sun. 6/6/04 12-6 Dave, Mordheim (call to confirm)
Sat. 6/12/04 12-6 Dave, D&D
Wed. 6/16/04 6:30-9:30 Dave, D&D
Wed. 6/23/04 Alex D&D or Star Wars
Wed. 6/30/04 Dave, D&D
Sat. 7/10/04 12-6 Dave, D&D
Wed. 7/14/04 6:30-9:30 Dave, D&D
Wed. 7/21/04 Alex, D&D or Star Wars
Wednesday, May 19, 2004
Aarde -- And Back
Tonight's campaign setting will be Aarde.
Some background
Back in the day, I've run some other campaigns. I played my first game of D&D in 1979, when 1st edition was new. I still have my first D&D book, the Monster Manual my dad bought me, which I promptly memorized and ruined with sticky tabs for quick reference. My first character was a paladin, and he was killed and robbed in a party battle while being used as a trap detector by a higher level evil cleric in the party. I was hooked though and within a year I was DM'ing. I ran some modules but mostly made up my own stuff. It was the cold war and D&D somehow fought off the recurring nightmares for me. My earliest campaign was Rotalia, built from a city designed on concentric circle graph paper from physics class. Greyhawk was such a big influence that it was a continent on the same world and you could sail a ship from one campaign to the other. My old Kelnorn map includes Rotalia and also has the Jinell Jungle on it and so many countless other places. You could sail off from somewhere and end up anywhere; it's an incredibly huge world basically made of lots of campaign worlds mushed together that allowed for anything to happen. Rick R. played a druid named Glenstorm who once did Plant Growth on a salad until it consumed a tavern he didn't like. Todd G. played dwarves, and once wrote a persuasive essay to convince me and TSR to allow dwarves to go unlimited levels as fighters. Matt L. played gnome illusionist-thieves, or monks with halberds and was an incredibly smart and insightful player who once analyzed the game and concluded that fighters were the best class because they could dish out and take the most damage, plus do whatever any spellcaster could do if they had the right magic items. There were plenty of other players too (keep reading) but this is the earliest group I remember. We used to hang out at a comic book and game store called House of Fantasy. I was never into drugs but I was sure hooked on games. We used to play Traveler, MegaTraveler, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & other Strangeness, Star Fleet Battles, Risk, Stratego, Killer and so on. B Shane P. was my first DM, and he loved JRR Tolkein before that was hip. He was in that first group and so was a different Rick R. who was a bit older than us. Jim C. worked at House of Fantasy and was also a player. I rode my skateboard to school or my BMX bike everywhere but what I loved most was D&D. I had a paper route so even though our family were not rich I always seemed to be able to afford the books, dice, minis and modules that I wanted. Other players included Art F., who couldn't roll a dice to save his life; Dave H., who liked illusionists so much he invented spells for them, and others. Later I traded a skateboard for a stack of modules and so I've run and/or played (or both) most if not all of the 1st edition modules (B1, G1-3 etc.) at least once and in many cases multiple times. I learned a lot about format and style, yet there is a lot of variation even in these areas between modules. The problem was, my players bought the modules too so they could beat them so I ended up writing a lot more adventures if for no other reason than to maintain a surprise factor.
Circa 1984-1986: I began running a new campaign with Spencer C., who loved Star Wars, Robotech and all things Japanese, gnomes, elves and GM'ing; Jason, who played elven rangers a lot, including a character named Finarfin; Tim I., who played a half-ogre; Ivan A., who was a good player. We fought every monster in the monster manual, in every possible setting. I ran impromptu adventures a lot using the monster and treasure assortment supplement. We traded DM responsibilities a lot even then so we could each get a chance to run as well as play. I had a grey elf wizard name Deston, and a human cleric named Razal. Somewhere around this time I memorized 2nd Edition (well, for the most part anyway).
I even founded and ran a game convention at my community college, about 200 people came. I wrote modules complete with pregenerated characters for that. About that time I played with Paul K., Timmer D. and that group.
Circa 1986-1989: When I went off to finish my 4 year degree, my D&D books came with me and I ran a campaign while in my fraternity. Knowing it would just be for one school year, I intentionally made that campaign world small, in fact it was based on a small moon. Time was tight so the writing had to be also. The Sonaeed campaign (sometimes I just called it Na) began from ideas that occurred to me after taking some astronomy classes. Mars has two moons, Phobos and Diemos. The asteroid belt is such wreckage it suggests some ancient cosmic battle. I imagined a huge back story in which the moons were habitable long ago (Sonaeed is loosely based on Diemos spelled backwards, which I also did with Soboff more directly). Anyway the party had to adventure in and explore 20 cities on Sonaeed during the school year and build up diplomacy to get every nation together to fight one big baddie right at the end in a spelljammer battle in space. The bad guy, a wizard named Signatious had effectively become immortal by making potions of longevity which cost the lives of elves, whom he enslaved. Some of those players included Art H., Keith H., Nathan D. and others. I also played in Art's campaign, which a crossover D&D/Gamma World campaign. My character, Dexter, was an elven wizard/thief who took the opportunity to cast Find Familiar while in a different, more radioactive time and place. As a result, he got himself a raccoon with a double brain mutation, named Einstein. When he got back to the D&D setting, Einstein, who had advanced in level himself, did a Find Familiar and got Edison, a brownie, who in turn got himself a black cat which is more traditional. That was a very fun campaign. So that gets me to about 1989 or so.
When I got back to my hometown I resumed play with my previous groups in different incarnations for a while, before I moved for my career. It was fall of 1991 (ooh I hope I'm right) at Spencer C's house where I met my future (and still happily) wife, Penny W. That of course changes everything, but in this case less than you might think since she's a gamer too, and spent our first night kicking my butt at Cribbage. Okay but this is a gamer blog, so I'll stick to what campaigns & players go to when, just for the purposes of back story for this Blog. So a bit later around that time, as a result of who I knew I became a published game designer for Mayfair Games, I wrote "Denizens of Old Durnick Ruins" section for the Role Aids supplement, "People, Places and Things," basically filler for when parties get sidetracked. I was paid a kill fee so I don't get any residual from that and I'm sure it's long out of print now, but hey at least I'm published.
After the move, I had to put together a new gaming group. I went to local comic and game stores and had a couple of false starts because believe it or not, just because someone plays the same games doesn't mean you're going to get along. There were several one-off sessions of this and that, some D&D and Magic but kind of a dearth of campaigns for a while. I ran a Spelljammer campaign with a small group including Stefan C. for a short time. I had some other things on my mind anyway... But I did get together with the old players a couple times when I would visit my old stomping grounds. Other than a few sessions here and there, it was a bit of a dry patch. For a couple of years we gamed with Nick and Tracy M., who were (are, I'm sure) excellent gamers and Tracy was more fanatical than me about running the game. I think his depth of knowledge about everything Forgotten Realms, and his ability to create beautiful pencil drawings of adventuring parties made me a bit jealous. Magic was just getting going and Nick introduced us to the power of a Goblin deck. We had some great D&D, Gurps and D20 modern games (including a great Jack The Ripper adventure), most of which Tracy ran.
Later, Dave H. would come up and we played some Magic. That eventually led to an opportunity to be part owner of a game store in 1999, an opportunity which I jumped at but later regretted somewhat. My Aarde campaign was born around that time. In order to support the games we sold, I ran multiple campaigns, including a Star Wars group, a D&D group, Mordheim (Games Workshop) skirmish battles and Penny ran Deadlands (original rules, not d20). I tried my hand at inventing games, and I wrote and edited a gaming newspaper about the store and the games we carried. All this time, I kept my day job. Unfortunately (but in some ways fortunately) due to the departure of a business partner, personal life events and (mostly) market conditions, the game store petered out after 2 years and 2 months. But the campaign survived at the prompting of my wife, for the sake of my sanity I think. I will always be grateful that so many players stuck with me. Looking back at that time, I think at times my moonlighting at the shop very nearly ruined the gaming hobby I love by making it too much like work. At the same time, it gave me an excellent perspective on retail, gaming, marketing and so many other valuable things in my life. I count as my best friends the people I got to know when we had that shop and we still talk about those days all these years later.
So anyway that more or less catches you up to here.
Some background
Back in the day, I've run some other campaigns. I played my first game of D&D in 1979, when 1st edition was new. I still have my first D&D book, the Monster Manual my dad bought me, which I promptly memorized and ruined with sticky tabs for quick reference. My first character was a paladin, and he was killed and robbed in a party battle while being used as a trap detector by a higher level evil cleric in the party. I was hooked though and within a year I was DM'ing. I ran some modules but mostly made up my own stuff. It was the cold war and D&D somehow fought off the recurring nightmares for me. My earliest campaign was Rotalia, built from a city designed on concentric circle graph paper from physics class. Greyhawk was such a big influence that it was a continent on the same world and you could sail a ship from one campaign to the other. My old Kelnorn map includes Rotalia and also has the Jinell Jungle on it and so many countless other places. You could sail off from somewhere and end up anywhere; it's an incredibly huge world basically made of lots of campaign worlds mushed together that allowed for anything to happen. Rick R. played a druid named Glenstorm who once did Plant Growth on a salad until it consumed a tavern he didn't like. Todd G. played dwarves, and once wrote a persuasive essay to convince me and TSR to allow dwarves to go unlimited levels as fighters. Matt L. played gnome illusionist-thieves, or monks with halberds and was an incredibly smart and insightful player who once analyzed the game and concluded that fighters were the best class because they could dish out and take the most damage, plus do whatever any spellcaster could do if they had the right magic items. There were plenty of other players too (keep reading) but this is the earliest group I remember. We used to hang out at a comic book and game store called House of Fantasy. I was never into drugs but I was sure hooked on games. We used to play Traveler, MegaTraveler, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & other Strangeness, Star Fleet Battles, Risk, Stratego, Killer and so on. B Shane P. was my first DM, and he loved JRR Tolkein before that was hip. He was in that first group and so was a different Rick R. who was a bit older than us. Jim C. worked at House of Fantasy and was also a player. I rode my skateboard to school or my BMX bike everywhere but what I loved most was D&D. I had a paper route so even though our family were not rich I always seemed to be able to afford the books, dice, minis and modules that I wanted. Other players included Art F., who couldn't roll a dice to save his life; Dave H., who liked illusionists so much he invented spells for them, and others. Later I traded a skateboard for a stack of modules and so I've run and/or played (or both) most if not all of the 1st edition modules (B1, G1-3 etc.) at least once and in many cases multiple times. I learned a lot about format and style, yet there is a lot of variation even in these areas between modules. The problem was, my players bought the modules too so they could beat them so I ended up writing a lot more adventures if for no other reason than to maintain a surprise factor.
Circa 1984-1986: I began running a new campaign with Spencer C., who loved Star Wars, Robotech and all things Japanese, gnomes, elves and GM'ing; Jason, who played elven rangers a lot, including a character named Finarfin; Tim I., who played a half-ogre; Ivan A., who was a good player. We fought every monster in the monster manual, in every possible setting. I ran impromptu adventures a lot using the monster and treasure assortment supplement. We traded DM responsibilities a lot even then so we could each get a chance to run as well as play. I had a grey elf wizard name Deston, and a human cleric named Razal. Somewhere around this time I memorized 2nd Edition (well, for the most part anyway).
I even founded and ran a game convention at my community college, about 200 people came. I wrote modules complete with pregenerated characters for that. About that time I played with Paul K., Timmer D. and that group.
Circa 1986-1989: When I went off to finish my 4 year degree, my D&D books came with me and I ran a campaign while in my fraternity. Knowing it would just be for one school year, I intentionally made that campaign world small, in fact it was based on a small moon. Time was tight so the writing had to be also. The Sonaeed campaign (sometimes I just called it Na) began from ideas that occurred to me after taking some astronomy classes. Mars has two moons, Phobos and Diemos. The asteroid belt is such wreckage it suggests some ancient cosmic battle. I imagined a huge back story in which the moons were habitable long ago (Sonaeed is loosely based on Diemos spelled backwards, which I also did with Soboff more directly). Anyway the party had to adventure in and explore 20 cities on Sonaeed during the school year and build up diplomacy to get every nation together to fight one big baddie right at the end in a spelljammer battle in space. The bad guy, a wizard named Signatious had effectively become immortal by making potions of longevity which cost the lives of elves, whom he enslaved. Some of those players included Art H., Keith H., Nathan D. and others. I also played in Art's campaign, which a crossover D&D/Gamma World campaign. My character, Dexter, was an elven wizard/thief who took the opportunity to cast Find Familiar while in a different, more radioactive time and place. As a result, he got himself a raccoon with a double brain mutation, named Einstein. When he got back to the D&D setting, Einstein, who had advanced in level himself, did a Find Familiar and got Edison, a brownie, who in turn got himself a black cat which is more traditional. That was a very fun campaign. So that gets me to about 1989 or so.
When I got back to my hometown I resumed play with my previous groups in different incarnations for a while, before I moved for my career. It was fall of 1991 (ooh I hope I'm right) at Spencer C's house where I met my future (and still happily) wife, Penny W. That of course changes everything, but in this case less than you might think since she's a gamer too, and spent our first night kicking my butt at Cribbage. Okay but this is a gamer blog, so I'll stick to what campaigns & players go to when, just for the purposes of back story for this Blog. So a bit later around that time, as a result of who I knew I became a published game designer for Mayfair Games, I wrote "Denizens of Old Durnick Ruins" section for the Role Aids supplement, "People, Places and Things," basically filler for when parties get sidetracked. I was paid a kill fee so I don't get any residual from that and I'm sure it's long out of print now, but hey at least I'm published.
After the move, I had to put together a new gaming group. I went to local comic and game stores and had a couple of false starts because believe it or not, just because someone plays the same games doesn't mean you're going to get along. There were several one-off sessions of this and that, some D&D and Magic but kind of a dearth of campaigns for a while. I ran a Spelljammer campaign with a small group including Stefan C. for a short time. I had some other things on my mind anyway... But I did get together with the old players a couple times when I would visit my old stomping grounds. Other than a few sessions here and there, it was a bit of a dry patch. For a couple of years we gamed with Nick and Tracy M., who were (are, I'm sure) excellent gamers and Tracy was more fanatical than me about running the game. I think his depth of knowledge about everything Forgotten Realms, and his ability to create beautiful pencil drawings of adventuring parties made me a bit jealous. Magic was just getting going and Nick introduced us to the power of a Goblin deck. We had some great D&D, Gurps and D20 modern games (including a great Jack The Ripper adventure), most of which Tracy ran.
Later, Dave H. would come up and we played some Magic. That eventually led to an opportunity to be part owner of a game store in 1999, an opportunity which I jumped at but later regretted somewhat. My Aarde campaign was born around that time. In order to support the games we sold, I ran multiple campaigns, including a Star Wars group, a D&D group, Mordheim (Games Workshop) skirmish battles and Penny ran Deadlands (original rules, not d20). I tried my hand at inventing games, and I wrote and edited a gaming newspaper about the store and the games we carried. All this time, I kept my day job. Unfortunately (but in some ways fortunately) due to the departure of a business partner, personal life events and (mostly) market conditions, the game store petered out after 2 years and 2 months. But the campaign survived at the prompting of my wife, for the sake of my sanity I think. I will always be grateful that so many players stuck with me. Looking back at that time, I think at times my moonlighting at the shop very nearly ruined the gaming hobby I love by making it too much like work. At the same time, it gave me an excellent perspective on retail, gaming, marketing and so many other valuable things in my life. I count as my best friends the people I got to know when we had that shop and we still talk about those days all these years later.
So anyway that more or less catches you up to here.
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