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
Thursday, May 20, 2004
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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