How I learned to stop worrying...

and like the Realms.
(I don't quite love them yet)

I have always been a Greyhawk fan. Some of my very first games were looking for ancient Suel mysteries or exploring the dirty streets of the Free City of Greyhawk.   While I ran my adventures in the Known World of Mystara, I played in Oerth and Greyhawk.

For years I even combined the two into one world, and that worked out pretty well.

I remember reading about the Realms in Dragon Mag and I was never impressed.  The increased fetishization of the Drow and Drizzt worship turned me off as well. I can't tell you how much I despised "Lloth", it's LOLTH goddamn it. Any way. I saw the Realms as an upstart to Greyhawk and not even a good one to be honest.   This oddly enough was right around the same time I played my first game of OD&D set in Greyhawk.  To me Realms fans were snotty little kids with delusions of adequacy.

My opinions have softened since then.

This weekend before last I was at the Games Plus game auction.  I was able to pick up the Forgotten Realms books for 1st and 2nd Ed. AD&D.  I picked up the 3rd ed stuff a while back and had the 4e stuff from Half-Price books.  All in all I was able to get all these books for under 50 bucks total.

The 1st Ed box is in fantastic shape, minus some shelf wear.  The 3 and 4e books are in mint condition.

I have been using the Realms for the 4e game I am running and I have been enjoying it.
Sure, I am still using elements from the Points of Light campaign that 4e is built around, but all of it is in the new version of the Realms.  There are lot of things that came together nicely for this for me really.  In the 4e game I am running the kids are going to go after Orcus.  Much the same way as the old H1-4 Bloodstone series a while back.  That was set in the Realms, so it is kind of fitting really. Plus it would help me flesh out some of the 4e Orcus arc (HPE series).  Not sure how I'll fit Hell into it all, but I might not have to worry about it.

I love the gonzo feeling of two worlds mystically crashing into each other.  I like that the place has some history to it.  Plus I really liked the 3e Realms book. This might irritate some long time Realms fans, but I think the Realms fits better with 3e and 4e.  Greyhawk is better for 1st ed and the like.  At least in my mind.

So maybe it's my age or something, but I feel I can finally sit back and appreciate what the Realms really are and not what I think or thought they were.  I have the main books/sets (for the most part) for all four editions of the game.  Honestly I think that is enough. People have done far more with less.

Here are my other thoughts in my introduction and use of the Realms.
http://timbrannan.blogspot.com/2010/12/could-my-answer-be-in-realms.html
http://timbrannan.blogspot.com/2010/03/drow-should-be-lawful-evil-among-other.html
http://timbrannan.blogspot.com/2012/06/new-game-new-world.html
http://timbrannan.blogspot.com/2012/07/gods-of-new-game.html
http://timbrannan.blogspot.com/2010/01/church-of-lolth-ascendant.html
http://timbrannan.blogspot.com/2012/07/nothing-like-sun.html

D&D Zombies vs. The Walking/Running Dead

"Zombies are the new Vampires" - True Blood

Zombies are a great threat for lower level characters in any version of D&D.  They can be deadly in groups, but are slow.  They are affected by all the same magics other undead are, so Clerical turning or Radiant Powers really get to ..er...shine.

The trouble is that D&D-style zombies are stuck in in a old modality of just being undead shamblers. Think Shaggy from Scooby-Doo only more dead.

Zombies in the game All Flesh Must Be Eaten by Eden Studios are much more deadly and their bite is lethal, just not right away.  Plus there are all sorts of Zombies in AFMBE including what we now call "quick"  or ""fast" zombies.

Of course the question has been and will be asked again, "why not just use Ghouls?".  Well simply put Ghouls are eaters of the dead.  If thought about I'd add subtle demonic influences to them as well to reflect the Ghoul/Ghul  relationship.

Improved Zombies
Let's take a page from modern interpretations via AFMBE and define a few new zombies.  Instead of full blown stat blocks, I'll just talk about how to make changes to your current game's Zombie.  Let's assume a couple of basics.  First, Zombies have no intelligence, they are slow, attack last in any round and had HD roughly equal to twice a normal human (so 2 HD in older games). XP awarded for these needs to recalulated up.

The Hungry Dead
This zombies appear to be most like Ghouls.  Their stats are the same as a regular zombie but once they kill a victim they begin to eat it.  They turn as if they were one slot higher ("Ghoul" for older games).

Plague Zombies
These might be the scariest of all. They do not appear to be any different than a regular Zombie until they bite a victim.  Then the differences are more apparent.  They look and act like The Hungry Dead, but their bite spreads the zombie infection. Anyone that is bitten (a roll of a Natural 20) becomes infected and will become a mindless zombie in 1d6 rounds.  They can be healed by a cure disease, but once dead they are dead forever. These zombies typically have twice the HD as their counterparts.

The Fast Dead
These zombies also appear as normal, until the move.  These are no shamblers, these zombies know the value of running.  They have an effective Dexterity of 16 and can attack normally (not last).

Alchemical Zombie
Stats-wise this is the same as any other zombie. The difference lie in how the zombie was made.  The alchemical zombie comes for a vat of foul smelling liquids produced by an alchemist and not a necromancer.  These zombies can not be turned.

These types can also be combined, so a Fast Plauge Zombie or a Hungry Alchemical zombie is possible.

Gaming Wrap-up

With Gen-Con, some time off and weekend gaming I have managed to get a ton of gaming in over the last couple weeks.  Here is a wrap-up

3.x/Dragonslayers
The Dragonslayers are heading into Epic levels, but there are some characters that need some help filling out their last levels.  Also my kids wanted some side-quests for some special magic weapons, so we did that.
Module: WG4 (upgraded)

1st Edition Game
The boys left B1 and on their way discovered the Keep on the Borderlands.  They are currently planning their attack on the first of the caves.
Module: B1

4th Ed Game
The larger group is getting ready to attack an sort of different Keep, this time the Keep on the Shadowfell.  They still don't know who Nera is, but are learning more about the cult of Orcus.  They also just learned a big secret, the God of the Dead, Kelemvor is dead himself.  No new god of the Dead has been named.
Module: H1

All in all the games are going very well.  My two boys, the commonality in all groups, have now played at least 5 different versions of the D&D rules in the last couple of weeks.  It has been a blast.

I like using the modules for a couple of reasons.  First, I want them to experience these classic adventures.  And it helps me keep three (or more) games and adventures straight in my head.

No idea what we are doing next week.

This week it is back to work.

Gen Con Haul 2012

First up:  Yes. I know I owe you all a Part 2 of the OSR is Dead. But many of you made a lot of the points I was going to.
I also know I missed White Dwarf Wednesday.  I was away from my machine all day.
So instead a drive by post.  With pictures.

So here is my Gen Con 2012 haul.  I also picked up some things here for my kids.

Here we have all the books, minis (love that Gelatinous Cube) and swag.

I picked up a way cool game, Monsterhearts (pdf), that I want to talk about in much detail later.  Also my new ConX 2.0 book, Zenner cards and screen.

I got my two copies of Castles & Crusades from Troll Lord and Jason Vey's Amazing "Amazing Adventures".  Again, I want to talk about that one in detail too.  I picked up a replacement GURPS Horror (lost it years ago) and GURPS Castle Falkenstein.

I got some of the "Drow" D&D dice bags.  And a bunch of older d20 books on magic.

Minis.  I got some dragons (well my kids did) and some other minis.  I love that huge one.  It is a statue of some sort.  In my games it will be a Death Titan.

Some books for my games.  The Dragon (Mongoose) and Dragonlance is for the 3.x game, Faith & Avatars and the Dragon Mag Annual are for the 4e game.  Rokugan was just because it was a buck.

Finally I am replacing my worn out Pokemon backpack for a real gamer bag.

And a full set Drow dice.  We all got some and had to go to all the D&D events to get them. They are very cool.  My wife likes hers because they are purple.  All her dice are purple.

Gen Con recap: The name of the game is "D&D"

I did something truly special this Gen Con. Something that I would love to repeat.

I played D&D with my family through the entire Con.  One of the things I wanted to do with my boys was to play the history of D&D with them.  I didn't get into every game I wanted, but I got in enough to make it count.  I also wanted my wife to join in so she could give her unbiased opinion of the games.  I have learned to trust her judgment on many, many things over the years.

Part of the plan was that any XP, gold or magic the boys got in the games they could translate that over to  the special 1st Ed Game we were playing at night.

We played a D&D4 game on Thursday.  It was a fun game where we all played Dwarfs.  The DM was great and he played well with the kids.  Thursday night I had a game of my own to play (which I'll discuss later).

Friday was our Castles and Crusades game.  I REALLY wanted to play this one after going on and on so much about C&C a while back.  I picked up my new copies of the 5th printing of the Players Handbook and Jason Vey's amazing Amazing Adventures.  The game we played was also a lot of fun.  Again we had a great GM...er Castle Keeper, and in this we all played Assassins.  My youngest loved it.

Friday night we rolled up characters for 1st Ed AD&D!!  They rolled up two each, and these are the children of the Dragonslayers (their current 3.x game).  That took us till midnight since I had to look a lot of things up and we were sitting on the 2nd floor of the JW Marriott and everyone had stop by and comment on what we were doing.

Saturday we played D&D5/Next.  If I would have known we were making characters I would have gone into it with a different mindset.  But it worked out well and character creation was a snap.  Really.  It only took me 30 mins to do my character and help out my wife and two kids.  I playtested the Warlock and I like it so far.  The game itself was fast, I mean really fast. I am going to come back to that in a sec in fact.

Saturday night we played AD&D 1st ed.  I had the boys go on a quick adventure into Castle Quasqueton from B1 In Search of the Unknown.  The boys had some great rolls and they even took out some orcs, zombies and a group of kobolds. The boys made their objective (which happened to be a on sheet of paper I wrote on when I ran this in college around 1988-9 or so), find a missing witch (Marissa) and bring her back.  I hinted there was an evil cult at work (cause that was what I was doing in 88) and the boys ran with it.  Now this cult is "infiltrating" the lands and they now have to put a stop to it.  I might run with that.

Fighting the Kobolds
Quite by accident one of the common elements in the D&D5/Next playtest and my AD&D game on the same day was the party (6 and 5 characters respectively) fought 4 kobolds.  The combat for each ran very, very similar.  In both cases it was fast with hit points flying everywhere and characters on the verge of death. I can say that in at least this respect D&D5 is closer to old-school play than 3 or 4 was.

It dawned on me at one point or another while playing Saturday night.  I was playing AD&D. With my boys. At Gen Con!  I play a lot of D&D with them and I have played a lot of AD&D over the years, but this felt special. This felt like the best thing I could do then and there.

I have no idea what I am going to do with D&D5 when it comes out.  At this very same Gen Con Wizards of the Coast had announced that D&D5 would not be out till 2014.  That is a very good year in my mind.  Still gives us time to play some 4e AND be out in time for the 40th anniversary of D&D.
WotC also announced that previous editions would be made available again via e-book format of some sort.

There were copies of 1st Ed for sale at Gen Con and we all also picked up a full set of D&D "Drow" dice.

For me there is no debate. D&D still reigns as king at Gen Con.

Witch Books, Part 5. Other games

For D&D4:  The Witch Player Class
A decent witch class for D&D4.  Predates the witch that appears in Heroes of the Feywild by a few years, but is roughly compatible.

For Witch Girls Adventures: Original Witch Girls (OWG)
The comic that came before the RPG. The first 200 or so pages are comic content of various artists, but all in the WitchGirls School and world.  The next dozen or so pages is the Coventry School written up for the Witch Girls RPG. And we end with WGA write-ups for all the characters that appeared in the comics.
One of the great things about the Witch Girls game are the characters.  So this is a nice treat really.
If you are a fan of the game and want some more NPCs for your own school or need some ideas on adventure then this  is a great book to have.

For Colonial Gothic: Witchcraft
I enjoy the Colonial Gothic game quite a bit. I love how it weaves the earliest American history with horror and monsters.
I was set to like this book quite a bit and I do, don't get me wrong, but it wasn't quite what I was expecting given how much I enjoyed all the other CG books.
This book gives us Witchcraft for the CG world and it does a great job of researching, but it only gives us the "evil" sort of witchcraft associated with summoning demons.  Granted, that is perfectly fine for this game.  I think I wanted to see a little more.
The first half deals with Witchcraft in the CG world and is great.  The second half is from the writings of King James and frankly he was more than just little bit paranoid.
In the end it is still a good book for the game and something to grab if you are interested in thoughts a views on witches of the time.
Of course for my own take, if you are going to assume that King Jame's witches are real then why not Margaret Murray's witches too?  I guess I just like having the option of playing a witch in my games.

For Mage: The Sorcerer's Crusade: Witches and Pagans
A great resource for the Renascence era Mage: The Sorcerer's Crusade.

For Mage: The Ascension:  Tradition Book: Verbena (1st) (Revised)
More Verbena goodness and more rotes based on the Verbena's sphere of Life.

Both are full of great background information on "witches" in the Mage game and are full of wonderful ideas and great art.  This is WW at their peak and there is so much care and detail here that I couldn't not get these books.

For Basic Role-Playing (Call of Cthulhu...):  BRP Witchcraft
I reviewed this one in detail here: http://timbrannan.blogspot.com/2010/07/brp-witchcraft.html

Witch Hunter: the Invisible World
I reviewed this one in detail here: http://timbrannan.blogspot.com/2011/03/review-witch-hunter-invisible-world.html

Quest of the Ancients
I have talked about this one before too: http://timbrannan.blogspot.com/2011/04/q-is-for-quest-of-ancients.html
The witch in this book is roughly compatible with AD&D1.  Lots of new and fairly cool spells.

My Kids are Awesome!

With the new reprints of 1st Ed AD&D now out my kids want our next game to be a 1st Edition one!

How freaking cool is that?

We have done just about everything we have set out to do in 3rd Ed and our 4th Ed game is still moving right along.

So what should we do then for 1st Ed?
I know I am going to throw in some house rules.

• 1st level HP will be equal to Con scores for all characters and NPCs include 0-level humans.
• I will be using bards, I am just not sure which one yet.
• Double damage on a natural 20.
• Will use strict multi-class and dual-class rules.
• If it is written down somewhere and it works with AD&D1, 2 or Basic D&D then it will be considered for this game.

I know I am going to use ideas from ALL the retro-clones where appropriate.  So it will be less of a 1st Ed game in rules, but certainly one in terms of tone and spirit.

Here are the adventures I want to use.  Again, I like sticking with these old school modules.

T1 Village of Hommlet, levels 1-2 (IF I don't use it in the D&D4 game)
B1 Into the Unknown, levels 1-3 (my go to starting module)
B2 Keep on the Borderlands, levels 1-3 (how can I NOT do this?)

L1 The Secret of Bone Hill, levels 2-4
X2 Castle Amber, levels 3-6 (love this freaky module, though it sticks out as the only Non-Greyhawk one)
A1-4 Slave Lords, levels 4-7
C2 Ghost Tower of Inverness, levels 5-7
S3 Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, levels 8-12
G123, Against the Giants, levels 8-12 (I also have the Stone Giant one from Dragonsfoot)
D12,3 Against the Drow, levels 8,9-14
Q1 Queen of the Demonweb Pits, 10-14
S1 Tomb of Horrors, levels 10-14 (IF I don't use it in the D&D4 game, it is an AD&D classic)
CM2 Death's Ride, levels 15-20. (Again, unless I use it in my current 3.x game which the boys want me to do)

AND if their 4.e group does not get to the end, then I could use the Bloodstone H series too.  But that is getting WAY ahead of myself.

If you look over my previous plans here and here, you see I am sticking with the modules. 
I am running the HPE Orcus ones for 4e, and used many of the other classics in my 3.x games.

So far the boys have gone through B3, B4, S2, S4, WG4, I1, and X1 for 3.x (and a bunch I made up when they were younger like "Cave of the Rainbow Dragon" and "The Stinky Cave"), and H1 Keep on the Shadowfell for 4e.  So they are getting, as my youngest put it this morning, a full Dungeons & Dragons education.

Again.  This is going to be a lot of fun!  I am not expecting this one to start anytime soon, I still have a 3.x game to finish with them. 

Post-Game Day

It was "mini-con" this past weekend at the Brannan household.

Saturday my oldest son played old school Traveller and had some of the crappiest dices rolls in the history of dice.  He was disappointed, but not in the rolls themselves but he was looking forward to playing rather than rolling up characters.

Saturday evening was Ghosts of Albion at EN World Game day.  I didn't have a full roster so I invited him to come along (my youngest had a friend spending the night).  He played William Swift, Protector of Albion. He did a great job.   He thought I had made the character especially for him! Everyone else had a great time and it was great to run Blight one last time.  It dis give me some ideas for new adventures and maybe even a hook to bring my boys into this game.

Sunday was D&D 4: Keep on the Shadowfell with the kid's group.  The group agreed to take out the Kobold lair for the nice price of 100gp each.  The got past the kobold ambush and the kobolds outside the lair, but they have not gone it yet.  The kids did great really.  They are learning to work together more and that is a good thing.  I have a couple of players that want to retrain or swap out some feats.  It is a generally accepted house rule here (and at the games my son and three of the other players play at) that you can make "free" modifications to your character to better suit you, the party or whatever.  My youngest is playing a Bard, he is thinking he wants to add a little bit of warlock to that and maybe rearrange his stats for a better Dex.  My oldest is playing a Paladin multiclassed with Warlord, which works, but he did this thinking we would not have any "Leader" types.  With my youngest now playing a Bard (instead of his usual ranger) and one of the others playing a cleric, he wants to drop the Warlord in favor of Sorcerer, his other favorite class. So the idea is that he had some military training (was Warlord, now it will be more of a background) and during his adventures the stress of combat has awakened the Celestial Dragon blood in his veins and now he can call on Dragon magic. It works.  I still need to talk to the other players too to see if they want to make any alterations.

The kids' 4e Group still doesn't have a name of their own yet.  In the game they are called the Heroes of Winterhaven.  Though in the arc a better name for them would be Death's Champions; though that sounds darker than it is supposed too (they will be making sure that that Death and Life are saved from Orcus).  They have an unknown ally in the form of a mysterious girl named Nera and one of the Arch Dukes of Hell will offer his aid as well. 'Enemy of my Enemy" and all.  Should be a great time!

Various reminders

Spent all day in 104+ weather outside.  My brain is cooked.

Here are some things I want you all to remind me about later cause they were in my clipboard so they must be important.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungeons_%26_Dragons_simulacrums
Need some more information on Swords & Wizardry.  Anyone have some details I can use?

http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/325572-chicago-gameday-32-july-14th-sign-up-play.html
I'd love to have some more people sign up for this.  It's the last time I am running Blight.

http://elflairgames.blogspot.com/2012/07/contemplating-kickstarter.html
Jason has a poll up.  Give it a look-see.

Next weekend I run Ghosts of Albion: Blight om Saturday and Part two of Keep on the Shadowfell on Sunday.

You Know Something?

I had forgotten how much fun I had with D&D 4th Edition.

The kids are in bed, the wife is out seeing "Magic Mike" and I am sorting through my D&D4 collection.

I know it gets beat up a lot, especially in the OSR blog-universe, but you know what? It is still fun to play and reading it there is a lot of nods to the older editions and a lot of love.  They just wanted to do their own thing.

I am really, really pleased that this is the system my son picked for his group.

D&D4 Group: Follow-ups

Source

So I hope you all had a great July 4th Independence Day!  And for my international readers I hope it was a nice day for you all as well.

I had the chance to talk to the parents of the kids (and a couple of the kids) of my son's D&D4 group.

The big news is that they all had a good time.  The biggest surprise to me though was the the ones that enjoyed it the most were the youngest one in the group.  My youngest (9) loves his Bard.  The two younger kids (almost 9 and 8) also really like their characters and they like the system.

All three were told by their parents that if they didn't enjoy it they did not have to stay.  But so far all three are staying.

The older kids had fun too.  They had more opinions on what worked and what didn't.  My oldest son still enjoys 3.x more he thinks, one of the twins loves his character so as long as he is playing that he is happy.  The other twin prefers C&C, but that is fine.

The next game is July 16.  We have mysteries to solve, some kobolds to take care of, and there is that rumor of a dragon's graveyard.

Gods of the New Game

I still don't have a name yet for my new Realms based 4e game, but things are coming together really nice.

Now back when I said I didn't know anything about the Realms. Well that wasn't true.  I don't know much about the lands or the peoples.  I have no idea where Elminster is from, but I could pick him out in a police line up.   But one thing I do know about is the gods of the Realms.
Back when I was working on my first Witch netbook I picked up what was at that time my only Realms specific book, Faiths & Avatars.  I wanted some more info on various gods, various 2nd ed Kits and the human deities. Later I picked up Powers & Pantheons and Demihuman Deities.

So Gods, I know.
I have been playing around with the plots lines of the Spellplague and the events in HPE modules.
And I have decided that I have killed of a number of the Gods.

Here is who is living and who is dead and why.

Bahamut has taken on Tyr's and Torm's portfolios. Torm was killed by Asmodeus. Is now a greater power.

Bane - Dead. Why? can't stand him.  Plus I need Asmodeus as a greater threat. He killed Bane and absorbed all his power and portfolio.  Part of his Reckoning of Hell.  Asmodeus is still keeping Tharizdun chained up deep in Hell.

Kelemvor - Was killed by Orcus in the demon lord's attempt to regain his godhood.  In my games Orcus was not a human that rose up through the ranks of demon-hood, but rather he was Death Primordial/Titan that had the powers of a god.  He had been denounced and banished to the Abyss.  He is searching for an artifact to give him ultimate power.

Mystra is dead, as per the book.  But she won't stay that way for long.

The Raven Queen - from the D&D core and not the Realms I know.  She is alive, but she has not come into her power at all.  In fact she is currently in the guise of a teenage girl ala Death from the Endless.  She is the vessel of Kelemvor's power.

Sehanine, Selûne and Shar are much as they are in the books. However in my world there is also a heresy and a cult dedicated to the "Triune Goddess" or the "Triple Moon Goddess" who believe that all three deities are merely part of the same greater goddess.  They are respectively the Maiden, Mother and Crone.
The mother, Selûne,  is pregnant with the infant Mystra.   Since Kelemvor is dead, Shar is pulling double duties till the young Raven Queen is ready.

Others will appear (or die) as needed.

The Road to Winterhaven

The first session of my kids new D&D4 group happened yesterday and fun was had by all.

The road to Winterhaven has it's issues, but yesterday the band of heroes-to-be gathered together to defeat the kobold ambush.  Present were Dracnil, a Dragonborn Paladin/Warlord, Swift aka "The King" a Bard, Hunter a Ranger, Glock the Halfling theirf, Calinndin an Elandrin Swordmage, Drac of the North a Mul Barbarian and Nevar Bloodbrow a Dwarven Cleric.

Some time was spent on getting characters made and the first encounter.  There was also an impromptu skill challenge when one of their fellow passengers was missing after the combat.  Even the natural 20 from the Ranger could find no trace of her.

So far they have the mystery of the missing girl, a symbol they are sure represents some cult, and three of the seven have been hired to investigate the rest of the kobolds.

I am going to add in some bits of the Winterhaven I was working on back in 2003.  It was conceived as a town where witches roamed free.  The D&D4/Nentir Vale Winterhaven is different, but it sits on a nexus point of the Material World, the Shadowfell and the Feywild.   So there is more here than meets the eye.

I thought the kids did really well yesterday, especially the two that had never played before (though I guess their mom was a big player of Werewolf back in college).  In fact I think the extra XP award for best role playing has to go to one of the new kids (who is the youngest) and the next oldest (though he has been playing a lot longer).  In fact it was Drac of the North (one of the youngest) that got extra experience points for being the first to notice the missing girl.

Given how yesterday went the combat was long, but not much different than my 3.x game.  That will change I know.  Also as the kids (and I for that matter) become more accustomed to the rules things will move along better.

Next session is not for another 2 weeks, so progress will be a bit slow, but I think it will be fine.

No name for the group yet, I am going to let the kids choose.

Tomorrow it Begins!

Tomorrow I start my* new D&D group.  

So far where is what we know.

• We are playing D&D 4th Edition with the plan of going from 1st to 30th level
• I will have *7* players aged 8 to 12 1/2
• We are playing in the Forgotten Realms as it is in the 4th Ed books.
• We are going to do the H-P-E Modules starting with "The Keep On the Shadowfell"

Two of the kids are mine. Three are the sons of my friend Greg and two are friends of my oldest son.  The two new kids have never played anything before.

Greg's kids have played a lot of games, mine have played a variety of D&D games, most notably our 3.x Dragon Slayers game.

We are going with the Orcus wants to become the God of Death plot line.  The differences will be that it's Kelemvor that has died due to the Spellplauge and the Raven Queen is only a Godling, her power untapped. This makes her a more likely target to Orcus than the mature Raven Queen.  I'll admit there are some things from Amber Benson's "Death's Daughter" that I want to try out too.   I am still doing many of the ideas from this post back in 2010, except these characters are not the descendants of the 3.x characters and I am going to smash a world into this one.  

Honestly I think it is going to be great.  4e has it's detractors, but we still had fun with it.  Plus my son plays in a Castles & Crusades game with 3 of the other kids listed above and my two boys are still finishing up their 3.x game where I used all the old 1st Ed modules.  We get to do all sorts of schools here.

(*really my son's)

New Game, New World

I am gearing up for my new game.  I posted about it already a couple days back.  Since then I have picked up another new player.

What I have been considering for this game is moving it away from my normal world of Mystoerth to something new. Or at least new for me. I am considering, very seriously, the Forgotten Realms.

I talked about this a while back. I picked up the Player's Guide then, and just got the Campaign Guide.
I own some Realms books as PDFs. They were one of the things I grabbed in the mad dash before DriveThru took them all down.

I mentioned before that I was never a fan of the Realms. I considered it to be a pretender to Greyhawk and not a very worthy one at that.  In fact one of the first examples of my own Nerd Rage was how Anti-Realms I used to be because it took the spotlight away from my beloved Greyhawk.

I picked up the 3.0 Realms Guide when it came out and I admit I liked it. I felt it was a good book and all it really was missing was monsters. The new 4e campaign books are a good model too. Though this time I feel I have enough monsters.

But what I like the most about the 4e Realms book is how completely gonzo it is. Smash two planets together to get one world! I love that! Spell plagues? Bring it on!  Races from Abeir now showing up? Fantastic!

I will be honest.  I know next to nothing about the Realms.  Nada. Zip.
Never read the novels, never played in the Realms EVER.

In fact most of what I know comes not from books or games, but from Wikipedia and the Forgotten Realms Wiki.

Normally I think this would be an issue. But since I am using the 4e material and it is about 100 years after all the events in 3e, not to mention world-changing events at that, that it is ok if that the players know nothing.  All I need to worry about is their local part of the world.
The iconic NPCs are never going to show up, nor in fact will my sons' characters from our 3.x game.
I want this story to be about these characters right now.

I am also still planning to use the HPE modules for these characters to fight Orcus.   Since it is the Realms I am going to add some of the materials from the old H-series, The Bloodstone Wars.

So here are my questions to those of you far more familiar with the Realms than me.

• Should I read over any of the older material?
• Where is a good place to start the characters?  IE.  What is "The Village of Hommlet" for the Realms?
• Anything I should about running the Realms say as opposed to running Greyhawk?

Thanks!  
I am feeling really excited about this and want it to work out well.

New Game Group and Game!

There is nothing quite like the excitement of a new gaming group.
New people getting together for the first time, new characters, new game, new worlds to explore.

My oldest son has a friend that really wants to learn to play D&D. So I talked to his mother and she is thrilled about it too. She used to play Werewolf back in college.  We are also going to add his younger brother and my youngest too.  So a total of four boys ages 9 to 12.

My oldest plays in a group now that he is continuing with. They are playing Castles and Crusades and having a good time with that.  My oldest and youngest are still playing our 3.x Epic game, the DragonSlayers.

Given I still have all this 4e stuff I want to get my money's worth out off, we are going to play Fourth Edition D&D.

I think it is going to be a great time to be honest.

Right now the plans are to play every other Saturday.
I picked up the Forgotten Realms books at Half-Price books a while back dirt cheap so maybe we will play in the Realms.  I have never done that before.

My kids created their characters yesterday and I am going to use the companion rules to let them have a human or animal companion.  My oldest is playing two characters a Dragonborn Paladin/Warlord and Genasi Sorcerer,  My youngest is playing a Half-elf Bard.  I am planning to go totally 4e gonzo on this too.  Use all the options, the cards, everything.

So yeah, it is about as far from an old school game as you can get, but you know what, it is going to be a blast!  I can't wait to get started!

I am not likely to use the "Basic Levels" idea I came up with.  Which is too bad really, cause I really liked that.  But hey, who knows.  Let's see what the kids want.

Gen Con Registration

Well I got into Gen con registration this morning.

I didn't end up getting all the games I wanted, but I did get a lot of good choices.

I wanted to take my kids on a "history tour" of D&D.
So far we are going to be playing 5e/Next, 4e, 3e and Castles & Crusades.  I wanted to get in an AD&D1 game and Basic game.  No luck though.

I still might run them through a Basic game on my own one of the nights.  Of course if I can find a Labyrinth Lord game, I'd love that. C&C is close to 3e and AD&D so this is a good choice.  And I wanted to play that one myself.

I am not sure if I'll have time for a Ghosts pickup game, though I love to try it at least one night.

Hope you all got your games!

Gen Con Schedule is out

The Gen Con schedule is out now.

I do not have any Ghosts of Albion games running.  I wanted to focus on paying games with my boys.
We are going to try to get into the D&D Next games, try to get some AD&D first ed in, and hopefully some D&D Basic (a clone) would be good too.  I'll run some D&D 3.x too, so we will get the full D&D experience. I think it will be great.

I happy to see there are plenty of Victoriana games, some Buffy/Unisystem games and some others I am interested in.  I'll have to put together a schedule.

I am sorry there won't be any Ghosts of Albion games.  But I am not amiss to doing a pick up game one night.

W is for What Next?

(Apologies to all coming here for the A to Z challenge, you might not be all that familiar with the back story of today's rant.)

I wanted to talk about World of Darkness today. But instead I am going to rant.  Well not rant so much as complain about gamer privilege. I know in the scope of things this is so minor as to be non-existent. But yet here I am...

W is for What Next?

So unless you were away from the internet like was all day yesterday you probably missed the "Big news" that Monte Cook packed up books and told WotC, "Screw you guys I'm going home."

Ok, not exactly like that.  Lots of times people leave projects on properties they love due to disagreements.
I have left playtests in "protest" before over a direction the author wanted to take that I felt was a bad idea.  I won't name names either, but it was a property I really liked and was honored to be a part of.  The game in my mind still sucked, but plenty others still liked it so maybe I was the one in the wrong (I don't think so).

So Monte Cook has left Wizards and his work on D&D Next; the nom-de-net for Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition.

I am a D&D fan. I am a D&D loyalist in fact.  I have every single edition and played them all.  I have nearly every retro clone.  I bought into the D&D 4 hype and bought a ton of books for it. I loved moving the minis on the maps with my kids, I loved the fact that the classes were balanced and I loved that 1st level characters all had something to do.  I disliked how long combats took. I disliked all the meta-gaming that had to go on with feats and surges and actions and markings.  But it was D&D and I still was able to do the sorts of things that worked for me.

Now we are going into the next version, and I have barely played the last version.  My kid's group, The Dragon Slayers, are wrapping up their 3.x game.  We have gone through many of the "Classic" adventures and as much as I love 1st Edition, I really don't want to go back to it.

I know.  I am complaining about having too many games to play. Woe is me...

I guess I'll wait for the playtest like everyone else.  But I have to say that at the moment, D&D 5/D&D Next is not filling me with a lot of excitement.

Meybe I'll just back to D&D Basic and house rule the hell out of it.  Start characters at a higher level (really, wizards should have more spells than 1) and use some of the rules I like from 4e (bloodied) and 3e (multiclass).

"Let's Play 1st Ed. Dad!"

Those are the words I heard after I told my boys that 5e was on the way and there were going to be reprints of the 1st Ed AD&D books.

Part of me is thrilled, another part of me is wondering what the hell am I going to do with all the 4e stuff I bought. ;)  You might recall my Big Plan^TM was going to be have the kids fight Orcus.

Here are the adventures I am thinking of running with them at the moment.  You will note that these all have a large amount of undead and "horror" themes to them.  As with the "Dragonslayers" I'd run this to level 20 or so.

• T1 The Village of Hommlet, levels 1-2. 
• B1 In Search of the Unknown, levels 1-3
• B2 The Keep on the Borderlands, levels 1-3 (this should be higher really, the caves are a killer)
• L1 The Secret of Bone Hill, levels 2-4
• X2 Castle Amber, levels 3-6 
• I6 Ravenloft, levels 5-7. That is if I don't use it as a convert Ghosts of Albion adventure. Use some of the Ravenloft campaign/world setting stuff here too.
• I10 Ravenloft II, House on Gryphon Hill, levels 8-10. (maybe)
• I9 Day of Al'Akbar, level 8-10. Useful for the Cup and Talisman of Al'Akbar.
• S1 Tomb of Horrors, levels 10-14
• S3 Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, levels 8-12 (this is an odd one.)
• G123, Against the Giants, levels 8-12
• D12 Descent into the Depths of the Earth, levels 9-14
• D3 Vault of the Drow, levels 10-14
• Q1 Queen of the Demonweb Pits, levels 10-14 (maybe)
• CM2 Death's Ride, levels 15-20. (If I don't use it in my current games. Thematically it fits better here.)

Then there are these modules:

• H1 Bloodstone Pass, levels 15+
• H2 The Mines of Bloodstone, levels 16-18
• H3 The Bloodstone Wars, levels 17-20
• H4 The Throne of Bloodstone, levels 18-100

Interestingly enough this is almost EXACTLY the same path my characters took when I played back in the day.  Some of these will be my first time running, others (B1, I6) I can run in my sleep.

Others I have a bigger issue with.  As muchas I LOVED the D series, we live in a post Drizzt world.  Drow are not the TOS era Romulans anymore.  They are the DS9 era Romulans.  The mystery is gone. Drow are no longer a big secret anymore.  Plus how does Lolth fit into the Orcus plot?  No idea.  She doesn't have too, but I want a big sweeping epic.  Something my kids will talk about when they are older.

If I do keep with 4e, I can do my original plan.  In both cases the Big Bad is Orcus.  And I kinda like that idea to be honest.

If do 1st Ed I am very likely to include information from JB's B/X Companion Rules and the Rules Cyclopedia to deal with the higher level play.

Who knows, maybe 5e will give me the power to use all this stuff under one game system.

Of course there is one other option.  Play the 1st ed games as a "Flash back" game or even (gasp!) a time travel one.  The characters (whether 4e or 5e) spend some time in the past.  I would stat up the characters as 1st Ed ones.  I kinda like this idea to be honest.  Play my 4e plan, and then hit some of the past adventures too.  I could then be more selective about which older adventures to use.

So many games to play and so little time....