Kid's Games

I totally missed Friday Night Videos the other night.  Sorry. Insane day at work. I didn't even know about Paris till I got home Friday night.

OneBookshelf is running their annual "Teach your Kids to Game Week" with lots of sales on introductory material for kids.

While I totally applaud such efforts, I think back to how I learned and how I taught my own kids and we all started with D&D.

In fact my oldest son has been playing for close to 11 years now.  He is still playing his first character in our Dragonslayers game.  We began the game in early 2005 with "The Cave of the Stinky Goblin" and now have a host of epic-level bad asses.

This weekend we even took some time to play the children of the Dragonslayers, the Order of the Platinum Dragon in the next part of the Slaver's series.  The big "reveal" is coming soon and I can't wait to spring it on my players.

Attack on the Slave Lords!

While searching for a ship that will take them home the Order of the Platinum Dragon discovers that  there has been an increase in the slaving activity to the north.  They decided to put a stop to it.

The first half of A1 went very well.  The characters discovered a lone cart from a caravan with slaves.  A few well-placed sleep spells and a few more well-placed arrows and the slavers were dealt with and the slaves freed.  An illusion later the party, with a couple of freed slaves looking for revenge manage to get into the north entrance.  So now they have an orc helping them.

Things went rather well so far.  The cleaned up much of the upper temple and have now dealt with the apis and the giant ants.

I did replace the orcs and half-orcs with gnolls and gnoles, respectively from the Hercynian Grimoire #1.  Replacing Gruumsh with Yeenoghu was an easy swap.  It also allowed me to play up the whole "demon" aspect since Gruumsh is considered a god and not a demon.

The high priestess in the chapel on the first level was also turned into a were-hyena witch.

Can't wait to see what the next session brings me!

Assault on the Slave Lords

Things are heating up for the Order of the Platinum Dragon this weekend.  They have been dropped into some unknown part of the world after they left Barovia.

While trying to charter a boat they hear some rumors of a group of slavers.

I went through this series years ago myself, so I am really looking forward to running it.  I think I still have a thief that was trapped in the basilisk room.
Of course I am going to make some changes to these adventures. The Slavers themselves are working for a group of vampires.  One or more of them are vampires themselves in fact. Not sure who though.

Also, I am going to replace some of the orcs with gnolls. I am planning on incorporating some more gnoll themes in the Slavers series. I am replacing Gruumsh with Yeenoghu and capitalizing on his role as "King of Ghouls" and "Vassal to Orcus". I am going to use a lot of the material in Hercynian Grimoire #1 from +James Mishler too.  It's just too good NOT to use.

I am also considering throwing in thouls just for the fun of it.

Here are some other postings on this module. Always interesting to read what others have experienced.
http://www.metagamemastery.com/2011/09/26/annotated-a1-slave-pits-of-the-undercity/
http://www.thedelversdungeon.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=227
http://bloodofprokopius.blogspot.com/2012/02/re-imagining-slave-pits-of-undercity.html
http://grognardia.blogspot.com/2010/11/retrospective-slave-pits-of-undercity.html
http://bxblackrazor.blogspot.com/search/label/a1-4
http://dungeonfantastic.blogspot.com/2014/12/review-a1-4-scourge-of-slave-lords.html

Edited to Add, Peter's detail into each adventure.
http://dungeonfantastic.blogspot.com/2014/10/review-a1-slave-pits-of-undercity.html
http://dungeonfantastic.blogspot.com/2014/10/review-a2-secret-of-slavers-stockade.html
http://dungeonfantastic.blogspot.com/2014/10/review-a3-assault-on-aerie-of-slave.html
http://dungeonfantastic.blogspot.com/2014/11/review-a4-in-dungeons-of-slave-lords.html

Endless Darkness vs. The Outer Darkness

No game this weekend. It's my son's birthday so he is taking over my game room this weekend.

This gives me some time to work on their next adventure (well, future adventure), the D series.

I have been re-reading the D series for a bit now. It's funny how when reading it today I have a really different perspective on things than when I was going through the adventure 30 years ago.  That's not a surprise really, nor is how much of it I had forgotten.  What is the surprise is how much of it I remembered.  Not from reading it or even the printed page, but what my characters were doing at the time.

I remembered how much I HATE Blibdoolpoolp.

Not the goddess herself actually, but the deception.  20 foot tall nude human with a lobster head?  Why would Kuo-toa worship something that looked so different than themselves?  Well the answer was obvious even to my then pre-teen and teenaged mind.  It was an excuse to draw a naked woman.
Now generally speaking I don't have a problem with this, but I would like to think I am a bit more sophisticated today.

Since Kuo-toa are supposed to be stand-ins for Deep Ones anyway, why not go all the way and use Mother Hydra instead of Blibdoolpoolp.  I can keep all the same names, Kuo-toa are a more "fishy" offshoot of the Deep Ones and they call their Goddess Blibdoolpoolp instead of Mother Hydra, but they are the same thing.  She would become one of those things that is a mix of demon, goddess and what those things are from the outer darkness of Lovecraft's mind.

vs.

I have been adding more "Lovecraft" to this adventure series anyway.  Castle Amber was already very steeped in the mythos of Clark Ashton Smith.  I have a bunch of Yithan minis now too.  Plus I have wanted to bring the Mind Flayers closer to their Lovecraftian step-fathers.   So in this sense it all works out.  I also have all of these books at home with the monster stats; Deities and Demigods,  Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea, Realms of Crawling Chaos and what I call neo-Mythos books like the Teratic Tome.

My kids are really into reading about the mythos, but not the actual stories yet.  My oldest doesn't read horror and my youngest is working his way up to Lovecraft now.  
Ok. For the record, I know there is so much more to Lovecraft than the Mythos.  But that is the part I want to use here.

I am not planning on bringing in the big C himself.  But I can see Dagon showing up sometime.

In any case it is going to be a lot of fun.

Rage...Across the Multiverse.

Wizards of the Coast is pulling out the stops for it's new Rage of the Demons campaign and I have to admit I am rather excited about it myself.


There is a lot going on here. Including the new Out of Abyss book and Rage of the Demons minis.

Though how is any of this going to affect the Order of the Platinum Dragon?  Simple. This is a multiversal event.  While all that stuff is going on in the Realms and the Sword Coast, over here in my world we are still running through what I call the "Great Greyhawk Campaign" in my campaign of the Endless Darkness.

The two campaigns are obviously linked. I'll adapt bits and pieces from the Rage of Demons to put into my campaign.

I am excited to see Demogorgon in this and the mindflayers.  Mindflayers working with Orcus, that is like custom made for my games.

Halfway, Fortunes of Ravenloft and the Foreshadowing

Got in a lot of gaming this weekend!

Saturday the Order of the Platinum Dragon found themselves still stuck in the mists.  They stumbled on to Halfway.  Here they met the Dealer and had the Fortunes of Ravenloft read.  We are not going to play Ravenloft till Gen Con, but I have 5 nights to run it.

I used Tarot cards for the Fortunes (because why not).  I have done that in the past, but I also found this AD&D1st Ed to D&D5 conversion of Ravenloft that also used Tarot cards.
With the PDF out I can print both of these out and run it from those.

Sunday we went "back in time" to the Dragonslayers.  They finished up their exploration of the Barrier Peaks.  Here they encountered, for the very first time, the Illithids.  Something that was not lost on my kids.

The "Order of the Platinum Dragon" characters are all the children or grand children of the "Dragonslayers".   So I am setting up the Mind Flayer threat a generation early.

I know what I have in store for the Order, I just need to figure out what is next for the Dragonslayers.

Castle Amber, Butterbeer and the Order of the Platinum Dragon

Sunday was a humid, rainy day in Chicagoland.  So what better to do than stay inside and play some D&D!

We decided to finish up Castle Amber taking them straight through all the wilderness encounters.  The boys meet Skylla, though true to her rumored appearance in the D&D cartoon she appears as an old woman. They also have no idea that she is evil.

She did help them a bit on where various towns were.  She wanted out of the Averoigne to get back to Glantri.  There is a small problem now, but I will get to that.

The boys decided that the name of their group is The Order of the Platinum Dragon. We celebrated with some homemade butterbeer.

It was quite good, but we could saved time and had the same amount of calories and fat with we had just drank some melted butter with a couple tablespoons of sugar.

The Order managed to dispatch the Beast of Averoigne and The Colossus of Ylourgne. They were able to con and bribe the Ring of Eibon from the Archbishop.  All in all, a really good session.

The Order summoned the Tomb of Stephen Amber and the mists closed in on them.  Normally that is where the adventure ends and they are back in their own world.  Instead when the mists cleared they discovered they are in Barovia.  Well, they don't know that yet, all they know is they are not home yet.

The Sword of Sylarie was not destroyed as per the module. It is half of what will become the Sun Sword.

So up next it is the Order vs. Castle Ravenloft.
Time to grab my copy of Ravenloft and start reading again.  Should not be to bad, I have run this many, many times.

It's going to be a lot of fun!

They Might Be Giants!

My kids are going to be going through the Classic G series modules here soon (I am hoping to do it by Gen Con) in our 5th Edition Game.  I have a great memories of this adventure and I really looking forward to it to be honest.

Yesterday Tenkar posted a link to the wonderful "Extended" series of the Giants adventures by R.C. Pinnell, aka +Thork Hammer.

I have had a copy of G4, Sanctum of the Stone Giant Lord.  I liked this one because it was short and it included Stone Giants, something I always felt was missing from the original.  I knew about some of the others (G5 and G6), but only recently discovered the others (G7 to 9).

Well thanks to Thork, Tenkar and +Vincent Florio I now have all of them.

All together the adventure is over 100 pages.  This is a bit more than I wanted to be honest.  The Giants are tied up pretty close to the Drow of the next series. So for me the Giants are just the pawns of the Drow.  The Stone and Mountain giants I can see.  Maybe even the Cloud, if they are more on the evil side.  I have not read all the adventures yet, but maybe the Cloud Giant queen has something to do with the Sun being blocked out in my adventure.

My feeling on these is that would work best as pure Giant themed series of adventures divorced from the GDQ series.  That being said, I am very, very sure there is something here that is perfect for my game. So for me it is worth printing this all out.  Given what I am planning I am a touch disappointed I don't have the 4th Ed D&D adventure, Revenge of the Giants.

The really nice thing about running these classics so many years later is all the material out there to support them.  For a while there WotC was publishing maps for the Giants series (among others).

I might need to print these all out and get them into a binder or something.

Links

• The Original Against The Giants, G123
• G4-9, at DriveThru (not free)
• G4-9, offered for free on Google Drive
• Map a Week from Wizards of the Coast
• Against the Giants -- May 2006
• Against the Giants -- July 2006
• Crumbling Hall of the Frost Giant Jarl

So lots of great stuff out there.

Sol Invictus: The Unconquered Sun

The mountains and the canyons started to tremble and shake 
as the children of the sun began to awake. 

It's not easy pulling off a large mono-theistic religion in a FRPG, especially one where the world not only has a lot of pantheons, but also where all these goods are assumed to be real.
Fortunately there are plenty of examples from the real world.  Especially in the Christ-like figure of Mithra or Mitra and the similar Sol Invictus.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sol_Invictus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mithraic_mysteries
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%81ine

I think a god like Mithra would be interesting in D&D.

The Church of Sol Invictus
In my Mystoerth world the Church of Sol Invictus seeks to unite the faiths of the world under the banner of one Sun God.  They have a lot of influence in the temples of Pholtus, Pelor, St. Cthubert and Ixion.  There are many similarities to this faith and the one of Taiia in 3rd Edition.

Proponents of Sol Invictus believe that their god is the only true god and all others are false gods or even worse elevated demons or mortals.

But the Church of Sol Invictus has a number of other, deeper secrets.
In addition to only recognizing the sun gods of various faiths as the only true god, they believe that these gods are really only aspects of a much greater god.
The high priests and the leader of the faith, known as "His Brilliance", feel that these aspects are in fact aspects of the god known as "He Who Was".

He Who Was was an ancient powerful god whose chief lieutenant was Asmodeus. At the behest of Tharizdun, Asmodeus tricked and betrayed this god. He was ambushed by Orcus, Demogorgon and a third demon whose name has been erased.  He Who Was managed to kill this other demon and even split Demogorgon into two.  Demogorgon later regenerated into  his current form, each half of his head regenerating in to two complete heads.  Orcus killed He Who Was and in a further act of desecration used his skull and spine as the the great Wand of Orcus.

The clergy of Sol Invictus believe then that by combining these aspects of the Sun God and destroying Orcus forever they can have their god reborn. They believe that this rebirth will make their god more powerful than he ever was.

In my larger world St. Aleena was also a follower of this philosophy and the Church of Law and Order in City of Dolmvay is just another aspect of this faith.

The major foes of this Church are followers of Orcus and pretty much any demonic cult.  Also feared and mistrusted are the faiths that follow the Moon.

The Church of Sol Invictus are among the main witch-hunters in my world.

I am planning to work elements of this church into my current game, but not sure how much detail the players are actually going to get.  The use a word my wife hates, I am going to let it grow "organically".

Some of this organic growth began when I first started pulling all this together for 4e. It was building the 4e version of Aleena that got this idea rolling again.  I guess this is one of the reasons I have not let go of my 4e books.  A lot of the fluff is still compatible with what I am doing in 5e.

Not everything is figured out though.
Given that I grew up in the 70s I would love to add some more left-over hippy shit to it all. I would love to add something like 12 houses to the faith, something along the lines of orders.  Or 7 orders and break them down by color.  The 7 orders actually fits better with some other things I had done in the past.  Each order representing a different aspect of the faith.  I had already figured out Red (Military might) and Blue (Knowledge/learning).  It should not be too hard to come up with something else.  Obviously Green could be related to growing things.  Violet could be Guidance. Why? Well it brings in a group I had created separately that could work into this faith.  Maybe they absorbed them.  I could even have a "Black" for the secret police within the faith.

I will give this some thought.  But yeah this could be fun.

Checking in on my Plan

Over the years I have discussed my Plan.  The Plan is what adventures I am going to take my kids through.

For D&D 3.x I was content to take anything as it came, make stuff up and generally going towards a  stopping the cult of Tiamat plot.  It was/has been fun and we are nearing the end of that.

For the new adventures I was looking at 3rd, then 4th, then 1st and now 5th Edition as the primary game system.

http://timbrannan.blogspot.com/2010/01/i-have-plan.html
http://timbrannan.blogspot.com/2012/02/lets-play-1st-ed-dad.html
http://timbrannan.blogspot.com/2012/07/my-kids-are-awesome.html

At the present here is where I am.

• B1 Into the Unknown, levels 1-3
• B2 Keep on the Borderlands, levels 1-3
• L1 The Secret of Bone Hill, levels 2-4
• X2 Castle Amber, levels 3-6 (where we are now!)
• I6 Ravenloft, levels 5-7
• A0-5 Slave Lords, levels 4-7
• G123, Against the Giants, levels 8-12 (I also have the Stone Giant one from Dragonsfoot, just need to find it)
• D12,3 Against the Drow, levels 8,9-14
• Q1 Queen of the Demonweb Pits, 10-14
• 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)

If I don't do Death's Ride I am seriously considering the classic H series to go after Orcus.

• 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

But I would REALLY edit these since they have a lot of issues.  Truthfully my best plan is to just use H4 and add bits from H1-3 and maybe even some stuff from the 4th Ed E-Series.  But that is if I want to have Orcus as the big bad guy at the end.  It has appeal.

Also I have the mind flayer adventure A Darkness Gathering to work into the mix.

It has taken me a while to get through all this because I am alternating with my 3.x game, some AS&SH and other games.

So far the adventures have seemed random and the characters are wandering about.  But they are about to get some items in the X2/I6 series that will help them later on.  

Right now, with out their knowing about it the Drow, Vampires and Illithids have gathered together to put the final phase of their ultimate plan into motion.  The PCs will discover a little of this plan when they encounter the Slavers.  The slavers are all vampires now and they are not dealing in slaves, but human cattle.    After they have defeated them the last part of the bad guys plan comes into fruition.  

The sun goes completely out.  

There is panic. Everyone gathers in the Freecity of Greyhawk.  The Church of Pelor/Ixion is hardest hit, but also the loudest voice.  All the "big names" are there and they are trying to figure out what to do.

There is a plan to set the moon a flame, but the various clergy of the Moon Goddesses are against that.  Finally they agree to instead use a large asteroid to keep life going till they can re-ignite the sun.

While all the big names are trying to figure this out the PCs have to deal with some raids nearby of giants...

The PCs will then go through the GDQ series to discover the plan and that the drow are working with mind flayers.  After defeating Lolth in Q1 the PCs will have to deal with the vampires who have Pelor captured.  In order to re ignite the sun they will need to set him free from his prison in ..... and that is all I have.

Yeah it is kinda story-gamey.  It's my game, my house and my kids. They will eat this up.

I guess it is hard for me to get away from the idea of vampires as the big bads.

Those of you who have been reading this blog a long time might notice that there was a similar plot in my Buffy Season 7 game, Episode 12 No Other Troy.  Though that one the sun being blocked was a side effect. 

I am inclined to use Orcus as the big bad holding Pelor.  

I have a huge ass mini of him and a crap ton of material for him.

But I have also wanted to use Camazotz as the demon-god of Vampires in his abyssal plane of Xibalba.  Maybe I still can use him in some way.  It is possible he is something like a high priest to Orcus and his job is to sacrifice Pelor on a bloody altar.  Once that is done Orcus will suck up his godly powers and reign as the God of Death and Darkness.

And he would have gotten away with it too had it not been for those meddling PCs.

On the Road to Averoigne

So over the weekend my D&D5 group completed the castle portion of Castle Amber and the adventurers have entered Averoigne.  They are currently taking a long rest before heading out to find the four items they need to return home.

So far this adventure has been fantastic.  I forgot how much fun X2 was, both as a player and as a DM.

I am still playing around with the 5e rules.  I might use the option that makes healing more like AD&D, but so far I still very happy with how things go.

Story wise I have been dropping hints of the "Oncoming Darkness" with both the ghouls and the Brain Collector/Neh-Thalggu mentioning it.   Once they complete their quest here typically they are brought back to their own world.  Instead I am going to have them go directly to Ravenloft via the mists and defeat Strahd.  In both adventures they get items necessary for them to survive the adventures to come.

I am going to try out this Ravenloft I6 D&D 5 conversion I found here.
Ravenloft is one of my favorite adventures and I am really looking forward to it.

I still need them to come up with a name for their group.

Great Weekend!

What a great weekend that was!  I can't even feel bad for it being Monday cause I am still riding the high.

I got to watch some cool horror movies with my family. Got our Halloween decorations up (well, most of them) and We played some more Castle Amber Sunday night.

Had a moment of serious Deja Vu when running it too.  In the "White Room" in the East Wing there is a D&D Expert set monster hiding out, a Frost Salamander.  Now back in the day (much like today) we mixed and matched our D&D rules as we needed.  Well back when I was a player and we went through this room I didn't have my D&D Expert book on me. I had just bought the PHB and we were running it as "pure" AD&D.  Well AD&D doesn't have a Frost Salamander.  Neither does D&D 5.
So in both cases we substituted a Remorhaz for it.

I know not a big deal. But for a bit I was transported back in time to when I was my son's age and doing what he was doing.  It was very cool to me.

If you have not had a chance yet, head on over to Tenkar's Tavern to see exactly how not to act when someone is reviewing your kickstarter:

• http://www.tenkarstavern.com/2014/10/kickstarter-dragonwars-of-trayth.html
• http://www.tenkarstavern.com/2014/10/wayward-kickstarter-dragonwars-of.html
• http://www.tenkarstavern.com/2014/10/tales-from-backwater-tavern.html

Very good example of what not to do.

Averoigne via Ravenloft

Chances are we are going to go see the new Dracula movie tonight.  But tomorrow I would like to get in some gaming.  My home group is nearly done with Castle Amber so given the season (and their levels) I want to segue right into Ravenloft.

For those that have played it you know that Stephen Amber send the party back to their own reality once they free him.  But what if he didn't? What if didn't have the power to do that since freeing him also meant letting go of all his power.  Stephen fades, Château d' Amberville crumbles to dust and the party is left standing in the mists.  Where are they to go?

Easy.

Castle Ravenloft.

I have for years talked about the similarities between Château d' Amberville and Castle Ravenloft and the connections between Mystara and the Demi-Plane of Dread.  It is likely that this is all taking place in the Demi-plane of Dread (Ravenloft) or the Dimension of Nightmares (Mystara) where even the Immortals fear to go.

Why do this?

I was thinking about the Doctor Who Series 2 episodes "Rise of the Cybermen" and "Age of Steel".  The Doctor, Rose and Mickey (who had not traveled with them before except for one episode) get stuck in an alternate universe.  Mickey stays behind.
The pay off on this is when we get to the Series 2 Finale and Mickey is back, and not just back, but since he traveled through "the Void" he and Rose are saved from being killed outright by the Daleks and it was Mickey who passed on his time travel energy (or void energy) to the Genesis Ark.

What's the point of this?  Well the reason they went to the parallel universe were not apparant at the time, but paid off in the finale.  From a story arc they all, including and especially Mickey, needed to go to that parallel universe when they did.

My players are in Ravenloft because they have to be.  They needed to free Stephen Amber and stop the Amber family because that gets them to Castle Ravenloft which in turn gets them the Sunsword and the Holy Symbol of Ravenkind.   They are going to need those in the coming darkness.

Another Great 5e Weekend

It is the the first weekend of Fall (more or less) and that means a lot of yard work for me including cleaning up my wife's garden.  I don't mind. I love getting all the fresh veggies.

But this weekend was also a great 5th Edition D&D weekend.

Began our time picking up a couple copies of the newest Monster Manual.

The new Monster Manual is a damn attractive book.  Like so much of D&D5 it reads like a "greatest hits" of D&D.  Yest there is still plenty of room for more books especially a Fiend Folio.

Tonight the family explored the temple in Castle Amber.  They might more of the crazy Ambers and manged to get one character turned to stone.  Fortunately for the paladin, the sorcerer still had a wand of negation that could undo one magical effect.  So our paladin was back.

But the dice were cold tonight and we stopped after a couple of hours.  Still, more fun to be had at Castle Amber.

Castle Amber by Candle Light

Running behind on posting (and reading).  We got slammed by a freak storm in Chicago and we were without power from Friday afternoon to Sunday morning.

Friday we went out in the hope that the power would be back soon.  No such luck.  So we spent the night reading by flashlight and candle light.  I grabbed my old 2e Ravenloft Boxed set to flip through.

Saturday was spent grilling everything in the fridge so we would not have to throw it all out.

Eggs, toast and bacon on the grill. I might never eat inside again.

We then spent the day preparing and playing one of my favorite modules X2 Castle Amber.

And trust me, nothing was quite as fun as playing it all by candle light.

We played it under 5th edition rules.  Unlike Bone Hill, I did not have 5e stats for all the monsters in this adventure.  But fortunately the conversion process was very easy and most I could do one the fly.

Yeah that is my 1st Ed. DMs screen.  I had my kids grab everything and they also got that.

So far 5e is still working very nice for us.
Castle Amber is also a great adventure to play and run.  The kids are having a blast.  They managed to get through the west wing and they even found an intelligent magical sword.  I am not sure what do with that one yet. I hand-waved it for now since I have not found any D&D5 rules about intelligent weapons yet.

My family is loving this adventure so far and I have to admit I was rather gleeful inside at scene where they have to run from the "Grey Mists" to get into the castle.

The nice thing is that even though this feels like a "monster of the week" adventure there is a great tie-in to the overall "Cult of Chaos" plot I have been weaving through all the adventures.  Yeah, yeah I have seen the posts that D&D isn't supposed to be "cinematic" or "storytelling".  Screw that. I do what my family and I enjoy.   My youngest spends his time playing looking for any clues that might help him understand more about the mystery and my oldest wants to read Lovecraft now.

So next time they will finish the central forest and hit the East Wing and then beyond.

Gen Con 2014 in Review. Part 1: D&D is back

Well another Gen Con is behind us.  Once again I ate more than I should, stayed up later and spent more money than I really should have.

D&D is Back!
I ended up play about 28 hours worth of D&D 5 over the con.  Ran most of that time and played for about 4 hours with 2 different DMs.
This is not the best version of D&D ever, but it is really, really damn close.  It plays and reads like a D&D "Greatest Hits" and you can see bits of not just every version of D&D in it, but little bits of Pathfinder and Castles & Crusades.  As I read somewhere else, every game has been stealing from D&D for so long that it was D&D's turn to steal some of it back.

I ran the end of "B2 Keep on the Borderlands" and all of "L1 The Secret of Bone Hill".  D&D 5 scales very well with the 1st Ed adventures and thanks to all the free stuff that WotC is throwing at us I was able to get D&D 5 stats for every monster in both modules.  We even had a guy join us that wanted to try D&D 5 and had played 2nd ed almost exclusively.  I think we made him into a D&D 5 fan by the end of the night.

At first I thought I would dislike the new faster XP progression but it really works nice.  While the former math teacher in me likes the nice progression from 3rd ed I think this new progression will work better.
Besides, the XP are 1/10 of what you saw in AD&D1 anyway.

Playing in the J.W. Marriott's "Open Gaming" room. 

The great thing about running the Keep on the Borderlands under AD&D and then again under D&D5 was I really got to get a good feel of both games in the same environment.  Trust me, if you liked AD&D then you should like D&D5, though everything in "5" runs faster.

I love the Backgrounds and the Archetypes.  The Backgrounds work better than what you have in Pathfinder (and can EASILY be ported over to any other system) and give you a good feel for what your character was before he/she was an adventurer; or something I like to refer to as the "Luke Skywalker".  Before Luke was a pilot or a Jedi he was a Farm Boy.  How does this translate, well he did target all those wamp rats back home.  Sure it feels a little "FATEy" but that is great.

Archetypes are the return of 2nd Ed kits, only reigned in.  Kits stopped being useful to me after the Complete Book of Bards was published and each and every kit in there was over powered.  In D&D5 they seem more reasonable.  In my group we had two Rogues, one was the Thief the other was the Assassin.  They were able to help each other out when needed but also had their own roles to play.

Multi-classing is of the 3.x variety (yeah!) and if anything easier to do.

The Wizard, Sorcerer and Warlock now all feel very different from each other.  So you can see some of 5's 4e DNA here.

I know people complain about the price of the books. Well I got in 28 hours of play and 6 more of enjoyment (reading, making characters) so far.  That's 34 hours of fun I had with my family.  Compare that to going to the movies which runs me (just tickets here) $36-40 per two hours. That's $1240.00+.  Frankly D&D5 is a steal.   Plus my wife enjoy it so much she wants us all to play a couple of hours each week!  Honestly I can't even put a price on that.

I also think, though I have not tried it yet, that D&D5 could run 3rd and 4th ed material too.  I might have to give that a go.

On an interesting note we played D&D 5 at the Wizard's area as well.  We had a WotC DM.  In the past I have less than stellar luck with this and most of the DMs were not very good.  I am happy to report that our DM was fantastic.  She let use our current characters, was great with teaching the rules and was all around a good DM.   In fact everyone I dealt with, talked to or otherwise interacted with at WotC were fantastic.

Does this mean I am done with "old school" D&D?  Hardly.  But it does mean my system of choice when it comes to D&D will be D&D5 for a while anyway.

Is it a perfect system?  No.  There are still some things I would have done differently.  But when I read the rules and I keep 99% of them intact, that is a good sign.
Hell. I am not even sure I do that with Ghosts of Albion and I *wrote* all of those rules.

Pathfinder Note
I still enjoy 3e and Pathfinder. In fact I still have a game of it going that I want to wrap up.
I had planned on picking up the Pathfinder Advanced Class Guide at the con.  I like to buy some games directly from the publisher at Gen Con since I know how much they look forward to these sales.
Well one of the Paizo employees was so rude to my son while he was looking at one of the goblin things that I decided I really didn't need to buy anything.
I am not making a big deal of this.
But it has turned me off from getting the book to be honest.

They in no way what-so-ever missed my money. But the contrast between how WotC treated my kids and how Paizo did really stuck with me.

Next update. I'll talk about all the other things I did. Plus my first time at the ENnies (short story, I lost, but still had a great time!). Oh and pictures.  All of them are on my wife's phone though.

Come Endless Darkness

No. Not the Gary Gygax book, but related.

I have been thinking a lot about the 1st Ed AD&D game my kids are in now.   They love play 1st ed more than 3e I feel, but what is missing from this game, at least how I initially conceived it, is an epic arc.

In this campaign the characters are going to get involved in something huge, something world changing.  Since these characters are the sons and daughters of their 3e characters I also want some thing that alters the feel of the game world to help explain the shift in rules from 3e to 1st Ed.

So I am going back to an idea I had years ago that I originally wanted to try for 3e.  It was going to be called Shadow Earth and bits and pieces live on in my other products and posts.
I am planning to blot out the sun.
This was something that I toyed with now and again and thought it might make for a good plot. It was also one of the ideas I threw out later on as an idea for my "no big bad" game Season of the Witch.

The idea is a simple one really.  The vampires, drow and mind flayers* (or maybe the mi-go have not decided yet) join forces to blot out the sun.

The PCs discover part of this plot after they bust up a slaving operation being run by vampires (A series).  Unlike like other games though, the bad guys succeed in their plans and the sun goes dark.  While the big powers of the world are meeting to discover how to reverse it (and thus not able to help out their offspring) the new generation is sent off to investigate reports of giants attacking a village nearby (GDQ).

So yes I am using modules with this.  I figure I have come up with say about 100 unique adventures over the last 35 years or so.  These allow me to ease some of the heavy lifting AND also to give my kids a shared experience with other gamers.
Here is the plan so far.

• B1 In Search of the Unknown, levels 1-3 (played at Gen Con 2012)
• B2 Keep on the Borderlands, levels 1-3 (playing now, will include a shrine to an evil god of chaos)
• T1 Village of Hommlet, Intro-levels (might not use now, depends on how the Temple of EE fits in)
• L1 The Secret of Bone Hill, levels 2-4 (maybe)
• X2 Castle Amber, levels 3-6 (the MiGo plot)
• A0 to A4, levels 4-7 (the vampires get their victims from the Slavers)
• A5, The Last Slave Lord, levels 5-9 
• I1 Dwellers of the Forbidden City, levels 4-7  (snakemen - minions)
• C1 The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan, levels 5-7
• G123, levels 8-12 (drow)
• D12, levels 9-14
• D3, levels 10-14
• Q1, levels 10-14

They are currently going through Tomb of Horrors under 3e, and I am thinking of running Expedition to the Barrier Peaks under AS&SH.

The idea then will be that the PCs discover the plot and have to destroy the device blocking out the sun on Lolth's plane.  IF things work out and we have more time or they want to go on then I *might* work in the old H4 Module, Throne of Bloodstone and redo it a bit to give them a second part to destroy.

Things I have not yet figured out.  I would love to use my Ophidians in there somewhere.  I should really since they a cool race and work well.  I will have to use my take on Demogorgon then as well.

Mindflayers seem like a no brainer to me which means I should really investigate why I am using them.  I think they should be part of a more Mythos-like mindset.  Their goal of course is to enslave the entire world.  But do they have a demon lord they answer to? Not likely.  Given this many factions I need to figure out their motivations.  Why? Well that will tell me how the players will be able to succeed.
Maybe the Ophidians are in league with or controlled by the mind flayers.

I want to give them an epic. I want this to feel like opera; like all three parts of Wagner's Ring Cycle.
At the end I want to be able to look over the table at their faces and know they know what it is to shake the pillars of Heaven.  I felt that when the I was done playing in the "Dragon Wars" in 1988 and again when I ran "The Dragon and the Phoenix" in 2002-2004.

Regardless how epic it might be, it will be fun.

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.

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. 

"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....