Showing posts with label kids. Show all posts
Showing posts with label kids. Show all posts

Monday, September 8, 2014

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.

Monday, July 28, 2014

Found my Gen Con Game

Every time I have taken my kids to Gen Con we have started a new adventure.
I like to pull from the classics no matter what it is I am playing.  So in the past we have done S4 The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth and B2 Keep on the Borderlands.

This year it is going to be L1 The Secret of Bone Hill!


I am rather fond of this adventure and have figured out some new tweeks to it to make it work great in my kids' AD&D game.  Plus I have a bunch of Len Lakofka's material from Dragon that I want to port into this.

Should be a blast!

Sunday, January 12, 2014

Mega-Dungeon!

We are big fans of the board game Dungeon around here.

My kids love to play it and have even gotten their non-gaming cousins into it.  I have several copies including two copies of the original 1975 version in slightly different boxes.
So last night we tried something we have been wanting to try for a while: Mega Dungeon.


We decided that there are secret doors between the two dungeons and you can teleport from any chamber to any other chamber.  Wizards get twice the amount of spells and magic swords can "stack" so if you have a +1 and a +2 sword then you have +3.  We also used minis instead of pawns cause that is more fun.
The monster rolls are on a d12 instead of a 2d6.  A roll of "1" means the player gets another attack.  We also require twice the amount of gold to win.

So far it has been a lot of fun.  We are continuing later today.

Friday, November 29, 2013

Return to the Keep, part 2

Brief one this late post Thanksgiving night.

The 1st Edition group was back at to the Keep on the Borderlands for supplies and reinforcements.  Spent a while haggling with merchants and buying more equipment.  Never quite got back to the caves yet, but it was more than I expected we would do.

Sunday, November 24, 2013

Tomb of Horrors

Today the Dragonslayers ventured into the most fabled of all dungeons, the infamous Tomb of Acereak himself. The Tomb of Horrors!

I am running the 3e version of this module with ideas stolen from the 4e version and the 2nd ed Return to the Tomb of Horrors.  Additionally we are using this map set to help us along the way.



So far so good.  My youngest loves the traps and he very meticulous on checking each one.  It was even his idea to use a 10' pole on the Green Devil Face to check for traps and he found the Sphere of Annihilation. He loves the puzzles and really has a brain for them.  My oldest prefers good old fashioned combat.  They both were able to guess the correct sequence of the Yellow/Blue/Orange gems right away.  Sure a couple of characters have been hit with some poison, but the brought plenty vials of healing, curing and cure poison.   Though they have taken quite a bit of hitpoint damage.

So far it has been a great followup to S4/WG4.
The Dragonslayers have now finished S4, S2 and now working on S1.  I wasn't going to do S3 (Expedition to the Barrier Peaks) but now I think I might.  It would be a lot of fun.

We played for 6 hours (or more) today and I think we can knock this one out fairly quickly.

Sunday, November 17, 2013

Spamming Hyperborea

So I was going back over some AS&SH posts in prep for today's game and I saw this as a comment:
I am Alan from Finland and I have always look forward for this day to tell the world about the the great powers of Dr.Zabaza. This great man called Dr.Zabaza was able to bring back my lover who left me, And within the space of 48 hours Dr.Zabaza brought my lover back and since then my love life have been more lovely and peaceful than i ever had. You can also strengthen your relationship or get your lover back by contacting Dr.Zabaza on zabaza.logan@XXXX.com or call him on +XXXXXXXXXXXXX and i assure you that you will get a better relationship after the help of Dr.Zabaza

You can read the original here: http://timbrannan.blogspot.com/2013/11/my-weekend-in-hyperborea.html

I think Dr. Logan Zabaza needs to become my next evil NPC.  Obviously some sort of evil wizard. Given that "Alan" is from Finland maybe some LotFP influences should be added!

Friday, August 9, 2013

Tomb of Horrors

I am gearing up for the Tomb of Horrors.
I finally got a copy of Return to the The Tomb of Horrors for 2nd ed, so now I have a copy for every editions of D&D including 3rd and 4th.

I am hopping to take my kids through the same week everyone else is at Gen Con. They are somewhat higher level than the module recommends, but I don't think that will be an issue since there are not a lot of monsters in this anyway, but a lot of traps.  I will be running this under D&D 3.x.

Sure. It's not the "Classic" version, but that is fine for me really.  Plus I can't help but want to add some monsters from the 3.x/Pathfinder Tome of Horrors too.

I picked up this printout of the maps for minis, so running it unnder 3.x would be nice.

Past conversations on this:
Plus these goodies on the internet
WotC's 3rd Edition conversion
WotC's humorous walkthrough map

So how about you? Have any stories about the infamous Tomb?


Sunday, June 16, 2013

Birthday/Gameday/Father's Day Weekend!

Wow! What freaking great weekend this has been.

We started it off by going to see Man of Steel (most of the "Smallville" were shot in Yorkvillle, IL near where my wife grew up) and it was a lot of fun.  Not sure if it replaces the Richard Donner films in my heart, but it was still good.

Saturday was Free RPG Day.


We piked up some cool books and bought some more.

We were going to play some Tomb of Horrors under 3.x but my youngest one wanted to play some of the free things we bought.  So we settled on continuing our 1st Ed game where the characters are still around 2nd level and continued on in the Caves of Chaos.



I thought I'd pull in some material from the free stuff to help flesh out the cave some more.

Yes.  There is a good chance that my young sons will play "Better Than Any Man".

Might get some more gaming done later tonight.  They cleared out the Goblin Cave ("D") and started on the Hobgoblin Cave ("E").

Great weekend!  I even got in a 3 mile run today.

Sunday, March 17, 2013

Palace of the Vampire Queen

Ran Palace of the Vampire Queen yesterday.

It went great I felt.  The kids had been playing D&D Basic all day, so I didn't have to explain the rules to them at all which was cool.

We might be doing this all again in August around Gen Con time.  I'd like to run some other games too.  Maybe that Chill game set in 1976 I have been dying to run.


Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Getting Basic

Getting ready for Palace of the Vampire Queen this weekend.


Got my books, the adventure and five (soon seven just in case) B/X characters around 5th-7th level.
I still want to stat up a witch character just in case.  Just need to throw some dice into that pile and I am ready to go.  I might make the vampire queen a witch with the Gypsy tradition. Mostly because I have had "Sign of the Gypsy Queen" by April Wine going through my head ever since I have started working on this.


Two copies of the adventure, Palace of the Vampire Queen.  Since it is 5 levels and I only have 4 hours the kids will get some rough maps.  From the previous survivors, besides the Queen doesn't mind unannounced guests...for dinner! (sorry. couldn't help it.)

Good, old fashioned dungeon crawl with empty rooms, treasure just laying around random monsters and the big bad at the end.  Gonna party like it's 1981!

Sunday, March 10, 2013

Palace of the Vampire Queen

Next weekend my friend Greg is hosting a mini-con for his D&D group, the Streamwood Dungeoneers.  My son plays in his group every weekend, so I was asked to prep and run an Old School adventure.
Greg wanted to give his players, the Gen Con experience since none of us are going Gen Con or even Gary Con this year.

I had a bunch of ideas, but I wanted to play to my strengths.  At first I wanted to do Ravenloft, but that would take to long.  So instead I am going to run Palace of the Vampire Queen using Basic/Expert D&D and my Witch book.

I have been dying to run this since I first scored a copy about three years ago.
This is a classic adventure and has been talked about on various blog before. Here is Grognardia's take and a bit from Jeff's Game Blog.  To be able to run this in a Con like setting is going to be a real treat.

Since that 2010 post I have picked up another copy from Pacesetter (not sure if it is the same Pacesetter that did 1st Ed Chill).

The module is thin.  Not just in size but in terms of plot too.
I'll give the kids some background and I might develop the character of the vampire queen more using my Basic Vampire supplement (which is free by the way).  She is a self-styled vampire Queen in my mind.  So not Akasha or even Marceline.

But in truth it is going to be a simple dungeon crawl with lots of undead and a big bad at the end.
Just like like to old days!


Sunday, February 17, 2013

Family Game Night

Not playing a game tonight, fighting off a migraine at the moment.

But I was curious  about how many of you out there on this cold Sunday (in Chicago at least) are spending your time.  Or more to point, how many of you all have a family game night?
If you do what do you play?

Around here the old Dungeon! board game is a fave.  But we also play a lot of Scrabble and Monopoly.
I have gotten my wife into a few games of D&D before, but it's really not her thing.
I never gotten her to play Ghosts of Albion despite all the time I spent on it. ;)

Speaking of family games.  Just decided that we are not going to Gen Con this year.  Might go to Gary Con, but don't really know yet.  I am hoping some con opens up locally that I can take my boys to.



Sunday, December 30, 2012

Return of the Dragon Slayers!

I got a chance to play with the boys again today.  We continued the DragonSlayers game from a while back.  To recap they had just entered the Temple of Tharizdun and had held off the advancing hordes with a Wall of Flame spell.

I upped the stats of all the goblins, trolls and norkers in the place to make them partially demonic.  Centuries of interbreeding has made them them evil, but dumb.  The boys cleared out one side of the temple and found the access to the Black Cyst.  

They recovered the Lament of Tharizdun, but the mostly Neutral Good party wants nothing to do with it.  They have no issue with the legendary 333 gems of Tharizdun.  

I am setting Tharizdun up as the next big bad.  But not till the next generation. That is the 1st Ed AD&D game I started with the children of these characters.

I printed out the newer symbol of Tharizdun and had it ready. One of the demonic trolls had it on his armor, so I showed it to the boys.  After some Knowledge Arcana, History and Religion rolls I announced that they didn't know what it was.  My youngest, playing a half-elf Sorcerer/Ranger/Arcane Archer stated "I know exactly what it is. It's a target!!" and he fired two flaming arrows into the troll.


I have to admit, I was pretty amused by that!

They finished the adventure and high tailed it back to Glantri City.  They are planning on taking a couple of months break before the next leg of their adventures, but I doubt it will be that long.  There is some trouble brewing in Two Lake Vale and strange cloud over the land.

Monday, December 3, 2012

Teach Your Kids to Game Week

DriveThruRPG is running a special all this week.

Teach Your Kids to Game Week.

Lots of kid and family friendly games that are easy to learn and fun to play.
While my boys are beyond this stage now (thy jump back and forth between 3e, 4e and AD&D1) there are a lot of great games here.

My favorites on the list include:


Be sure to check these out.

Monday, November 19, 2012

Return to the Dungeon!

So last month I picked up the newest version of the classic Dungeon! broad game.  Now like many of the gamers my age I also had one of the earlier versions of Dungeon.  The one I had is not depicted below.


How does the new one measure up?

Well quite well to be honest.  The older character "classes" of Elf, Hero, Super Hero and Wizard are now gone.  Replaced with Rogue, Cleric, Fighter and Wizard.

The rules really have not changed.  So any house rules or mods you did back then will still work today.


The board really has changed much.  It is smaller than the "1st Edition" or "3rd Edition" versions depicted above.  This puts it closer to the overall feel of the "2nd Edition" version (that I originally owned, but don't have anymore) with the "RIP" cards.

So in this version you don't lay the cards on the map, you instead keep them in a stack and when a room is empty you put a little RIP marker on it.

In the older versions you could use your D&D minis on them.  The newer board is slightly smaller so it makes using the D&D minis harder.   There are no plastic pawns or small monochrome plastic minis, this version has heavy card stock.

It's not any closer to D&D than it ever was. The board is the same. The rules are the same and we still had a blast.

If you never played Dungeon! then you can still play it now.  If you have a younger child in your family or extended family then this is a great game.  And maybe just maybe it is also a good introduction to D&D.

Saturday, October 20, 2012

October Challenge: Girl vs. Monster (2012)

Girl vs. Monster (2012)

So I was not originally going to count this one till my wife pointed out that it is actually better and scarier than  some of the other movies I have forced her to watch with me.  This one was obviously my kids' choice but it turns out it is kinda fun.  There are homages to Buffy, Ghostbusters (lots), and Beetlejuice in this.

Skylar, a fearless teen discovers near her 16th birthday that she is a 5th generation monster hunter. Not a bad premise really. Her mom and dad have a Steampunk-looking Ghostsbusters like lab. Where they keep all the ghosts, vapors and spooks they catch.

The special effects are not bad. Not great mind you, but not bad.  The message is not a bad one either; you are going to have fears, but they don't have to control you.

From my point of view it would make a cool game for kids.  I can certainly see Disney doing a sequel to this one.

I'll count this one as a horror movie, but I am going to have watch something scarier soon.


Tally: Watched 23, New 18

What are you watching?


Monday, October 15, 2012

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

Sunday, August 26, 2012

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.


Tuesday, July 24, 2012

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. 

Thursday, July 5, 2012

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.