Weekend "D&D;" Destiny & Dinner

Our weekend game went over well. 

My oldest is running a new game based on the Destiny video game series and we are trying out different things. 

Destiny and 13 Parsecs

Obviously, we are not making a published setting here, but we are trying somethings out. In this case the "Solar Frontier" is just the edge of our Solar System.

The Destiny classes, Hunters (Hunter-Soldier), Titans (Blaster), and Warlocks (Mystic), can be emulated with Thirteen Parsecs rules easily.  No shock, all are based on easy to access archetypes.

Plus with the likelihood of Destiny 3 no not happening, and my own enjoyment of Destiny 2: The Witch Queen, this seems like a good idea to me. 

This is another reason (but the first I have posted) to move my War of the Witch Queens over to OGRES (Wasted Lands).

As always, players here are fed well.

Homemade apple crisp, with homemade caramel sauce and homemade whipped cream.

Hot, cajun, and BBQ chicken wings, right before crisping them on the grill.

I'll keep you posted on how well it works out. 

Mail Call and Boxing Day 2023

Today I normally like to post some sort of Boxed Set thing I have going on. But instead, I'll just talk about my D&D-related fun from the last couple of days. BTW I sliced my finger open on a mandolin making sliced potatoes, so this post is taking a lot longer.

Hanging Coffins of the Vampire Queen

Up first I got my copies of Hanging Coffins of the Vampire Queen from Mark Taomino. Both the 10th Anniversary OSR and the new 5th Edition versions.

I signed on early for these adventures. No shock given my love for the original Wee Warriors Vampire Queen. So now I have three different printings of this Vampire Queen.

Party Like It's 1979!

For Christmas, my oldest son decided to go all out for everyone. This is what he got me.

The Atari 2600 plugs into any HCMI TV/Monitor and even has an aspect ratio switch.  But the coolest part is it will run old 2600 cartridges. So time to start cruising the Half-Price Books and second-hand stores!

The Monster Manual minis are from set G-J. Though really, G-I.

D&D en Español

My son also ran some D&D for us. We played the "Witchlight Carnival" adventure.

I made a character, but to help with my Spanish, I opted to only use my new Spanish language Players Handbook.

El es Brujo y Elfo. For play, I limited myself to what I could read and understand in this book. 

Hope everyone is having a great holiday.

Weekend Gaming. Keep the Goblin in the Backpack

A full weekend of gaming.  

Friday Liam went to his friends' game (5e) where they are rotating DMs. I think this is a great idea. Gives everyone a chance to try DMing and keeps everything fresh with everyone's different style.  

Next week I hear they are doing Trek! 

Saturday was Connor's group. They are going through the Curse of Strahd, but the characters are again the stereotypical bi-sexual, kleptomaniac, pyromaniac band of murder hobos.  One of the players could not make it this week or last, so their character, a goblin fey-pact warlock, has been in the barbarian's backpack this whole time sleeping.  Trouble is the barbarian has decided he likes spiders, so he keeps putting live spiders into his backpack.  This will be fun next week.

Tonight Liam has his other group, his "college" group, over.  They are also going through Curse of Strahd.

We also went out to Games Plus this weekend to drop off some books for the local game auction.

For food, since it was 50 degrees in Chicago (which is like 70 everywhere else, except Minnesota, they think 40 is like everyone elses' 70) I grilled.  Chicken, garlic bread, romaine, as well as cornbread and brownies. 

Right now everyone is laughing, so it sounds like a good time. 

Hope your weekend of gaming went well!

Weekend Gaming: It's Always Sunny In Waterdeep

The kids had their games this weekend.

Friday Liam has his group, The Dungeoneers that have been playing together for over 10 years.  He ran a 5e game and had a blast.

Saturday was the game with Connor's group with Liam running.
They were supposed to go on a quest, given to them by a librarian in Waterdeep, they headed out to the forest area outside.

Instead, they spent three days looking for 62 mushrooms, 134 "magic" carrots, some catfish and berries.  The druid has decided that the forest needs to reclaim the land and has been casting Plant Growth and Commune with Nature to convince the forest to retake the lands.  The goblin warlock decided it would be fun to play a joke on a horse so they stabbed it, killing it and then they got in a fight with the owner.   They also crashed the funeral.

It was Gwen's (of the Goblin Warlock) birthday today and like everyone else in the group, they wanted to celebrate their birthday here, playing D&D.

We made the group ham & cheese sliders and turkey, bacon and provolone sliders.

We made these for both boy's respective New Year's Eve parties and they were a huge hit.

Since it was a birthday game we also made homemade cupcakes (yes from cake flour and everything) and brownies.

It was a blast.  The characters did not get very far and the Goblin is now wanted for murder and killing a horse.

Sunday was Liam's High School / College group. Kids he met in High School and continued into their college days.

This is his Curse of Strahd game.  So what is on the menu?  Bolognese sauce of course!

So three games this weekend. Not too bad really.

Weekend Gaming: Wormholes and Chicken

Liam and Connor's 5e game is going on this weekend.  They are going deeper into Curse of Strahd, but as typical the party made a left turn when they should have just kept going straight.

While looking for a passageway across a mountain range they came across a "cave", turns out it was a wormhole, or rather the passageway for a small purple worm.

A special treat, we are using my old Ral Partha Ravenloft minis.

On the dinner front.  Tonight we made chicken stroganoff,  potatoes, and homemade focaccia bread.

In the meantime, I got some Blu-Rays in the mail for my October Horror Movie Marathon.

50 movies so far, ready to go!

Weekend Gaming: Dungeons & Dragons & Dinners & Dramaturges

I have not done a weekend gaming post in forever, despite having a game or two going every weekend.  If you follow me on Facebook or my personal Instagram page then one thing is pretty obvious.  My family and I LOVE food.  My wife has won baking awards, my oldest son is in culinary school, my youngest loves to experiment in the kitchen and even I have won 1st place in my local chili cook-off for my "Mississippi Queen" Chili.

It should be no surprise then we LOVE to cook for our D&D sessions.  My oldest son runs three D&D 5e campaigns, one Call of Cthulhu game (3 of which my youngest son is a part of), and I have my three D&D games that meet more rarely, but the bottom line is we have anywhere from two to three groups here every week and we cook for all of them.

These are all high school and college-age kids, so other than one or two other than my kids, their palettes are still forming.  I mean in our groups we have people from South Korea, Equador, Mexico, Spain, and even a 2nd generation Greek (the Greek Orthodox Church is just down the road), so we have ethnicities all covered. So we still like to branch out a bit from just plain old "gamer faire" of burgers, hot dogs and chips, though we still do those a lot.  We have made chili for them (of course), homemade mac-n-cheese (they are still kids), but homemade enchiladas, pulled smoked pork, bbq chicken, homemade ramen (complete with soy marinaded eggs), eclair cakes, banana bread, tacos, homemade chicken sandwiches (because fuck Chik-fil-a), homemade pizza, mini pies,  and homemade wings of various spiciness from mild to "oh dear god make it stop mommy!"

Fortunately for us, we love to cook all this.  My wife has a huge garden (over 2,200 square feet) where we can grow an absolute ton of veggies, so that helps.  In fact, there are many times throughout the year where we don't even need to buy vegetables (and we eat a lot of veggies).

You can see my wife's garden from space!

We only have a couple of food allergies to deal with, but that fine with us. 
The great thing is that everyone wants to come here now for the games!  Yeah it means we have a lot of cooking to do, but we enjoy it and we know some of these guys in college with my oldest don't get a homecooked meal very often.

Today's game is Liam's college group and on the menu is the Curse of Strahd and Taco Pie.  Yeah, not haute cuisine, but it is still homemade AND we used enchilada sauce made from our own dried peppers, garden onions, and tomato sauce (yes, we make our own tomato sauce). 

Much better than a bag of chips and a Mountain Dew.

Monstrous Monday will return next week.