Would you like an "A" or 100 XP?

So rarely do my roles as father, educator and gamer collide as well as they have this night.

I have been working with my sons all summer long on doing extra reading, math and writing.  Yes this is what it is like when you are a teacher's kid.

I know motivation is low for school work, especially in the summer and especially when it comes to writing.  But tonight I offered my boys a deal.

For every paragraph they write about their characters they will get 100 XP.  If they do a whole page then they get 500 XP.  If they can write a good story and tell me something about their character then we consider it "true" , even if that means he gets a new magic item.

We will see how it will go.

RPGNet Review for Cartoon Action Hour is up

My review for Cartoon Action Hour: Season 2 is up at RPG Net.

http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/14/14855.phtml

You can also discuss it on their forums: http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=524162

Comments are not showing up

Comments are not showing up for my blog.

I can see the comments via my email, but they are not on the screen.
This might be true for all of Blogger or just me.

Expedition to the Barrier Peaks

Just so you all know.

The module, Expedition to the Barrier Peaks is today's featured article on Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

I worked a bit on this article back when the deletionists were trying to get all D&D related content removed from Wikipedia.  Some of them seemed to be on a crusade of one sort or another.

This is a great honor for any page.  Wikipedia has over 3 million articles and only 365 of them can be a featured page in a year.  There is even a Facebook page to celebrate.

So celebrate this classic module.  How?  Oh I don't know.  Mix some sci-fi in with your old school games.  I might need to run this one for my kids one day.  It is a lot of fun.

I remember buying this module in Springfield, IL at White Oaks Mall.  I sat on the floor of my parents van (yes kids on the floor with NO seat belts) reading this as we drove to some diner or something. I can't recall where we were going, just that I had this module and I ate it up.  Great memories of this one.

HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY!!

It's Independence Day here in the States.

Which is a excuse for Americans to play with fire all weekend, but that is cool.

It's odd we celebrate our independence from a country that is arguably one of our biggest friends and ally today.

Well I am celebrating all the same and so should you!

Revised Plan; Generational Mega Plots, Part 2

So.  I started to put my plan into action for the first major campaign arc I have planed out from square 1 and ran since the Dragon and Phoenix. My boys are excited, my wife will buy me adventures (how cool is that?!) and we will get going.

I told the boys that they can play two characters.  A character and a companion character via the 4e rules.  We need the extra characters because they wont survive otherwise.  So far we are going to have a Dragonborn Paladin, a Dragonborn Sorcerer, a Ranger with some thief skills and a "sword guy".  I am thinking the "Sword guy" will be a Warlord to get at the Leader role.  But we certainly need a Cleric if for nothing else than for undead battling.  Given that this is 4E I do want the roles to be covered.  So I have a defender and a couple of strikers, I need a controller and a leader.  The "Sword Guy" would work, but I am going to look into all the Leaders we have so far and see what would fit the best.  He would love a Swordmage, but that is a defender. Bard is a good choice, but I would really prefer a Cleric I think.  I like the Inovker as a potential controller too.

I am going to start to lay the seeds in my current game for this new one.  The 4e characters are the descendants of the 3.x characters.  So yeah I am likely to give 1st level characters a magic item each.  I  know some of you old-schoolers are cringing at the thought.  So some clues will be laid out about Tharizdun, the Raven Queen and Orcus.  I will have the Raven Queen kill Nerull sometime before the 4e game starts.  The result will be massive amounts of undead roaming the lands due to the "backlash of necrotic energies".  The Raven Queen is getting them under control, but this backlash has not escaped the attentions of Orcus and Vecna.  Orcus wants to use this time to kill the Raven Queen and put himself in her place.  She is still just a "godling" in age, but controls vast amounts of power.  Vecna wants her power pure and simple.  I can begin the 4e adventure with a story on how one horrible day all the dead got up and attacked.  There was a mini-Rekoning (ala WitchCraft RPG) and magic went crazy and now everything is new again.  Better than ramming a planet into my world.   If that is the case then I might want to run CM2 Death's Ride for the current 3.x group, build up to that.  Plus Death's Ride has something else I want, some great NPCs for the characters to fight as an arch nemesis.

The Raven Queen is going to be a combination of Death from The Endless, the Raven Queen of D&D world and the Morrigan of Celtic Myth.  So less like Xena becoming Death and more like Teen Titans' Raven becoming Death.  Or some combination.  I like the idea of the world's most powerful god being a teenage goth chick.  With her being younger it would help my kids relate to her more.

Some things to consider while I look over my adventures and books some more.

Revised Plan; Generational Mega Plots

I plan to come back to Cartoon Action Hour here in a bit, but I have something I want to get organized first.

So a while back I posted a plan for the adventures I wanted to run with my family using 4E.

Well since that time, some gaming has happened, some looking over various adventures and some tests on my part has brought me to the conclusion that I can't run some of those old school modules under 4E after all.  Certainly I am still working on my current 3.x adventures with my kids.

Now mind you, this is not a bad thing nor is it reflective of the modules, 4e or "Old School".
But it has forced me to change my plans.

So for the "Dragon Slayers" game I am running I'll add some of those classic modules.  The characters are all right around 13th level now, with one just on the verge of 10th.  The ultimate goal of this game is to defeat Tiamat in the "Graveyard of Dragons". What can I say, my kids like the old D&D cartoon.    The rules are under 3.x edition, which has an odd mix of D&D 3.0, with some 3.5, minor bits from Pathfinder, BESM d20 and Star Wars d20 (the revised one that came out after Attack of the Clones).

Also some of these modules are going to be played by me under Pathfinder in either my "Big Kids Group" or the "Little Kids Group".  Currently the LKG is going through "B2 The Keep on the Borderlands".  I have already used bits of "X1 Ilse of the Dread" and "B4 The Lost City".  I know that in the one of the Pathfinder groups we will go through the GDQ series at some point, most likely the Little Kids Group.  I will be running "C2 Ghost Tower" under the Doctor Who Adventures in Time and Space game.

After that those characters will retire and their descendants will complete a new Quest.  The defeat of Orcus.
I'll run this one under D&D 4E and I do plan on it taking many years.

I am not 100% certain how the adventures will pan out, but I do want to use the D&D4 ones for ease.

• H1 Keep on the Shadowfell
• H2 Thunderspire Labyrinth
• H3 Pyramid of Shadows
• P1 King of the Trollhaunt Warrens
• P2 Demon Queen's Enclave
• P3 Assault on Nightwrymn Fortress
• E1 Death's Reach
• E2 Kingdom of the Ghouls
• E3 Prince of Undeath

Part of this is my desire to have them battle Orcus at the end. Plus I like to overall plot of involving the Raven Queen vs Orcus and Orcus getting a hold of some ancient artifact of Tharizdûn.

Those modules will get them from 1st to 30th level.  But I might want to add a couple here and there.  Not sure yet since I have not read them all in detail.   I also know some people have had issues with these modules, both in terms of how they fit together, plot and playability.  So I want to get things that are out now, and then tweak them as I need.  Afterall, if this is about fighting Orcus who gets an artifact from ancient Tharizdûn then I can lay some ground work in my 3.x game now for that.

So after all that I have some modules left over.

• B3 Palace of the Silver Princess, levels 1-3 (using bits from both the "Green" and "Orange" versions).
• L1 The Secret of Bone Hill, levels 2-4
• X2 Castle Amber, levels 3-6 (place it in the Shadowfell, which is the new Ravenloft anyway)
• 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.
• S2 White Plume Mountain, levels 5-10
• I10 Ravenloft II, House on Gryphon Hill, levels 8-10.
• S4 The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth (with some of the info from the 3.5 update), levels 6-10
• WG4 The Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun, levels 5-10
• S1 Tomb of Horrors, levels 10-14 (though I might just wait for the new D&D4 version)
• S3 Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, levels 8-12
• CM2 Death's Ride, levels 15-20. 

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

Like the E series for D&D4, these send you to Orcus's layer to defeat him.   Of the lot, H4 would be the best one to use, maybe as a buffer between E2 and E3.   The others seem more suited for the Dragon Slayer's Pathfinder game.    Of course, I could convert the H1-H4 Bloodstone series to feature Tiamat instead of Orcus.   S4 and WG4 are linked and deal with Iggwilv, her Demonomicon and Tharizdûn.  They are good to set up the history of Orcus and Tharizdûn.  They can happen in either game. In the 4th Ed game I'd stick it in between H and P.  CM2 Death's Ride has some cool stuff in it. Good to set up the whole Orcus wants to be a God thing in the 3.x game.  Plus it would give me a good arch-nemesis for the characters to fight throughout.

The Ravenloft ones would be great for the Sunsword (a good weapon against the undead) but there is the Board Game coming out and I want it.  Plus I'd rather run Ravenloft these days under True20.  So I might have to find something similar.  If I use the new Tomb of Horrors then I could place a good aligned sword there.  There is a D&D4

There is a lot to do and figure out here.  But I see this as a good thing. Look at all the time I have.  I can plan out a mult-year arc of adventuring that would take my kids all the way to college.  Wouldn't have died to have done something like that?

Though I do need to figure out a way to get more dragons into the 4th Ed game for my oldest.

Now this is my attempt to bring Old Schoolers and New Schoolers together.

NEW SCHOOLERS:  What things should I be aware of when running the HPE series?

OLD SCHOOLERS: What classic, epic modules are a "must run" for a group of kids that were not even alive when Clinton was in office, let alone Carter.  What memory of "D&D" is a must have?  Barrier Peeks?  Tomb of Horrors?

Clarifications on Games being Played
- "Dragon Slayers" is a 3.x game that I play with my two sons and sometimes my wife joins us. The goal of this game is to defeat Tiamat.
- "Big Kids Game/Group" is a Pathfinder game where I play a Paladin.  In this group are my kids and the DM's kids (6 players, 1 DM)
- "Little Kids Game/Group" is a Pathfinder game where I play a Witch (same witch as I do in Dragon Slayers).  This is the group with the Problem Player.
Both Pathfinder games have the same DM.
- "Untitled 4th Ed Game" is a 4e game where the players are the same as Dragon Slayers, but the characters are their children or descendants. The goal of this game is to defeat Orcus.