Review: White Plume Mountain Dungeon Tiles

White Plume Mountain 3D Dungeon Tiles

I love the old-school modules, I love the new school systems. The trouble is that one of the things I enjoy about the newer systems is the use of minis. I love mins, my kids love minis. But I don't have enough dungeon tiles to always run these classic adventures or the time to make my own. That is where Red Pub Games comes in. I was searching for some material on White Plume Mountain, which I plan on running soon, and to my pleasure I found this product.

At 37 pages and 50 cents this will save me hours of either looking for the right dungeon tile or trying to make my own. I just print them out. IF I need to write on them, no problem, I can print out a new one later.
I am quite pleased with this product and want more.

Epic Dragonslayers

A couple of the Dragonslayer characters hit 19th level over the weekend.

I let my boys play two characters each, but sometimes the characters can vary.  My oldest has a cast of 6-7 that he uses two at a time.  Well both boys now have a character each that are 19th level.  The lowest ones are still 15.

I am planning to let them take ALL their characters for the final battle with Tiamat.  Yeah, yeah I know, not really a good role-playing experience for them and more of a roll-playing one, but it is the final battle and the last time they will be able to use any of these characters.

Plus I have a couple more adventures I want them to do before that big battle.

So I am considering using the Epic Level rules.

Anyone have any insights, tips, suggestions?

The Message

That is the name of this story my oldest son has been writing.  His teacher is very proud of him and so are his mom and dad!  But beyond how cool that is, today during our Dragonslayer session he ran "The Message" for the very, very first time as a game.  This was his very first time running a D&D game and frankly I thought he did really well.

We took the Dragonslayers, including his own character as a quasi DM-PC (I'll help run him) and I got a chance to play my witch again.  The one I rolled up back when D&D 3.0 was new and my witch book was in playtest.

The adventure was simple enough.  We (the characters) had to cross Druid Woods and deliver a message (thus the name) to a Baron on the other side of the forest.   Simple right? What could go wrong?  Well we were attacked many times in the woods by kobolds, hobgoblins and (much to my joy) a rogue druther and an evil treant. Of course the Baron had been kidnapped and we needed to save him from being the main event in a sacrifice to Tiamat.  We saved the Baron (who turned out to be a Neutral Blue Dragon in human form) and we were attacked by a huge adult red Dragon (in my boy's world Reds and Blues hate each other so much that they will work with anyone to defeat the other).

Baron saved, returned home and the message delivered.  It really was great fun.  Liam (my oldest) said he toned down the Red.  We got the initiative on him and dealt what I felt was a respectable 64 hp damage to it.  Then he turned around and did a 48 to all of us on his first attack (and that was with the elemental protection my witch set up).  He toned the dragon down a touch and we all came out of it more or less intact.

It was really, really fun.  Liam did a great job and it was nice to not only see him running a game and doing a good job, but also running an adventure he wrote all on his own.

Connor (my youngest) also got in some good playing too.  We found a gold necklace and I said his character could have it for his girl-friend, to which he replied "What girlfriend?  I am too busy adventuring to have time for one of those!"  And when we fought a fire elemental he told us that "I hate these guys, when I was younger they attacked my village and killed my mother."  No idea where that came from.

Maybe next time we will hit the mountains.

Next up: At the White Plume Mountains of Madness

The next adventure for the Dragonslayers (my kids' group) is to go to the White Plume Mountain.  They know they need to recover another relic of the Cult of Tiamat, this time the tooth of the largest red dragon that ever lived.  They have heard rumors that what they seek is in a volcano.

The idea of this adventure was to go to a mountain in snowy area.  So I using the 3.x conversion of S2 White Plume Mountain (and the original) and I am going to set it in a near Arctic area.  I am also going to fill it full of Lovecraftian Horrors since my boys both know who Cthulhu is.  Meld the two together a bit for some good old fashioned dungeon crawl of horror fun.

The adventure is actually very short; shorter than I remembered it.  Plus my youngest has been asking about the most powerful swords in D&D so I think it is time he sees Blackrazor.

Zatannurday: What is Zatanna Reading?

What does Zatanna read before going to bed after a long night of performances? We go to "Catwoman #57" for that answer.

Looks like Aleister Crowley's The Book of the Law on her bed and the Necronomicon on her nightstand.

Gotta love the poster of her Dad over her bed.

Art and Content thief Jim Shipman back

You all might remember Jim Shipman; the thief that has been stealing art all over the internet and putting them on Tunnels and Trolls products and selling them as his own.

Well he is back at it.

http://www.outlawpressinc.com/

Now he is trying to lie behind some bullshit disclaimer that the items are "second hand" and not published by him and he therefore has not responsibility over their content.

Can we please shut this asshole down once and for all?

Thanks to Tran Eskoor an Doon for this information.
http://quietdayinheimdall.blogspot.com/2011/02/breaking-news-shipman-is-still-asshole.html

Mutants and Masterminds 3

I love Mutants and Masterminds.

The third edition is out, and I have talked about it before, but flipping through the pages fills me with such geek-related glee that I can barely contain it.  Then you add my favorite comics on top of that, DC Comics, in a 100% compatible system then I wonder why I play anything else at this point.  Well maybe that is a stretch.

But not by much.

Mutants and Masterminds is by far one of the the best examples of how and why the OGL works so well.  It is the same basic d20 system, stripped down to the bare bones and then fine tuned, just enough, to be exactly what it needs to be.

Is it the best RPG ever? No, not by a long shot.
Is it the best Super Hero RPG ever?  Yeah, it probably is.

Third Edition has gone a long way to fixing a lot of the issues I had with 2nd Edition.  Mind you those were "issues" not "problems" and many could have been solved had played a few more games of it really.

I am looking forward to playing some with my boys at Gen Con.  I just hope I can get in to them this year.