D&D40 Bloghop: Day 1

Here we are with the D&D 40 Anniversary Bloghop.  Been looking forward to this.  So without further ado!

Day 1:  First person who introduced you to D&D. Which edition? First character?

Ok. Let's start thing off complicated!  No one person introduced me. In fact it seemed to be a conspiracy to get me to play.  I remember borrowing Asa Herald's AD&D Monster Manual to read during silent reading in grade school.  I remember Darin Buhlig and I trying to figure out Holmes basic on a field trip bus ride to St. Louis.  But I have to give credit to Jon Cook for being my first DM. We played the hell out of some D&D then.  He had the AD&D books and I had the Basic/Expert books. We ran with it.

My first character was Johan Werper, human lawful cleric. He worshiped an unnamed sun god.  At this point in my life I had become fairly committed to my own atheism but I still found religion interesting.  I guess to be a religious human was as alien to me as an elf or dwarf.  But I also thought the turning undead thing was really cool.   I was very, very much into vampires and horror and I *got* that the Cleric was supposed to be Van Helsing, so that is how I played him.

Johan became something of my "ego" character.  With my assassin Nigel as my "id" and my grizzled old wizard Phygora as my "superego" they made up the trinity of characters I played most often in Jr. High and High School.  Larina my witch was an "anima" character. Cause eventually all psychologists leave Freud in favor of Jung.

He also became one of my first "generational" characters.  Anytime a new version of D&D came out I would make a new Johan who is the son of the previous one.   Johan I was a cleric under Basic, Johan II was a Lawful Good Paladin for AD&D, Johan III was a Cavalier for Unearthed Arcana.  Celene was Johan II's daughter and she was a Healer in 2nd ed.  I kept this up even until recently with Johan V for D&D 4.  I fully expect that Johan VI will be for Next.  All Lawful good clerics or paladins, or something similar.

I still have all the sheets.

Sign up below! Join the fun!

American Horror Story: Coven

Finished watching American Horror Story Coven last night.

Wow. That was a trip!  Pretty much everything you have read here put into a blender and poured out on to my TV.  I loved every minute of it.

I have some ideas on how to incorporate it into my ongoing games, but want to wait till next week when everyone that is going to watch it has and, well, I got caught up in work today.
(and Blogger is acting up. took me forever to post this)

I already pre-ordered the Blu-Ray.  I gotta see the behind the scenes features and listen to the commentary.

Personally I see plenty of potential for Miss Robichaux's Academy for Exceptional Young Ladies.

Amazon Store

I have set up an Amazon Affiliates store for this blog.

What does that mean? Well you can use links I provide to buy things I talk about.  But each and everyone is handpicked by me, so nothing that would not normally appear here anyway.

The store at the moment has three sub-categories.

• Appendix-N  - classics from the Appendix N library.
• Modern Supernatural - books and novels taking place in the modern day Earth + magic
• Witches - books and encyclopedias about Witches, magic, demons and the like.

I am not planning on this making really any money.  Last time I did this I made something like $40.00 over three years.  But if I can I'll pour it right back into the site, or gift cards.  Those are good too.

Custom Classes from Thoul's Paradise

One of my favorite Dragon articles of all time was from Dragon #109 dealing with customized classes for the D&D Basic game. We of course adapted it over to AD&D, though to be fair we played a combination of D&D and AD&D back then.  From that article came the Riddlemaster, Shadowmaster and Beastmaster classes from my DM and the Healer, Sun Priest and Death Mage classes from me.  I had already started notes on the witch including an XP by level that I was fond of and didn't want to change it.

Last week Perdustin over at Thoul's Paradise posted a reflection on this article and got me thinking about the custom classes I had made then.  This week he posted a little on his analysis of the the classes with his tweaks.
I thought I would have a look at my Witch class as well.

Here are his posts:
Customized Classes (part I) and
Customized Classes (part II)

Here is my attempt.



So the biggest issue for me is that the Witch advances to Spell level 8, not 7 like the Cleric or 9 like the Magic-User.  So I roughly split the difference on the Magic cost, rounding up for the more Magic-user like nature of the Witch spells.

If you look at the XP values for the Witch and compare them to Thoul's my Witch is coming up a bit short on needed XP. But that is based on MU magic.  The adjusted Magic cost puts mine and Thoul's a little closer together (see Delta Col).

I'd like to try this again with my old Healer class and see how it worked out.

White Dwarf Wednesday #95

White Dwarf Issue # 95 from November 1987.
I want to state upfront that I actually don't have the flexi-disc. It was not part of the magazine when I got it (no surprise really). Plus I don't actually own a turn-table anymore so even if I did have it.

White Dwarf #95 takes us to November 1987.  I asked my wife if she remembers what we were doing then. She didn't recall.  I know that gamewise my old 1st Ed DM had come up and we were running an adventure together for some other people in the dorm.  One of the characters we made that day would later live on as a vampire in other games and finally come back to my 3rd Ed game as the only person in my games to ever be cured of vampirism.  I think I mentioned this one before. (yup, WDW 93).

Sean Masterson discusses the influence fantasy and sci-fi has had on rock.  There is the obvious influence of metal at least on gaming, at least in terms of how WD does it.  So we should not be surprised when gaming influences metal. Thus the flexi disk that came with the magazine.

Marginalia, Open Box's lesser offspring, is next with "reviews" of some GW products.  Up first is "The Fury of Dracula" board game.  I'll admit I have always wanted to play this one, and it always looked rather cool.  Reading these design notes/reviews actually get me more interested in a game.  Though I do feel compelled to point out something. The review is written for the point of view of someone who has only known Dracula in movies and maybe never read the book.  That is fine, a lot of people don't like the book.  They are careful to point out that Dracula was killed with a Bowie knife to the heart in the book (true) but add that he was trying to build an empire of the undead (not true).  Not quite sure where they got that.  Of course people have also been looking for some deeper romantic connection between Mina and Dracula and that was also never in the book.
Covered next are two city books, one for Warhammer the other for Judge Dredd.

Critical Mass covers a number of Sci-fi books including the latest Stainless Steel Rat book.  Never could get into this series.

Our first big adventure of the issue is for Judge Dredd, "To Live and Die in Megacity One, Prog: 2 The Big Sleep".  Again hard for me to judge this one, but I have been told that the Judge Dredd adventures of this time are good. It is a long one, 10 pages with 2 more of maps.

Lots of pages of pictures of painted minis even before we get to 'Eavy Metal. Here is a review (more detailed than I ever could do) on the minis. http://realmofchaos80s.blogspot.com/2012/08/acceptable-in-80s-white-dwarf-95.html

Actually if you are looking for you White Dwarf fix every week I would recommend Realms of Chaos 80s as a good blog dedicated to things I only briefly touched on.

Ad for Fury of Dracula.  At first I thought it was a mis-print of the first page of Marginalia again.  Looked exactly the same.

"On the Boil" is an adventure (or is it Scenario?) for Warhammer Fantasy. 5 pages.  I wish I knew more about Warhammer to be honest.  Not just to judge these, but because reading these makes me aware of a huge gap I have in my RPG background.  I honestly don't think I would get much out of the Warhammer experience. I can't paint. I don't like collecting minis of armies.  But there is something so...well, Warhammer, about it.  I am sure there has to be something in this experience that I could port back over to my own old-school D&D games.

"The Madcap Laughs" deals with setting the scenes for new Stormbringer Adventures.

"Warhammer Rock" is where the flexi-disk would have been. It is also an interview with the band Sabbat.
Here is a link to the entire article. http://hem.bredband.net/b306090/white_dwarf.htm

And here is the song.



The lyrics are in the magazine and on the video page on YouTube.

Next are ads, then Illuminations featuring the art of John Blanche.
Letters follow and then some ads.

Again we see similar things here that we did in issue 94.  I have mixed feelings about Marginalia; I like the in-depth reviews but dislike that they are only focusing on house brands. Granted that is really the only way a magazine would do it and in 1987 I wasn't buying much of anything.

If you are looking for another good source of White Dwarf information I have been enjoying the fuckyeahbritisholdschoolgaming blog on tumblr http://fuckyeahbritisholdschoolgaming.tumblr.com/

Coming Soon! Strange Brew

Remember when I said I had a lot of projects on my plate?

Strange Brew by Peter Bradley

She's a witch of trouble in electric blue.
In her own mad mind she's in love with you,
With you.
Now what you gonna do?
Strange brew ...

Strange Brew: The Ultimate Witch & Warlock. Coming soon for the Pathfinder RPG.

Discuss this over at the Paizo boards as well.
http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2q5wq?Misfit-Studios-The-Ultimate-Witch-Warlock

Bloghops

February brings us the D&D 40th Anniversary Bloghop challenge from d20 Dark Ages.
If you have a D&D-related blog I would like to see you sign up. I think it will be very interesting to see everyone's stories.

You have plenty of time to sign up.

Also coming up is the big April A to Z bloghop.  I have participated in this every year now for a while. Sometimes while doing my Atheism blog and the Red Sonja blog I participate in.

I will be honest.  The April A to Z has gotten huge. Maybe way too big. Plus I am not sure my enthusiasm is there for it this year.  I do have things I can post.  That is not the issue. The issue is one of time really.  I have a lot of projects I am working on now for myself and other publishers, so I think I might not do it this year.  Or least not do it to the level I had been.

Wait and see I guess. If I get a lot done the next couple of months I might change my mind.