D&D40 Bloghop: Day 7

Day 7: First D&D Product you ever bought. Do you still have it?

Ever bought with my own money as opposed to a gift?

Not exactly sure.  It was either a copy of B3: Palace of the Silver Princess or the AD&D Deities and Demigods.

I still have my copy of B3. In fact a few years ago I ran my kids through an adventure with it that I was calling Return to the Palace of the Silver Princess.

I don't have my DDG anymore.  It was the updated version without the Elric and Cthulhu myths.  Since that time I picked two more.  Both with the Elric and Cthuhlhu myths in them.  One is autographed by most of the authors and artists.

Live #RPGnet Q&A Series

I wanted to let you know that I will be participating in the live #RPGNet Q&A Series tomorrow night (Friday 2/7) at 8:00pm Central time (GMT -6:00).

http://tinyurl.com/rpgnetchat

I will be talking about Ghosts of Albion, my upcoming work for Gaslight and of course the Strange Brew kickstarter.

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Hope to see you all there!

D&D40 Bloghop: Day 6

Day 6: First character death. How did you handle it?

My first character death was my first Elf character (back when Elf was a class).
Silverleaf was killed by an assassin's blade. Never saw it coming.

I remember at the time thinking "well, I guess takes care of that lame character".
But later I was a little bummed, I had been playing him for a bit.

I got over fairly quickly with a swift progression of character deaths including my only other Elf character, a dwarf and one of my thieves.  Life was cheap back in those days.  My Dwarf, Creeper, died due to one of those awful traps from Grimtooth's Traps books.  Their death dates are listed as June 1982 on the sheets.  He was followed in Death by Arendil (Elf), Rad (Cleric) and Roscoe (thief).  I then burned through something like 10 characters during the "Winter 1984" sessions. No exact dates, but a lot of them were classes that came from early Dragon magazines, I saw a lot of "Spies", "Bandits" and "Samurai".  It was also obvious that this must have coincided with my switch over to full AD&D.

I have kept all my "dead" characters.  I have a folder called "The Graveyard".  I figured if I ever needed an NPC I could pull one of them out.

Bring out your dead!

White Dwarf Wednesday #96

White Dwarf #96 is the last issue of 1987.  I had considered stopping here to be honest. This issue marks the first of what I consider the "All Warhammer, all the time" issues.  But hey, I have gotten this far and 100 is more round number.
The cover art is the same as Casket of Souls by Iain McCaig.  We have a competition for it later in the issue.
The editorial is a bit of nonsense from Sean Masterson on what gaming is.  I guess the only really interesting thing about this is that it is a reflection of the gamin scene of the late 80s; everything going in a thousand directions at once yet still gaming.

Marginalia covers Dungeonquest, a game I have wanted to try out, and Warhammer Fantasy Battle, 3rd Ed.
This review of Dungeonquest only revives my desire to find a copy of this game.   By my estimates this $10 box of White Dwarf magazines has cost me a couple to three hundred extra bucks.  I had to buy other WDs to fill in the gaps (I still have a WD 105 that I am not going to review) but mostly in old games I see reviewed and want to pick up.  Some have been cheap. Most have not.

Culture Shock is the oft renamed news/rumor column.  Of interest, Citadel is selling a million miniature figures a month.  I wonder if that rate kept up.
Critical Mass covers the books of the time, none jump out at me.  I was reading the Chronicles of Corum at this point.

Barroom Brawl is the first Scenario for Warhammer Fantasy.  In my mind most of Warhammer was about fighting in large scale wars and then going to the pub to fight again.

After that, Elfwardancers for WH Fantasy.  This is something I could see being snagged for D&D or even ShadowRun.  I have seen stranger things in both games.  Plus it helps get rid of some the "Tolkienesque" qualities of elves.

The conclusion of "To Live and Die in Mega-City One" is next. I am told it is quite good.  I personally don't know enough about Judge Dredd to know for sure.

In a rare departure (and soon to be rarer) we have The Beast of Kozamura, an Eastern-themed adventure for RuneQuest. Overtly for Land of Ninja rules.

An article/ad for Casket of Souls.
The first Warhammer 40,000 regular article "Chapter Approved" is up.

On the Boil details various topics in Warhammer Fantasy, this time Middenheim the City of the White Wolf.

An aside for a bit.  There is a lot of Warhammer stuff going on here now and really I have no clue. I read through WH40k once and I see the appeal, but I am not into painting mins all day.  By extension I also guess I see the appeal of Warhammer Fantasy and Warhammer Fantasy Battles. Wish I could offer more at this point.

'Eavy Metal paints some dragons.

Last issue we discussed The Madcap Laughs, this issue we have the first adventure in the series.  A Heart of Dust, A Hand of Death is for Stormbringer but it could be adapted to RuneQuest easy enough.

We end with the usual run of letters and ads.

So. Much less in this issue for me to be honest. Nothing against the change WD is making or the Warhammer stuff, just not where my gaming went at the time or now.

D&D40 Bloghop: Day 5

Day 5: First character to go from 1st level to 20th level (or highest possible level in a given edition).

Going back to my first character I have to say Johan Werper.  Since I was playing (mostly) Basic/Expert with bits of Advanced thrown in we decided the maximum level for playable characters was 36.  After that characters became immortal.  We had heard about the immortal rules, but never saw them.  I think at that point they were more rumor than reality.

Johan made it level 30 before my DM decided he was too powerful.  He was "retired" and became an NPC, St. Werper, Patron Saint of those who battle Undead in my games later on.

He had lost levels over the course of his adventure career, can't battle undead and not loose some levels sometimes.

I was quite amused when D&D 4e came out and the level max was back to 30.

D&D40 Bloghop: Day 4

Day 4: First dragon you slew (or some other powerful monster)

I will be honest with you. I can't remember the first dragon I killed.
I am pretty sure it was a blue one, but outside of that I can't recall.

Now I do remember what was one of the most powerful monsters I killed.

It was Jr. High and I was in a game with my friend Jon Cook, from posting #1.
His older sister was running us through a dungeon crawl one summer night and I remember we ran into a Lich.  
This was big deal because I had been mostly playing this odd collection of AD&D and D&D (B/X) and had not run into a Lich yet.  Plus Mary was your typical Chaotic Evil DM. So this Lich kept jumping in and out of the Ethereal plane and she ruled I couldn't turn it since it wasn't on my sheet.

We, that is Johan and Sneaker the thief, managed to kill it with best weapon we had.  We burned down the building it was in.

Still love throwing Liches at players.  It brings out the CE DM in me as well.

Kickstarter: Strange Brew - The Ultimate Witch & Warlock

The Kickstarter for Strange Brew: The Ultimate Witch & Warlock is now up.

Ok so what makes Strange Brew - The Ultimate Witch & Warlock, well...Ultimate?

The Ultimate Witch & Warlock began a number of years ago for me.  I was working on collecting everything I had ever done for witches for various games that never saw print (Buffy, WitchCraft RPG, Ghosts of Albion), items from my blog here and what I considered the best of the best OGC.

When the whole Old School thing hit, I shelved UW&W and produced "The Witch for Basic Era Games" and then later "Eldritch Witchery".

Christina Stiles approached me about a potential Pathfinder book a while and asked if I had material.  I turned around and gave her 500+ pages of things I have been working on.

UW&W is the spiritual successor to "Liber Mysterium", but also to "Way of the Witch" a product I very much loved.  If you liked either of those then you are likely to like this one.  With Liber I have had another 10 years of playing witches in a d20/3.x game and have made many tweaks that only real play can afford you.

Let me say this. I am so excited about this. Not only do I have a ton of great material, but the idea of getting it all together for the first time in one book is fantastic.

So please consider backing my Kickstarter!