One of my stories

One of the better stories from my group came early on in college. Two of my players were playing their rogues Mickalen and Stern and had snuck into a temple to steal some macguffin or another and they ran into the head priest in his bedchambers. A scuffle ensued and Stern engaged the priest toe to toe. The second decided to go check out the closet and see if the object of desire was in it. When Mickalen opened the door a 7' tall golden golem was inside. Mickalen quickly closed the door but the golem having been activated punched through the door and shattered it. Mick ran around the room being chased by the gollem at one point slitting open the feather bed with his knife and doing a elbow drop on it to create confusion then sliding under the bed. the golem however decided to stand on top of the bed and it collapsed with him underneath. In the end the golem turned to dust once the priest died and they decided to collect the gold dust to sell or whatever at a later date. This encounter had such an impact on the players that for years aftarward Mick would tell random NPC's about the time he faced down a golden golem all by himself. The hilarious part is with every retelling the golem grew a few inches by the end of the game the golem was 50 feet tall breathed fire and shot fireballs out its ass

Capcha - Just say no

This post isn't about D&D its more of a rant against capcha on being auto default on blogger. I hate capcha, its annoying and unnecessary. IF you blog gets 2000 hits a day it might be nice to have otherwise you really don't need it. I disabled it early on in my blog and have only had to delete 2 spambots the entire time. Those were the same guy and were fairly easy to spot. Having capcha discourages posting its another annoying step and I implore you to turn yours off. When I'm surfing the nearly 50+ blogs I follow those extra few moments add up.

Stories

One of my favorite things about pen and paper gaming is the stories that stick with you forever. When you play a game over the course of years with friends the absurd, awesome and plain amazing situations that crop up become a common source of nostalgia for your group. My group has been meeting since we were in college nearly 10 years ago and naturally we have some stories to tell.

whats your favorite gaming memory, if you don't play D&D whats a story you and your friends tell over and over and still get a chuckle out of every time you hear it?

Hero Generator

I found a cool website for creating portraits of your characters at http://www.heromachine.com/heromachine-3-lab/ It lets you create a picture however you want and color it however you want. So if you were to have a male character with a snake named Ricardo you can make him. The range of skins for this picture generator is pretty good and you can piece together you ideas pretty fast. To start a new picture pic the load male or female option from the original screen

This took me about 10 minutes to make

Den of the Destroyer - Review

Its been a while since I reviewed a module that my group has run. We only meet once a month so our game sessions tend to be pretty long 6-8 hours is the usual. Last time we played Den of the Destroyer from dungeon magazine #160 published in 2008. Dotd starts with a courier seeking the players in the city of Overlook.  The courier has been captured by some of the players past enemies and is being interrogated and held in a run down temple. The first encounter takes place inside the temple with the kidnappers.

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Mini confusion

One of the biggest problems I have as a dm is keeping track of which monsters are which during an encounter. Often you have 5 monsters with the same name and use similar minis for each of them. When these monsters move and throughout battle sometimes its easy to lose track of which one took 30 damage and which one took 25. The most elegant solution I've seen for this can be found at http://stuffershack.com/store/ they sell little counters with numbers on them that can be attached easily to minis with sticky putty (which you can find at any walmart or office supply store) these counters mean you can simply number your monsters easily and know which ones are which at a glance.

They also sell little red counters for indicating bloodied enemies, a nice touch. Also horses with large bases so you can attach characters to the base of their horse. This makes mounted combat much easier.

Barston Interviews a Red Dragon

When legends, fairy tales, and fables speak of dragons, when they tell of kingdoms laid waste, virtuous maidens sacrificed, and valiant heroes sent home as charred corpses odds are that they speak of the mighty red dragons. Also called flame dragons, fire wyrms, and mountain dragons, these horrific beasts epitomize the iconic dragon traits. - Draconomicon

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DragonCon 2011 cosplay

For those that don't know Cosplay is when people dress up like fantasy characters. The practice was popularized in Japan, where fans of manga and anime dress as their favorite characters at social gatherings. The practice has invaded american geek culture, much like most of Japanese culture. Cosplay differs from Halloween or masquerade in that the point of the practice is to emulate the character as closely as possible, much as an actor plays a role on stage.

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Haiku

Two of my favorite bloggers are having a haiku contest, Hassidic Plumber and The Lunatic Pope. In honor of their friendly contest I'm going to post my own D&D themed Haiku

red dragon breaths flame

in a vast, underground cave

waiting to break free

Class Warfare - Rogues

Dungeons and dragons is in its fourth edition now and has been for several years. Through those years the basic classes that started the game Fighter, Magic User (now called Wizards) Cleric, Thief (rogue) have remained. Looking back how have these core ideas changed over nearly 40 years of product evolution? Lets take a look at the Sneaky Rogue.

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no post today

Im helping my folks move some stuff and very busy today so no real post today.

What Alignment are you?

Wizards of the coast has an old 3rd edition alignment quiz heres what I got.

Based on your answers to the quiz, your character’s most likely alignment is Chaotic Good.

Chaotic Good

A chaotic good character acts as his conscience directs him with little regard for what others expect of him. He makes his own way, but he’s kind and benevolent. He believes in goodness and right but has little use for laws and regulations. He hates it when people try to intimidate others and tell them what to do. He follows his own moral compass, which, although good, may not agree with that of society. Chaotic good is the best alignment you can be because it combines a good heart with a free spirit.

--excerpted from the Player’s Handbook, Chapter 6

Play by Post

Yesterday I talked about message board gaming here are a few that I found around the internet.

5 tips for finding a gaming group

sometimes its hard to get a group to play D&D with. For one reason or another your current group might split up move away or whatever. Here's some tips for finding a new game.

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12 Steps to creating your own monster

Creating your own monsters in D&D can be a fun way to creating flavor for your game that is unique to it. The process I use for making a brand new creature is called templating.

I love the move tremors, lets say that you wanted a monster like the tremors monster for you game. Now you have two options. One see if there is a monster like it Two make your own. There actually is a monster very similar to the tremors creatures called the purple worm, but for the sake of this article lets assume there isn't.

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How Do I get into Dungeons and Dragons?

I've noticed from my comments there are some people who are interested in the game that have never played before. One question you might have is: "How do I get started playing?" Dungeons and dragons can be a daunting game to get started with, to a newcomer it seems like there are tons of rules and its hard to understand. For the ultra new player I would recommend the following product.

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Class Warfare - Wizards

Dungeons and dragons is in its fourth edition now and has been for several years. Through those years the basic classes that started the game Fighter, Magic User (now called Wizards) Cleric, Thief (rogue) have remained. Looking back how have these core ideas changed over nearly 40 years of product evolution? Lets take a look at the mighty Wizard

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pics from saturday's game

Tough spot

recovered

So finished my game this weekend. It went really well, lots of fun was had by all. Sunday I came home after everyone left at 3pm and crashed in bed till 6 this morning. Ill post pics of the game when I get my digital camera and upload them later tonight probably.

Back for the future

Nike is doing something really awesome. They actually made the shoes that Marty Mcfly wore in back to the future 2 and are selling them via bids on ebay. Awesome Idea right? It gets better. 100% of the proceeds from these limited edition (1500 pairs, 150 per day for 10 days) goes to Parkinsons research foundation founded by marty himself Michael J Fox.

How would you like to go to hawaii?

Wizards of the coast (producers of D&D) is running a contest to promote their new neverwinter campaign setting. They ask 9 questions about neverwinter and neverwinter related products and they will choose someone from the correct answers to send on a 2 person Hawaii trip. The questions are pretty hard I know 3 of the 9 off the top of my head and I'm a pretty big D&D nerd. Still if your willing to really research the crap out of this stuff you might have a shot. here's a link to the wizards official page

Game this weekend

Im getting ready for my monthly game this weekend Im continung our campaign using the 2008 "Scales of War" campaign in dungeon magazine. this weeks adventure will be Den of the destroyer,

Im skipping one of the modules because my team is outpacing the leveling curve for one reason or another and the 4th module is mostly filler anyway. Im getting the maps and stuff ready and am pretty pumped about this one.

my excuse

I know I didnt post yesterday, my excuse is I started up minecraft and it ate up all my time.

this is my fort

Here is during the day

And heres a tower I've been working on

community answer

quick post today, for anyone who was curious the map in that community episode I posted about the other day was from.

Queen of the Demonweb Pits

The series of modules that introduced the Drow (or dark elves if your not familiar) to D&D. This was long before R.A. Salvator made them popular with Drizzt Do'Urden and the Icewind dale series of books. It also introduced the spider goddess Loth the final boss of the module. This was one of the most classic of the early D&D modules so much of D&D that came after started in this series with G1,2,3 known as the against the giants modules then followed by D1,2,3 known as the drow modules. I was really pleased that they threw in that little piece of real D&D history as an easter egg.

Roleplaying Cliches

I found this list a few years ago, I didn't write it but its been so long ago the forum I found it on is unknown to me. possibly the old 3rd edition forums at wizards. who knows. anyway on to the list. thanks to Michael Westside who found the source http://willforshire.forumakers.com/t34-dd-cliches

Avenging Wallflower. These players play characters with a vast amount of unheralded, unseen power and go out of their way to be meek and unassuming, at least until a dramatic confrontation occurs in their vicinity. Whenever active, outgoing characters do something interesting near them, they will feel an unholy compulsion to leap into action, screaming and blowing things up with their incredible
powers, simply to interfere in the process and thereby feel that they've done something. It's quite common in Anime, and I've seen about a thousand 'I'm a dragon ploymorphed into a halfling'.

Community

The TV show Community on NBC recently aired an episode focused on Dungeons and Dragons. I found the show very humorous and fairly factually accurate (which for TV is a rarity) I had a major nerd moment when I could identify which module the map in the fake TV module actually comes from +10 nerd points if you can do it a well here is a screenshot of the module in question.

Hint its from 1st edition and its a classic!

I found the guy in blackface pretending to be drow a bit cringe-worthy probably because I know people who do that kind of thing. Anyway here is the video. http://vimeo.com/24954002

Neverwinter

Cryptic Studios has announced an October 4th release date for their new dungeons and dragons game Neverwinter. If you've played D&D games on the computer at all that name should ring a bell as one of the most successful D&D themed franchises in history.

Cryptic is known for MMO type games (City of Heroes / Villians, Star Trek Online, and Champions Online) Neverwinter will be their first foray into non online games. That fact makes me very nervous about this property. Its no secret that in the 3 years since 4th edition was released no D&D themed game has done the system justice. I find this odd since one of the most common criticisms people have about 4th edition is it feels like a video game more then a role playing pen and paper game.

This dragon looks scary enough

One thing that is a point in favor for cryptic they are introducing a feature called "the foundry"

" Players can create and share their own adventures using The Foundry creation toolset, " http://crypticstudios.com/

The addition of a creation toolkit may help this game last many years after it stops selling copies at Walmart. The same way the creation tools in Neverwinter Nights and Neverwinter Nights 2 did.

Dont jump!

The last D&D game was a big disappointment. Daggerdale felt more like a torchlight clone (which is itself a clone I know) than and true D&D game. It was pretty bad even for downloadable console content. Its probably no mistake that wizards released the Neverwinter campaign source book a few months before this game came out. they are probably hoping if its a success it will boost the source book sales as well.

Game Masters Book Review - First Law Series

I recently finished reading Joe Ambercrombie's First law series of books. If you are into fantasy novels at all and haven't read these books do yourself a favor and head to your library, bookstore, or kindle store and get the first one The Blade Itself today.
The story has about 4 main characters all of them neither villains or heroes but somewhere in the shades of grey that make them dynamic personalities. The first is Logan also known as "The Bloody Nine". Hes a barbarian with a missing middle finger (how he got the nickname) who is one of the most fear killers ever who himself loathes killing. Second you have Glokta who is a torturer with a heart of gold that himself was tortured to the point even though he is only 30 his body moves like that of a 90 year old man. Third you have Jezel who is the callous noble fop who through events out of his control must learn to cope with problems he was never ready for, and hes a bit of a coward. Fourth you have Bayaz a mage with secrets and plots that may or may not have the best intrests of everyone around him at heart that's just a small sample of the characters that Ambercrombie deftly weaves to life in his first trilogy of books. The characters are totally believable the plot twists are unexpected and the villains might not be as bad as you thought at first.r