30 Day D&D Challenge, Day 15: Favorite Monster (Undead)

Oh yeah. It's Dragonlance time again. If you ain't already noticed, you should get used to it around this blog.

 

So, Lord Soth. And by extension, the type of undead we call death knights. That's what I'm talking about.

 

There's something about a formerly good knight who is tempted to conduct acts so heinous that he is cursed to the eternal torment of unlife.

30 Day D&D Challenge, Day 14: Favorite NPC

I missed posting this Day 14 entry yesterday, so I'm doing a two-fer today, while I watch the Eagles and quaff a lovely Leinenkugel Oktoberfest!

 

Speaking of libations, that brings me to my favorite NPC: the innkeeper! Ah, how many innkeepers have I depicted during my GMing career! Fat ones, thin ones...bald ones and ones that sport unruly mops of hair...honest ones and ones that would rob you blind while you weren't looking...gregarious ones and ones that would do more glaring than speaking...those that had an earnest desire to please customers and those who were falsely fawning, hating you secretly behind servile smiles...males and females...on and on and on. Most recently, there was an innkeeper with a preference for elven ladies, and his vengeful wife who would applaud when he was slapped for his lecherous ways.

 

There are those that disparage the cliché of "you find yourselves in a tavern" in D&D-type roleplaying, but I find it a comfort to most players. And it gives me an opportunity to try out a new type of innkeeper.

30 Day D&D Challenge, Day 13: Favorite Trap/Puzzle

This is an easy one for me, because my answer is EVERY TRAP IN EVERY GRIMTOOTH'S TRAPS EVER PUBLISHED.

 

Seriously. Every single one. From the simplest to the ones that would make Rube Goldberg weep with joy.

 

I may not have used many of them, but the books are a damned hoot to read. 

30 Day D&D Challenge, Day 12: Favorite Dungeon Type/Location

"Oh, that looks like a nice place to rest! Let's see who's home!"

Everybody seems manic for megadungeons these days, eh? Sure, I like dungeons as much as the next red-blooded roleplayer. But, of equal interest to yours truly is the castle! Call it an "inverted dungeon"! 

 

More specifically, there's the haunted castle! To me, there's no better location to inject a bit of gothic horror into your game.

 

There are, of course, a goodly number of old-school D&D examples of castles. Beyond the obvious infamous D&D locations such as Castle Ravenloft and Castle Greyhawk (which really seems to be a "front door" for a dungeon system, but you get the idea), there's also more recent OSR examples such as Castle of the Mad Archmage. Heck, I daresay the Temple of Elemental Evil is also something of a castle...right? For added inspiration, seek out gothic horror literature such as the famous "Castle of Otranto."

 

Even though there's something to be said for the anticipatory dread of a dungeon, I think the ruins of a castle can be just as intimidating. Whereas a dungeon can bestow the fear of the unknown hazards that lurk beneath the earth, a dungeon can instill fear and foreboding simply by its imposing appearance. Here is not just the rumor of twisting passageways filled with danger in the form of traps and monsters. Upon first glimpsing the brooding, towering walls and towers of a fortress, one is immediately hit with a physical manifestation of the dangers to come. The structure itself becomes almost a foreshadowing, the first "encounter" of the adventure.

 

So, please share! What castles have you encountered on your adventures?

30 Day D&D Challenge, Day 11: Favorite Adventure

This is tough for me, because to be honest I haven't used that many published adventures over the years. I've used them more in the last couple years, during my return to roleplaying, but this still only amounts to a handful of adventures.

 

And frankly, most of the adventures I used were serviceable rather than extraordinary. Meaning, I embellished them a lot, which is my philosophy on how to run published adventures. I use them as a foundation, as inspiration, and rarely rely on boxed text, the exact monster stats, etc. I suppose that's how most GMs worth their salt run published adventures, so there's nothing exceptional about that.

 

If I have to choose, I'd say that running The Keep on the Borderlands on Free RPG Day 2011 was the most fun I've had running a module.

 

 

I think most of my enjoyment came from knowing that I was running a classic adventure, if not THE archetypal adventure. Yes, I know I was basically using AD&D (via Castles & Crusades) to run a module for Basic D&D, but whatever! We all know it just takes a little bit of tweaking to do such a thing.

 

Another joy came from the simple act of reading The Keep on the Borderlands. Even the name of the adventure is evocative, conjuring images of a remote outpost on the edge of an unexplored and dangerous wilderness. As stated, I didn't use many modules as a teen, so this was an opportunity to go back and read something that I missed back in my youth. This is especially true because I started out with AD&D, and much later than many bloggers (I got into RPGs in the late 80's).

 

So, Keep on the Borderlands is definitely my favorite adventure!

30 Day D&D Challenge, Day 10: Craziest Thing(s) I've Seen

Imagine this with a lot of treasure piled in it.

 

Back in spring and summer 2011, I played my half-elf paladin Drance in a City State of the Invincible Overlord campaign (via Castles & Crusades rules). There were some pretty fun times during that campaign!

 

I have to say, though, that there wasn't just one craziest thing/moment from that campaign (which was basically the first continuous fantasy RPG campaign I've played in for...decades!). No, indeed there were many memorable moments that perhaps did stray into the "crazy" realm.

 

I think there were several factors behind why we got up to so many wacky hijinks during that campaign. One reason was the incredible GM we had in a fellow blogger named Rich, who was as creative and open-minded a GM as I've ever seen.

 

The other reason was that, at the time, our group of regular gamers was just getting together, just getting to know each other. That always seems to be a heady time, because you're testing the boundaries of what other gamers are open to doing during an adventure.

 

Also with regard to meeting new gamers, there's the simple, joyous feeling of encountering people that are kindred spirits, with which you click and can have a good time. People you can relax around and just have fun. That can be a rarity in the table-top RPG world, and we're pretty lucky.

 

Anyway, onto the hijinks. Perhaps the following things won't be crazy to some of you maniacs out there, but hey, it's all a matter of perspective, right?

 

So, here are some moments I cherish from that campaign: 

• Setting everything we could on fire. If we thought it could burn, we torched it. I think the first thing we burned down was a tannery. Probably covering up evidence of some misdeed of ours.
• Inciting a feud between two noble houses, which worked out much better than expected... perhaps a bit too well...given that we threw most of the city into chaos for a while!
• Seeing what happens when 1st level NPCs get level-drained. In Rich's world, they burst into purple smoke.
• Beating a "big bad," which was some sort of powerful undead (who turned the above-mentioned NPCs to purple smoke) and stealing what was, apparently, a funereal boat/barge from his hideout. Said barge was loaded with treasure. So, of course, our group wound up wheeling the boat as sneakily as possible (as sneaky as you can be wheeling an entire boat around) through the streets of the City State at night.

There are other moments, but right now Perhaps some of my fellow Wednesday-Nighters can chime in with other tales? Some have been know to frequent this here blog from time to time. 

So, I got Playing at the World from the library...

...you know, that book about the origins of wargames and RPGs? Well, I borrowed it from the Texas A&M University library, to be precise. The funny thing is, I live in South Jersey.

Welcome to the wonderful world of interlibrary loan!

 

Or maybe it's not so wonderful. Because, well, you'd think that they'd give me, oh, at least three weeks (the usual timeframe for checking out a book) to read the thing. Note that the book (correction: TOME!) is over 600 pages of dense, dense text. How dense? Here's a typical two-page spread:

Wow. I really didn't know how, um, scholarly (text book-y?) Playing at the World was going to be. Oh well, I'm going to get through as much as I can before I need to give it back.

 

Oh, right, speaking of giving it back...well, how wonderful is it that my local library system has a delightfully cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all lending policy with regard to interlibrary loan? Meaning that no matter how big or dense a book may be, all you get is two weeks. So, you can get Playing at the World or, let's say, Oh the Thinks you can Think by Dr. Seuss (a personal fave). It doesn't matter that one dwarfs the other. You get two weeks.

 

Nevermind how much it must have cost the library to ship Playing at the World to my local branch for pick-up, etc. Right? Two weeks. Makes total sense.

 

Some of you might already be saying "go buy the book you cheap bastard if you want ample time to read it." Sure, sure. Of course I could do that.

 

Or, you know, libraries could start making sense in how they lend books.

 

Enough bitching, I have reading to do...wish me luck.

"Two weeks!"