Lamentations (and other things) for Sale!

Ok, not to broadcast a sob story, but...I've come across some difficult financial times of late, with salary reductions, reduced hours, and other specters of the current economic state of the country (the world?) afflicting me. That being said, as painful as it may be, I find myself in need of unloading some gaming materials.

The most painful of these is the need to sell my brand spankin' new, barely used copy of the Lamentations of the Flame Princess box set, which I just acquired a few scant monts ago. It's in pristine condition, of course, and I'm looking to sell it for $45 (shipping will be a bit extra)...that's $20 less than what I paid for it. Please let me know if you are interested. You can email me at gm_drance@yahoo.com to discuss this or any other item I have for sale.

(Some of you might be asking how I will continue to run my current, LotFP-based campaign. Well, I'm going to resort to using the free PDFs of the Rules and Magic books that James Raggi has provided.)

While my copy of LotFP is my current crown jewel for sale, I have a list of other materials that are also for sale. Here's the list (with prices):

• Dungeoneer: Tomb of the Lich Lord card game (with bonus extra cards) = $10
• D&D 3.5 Module: The Standing Stone = $5
• Fading Suns sci-fi RPG = $5
• In Nomine RPG = $5
• Continuum time-travel RPG = $5
• Rifts World Book 11: Coalition War Campaign = $7
• Rifts World Book 12: Psyscape = $7
• Rifts World Book 13: Lone Star = $7

Musings on Entering my 35th Year...

Well met once again, all! This is your friendly neighborhood Drance, checking in with some thoughts. I turned 35 yesterday, and it staggered me to think that I started gaming more than 20 years ago! Now, granted, as anyone who's read my testimonial on this blog knows, many of the years between my first gaming experiences and my current life were spent NOT gaming (at least not table-top roleplaying). But still, I never totally forgot about roleplaying, and always had it on my mind somewhere, and always believed that someday I would return to realm fantasic and deadly!

All in all, it's been great getting back into table-top (and getting into play-by-chat) roleplaying! Thanks to all of you in the gaming blogosphere that I've come to know in the past year, for being there to share your thoughts and experiences! It's been a great ride so far!

Autumn is my favorite time of year, and October is my favorite month (natch!) I've been doing my usual October rituals, like reading my H.P. Lovecraft and other horror literature, watching horror flicks of varying caliber (heartily recommend Drag Me to Hell and Quarantine, but avoid Pulse...bleh!)

But, as usual, I digress...

I hope to post the recap of Legendary Domains Sesson 3 soon enough (spoiler: it was sort of a short session, not as much happened this time around).

Stay tuned, dudes and dudettes!

As always, happy gaming!

Session 2 Recap/Session 3 This Weekend!

Hello all! This is your pal Drance, the guy who doesn't post very often anymore! As I've said before, all my creative energies (and limited free time) are going to the maintenance of my fledgeling Legendary Domains campaign.

That said, we did have a second session about two weeks ago, and we're slated for session three tomorrow night! So far, things have been pretty good!

For those who are interested, you can read the recap of session two on Obsidian Portal. As a side note, I was totally messed up in my interpretation/execution/understanding of the Lamentations of the Flame Princess encumbrance rules. I won't go into details, but suffice to say one of my players called me out on it (nicely), and showed me the error of my ways. He and I also discussed possible house rules on the subject.

Anyway, wish me luck for the next session, and let me know if anyone at all is reading/listening!

As always, happy gaming!

Gearing Up for Session 2!

Greetings all,

As you can tell, the regularity of my postings is WAY down on ye olde blog. I know, I know, you've all been beating your chests and nashing your teeth at my much-decreased blogging output ;-)

But I have to say that a derth of postings is going to be the status quo here at OMUtB for the indefinite future. And I am actually OK with that. Because I am spending my free time on actually working on/preparing for/running my currently bi-weekly Legendary Domains campaign. This Saturday is session two, and I am all jazzed up for it! I think I'm pretty prepared, and I can't wait to see my players and their characters react to what I have to throw at them!

Point is, most of my posts here for the time being will be to give you reports on my sessions, and perhaps the occasional divergence from that topic if the mood strikes me and if I have time.

Again, I am pretty sure that no one will be devastated by this news. But I don't want to be one of those guys who abandons a blog after a few months because the initial fire that made me start the blog has "gone out." It hasn't. It's just my energies are better focused elsewhere. I'm doing what I want to be doing: actually GAMING! I feel like a success, so far!

So keep your fingers crossed for me, with regards to my continued gaming efforts!

Legendary Domains: Session 1 Recap

Hello once again all! This is your absentee blogmaster checking back in again...finally! I've been spending my limited free time on getting my play-by-chat Legendary Domains campaign off the ground, and we finally had our first session on Thursday the 16th of September. Now, Thursday night games will have to be short sessions, about three or so hours, due to it being a "school night" and the schedules of my four players. Ideally we want to have our sessions on Saturday nights from about 6:30 to midnight or so.

We used Chatzy for the session, but I'm not sure I like it. I wanted to try out a web-based chat system, because I didn't really want to load something like Yahoo Messenger or Windows Messenger onto my aging 'puter. But there seemed to be a lot of lag time that really slowed the game down though, so I think we wont' be using Chatzy anymore! One of the guys in the group is really trying to convince me to do VOIP (TeamSpeak) instead of chat room, and I'm tempted...but again, I am leary of loading stuff up to my ailing system. But we'll see.

Anyway, as for the session itself, it was a bit short and it was an introductory session of course, so there really wasn't any combat/encounters. I was really just expecting to set the stage for the campaign anyway, and introduce the characters to each other.

I've set the campaign in an "alternate universe" Forgotten Realms. I took Abeir, the sister planet of Toril, and decided to use it for this alternate world. This will enable me to justify either using or not using canon material from the Realms. For starters, since I'm using Lamentations of the Flame Princess as my rule set, the only demi-human races in the game are elves, dwarves, and halflings, and they are in the race-as-class mold of OD&D.

And there are no half-elves or half-orcs. I weaved this into the background for the campaign by making this inability of the races to "mingle" as just being a law of the universe. Thus there may bloom romances between races such as elves and humans, but there can be no interbreeding, as decreed by the gods. Also, there are rarely clerics among the demi-human races, and for the most part they "worship" their gods through living their lives, and the deeds they perform. They have no truly organized religions. There may be those individuals among the demi-human races that are sometimes gifted with powers from their gods, but they are rare.

At any rate, I encourage you to look over the campaign wiki at Obsidian Portal. There you can check out the player characters and also read the recap of the session.

Needless to say, I am very excited to have this campaign finally off the ground!

Focusing my Energies

Hello once again...

As you can clearly tell by my lack of posting on ye olde blog, I'm really focusing every spare moment I have into getting my Legendary Domains campaign off the ground. I've got my four players, have their characters pretty much done...now all I need to do is coordinate schedules and finalize a date for our first game session! We're tentatively shooting for September 18th as our date, but we're still just tentative for that day. Damn adult responsibilities ;-)

Anyway, sorry for this blog not being very interesting lately...if it ever was at all! I know there's differences in opinion on whether or not session recaps are worthwhile, but I am thinking at this point that that's all you'll be seeing from me for a while on this blog. Until I can get into the groove of the campaign, at least.

Anyway, that's all for now. As always, happy gaming!

Creeping Closer to a Campaign

Hi all! Well, had a first chat session with two of my potential players last night. The other two potentials did not attend the chat, and I haven't heard much from them in a few days. So, signs are starting to point to a need for me to go back out and stump for two more players in order to get my desired total of four. But in the meantime, the two players that I chatted with last night seem to be VERY enthusiastic, so I'm not worried about them flaking on me. We discussed characters and rolled up stats, and they'll be getting me drafts of their characters in a couple days.

So next steps are to go out and do more advertising for the game in the hopes of attracting a couple more players, and finalize the characters for my two solid players. If all goes well and I get some more players soon, we should be on pace to have our first gaming session sometime in early to mid-September.

And as you can see, during this process my posting here will be pretty infrequent as I focus my energies (and limited free time) elsewhere.

Anyway, wish me luck!