More Warhammer Fantasy stuff ... the lizardmen pile grows!

So here is the hard to tell WTF this is pile o' bitz and whatnot.  A friend treked down to Strategicon and managed to pick up a bunch of WHFB stuff at a really good price.  So I snagged a bunch.  What is there is:

• Skaven Hell Pit Abomination
• Stegadon
• Lizardmen Battalion 

When I'm going to get to my Skaven stuff I have no clue, but the Lizardmen are going to be my summer project.  I'm pretty much done with acquisition other than probably about $40-$50 on bitz, perhaps one or two other character models and a couple of big Schleich dinosaurs.  I have a final group of lizardmen coming in the mail from a friend in Las Vegas.  We worked out a trade.  So I'll throw some pictures up of that stuff when it gets in.

I am really looking forward to painting all this stuff up honestly.  I really want to do a bright army for a change.  I've done so many drab, dark, dip armies.  Which I've been happy with but they just all seem to blend together in my mind.  I am no master painter, but just working with some bright colors for a change sounds like fun.

D&D 40th Anniversary Blog Hop Challenge -- 1st D&D books I ever sold

So yes.  That image sort of displays how I encountered the newer versions of D&D.  I felt really great about "grid" based D&D early on and then gradually came to really not that great about it.

So as for the question I can honestly say I've never really "sold" any D&D books.  Not some dyed in the wool D&D purist thing, no really they just don't hold their value.  You buy the stuff at a heavy discount on Amazon and as we all know the average RPGer doesn't spend anything on the hobby.  Its the DM who has most of the books and the rest of the people just mooch.  There are always a dedicated one or two players who owns a PHB.  So there just ends up being this glut of extra core books for pretty much every system.  Sure there was a spike with the core 3.5 books there for a brief while they were worth more than their initial MSRP but that was short lived.  Generally the average D&D book is pretty cheap (again not talking obscure/rare modules, etc.) so unlike my constant buying and selling mini gaming stuff on eBay I've pretty much never sold RPG stuff, it just isn't really worth my time and effort to make $3 or $5 bucks and though I'm not living fat like I did back in the six figure days, I'm still not so poor that I am going to spend all the time listing stuff on eBay hauling books to the post office, etc. etc. to make a couple of dollars.  So they've just sat on my shelf.

Books are easy to store as well.  With other hobby stuff like minis, for me anyway I get frustrated with all the stuff taking up space so I try to downsize occasionally.  With all my RPG stuff I have large bookshelves in the basement and they are there expressly to store ... books.  So my wife is never nagging at me to clean it all up, I'm never feeling like I could really do a whole lot more with that area, so I just don't have strong incentive to even pay attention to all that stuff.

Anyway I did give away my 4th edition stuff.  Which I just gave to a friend who was going to give all of his stuff to one of his childhood friends who was a little tight on money but looking to get into the hobby just with his son.  For whatever reason that person (who I don't know and who lives half way across the country) was apparently getting into 4th. ed.  So anyway long story short my friend Scott  gave all of his 4th ed. stuff to him and I chucked my stuff in with his.  I never saw myself ever, ever playing 4th again so it seemed like a no brainer ... help a fellow gamer out with something I was never going to use anyway (and really couldn't sell even if I wanted to ... lol).

Now this isn't a bash 4th ed. piece here, please don't see it that way.  I very much dislike ALL grid based D&D.  I really do not enjoy it.  To me it isn't D&D, it isn't even role playing.  I see grid based RPGs as a bastardized hybrid board game-skirmish wargame-RPG.  Its really a watered down board game, a watered down minis game all combined with a very watered down RPG.  The focus is always going to be on getting into combat really quickly, and then staying there for most of the session.  The mini game side of things is on one hand too tactical for my taste but then again, not really tactical enough.  As for being a board game, I think 3.5/4e would be fine "Descent" emulators.  In fact I sold off all my Descent stuff this last year when I cam to that realization.  So someday perhaps I will use my old Pathfinder shit to run a Descent game, I"ll just pre-gen up some characters for people and run them through railroady dungeons.  That could be fun with my kids I guess.

Overall though I had come to the decision that I really will never go back to the grid, after several different 3.0/3.5/4e/Pathfinder games with several different groups, at conventions, and just from reading blogs, podcasts, and message board posts.  Everyone who was playing at an "optimized" level sounded a hell of a lot like the guys on Bell of Lost Souls running "optimized" warhammer 40K armies.  Its all about the power game, its all about combat and it rarely was about having a good time gaming.  Of course most home game groups were playing 3.5/4e just like we used to play 2nd ed.  Hell half of the groups out there weren't using the grid or minis (which was so laughable to me) and I recall many arguing "you don't even need minis or the grid" which always made me laugh.  Sure you didn't but then you were fudging and hand waiving half the rules ... so why the hell not just go play basic, or any one of the the fine OSR options.

Mind you this was all for me in the pre  Dungeon World days so that was not an option yet.   I never took the plunge with Castles and Crusades or Labyrinth Lord though I own printed copies of both. I have a pretty massive collection of 2nd edition D&D as well.  I never could get anyone to really want to play 2nd.  I just knew that the groups I was playing with wouldn't have wanted to do it.  Most of the groups I've played with have honestly been 3.0era fanboys.  They all started in that era and so they think that is real D&D.  For some that is true, not for me.  Anyway I didn't mean to turn this into a bash any particular version of D&D.  All my ranting aside, I think that if people enjoy grid based RPGing more power to them.  I have enjoyed being a player in 3.5/Pathfinder/4e games.  I will never say never on being a player in a grid based RPG again I just know I wouldn't run one of those types of games.  Thus no need to own any rulesets.  I do still have my Pathfinder books which again I'm holding onto on the off chance I get a wild hair to run a home brew Descent campaign where we just do a series of one shot dungeons.

This post does have me now thinking about all those books though.  I have the better part of all 2nd edition White Wolf stuff.  I really should get rid of all that stuff. Hmmmmm ...

D&D 40th Anniversary Blog Hop Challenge -- My first non-D&D RPG

D&D 40th Anniversary Blog Hop Challenge --

The first non-D&D RPG I played was RIFTS.  It is a venerable system that I hardly need to elaborate on.  Most RPG fans have at least heard of it and it is well known enough that even non-RPG players have run across it.  Kevin Siembieda is the main guy behind it all, though he has had a whose who of sci-fi/fantasy artists do work for him and many other designers have worked with him.  But it is sort of a one man show from what I understand.

Anyway none of that had anything to do with why I played RIFTs.  It was actually pretty late in my RPG career before I departed from D&D.  After I had returned to RPGs as an adult I was fortunate to have a really stable group that played a weekly game for about two years.  After that game finally ran its course, we were up for a change.  So the DM suggested he run a RIFTs game.  He was rightfully concerned about the really gigantic amount of material available and restricted us to the collation stuff.  He also had a pretty novel approach to dealing with the "I want to play a Glitterboy!" phenomenia and that was we all started out as vagabonds and had to earn our O.C.C somehow.  The campaign lasted for about three months and it was pretty fun.  Every successive attempt at making the actual game of RIFTs work (only as a player, RIFTs is not the kind of game I'd ever want to run) has never really panned out well.

What RIFTs really did for our group and me personally was it broke the ice.  I realized that really any genre could be just as fun as D&D.  So I became much more willing to try new systems.  I eventually would gravitate towards indie/small press RPGs, stuff like FATE, Vincent Baker games, etc. etc. I think I owe my willingness to do so all to RIFTs.

These days I play anything but D&D to be honest.  I have come to prefer Dungeon World to any version of D&D.  Not because it is somehow inherently better, but because it is for me as a DM pretty much just as satisfying and far easier to pull off, taking 10% of the prep time, etc. etc. Again I am not bashing D&D, OSR or any other RPG out there I just have found that this year anyway DW is filling the D&D void rather nicely.

There is talk in our group of an Iron Kingdoms foray so that might end up being the next game I run.  So who knows.  I'm not holding my breath for 5th ed. but I will take a look at it and give it the benefit of the doubt rather than just auto hating it.

Woohoo! I love it when a delivery comes in ...

Always fun when you get a special delivery!! 

I got the two player battle set for Hordes.  Honestly don't know why I picked it up, other than I really love the Everblight and Circle of Orboros minis.  Hordes is a "maybe" thing for this summer.  

I also grabbed two board games I've been meaning to pickup forever, Kemet and Cyclades.  

D&D 40th Anniversary Blog Hop Challenge -- First Gamer who annoyed the hell out of me

To me this is a post about gaming being a social activity and how we navigate an often prickly issue of individual behavior, personality and character.  So I'm approaching it from that standpoint.

So being annoyed by fellow gamers ... hmm ...

Of course I have been.  Haven't we all?

For example I've been to conventions where you get in the elevator with THAT GUY who doesn't apparently understand how to take a shower and/or use soap.  I've been in many RPG groups with THAT GUY who is an abusive jerk of a power gamer whose sole intent in life seems to be just to break the game and make the GM physically attack him.  Hell I've even had a thief in my home gaming group who absconded with about $300.00 in games workshop bitz (and it was a bits by the gram order no less meaning that it was probably more like $500-$800 worth of stuff).  I could go on, but we've all probably had these sorts of experiences in one form or another.

But rather than cast blame on others let me elaborate on why I'm probably annoying at times ..

I am a grumpy guy at times.  I get tired and punchy late at night and my patience wears thin and at those times if we are playing some sort of involved game and someone starts up with some rules equivocation or something I have been known to blow my stack.  I would say my most annoying trait is probably my occasional "Donald Duck" episode.  Now mind you I do not normally have a short temper, but under the right circumstances it happens.

Really in all but the case of the thief, I have tried to look past people's shortcomings and see that people come to gaming for many reasons.  Many people do it because they struggle in life somehow, many people do it for social activity, for camaraderie.  We are all human.  No one is perfect.  A person who steals just cannot be trusted in your home so you have to boot that person, a guy with utterly repulsive body odor would be another case of nope not going to deal with that (fortunately that has never been an issue really in any game group I was with ... well we had a guy in the Las Vegas gaming club I was in who would show up to club meetings occasionally ... but that wasn't very often), but quirky and very mildly annoying behaviors I think are par for the course with geeks in general.  Lots of know-it-all types, lots of folks who have mildly anti-social tendencies, and I can over look those traits if they aren't extreme and if those people are genuinely friendly, nice, dependable people I happily overlook minor personality flaws and focus on what we all have in common.  But even then for me to really want to have someone in my own home gaming group I need to have enough in common with the person that we can have a good conversation and get along.  Because to me gaming is as much about socializing as anything and if we can't socialize why in the world would we want to be in a gaming group together that meets regularly.  I don't do gaming to build my self esteem or to self actualize, I do it to relax and just have a fun pass time so the people I choose to game ideally have a somewhat shared philosophy.

Now all that said I have had several people over the years I have just not gelled with in terms of gaming.  One is a great friend of mine who is just an abusive power gamer and has some mad Jekyll and Hyde thing going on when he games. Everyone we gamed with back in the day disliked him.  But you get the guy out of the game, invite him over for dinner and the reaction would be just opposite people really like him, find him witty, kind hearted and really funny.  He is not a bad guy at all, not generally a selfish person, he is a liberal so at least in principal he cares about his fellow man, etc. etc. yet you get him on a table with a 40K army, or running a character in a D&D game and he goes nuts and gets way too competitive, he clams up, he won't have friendly conversations, he just becomes obsessed with winning and not just winning, kicking his opponents ass as hard as he can.  That might be a great way to be in competitive sports, back when I played college football that was how I was.

So more on my inner "Donald" to this day I don't take to any sort of trash talk at all.  I honestly don't know why.  The only thing I can really think of is it must stem to my time in competitive sports during my youth. I do recall as a defensive lineman/linebacker that stuff fueled my inner rage and I channeled it into smashing the shit out of my opponent.  All these years later, a big old beer be-gutted gamer dad that I am now, and I guess at times I still have that inner linebacker that is just waiting to use the trash talk rage to plant my opponent on their backside.  Problem is, naturally, that doesn't mix well with a friendly game of something.  So I always warn my friends when I game, don't trash talk me, please, I'll get ticked fast.  I am not a poor loser though generally, and I can handle some light ribbing or teasing, but if someone starts to really get in with the "yo-mamma" and "that was a stupid move" kind of comments that's when I just have to step away from the table.  Fortunately in my gaming groups it has never been a problem as I've been blessed with mostly laid back gamers who are just there for generally casual play, fun, socializing and having a good time.

I guess the bottom line is I don't like focusing on the negative in other people unless they just stand right in my pathway and force me to confront it.  Otherwise I try to give people wide latitude and have a live and let live attitude.  One of my favorite holiday/comedies of all time is Planes, Trains and Automobiles and I find much in common with the plot of that film and many gamers out there.  John Candy's character is THAT GUY yet he has an endearing side too.  I think that even THAT GUY usually has some redeeming quality and for me it just comes down to ... legitimately ... do those redeeming qualities truly outweigh the bad stuff.  For some people the answer is yes, for others no.
Anyway ramble over ...

D&D 40th Anniversary Blog Hop Challenge -- 1st gaming convention I ever attended.

The first gaming convention I ever attended was Strategicon-Gatway-Orccon down in Los Angeles at the LAX airport Westin Hotel.  I believe it was in 2001 or 2002 and I can not recall if it was Labor Day, Presidents Day or Memorial Day. Of all conventions I've attended I've been to the Strategicon conventions more than anything else.  I've probably been to 20 or more now.  I've been to Comicon, Gencon and other smaller local conventions as well as many Games Workshop events.  Strategicon is essentially a small locals con, but since its in Southern California there are usually I would imagine, several thousand attendees. Yet it is a small con, it is nowhere near a PAX, Comicon, Origins, etc. at any given time there is 50-200 people in the main hall and dozens of meeting rooms filled with 10-20 people.

In the beginning I went for mini gaming.  Our gaming club used to participate in the 40K stuff and we even ran some big games over the years, etc.  We used to trek down with the better part of our wargaming club.  Once we managed to get 20 people from our 40(ish) person club to attend ... that was a blast.  Other times I'd do an open call for anyone who wanted to come along, they could sleep on the floor in the room for free ... that got some of the younger enlisted military guys and some of the younger members of the club to attend.  Problem with that was it was more like a mid 19th century New York Irish tenement than the normal con trip.  I eventually abadoned those sorts of trips and have ever since imposed my own rule of trying not to share a room with more than two other people (I'll stretch it to three on occasion) which I find ideal for the sake of sanitation and sanity.

I was introduced to so many things at Strategicon from Euro-games to historical gaming, to indie/small press RPGs.  I rarely go anymore because I now live in Utah and though I have strong nostalgia for the event, it just isn't worth the cash outlay to go.  At this point going to PAX or Gencon is just a little more expensive given the plane ticket price to get to LA (or the crazy 12 hour drive that blows a full day of time).

I try to get down there every couple years, in fact I was supposed to go this past weekend but due to the demands of school I just couldn't justify it.  I really do enjoy what gaming conventions provide in terms of getting to get out and demo lots of games, talk to fellow gamers, and generally mingle with the masses and see how others are experiencing and presenting games.  Ya sure there are annoying bits, such as gamers with less than proper personal hygiene skills, big crowds (not a fan of crowds myself to be honest) and the inconvenience of bunking up with other people in hotels, etc.  But for all that for me anyway the cons have been vastly outweighed by the pros.

The next convention I'll be attending is one in my own back yard, Salt-Con a small board game convention at the end of March (28th-30th ... LINK)

When did I first encounter the D&D is EVIL stuff? Dungeons and Dragons 40th Anniversary Blog Hop Challenge ... Post 17

So the first time I heard D&D was somehow "evil" was probably back in 1985, which was 3 years after the film "mazes and monsters" was released.  

Not that I necessarily blame the film, its really crappy.  To quickly summarize the plot, Tom Hanks character loses the ability to discern the difference between the D&D game and real life ... umm .. yup that is it in a nutshell.

As with many new things there is a hysteria that ensues and that happened with D&D.  Not probably all that dissimilar from the anti-comic movement of the what 1940s-70s, or the anti-rock and roll movement, etc. etc. We have seen it with video games over the past 30 years as well.  For me the fortunate thing was, my parents heard there were some possible negative aspects associated with D&D.  They took the time to talk to me to figure out what the game was about, to pick the books up and look past the covers.  In the end the say that the games were simply about telling a shared story, whatever story you wanted and frequently/mostly about good characters versus evil villains and monsters.  

The "D&D" is somehow evil thing really hit our group hardest in the summer of 1985 when we were playing the game like 3-6 days a week for 8-10 hours a day.  One of my friends mothers found out we'd been playing D&D and tried to get all of the parents to make us stop.  As a result a few of my friends were not allowed to play as often as they previously had, and we lost that kid from the group.

Today it is laughable to think that people really believed this stuff.  But it happens all the time.  Not to bash religion (I really try very hard not to do that here) but in some cases overly zealous religious viewpoints can lead to finding "evil" in the most mundane places.  Harry Potter is EVIL and promotes WITCHCRAFT has been one in the past ten years that is reminiscent of the D&D scare.  It is really funny but this one still lingers out there. Honestly though if you look at how things changed.  

D&D was pretty wide open in say 1982 and 1983 and unfettered by conservative religious views.  This film and these ideas I think ultimately impacted the game.  D&D pulled away to my view, from some of the really open and irreverent stuff in the 1st ed. era of the game.  The game seemed to get something of a visual sanitizing for 2nd edition.  I can't help but think at least in part it was due to the hysteria that ensued over D&D being evil/occult/wtf ever crazy church ladies thought it was by simply looking at the cover of the 1st ed. DMG and PHB.  1989 is when 2nd hit and if one looks just at the cover ... yes the 2nd ed. PHB is still witchcrafty looking (the later printing was the super generic black book set which is one of the most boring D&D sets of all time, visually speaking anyway).  But its more standard and heroic an old wizard instead of this huge demon idol.

The game itself, who is to say how much it changed.  I'm sure someone out there has probably written a scholarly article on this topic by now.  This is just idle observation on my part ... pure conjecture ... so who knows really.  I just do feel that the earlier version of the game had an intangible feeling to it that was just different than the subsequent versions.  The game felt a little more "white-washed" and toned down to some extent, maybe PG/PCized a little more.  For sure there are still some cool/harsh/adult elements to the game, but it just didn't feel the same on some levels.  I will be a little lazy here and not break the books out to provide examples, I just don't have the time today.  Perhaps a good idea for a post some other day.  Anyway as far as where D&D went some people inevitably disliked 2nd edition for whatever reason, mostly just Thaco I think ... other than that I haven't heard anything really consistent.  I think the main dislike of 2nd now is its a little more complex than basic/1st and it isn't 3.0 era grid based.  For me it is the version that I had perhaps the most fun with, so I'm not saying I do not like second.  Not at all.  I just see some of the at least aesthetic change that took place and just wonder ... what if there was no mazes and monsters ... what if hysteria never entered into the equation?  Would 2nd edition have been more like 1st, aesthetically and otherwise?  Then of course the subsequent versions would have been impacted as well.  Ironically I guess this is just another version of the "Mazes and Minotaur" question (that question was what would D&D have looked like if it was based primarily Greek mythology primarily instead of the northern European/Conan/Tolkien (I don't give a shit what Gygax said D&D was HEAVILY influenced by Tolkien), etc. etc.).

Anyway rambling ranting ... done ... 

  

40th Anniversary D&D Blog Hop Challenge -- Edition Wars!

So this question is: "What was my first edition war and did I win?"

First to answer whether or not I won ... no ... no one wins a version war.

I really honestly did not have much in the way of edition war nonsense in my life until 4th edition D&D came out.  Then of course it was unavoidable.  There was mass ranting and raving everywhere one looked.  I didn't get it honestly because I don't like 3.0, 3.5 or 4e.  I would have been so much happier of 2nd never went away.  Human nature though, we like what we know and we fear what we do not. 

But rant and rave we all did at some point over the 3.5 vs. 4e nonsense.  I feel it was the D&D war to end all wars and we had a "lost generation" as a result.  For me it completely drove me away from anything related to 3.5 FOREVER ... I really hope I never have to play a game of 3.5 again and as I said in the previous post I utterly refuse to DM any 3.0-4e era game ever again.  I'd just not play RPGs if that was my only choice.  I feel the same about 4e and Pathfinder as well.  Just completely not my cup of tea.  So there is my own angst about it.  That said I don't hate people who play 3.5/4e ... if my home group really wanted to play a 3.5/4e game and someone else was going to run it ... I'd join in without being grumbly.  I did that very thing for several years actually. 

As we all know what is so crappy about "edition wars" is here we go again soon with 5e coming out.  Its going to be wall to wall ranting and raving for another few years.

So when tabletop gaming is dying a slow death due to everyone wasting 10 extra hours a week on youtube, so their "hobby" time is now diminished, we have to have a mass "pee in our own pool" episode with version wars again.  Old grognards being all superior with OSR, the 3.5/Pathfinder supporters being superior with "our fat books are the best fat books!" and the inevitable honeymoon people with 5e who proclaim it as the best thing ever.  Que two years of ranting, massive divisiveness and at the end of it several camps of people who could have had great exchange on ideas about how to run and play in essentially the same damn game ... but rather completely divided and bitter.

Version wars suck and they tend to hurt everyone involved and just create negativity, divisiveness and bitterness!  Those from outside who look in and see this just immediately tune out anything that is being said.  I wonder how many potential D&D fans were just outright driven away by version wars?

At the end of the day we are sitting around a table pretending to be fantasy characters ... as adults ... seriously everyone we need to get the fuck over ourselves and just realize how silly it is to argue about this crap.  If only we could focus on the 95% that all this stuff has in common I think we'd all be better for it.

D&D 40th Anniversary (Blog Hop Challenge) -- The first edition of D&D I didn't enjoy

Life in the post grid world ... 

The first edition of D&D I did not like was 3.0.  Previous to that, like most people I had only played a few versions of the game. I had pretty much only played either basic or 2nd edition D&D (a very brief run of 1st ed. but so brief it really doesn't count).  So why no love for post 3.0 era D&D?  For me it is the bane of RPGs the GRID!!  I dispise the grid.  I hate how it slows the game down, forces very terrible min-maxing into every players head.  In my experience I feel that the grid means story inevitably is sacrificed. So a strong opinion there and I am well aware it is just that an "opinion" and I have had many discussions with people who love the grid and feel it has enhanced their games, etc.   Even on blaming 3.0 for the grid is sort of wrong as the grid sort of stems from many things, the advanced combat rules in 2nd edition arguably had a grid. Many DMs out there had used a grid back in the earlier days.  Using graphing paper to draw maps in a way was a "grid", etc. etc.

In my view though when the official rules went full grid the game jumped the shark.  Again depending on perspective for better or worse the grid undeniably completely changed how D&D worked.  Some people loved it, I did not.   For me I do not like an RPG to center on miniatures.  Which is sort of odd giving my love of miniature gaming.  I like RPGs to center on what players are doing, on their characters feelings, motivations and fears.  I find that when minis hit the table, the game turns into a tactical board game and most of the immersion goes out the window.  Can things be fun still, hell yes, and for some people all the things they actually like about RPGs is enhanced by minis.  To each their own I say and if people like grid based D&D more power to them.  There is room for all persuasions and perversions in my view.  

My own trek with grid based D&D though, did not really hit very heavily with 3.0. I played one quick, four or five session game of it and was sort of meh about it and went back to a 2nd ed campaign.  A few years later I played in a short 3.5 game and again was meh about it.  I then played in a few hilarious Hackmaster games that lasted the better part of a year.  Then RPGs took a turn into OSR land for me with Tunnels and Trolls, and then I sort of just hit a period where we played everything but D&D for years.

4e was the first grid based version of D&D that I really got into.  I gave it a two year run as a player (I never DM'd that version of the game).  I gave it a full on college try and it was actually fun for a few months of that time.  The rest of the time it just never felt like D&D for me.  It was something else.  We never seemed to get as much done in the games, we argued more, there was far more "meta" talk and sideline non-game BSing, etc.  I never seemed to care about my characters as much and neither did the other players (totally subjective statement I concede).   But really what killed 4e, was WoTC of course.  They botched the support of the game so badly with the introduction of "essentials" that our group just folded up shop on 4e all together and went to Pathfinder for about a year.  After that I've just totally abandoned any grid based version of RPGs.  I refuse to play in any grid game again as a DM ... UNLESS ... I could do it with pre-gen characters and run the game like Descent and just do fun one shot dungeon crawls or something.  I think the grid would be great for that but in my humble opinion it is not as good at doing D&D as non-mini based versions were/are.  

Otherwise my forevermore preference with D&D is to stick with something clean, simple and classic feeling.  At present I'm very much enjoying Dungeon World for that.  But I could happily do other OSR style games.  Who knows though I have learned that in gaming nothing is forever and preferences of one's game group are fickle.  The winds of change constantly are blowing ...

D&D Anniversary blog hop challenge!

So I will give it a try for post 14.

I really have no story regarding my significant other and D&D.  My wife is a wonderful lady.  But she is essentially an anti-gamer.  She indulges me with my gaming, allowing me to take the time I want to for it, allowing me to often spend far too much on it, etc. etc.

But she has never really had even the most passing of interests in any gaming other than an occasional board game.  I tried early in our relationship to get her into video games, or RPGs and even once into mini games.  But she never had any desire to get into any of it.  She did play World of Warcraft with me for awhile ... (yes I played ... ashamed to admit it but I did ... and far far too much) so there was that.

Anyway here is my bestiary concept, actually used in my Dungeon World Game --

The Corpse Altar --

Corpse Altar	Solitary, Huge, Magical, Organized, Construct, Terrifying, Amorphous
The scrape of 1000 claws (2d6+5 damage)/damage of appropriately raised creature(s)	50+ HP	1 armor
Reach, Ignores Armor, Near, Far
Special Qualities: Unholy transformation, we are legion, the call of the grave, construct of the darkest arts, A corpse altar can be grotesquely beautiful or unimaginably horrible. It just depends on the nature of its creator. That said they are all completely malevolent and single minded in their desire to gorge on the living.

Corps altars can take on the form of an orgy of beautiful dead maidens. They can be a macabre collection of cavalry officers arrayed in battle formation. They might be a mountain of dead, with heads, hands, arms, legs and intestines bound up into a bloated stinking mass the size of a small city. They might be anything that the vile mind who created them chose to construct. Corpse altars might be obvious or deceptively concealed. They might inhabit the upper portion of a crypt or the lower portions. They might really be anywhere. Generally though they do need some source of moisture to keep their corpses hydrated. A corpse altar in the desert is a rare thing indeed. Instinct: The corpse altar always hungers

• The alter pulses with dark energy
• Corpse altars are the work of powerful necromancers. They often serve as guardians of places of power (or phylacteries). Thus they are often imbued with the power to raise their dead and/or any creatures who die in the vicinity should the need arise.
• The corpse altar can form its copious mountains of flesh into whatever it needs to slay the intruders (and/or add to its stores of flesh).

Lizardman project ... the pile grows!

Well the pile o' stuff has grown a little bit.  Here are two pictures, sort of poor quality but you can see mostly what I have there.  This is in addition to the stuff I posted about a week or so ago.  I have probably too many saurus and skink models now, but that is ok.  I have another 50 coming along with Lord Croak some chameleon skinks, some temple guard, more skinks with blow guns.

I just really need to get the substitute models for the newer big models. I don't dislike the new GW models but they are just too expensive for me to justify given that I'm not going to ever play this army in a tourney or anything.

Brother Vinni Minis having a Valentines Day Sale!

20% off on all the female figures in their range!

Perhaps that is a little more risque than everything in their range, they do have some cool minis though.  Really cool fantasy and sci-fi stuff.

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I've been meaning to pick this one up forever!

D&D nostalgia .. continued

It was 1985.  I was but a wee lad.  I had utterly succumbed to the obsession of TSR's wondrous pen and paper masterpiece ... Red Box D&D.

The first store I purchased products to further my addiction was from a book store actually.  Called Waldenbooks.  Sadly the entire chain went out of business in 2011 I believe (I think Borders bought them out some years prior to that ... I don't recall for sure though).  Anyway my purchases were limited more by the stores supply than my bankroll.  At the time I was an independently wealthy paper route tycoon.  I had two seperate paper routs, a lucrative lawn mowing busiess AND I helped my neighbors "buck" bails of hay (i.e., toss hay bails up on trailers and then stack them in the barn).  So for a 10 year old kid I was loaded.  Money to burn and an addiction to feed!  

I wasn't the GM though so my needs weren't very great honestly.  I mostly bought the classic brown "complete" series books. I bought issues of Dragon and dice when they were available.  Never really got to buy minis as the store never carried them .. sadly. 

D&D Anniversary nostalgic blog hop challenge!

HOW DO YOU LIKE THAT SPLAT!! 

The first splatbook that I begged my DM to let me use ... hmmm ... hmmm

I believe I did ask the DM if I could use the complete book of dwarves.  I forget why to be honest.  Of course it had the cool kits and some special dwarven proficiencies I liked.  Also it just had cool stuff like gully dwarves!

Dungeons and Dragons 40th Anniversary -- Walk down nostalgia lane continues

So the first gaming magazine of any kind I can remember purchasing is an issue of Dragon Magazine.  Specifically the march 1986 issue ... I think.  I"m not sure honestly.  All those memories are blended together.  I recall looking at my Dad's HO train magazines, looking at Dragon and I might have even somehow ended up with a copy of White Dwarf.  The selection at Walden Books was really limited and when it came to gaming stuff, it seemed completely random and it was just very sporadic.  One month they'd get in a copy of something and then the next month they wouldn't (what it was I'm sure is they were quickly snatched up as they'd only order a single copy probably).  

Anyway the more memorable purchase for me came not in early childhood but in my mid-20s.  I was in graduate school.  I'd abandoned booze and sports, I'd been married in August of 1998.  This "settling down" drew me back to the idea of a gaming as a hobby.

This issue,  along with my purchase of some randome 2nd edition D&D stuff that I snagged at the Hobbytown USA store on West Sahara in Las Vegas in late May or June of 1999 started me down the path towards gaming in actuality.  But it was really probably the Warhammer Fantasy Battles 6th edition boxed set about a year later that pulled me back in entirely.  Though I'd never actually use those minis for anything.  I put them together and painted most of them up.  Didn't really find a good group to play with until about six months later and then I realized all those folks were doing 40k.  So I went out and got into that and the next six years of my gaming life were utter bliss.  We had a wonderful club of working professional late 28s to early 50s age folks, everyone painting their armies, showing up to club meetings and club events, etc. It was my true golden age of gaming.  I've been chasing it ever since I lost it.  Today with everyone head-jacked into their Iphone and wasting time on the internet (I know funny coincidence I'm typing that on my blog ... lol).  I think that much of the disposable time we had in the late 90s early 2000s is now lost, mostly wasted.  So fewer and fewer people have the willpower to paint minis, etc.

I don't think gaming is dead, by no means.  I just think it has to evolve.  Gaming has to take less time than it once did.  The luxury of all day gaming on Saturday and Sunday afternoons is forever gone for most people. At least where I'm at in the world.  Anyway the trip down memory lane inevitably leads to melancholy right? Only ten posts about D&D and I'm already there?  LOL.  Where will I be by the twentieth post!!

D&D's 40th Anniversary ... the walk down nostalgia lane continues!

The first actual game I played was a home brew game.  I talked about that a big a few posts ago.  To summarize it was something conjured up from the minds of 10 to 14 year old adolescents.  Replete with hilariously improbable combos, zany ecology, laughably politics, etc.  in short it was splendid fun! We played for about ten months I think in our home brew world.  Then a few PCs died, and we had some transition in the group.  We were kids, totally different kind of game when your a group of 10-14 year old kids vs. adults.  

Anyway the first published campaign setting I played in was actually the Mystara stuff.   I fondly recall a generic start

I believe we did some of the Karameikos stuff, we went to Glantri, did more home brew stuff in Mystara and I think our DM used some other modules too and subtly disguised them.  He never really told us when he was running a module or not.  I was ten and eleven years old and didn't really pay much attention to that sort of thing.  I was more concerned about what my character was going to do next and whatnot.  Its honestly been years and years since I even thought about this stuff ... lol.  Those were the days though, the golden age of RPG adventure for me anyway.  

So the first dice I ever purchased.  I believe it was way, way, way back in 1985 at the Walden Books in tiny Hermiston, Oregon.  I don't recall the price, but I want to say they were around $5.00 which would be like a $15-20 pricetag on dice now.

All that remains of that set is .... 

No recollection of what brand they were, the packaging, or anything.  They've been in the chest o' dice ever since I was a kid.  Though their number has dwindled to this ...

Dungeons and Dragons 40th Anniversary Blog Hop Challenge! First D&D Product I ever purchased ...

The first product I ever purchased ... 

Red Box D&D and rather than plundering it from online, I actually took a picture of my copy.  It is missing everything except the players handbook and the DM guide.  The dice are lost to the sands of time, the little pencil, etc. etc. 

Our DM had his own copy, but having another set of dice and an extra players handbook was a must.  So being an independently wealthy fellow in those days (ahh the days of living with mom and dad and having a paper route!) I sprung for one and then we had a set of dice for the players and a set for the DM.  I was honestly a little stingy with my PHB, but the other one only had to be shared between four players instead of five.  

1st Player Death in an RPG

First character death ... 

I have to admit that I have had very few character deaths, and never died in an actual D&D game.  The times we've had a party wipe I was playing a rogue who manged to cut and run.   Even in 4e where that isn't really always possible (thanks to the damn grid) I managed to escape via some GM adjudication.   I've been close of course a hundred times.  I am not a professional D&D player, nor am I a super genius who always outsmarts the DM.  I do usually take a leadership role if I'm playing OR I tend to be the a stealthy scout type character.  One would think I would therefor have had more player deaths, but I guess I just play conservative.  I try to plan ahead and talk things out with the party, etc. and make good choices.  So maybe that yields less player death.  I really enjoy more realistic, immersive  RPGing where the game is approached that way.  Instead of kicking doors in and behaving gung-ho crazy all the time, methodical calculated moves.  That is what I like to think it is.  But maybe I've just had wamby-pamby DMs ... I don't know.  Actually I think I've generally been lucky with the DMs I've had for the most part (of course I've had a few that were not very skilled, as most of us have). 

I do know that when I'm running games, I tend to have some player deaths.  I'm not a killer DM who squishes PCs for fun constantly.  But when a party does something that is going to put them in a deadly spot, I feel it is incumbent upon me to deliver.  That makes the game more enjoyable for us all in the long run.  I feel it is my job to populate the world, make it live and breath and to make the game feel exciting and real danger is a big part of that.  Fudging for the party to live all the time, no matter what, makes the game boring really quickly ... at least in my experience and opinion. 

The only fantasy game I've had a PC death in was in a Hackmaster game.  I was actually playing a 2 player game.  The DM was running an interesting game, with two evil PCs.  We were really just doing a kick the tires kind of test run on the system before we launched into a full game with a five party group.  We had three months to finish our campaign.  I was playing a grel (Dark Elf) assassin and the other person was playing a dwarf thief.  We both had a few solo adventures to bring us to the point where our characters met. I was playing a cold calculated character, trying to be sort of serious (yes in a Hackmaster game that is pretty funny isn't it ... lol) and he was just playing a chaotic insane character.  Well long story short.  Towards the end of the campaign we were in a town, completing an assassination job.  We just finished offing the deputy mayor (and his poor guards, and probably half of his family ... we were instructed not to be quiet about it and make it look like orcs did it) and had collected our payment.  We ended up down the coast in another larger town with money to burn and no direct business at hand.  So the other player in the game decided to break into a large estate ... because ... why?!? (satisfactory answer never produced, silly me for not riding off into the sunset at that point eh?).

I urged him not to, I threatened him to no avail, even offered a bribe, but he was insistent so in the end I begrudgingly followed and agreed to at most play lookout.  Well he badly botched the "burglary" which turned into a full on robbery (including offing the residents of the home, but not before one of them made it to the street and alerted the town guard).  I was in a nearby tree playing lookout, but of course my companion allowed the one survivor to escape out of the front of the home.  He wasn't supposed to attack anyone, let alone murder them all!

So I cut and ran at that point, but it was too late. The alarm was sounded and I was on a more dangerous street before I knew it and quickly surrounded by amazingly competent, mixed-unit town guards.  One of the guards made me out as a bandit and I was caught.  The other PC was killed outright as he fled.  I tried to talk my way out of it.  I was nearly successful as I had a compelling line.  But the GM gave me minuses due to my carrying a substantial amount of wealth.  My dice abandoned me and I was sent to the block the next morning.  Something of an ignoble end ... but ... the campaign itself was fun.  We never played evil for one thing, so it was novel in that regard.  Also a two player game was strange too.  We got so much done usually.  My fellow player, Jason, was not used to playing an evil character (neither was I honestly) so he just played like a mad man.  It was funny at first, but as the game went on it became annoying honestly.  So when the game was over, I was a little relieved.  But it was the one black mark on my record, and with a character I liked no less! But as they say ... crime doesn't pay ... so there you have it.  My one and only fantasy PC death to date.

I've had a score of non-fantasy PC deaths though.  Many characters downed in Rifts, Shadowrun, Apocalypse World, Gamma World, Deadlands, D20 Modern, hell I even had a PC die in a Dogs in the Vineyard game once.  

First character to reach high level -- D&D 40th anniversary blog post-a-thon

The first character I ever leveled from low level to high level ... 2nd ed. D&D in 2000-02.  Yes we were sort of behind the times, clinging to 2nd ed. right as 3rd was coming out.  No one knew what OSR was back then, but we were practicing our own brand. 

Barak the dwarven cleric was the characters name, a follower of Moradin and a paragon of wisdom and virtue (well at least in the beginning).  It was actually during the second time around with D&D for me.  To explain what that means,  I left D&D in middle school and didn't really come back to it until my mid 20s. My first experience with D&D as an adult was a second edition game.  I had been wargaming with a club in Las Vegas (the Las Vegas Gamers Club, LVGC) for a few years when one day a friend struck up conversation about D&D.  Well several of us were there and before we knew it we were talking about forming up a game.  He offered to run the game for us and next thing we knew ... every Saturday from noon to about 2 AM at my place was devoted to D&D.

My wife frequently worked on the weekends, we had no kids yet and loads of disposable income.  So we were leasing this gorgeous 4,000 square foot house.  I had a titanic game room.  The DM just opened it up to anyone who wanted to play.  So we had and your going to gasp here ... TWELVE ... players for a time and rarely below eight players.  I can tell you as someone who has DM'd games, played in probably something like 50 games now run by dozens of DMs (many at conventions admittedly but still) that I would never play in nor run a game at over six players and six is pushing it.  So how the hell that twelve player game worked I don't know.

The only thing I can say is it was a group of people who felt so nostalgic about the game.  We were all caught up in that so much I think it just was one of those once in a blue moon kind of things.  The rule was no table-talk/meta talk and absolutely no sideline BSing.  We were supposed to keep things in character whenever possible.  We had a 30 minute period for housekeeping stuff with the DM at the beginning of the game and that was it.   The sessions did go long, but for such a big party we seemed to get a lot done.   We faithfully played every week for the better part of two years and I legitimately leveled from one to fourteen with little to no DM fudging on exp, etc.  Our exp was chopped up pretty heavily due to the large party size, yet our large party allowed us to take on some pretty powerful encounters that would have been beyond our level otherwise.  One other player hit 14 but everyone else in the group lost at least one character along the way.

The game itself was fun, a home brew, nothing amazing other than it marked my return along with many others at the table to RPGs so it was very memorable.  The campaign involved us chasing this vile lich and his band of horrors and dark servants.  In the end a terrible spell mishap sent Barak into the deep ether and the DM gave me a choice (via a side bar in another room) ... Barak would die, unless he made a pact with an evil deity Abbathor. 

So over several weeks Barak began to behave strangely.  He had a new amulet (disguised his true alignment) with a strange symbol on it.  I didn't play that up but it was sort of a case of hiding in plain sight.  The party went on for a few months and slowly I was weaving a plan of vile deceit with the DM nudging me along.  I felt bad, but it was hilarious fun as well.  Anyway long story short I staged a coup d'etat in my home hold, seized control from my elder brother had him and my entire family imprisoned as well as the party.  They were all so betrayed and actually angry.  It was a moment of triumph and tragedy.  The campaign went on for a few more weeks after that, they escaped, raised an army and met my forces (who fought along side the lich) and the forces of good barely prevailed.

We all had a blast and vowed to play again, but somehow we never did re-form that group.  We splintered off into other groups over the years and honestly I've lost contact with them all.  I live in a different state, etc.

I'll always remember the game though.  I don't think it was even in my own top ten in terms of quality, but the level of fun and excitement each week makes it as memorable as they come for me anyway.