A Life Full of Adventure

I'm taking a day of rest here on the blog. Maybe a few. I would love to answer questions, though, if any readers had some. You can email me at qwertyuppyATgmailDOTcom.

I can't say I've had a character so bad that I would never play them again. That even includes my priestess of Loviatar in an all-evil campaign. I would rejoin any of my characters' stories at any point I could remember leaving off. There is one character I will never get to play again, though. He met his doom in the Haunted Halls of Eveningstar, killed by a doppleganger. The DM pretty much just randomly rolled to see which of us would get killed. At least he let me play the doppleganger through to the end. RIP Kryphon . He was a tortured soul who was heading toward a career as an assassin. The doppleganger probably saved Kryphon a lifetime of pain and sorrow. With this post, I am done with the 30 Day D&D Challenge. I skipped a couple days in the middle, and I'm skipping the last two days. I don't think they are very interesting or evocative subjects. I hope there has been something I've posted within the last month that has been of interest to you.

I have many ideas for characters to play in the future. Pretty much all combinations of races and classes are on the table. The characters I want to play the most, however, are characters I started and didn't get to play enough of. I didn't play them through to a satisfactory end. The one I would like to play right now is Ke'lan, my half-orc specialty priest of Tempus who is trying his hardest to earn a paladinship.  Never give up on your goals.

There are a few items I like to always have in my starting backpack. These include rope, chalk, caltrops (if I can), iron spikes, and a small hammer. The last few times I've played, I haven't used these items as much as I did back in the day. I think we're so focused on battle these days that we don't remember there are many good ways to avoid it. Utility-wise, I don't think you can go wrong with a length of rope...though the weight/encumbrance can sometimes hinder you. Get the strong guy to carry it.

(Yes, I skipped day 23 and 24. I didn't have anything to say about those topics. I did post other stuff on those days, though, so it wasn't a complete washout) I have a couple listings for favorite magic item day. The first magic item that I remember having a lot of fun with was a helmet of ramming. I had a dwarf that wore it and charged everything head-down. He wasn't quite right in the head, to use a phrase. The magic item I've had a lot of fun with as a DM is a magic axe I created called Gorlandor . Unfortunately for Gorlandor's wielder, his conscience has been melded into the axe when he was killed by a Flame Strike. Now the axe goes by either the name Gorlandor or Zorr (the character's name). It now also has the power of a Heat Metal spell if someone other than a worthy dwarf hero (or hero-to-be) picks it up. I should really update Gorlandor's listing.

Common Knowledge About Allyssa Height:  5'6"    Weight:  111    Hair:  Silver    Eyes:  Blue As told by townfolk She is an elf who suddenly came into town and bought the house of the resident Herbalist, who nobody knew wanted to move.  She has an elf apprentice and a human apprentice (Razmar). As told by Razmar, early in his apprenticeship before he started going silent when questioned about her: Alyssa, an attractive Elven female, came to his hometown and hired Razmar (she was looking for "a healthy young lad with potential") as an apprentice. She really didn't seem all too interested in Magick, though, only thinking to teach him anything when he reminded her. She more or less just seemed to have wanted a personal helper, though she taught him things that go just beyond house slave. Allyssa was not too bad to work for (though that opinion may change depending on the work she is having him do). She usually just wanted s...

My PC Mordrin Skorkinson , Giant Slayer. My companions: Udrin Sor-Valdir - High Elf Wizard Apprentice Gustav Jaeger - Human Priest of Verena Ludovic Hasselhoff - Human Entertainer From Mordrin's point of view: ( Previous updates ) The Verenean's know the value of a hero. They put us up in their temple overnight, ousting some of their own to make room. The elf states they are using us to add legitimacy to a political power play. Either way I got a decent meal tonight. We were summoned to the estate of the Markgraf, the Imperial Governor of Helmgart. Apparently word finally got to him that we were back in town. He asked me to serve in the town's rebuilding process. He seems to know the value of good dwarven ingenuity, dwarf craftsmanship, and our ability to keep order. He also desires some stupid ambassador work out of me. I'll pawn that off as soon as possible. The hard physical labor of rebuilding and the cracking of human heads to get people in line...

Dragons are my favorite monster overall. I know the name of the game is Dungeons & Dragons, but players don't get to see many dragons in my game. This is because dragons are extremely deadly in my game. I can appreciate those who use various sizes/ages and colors of dragons that allow their players to often slay them, but I like dragons to be large and menacing. Of course, allowing them to find some smaller dragons and get a little cocky fighting them would be a good ploy... Beat that dragon

Throughout my formative years, I would have answered this question with the Gold Dragon. It was the most powerful dragon in the book. And it was Lawful Good, so it was nice. This means that you can't really use it as an enemy against the good party, but it can be used as a powerful, mysterious NPC. These days my favorite dragon is the Weredragon (Song Dragon from the latest edition(s) ). It's my favorite mostly because I was able to play it once as a PC. From there I created an NPC for my Warhammer game. She has been altering my Warhammer world ever since.

As far as humanoid enemies go, I've always liked Ogres. It may stem from having the insidious ogre toy as a child, even before I played D&D. Ogres are large, strong, and may just eat you. Or they can be mercenary and help you out (as they did in my Warhammer game last week). Either way, they are just human enough to think you can understand and just monster enough to turn on you.

What do you know? Yesterday I ended by saying elementals may be my second favorite type of outsider. I like elementals in that I like the embodiment of different elements into a powerful humanoid force. Each elemental is deadly in its own way. My favorite would probably be an earth elemental. It's going to hurt when that heavy fits hits you!

The Reavers' Trail and The Lonely Tower. The party met the halfling merchant and got very little from him but a copy of his map. They were ambushed by some trolls and were in desperate straights until two ogre mercenaries showed up to help out. This encounter is not in the book, but they needed some battle experience and it sets up the ogre caves later in the campaign. They were welcomed into the gypsy camp and spent a lot of money for a 'free' meal and drink. Also, two of the characters left married after being seduced by the young ladies (and men) of the camp. They can crossed the river and explored the tower, finding more clues of the path the orcs took 100 years ago. It is possible for them to have a Doomstone at the end of the next sitting. Oh, and they killed the mama bear at the tower and added her two cubs to the party. One of the PCs has Animal Training. The party now has 14 members, including the bears. Oh, and the prisoner from Crossing the Border . That...

I have mentioned my favorite immortal under the undead post. Again, forgive me, a poor 2e player, while I go look up outsiders. An outsider is made up of the essence of another plane besides the Prime Material plane. The best of the list I read would be Angel, Balor, or Elemental. My favorite would probably be an angel. Now I need to read stats to see if that is a really lame choice or not. Elementals are cool, too.

I think the most popular vermin would be rats. They seem to be everywhere, especially when you are a beginning adventurer. My favorite animal, however, would be a large cat...probably a panther. R.A. Salvatore got lucky with me when he chose a panther as Drizzt's constant companion. I have always been a lover of big cats. I even helped my friend create a class of were-priests in his homebrew D&D game, making a were-panther. I try to incorporate large cats into my game whenever I can. Cats are smart, however, and aren't likely to attack a wandering group of adventurers. Usually the cats stay in the background. Usually.

I got a fate point from the party's dwarf soldier the first night of the Doomstones campaign. It was due to a particularly powerful tail whip from a beastman which resulted in extra damage. I like to make fate points spectacular, but not over the top. Instead of cutting off the dwarf's head (which was the roll on the critical hit chart), the dwarf ducked and the whip cut off the head of the beastman that was fighting by this one's side against the dwarf. The description of the critical hit had the head roll in a random direction 10 feet away. By actual coincidence, there was another beastman in that location who was running away for reinforcements. I had the rolling head take it out at the back of the knees. The beast fell, striking its head in a sickening, bloody mess and dying. I don't think that's over the top. Over the top would be collapsing the whole cave on the head of all 10 beastmen present and the party surviving, miraculously unhurt. What do you t...

I'm a 2e guy. Gives me a minute; I have to see what aberrations are. I'll be right back. Illithid. Let me tell you why. I don't use psionics in my game. I never have. It just hasn't been a thing that me or anyone else ever chose to pursue. However, if I used Illithids, I would attack your mind. There aren't many ways to defend against that. These creatures would definitely be unique. I could see many great ways to use illusion-like abilities. There are so many possibilities. I should use them in my next game. Too bad there aren't insanity points in D&D.

I can't say that I normally use too many undead outside of the skeletons and zombies written into beginning adventures. I have, however, always been a fan of vampires. Hopefully I didn't lose you there. This love of vampires started a long time ago, before Anne Rice, really, though she helped seal the deal. Among other powers they have, vampires are immortal. As they have to do is be smart enough to not get caught and killed. Sounds like it should be easy. It's really the immortality that attracts me. It's not that I fear death, rather I have found life to be so darned fun . So...vampires. Blood sucking, bat and wolf controlling, hypnotizing, seductive, shape changing vampires. Have I mentioned how much I love dragons? If not, I probably will before the week is out. Anyway, a trilogy I recently read had a vampire dragon. That has got to be one of the coolest creatures ever. If you play a ga,e under me, don't be surprised when the vampire dragon shows up.

I almost forgot. Today is the 5th year anniversary of the gaming blog. A lot has happened in my gaming life in the last 5 years. I am no longer part of the weekly d5 gaming group (all of us but 1 are still around, we just never get together). Instead I have been part of an online biweekly  Warhammer 2e campaign for the better part of a year, and I have recently started a biweekly face-to-face Warhammer 1e group, Acquisitions Unlimited . As far as the blog goes, here are a few stats: 23 Members 387 published posts (plus 6 scheduled and 11 drafts) 64,117 Pageviews I wish I knew how many daily readers/RSS subscribers there were. Here's to another 5 years with much, much gaming throughout!

In the Google+ Dungeons and Dragons 2e community we mixed days up a bit in this 30 day challenge. We answered this question on the 9th. Early on in the thread it became a trip down memory lane on some of our favorite characters from Forgotten Realms novels. I chose Danica from the Cleric Quintet. (A lot of us chose characters from the Quintet.) I have met many NPCs as a player over the years. I haven't created too many NPCs of my own in games that I can remember. I'm going to have to go with the cleric in the Caves of Chaos. He was able to kill two PCs, with the help of his undead. Read about it here .

I've never really thought about this question before. When placing traps in homebrewed games, I just rotate through the ones suggested in the DMG.  I suppose a nice poison dart or crossbow bolt or spear trap would be a good choice. You can always coat those points in anything you want. What I really want, though, is a trap that you don't have to reset. Many traps are one-shots, and I don't have a good reason why they weren't set off by the people who explored previously. Or a good reason why the trap hasn't rotted in time. I'm open for suggestions.

The current roster of the Warhammer adventuring team Acquisitions Unlimited now includes: Nick: Primary: Alban MacDuff, Human Bodyguard of Professor Brumbleburr Secondary: Professor Bartholomew Brumbleburr II, Halfling Archaeologist (Tomb Robber) turned Tunnel Fighter. Mark: Primary: Ryan the Human Entertainer (Knife Thrower) Secondary: Ce'fana the Elf Entertainer (Knife Thrower) Mel: Primary: Meliot Took, Halfling Hypnotist Secondary: Greedo Baker, Human Bounty Hunter Kathy: Primary: Revoltac, Dwarf Soldier Secondary: Gundral Anders, Dwarf Squire NPCs: Primary: Jorge the Human Physician Student Secondary: Boris the Human Wizard Apprentice Now if I could only find some decent pictures for the NPCs...

Good question. I've played in published dungeons, and I've created my own dungeons. I think I'd go with a published dungeon because I haven't really made my own when thinking about proper ecology and sensical trappings. From the two published ones, I mostly remember Undermountain and The Haunted Halls of Eveningstar. The Haunted Halls seem to make more sense, but Undermountain is probably more fun. It's just so much bigger. And we had two parties who played at the same time who entered at different entrances. The game was a blast.

Back when I was playing D&D all the time, there were enough other DMs that I didn't have to run any games. I always stuck to running Warhammer and let the other 4-5 guys run D&D. When I got together later in life with another group, I ran them through the Keep on the Borderlands using 2e. We had a lot of fun, even with character deaths. One character I killed had his soul infused into an axe and it became a magical weapon. Another character got changed into a Juju zombie. Playing with others, and not just running a bunch of GMPCs with my cousin, this would be my favorite adventure that I can remember.

There are some crazy things, with random spells, wands of wonders, decks of many things. Our party experienced more than one of those. One of the craziest things that happened to me was that my 14th level archer was split in two, with each new character at level 7. My character Madai suddenly had a twin named Joe. I got to play the two characters for the rest of the campaign while everyone else had their one high-level character. A crazy thing I witnessed a the table was a dwarf who lost a foot to a critical hit. He picked it up, put it in his backpack, passed whatever toughness test the DM required, and kept on going.

Last Thursday we played the eighteenth sitting of our WarHammer 2e online campaign. My PC Mordrin Skorkinson, Giant Slayer. He is still looking for a giant to slay, as he doesn't feel the last giant was quite giant enough. He has also slain some daemons, though none of note. He has now slain a wyvern, but decided it was too small to count as a dragon. He is the bemoaner of the doom that got away. He is also the grumbler of living in Tibalt's shadow. His chosen weapon is a magical two handed war-hammer taken from a slain priest of Sigmar, its once faded runes now burn bright due to Mordrin's great deeds. So far, it's original name has been lost to time, but Mordrin has taken to calling it Drung Azgul, or Smashing Death. My companions: Tibalt DesRoches - Brettonian Knight changed to Ludovic Hasselhoff - Human Entertainer Udrin Sor-Valdir - High Elf Wizard Apprentice Gustav Jaeger - Human Initiate of Verena (Player absent) From Mordrin's Point of View Fr...

I've always wanted to play an Assassin. They weren't really a thing anymore when our group played 2e S&P. I really like the thought of someone skilled in the silent, unexpected kill. There are a lot of skills and proficiencies needed to pull a character like that off right, rather than just playing a dexterous fighter.  You fight from the front line. I'll slip in through the shadows and slit a throat...or shoot a poison dart from afar. Seems safer that way, anyway.

Intro Mordrin Skorkinson, Giant Slayer. He is still looking for a giant to slay, as he doesn't feel the last giant was quite giant enough. He has also slain some daemons, though none of note. He has now slain a wyvern, but decided it was too small to count as a dragon. He is the bemoaner of the doom that got away. His chosen weapon is a magical two handed war-hammer taken from a slain priest of Sigmar, its once faded runes now burn bright due to Mordrin's great deeds. So far, it's original name has been lost to time, but Mordrin has taken to calling it Drung Azgul, or Smashing Death. The Patch Mordrin followed the rest of the party around as they were led back through the woods to the human town of Holthusen. He occasionally perked up during mention of the battle with the wyvern but only to complain how wimpy the beast was. Talk of the star metal that fell from the sky on the town of Helmgart also caught his attention.  In Holthusen, Mordrin returned to dri...

My favorite character would have to be my half-orc specialty cleric Ke'lan of Tempus. While I had other characters with individual personalities, something about this character's personality took off. He was fearless in battle, always trying to prove himself to Tempus and be made a paladin instead of just a cleric. I have played him, or a version of him, in two different editions and in a Pathfinder one-off at a convention. He is all axe and all bravado, and I miss not playing him.

As I mentioned in Day 1, I'll always be partial to the Mentzer red box. However, I'm going to have to go with 2nd edition (Skills & Powers) as my favorite edition. Understand that I played many hours for many Friday nights for many years, with very fun people, in this edition when it was the newest thing out there. Between all of us, we had all the books (probably a few times over). We had multiple DMs, with at least one person working on something for when the current DM got burned out. We tried many different races and classes at many different levels of play. When you have as many good memories of a time as I have of this, it's a no-brainer which edition you'll choose.

I'm going to have to go with Tempus on this one. This is for one reason: my half-orc cleric of Tempus who achieved Paladin-hood. Normally, for my personality, I'd expect to say Torm the True or Helm the Vigilant (protector) or even Sune who likes to keep people looking good :wink:. However, my experience with my half-orc Ke'lan tips the scales...merely due to the fun I had playing him. As as side note, I love my Faiths & Avatars book.

Favorite set of dice/individual dice I don't ever remember having a favorite set of dice. I do remember my first green 20 sided die (probably a mud die from a box set). It wore more and more as the years went by. I remember finally buying a bunch of matching, translucent, blue 8 siders for casting my clerical healing spells. I have a d20 now called the Garry Kasperov because a friend gave some dice out as prizes and made up a back-story for each die. I carry this die around in my pocket at almost all times.

I'm actually going to have to go with the Forgotten Realms on this one. This choice is as much to do with actual exposure as anything else. I have played for years in the Realms. I have read many many novels and published adventures set in the Realms. I can't say the same for other settings. The published information for the Realms never overwhelmed us. We used what we want and just kind of ignored the rest. We didn't argued with the DM about what we read in a novel compared to how he ran his game. The background information was just that...background. Adventuring in the Realms were good times.

I've always been a cleric kind of guy. I like the idea of a holy warrior. I like aiding my party by healing them. I like the various clerical spells and how they are useful in a different way than the magic user spells. I even chose a cleric when our group ran an all evil alignment campaign.

I have always been partial to elves. They are agile creatures of the forests, inherently magical. All these things attract me about this race. I was raised in the woods, with what I would like to think of as cat-like reflexes. And magic is an integral part of my fantasy roleplay. Though I have had my share of characters from other races, especially human and dwarf, the elves have always been a favorite for me.

How I got started in D&D: I remember my cousins, who lived practically next door, had the AD&D book, but I didn't really get into it at first. Instead, I visited a friend's house and he had the Mentzer Basic red box. I managed to borrow that and never return it. This edition will always hold a special place in my heart as the place I entered the hobby. I followed up with the Expert, Companion, and Immortal boxes. Somehow I never found the Master box.  I ran my cousin through many published adventures from this era. He played one race, and I GMPC'd one character from all the other options. I don't know how much fun he had, but I had a blast. Good memories.