A Life Full of Adventure

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.

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!

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'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.

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.

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.

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.

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.