A Life Full of Adventure

I think I was "that guy" at the gaming convention. I attacked other characters, the characters of people sitting right across from me playing D&D. I think I may need to apologize. We were playing a 5e adventure called Smash & Grab. We were to enter a complex to retrieve a magical lamp before other parties could find it. Little did we know what this really meant. The characters we were using were C/N, N, L/N. There were no good characters at our table, and there were no evil characters at our table. I had a C/N tiefling warlock. We found out, through the adventure, that there was another party in the complex, less than an hour ahead of us, that was also after the magic lamp. We set our sights on this party and tried hard to catch up with them. We were pretty sure that they not only wanted to get to the lamp before us but they also had retrieved some items along the way that we needed to fulfill our quest. Well, we did catch up to them, and what happened really su...

At SnowCon last weekend, I played four four-hour sessions of D&D 5e. I came away with four completely different experiences. The first game was Death & Taxes , with Edwin Nagy (Lesser Gnome Zach Glazier was also at the convention, but he was wandering around enjoying himself elsewhere in the room). There was a fine balance of exploration and fighting in this session. It was my first 5e session of the con, and I was getting used to playing the edition again. I found my dragonborn cleric rather interesting, and I was also interested in how the other players ran the other characters at the table. We were unable to finish the adventure (it is an entire boxed set), but it got me interested in 5e and interested in maybe purchasing the Death & Taxes boxed set. The second game was called Coming Down the Mountain. We were escorting a caravan through a mountain pass and had to stop for the night in a waystation near the top of the mountain. We were woefully nonproficient and all...

The third (and last) game I ran might have been the most fun of them all.  I ran an amazing game of Dwimmermount set in the Warhammer world.  I set it in the Warhammer world because it's the system I can run with the least effort in preparation. Time is precious these day.  The party was hired as the exploratory group in a large, costly expedition to Lustria. The Lustria setting lent itself to an easy conversion of orcs to lizardmen and kobolds to skinks. The party somehow managed to take the most violent route possible through the first level of the megadungeon. In the end, they confronted the mad dwarf king, his skink minions, and the giant spider. It was the very last hour of the convention, and I didn't know if I had the mental capability of running a mad dwarf king. I seemed to do OK even though the party decided to attack him. The final battle was brutal, but the party survived. I look forward to running a continuation next year with as many repeat playe...

When I ran this game , I felt lucky that only my friends (and only a few of them) signed up to play.  Out of the three games, this is the one I hadn't run before, though I had read through the adventure a few times. My inexperience definitely showed. All in all, I'd say it would make a much better adventure in the midst of a campaign. The PCs could have fought their way there, fought in the battle for the town, and then helped lead the villagers out. It could also use some random events interspersed with the rest of the encounters. It should have taken a lot longer to play through, if I had done it right. My only saving grace in this one was that a PC did get attached to Granny Mosher and was set up for a big surprise at the end.

When I ran this adventure at SnowCon 2014, it ended up pretty much a "march through and overpower everything" adventure. Which is odd, considering I had pregenerated the weakest characters I could find. There was no sneaking. I think they checked for traps once (after the set off a trap in the first cavern). They didn't think outside the "I hit it with my weapon/shoot it with my bow" box. I feel like it need to improve it. Hopefully my step-by-step revision will make it better. Maybe if I give them more of a character dossier than just a character sheet... As an end-note, I do have to admit that this time through saw the most explosions than any other time I've run the game. I've had a mis-throw of a molotov cocktail in the past, but this time saw an exploding warpgun and an exploding barrel of lamp oil.

I realized that the three different adventures I'm running at SnowCon are three different types of games. The first adventure has a specific goal: Stop the bad guy from doing bad stuff. If the party doesn't do that, they have failed.  The second adventure is almost like a story, with the party taking on character roles. There is a goal, but it's not the focus of the adventure. One fight in the beginning, a lot of roleplaying in the middle, an unexpected fight toward the end. The party's goal switches before the end, and survival becomes paramount over making it from point A to point B. The third adventure is exploration. There is no goal. There is no end fight. There is no specific treasure.  I think it would be kind of me to mention these things when we start the game. Imagine the players expecting a big boss at the end of the dungeon crawl and coming away without. They might feel like they lost out. It's good to know these things ahead of time.

The third SnowCon game I'm running is actually Dwimmermount . Last year I ran this using Ambition & Avarice rules. As fun as those rules are, I really needed a game I could just jump into with little prep this year. Warhammer is that game for me, so I'm moving Dwimmermount to the Warhammer world. I've got to set the megadungeon in Lustria to help explain some of the more...technological...aspects. Convention-goers won't care where the dungeon is set; it doesn't really matter in the four-hour scope of the game. For my purposes, though, I need it to make sense. Plus, I want to continue it each year at SnowCon. Here's my game blurb: After years of rumors, the gates of Dwimmermount have opened. Of the first conscripts sent in, only one returned. He was insane, mumbling about ghosts and undead warriors...but he had a map. Now it's your turn to see what the fuss is about. I have all the pregenerated characters made. This group will be starting o...

The second SnowCon game I'm running is the adventure from the back of the second edition player's handbook. It won't take but a few tweaks to convert to first edition. I also have a surprise at the end, so anyone who has read the adventure won't be bored. Here's the blurb I gave my listing: Beastmen approach from the south. The town's patched-up defenses aren't strong enough to hold back this large a warband. The inhabitants must evacuate. The players take the role of protectors, providers, and even investigators as the townfolk seek the safety of Middenheim. What nefarious forces will get in their way? I have yet to make the pregenerated characters, but I know they will be a little tougher than the ones in my first game.

What am I running at SnowCon this year? Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay! (Naturally.) The first game is actually a D&D module that I have adapted and run as a Warhammer module previously at PortCon. I'm altering it again and changing the race of enemy creatures. Here's the blurb I gave my listing: A sickness has come unto the simple mining community of Duvik's Pass, poisoning their wells and blighting their crops. With the pestilence leaving the strongest men of the town's guard a few short days away from death, the burden of descending into the mines and purging the wellspring of whatever Chaos has settled there falls to less obvious heroes. For PC choices I have a Jailer, Rat Catcher, Hunter, Pharmacist, Beggar, and Servant. Luckily, between career skills and starting skills, all the PCs have Immunity to Disease. Still I almost feel pity on this sorry lot. We'll see how they do.

I have been remiss in not alerting you to the upcoming gaming convention. My school semester should be lightening up, and I hope to be more frequent with my postings. For now, if you're in the area, sign up. Come. Play. Have fun. I hope to see you there! Ugg. Why does that look crooked? From the website: The first SnowCon Gaming Convention was held in 2009, motivated by the BangPop! team’s mutual love of games and gaming. With a crowd of nearly 200 in the first year, it seemed that we were on to something. Our focus is on tabletop games of all types: board games, card games, roleplaying games, LARPs, miniatures, demo games, strategy games; as well as a packed game library, vendors, exhibitors, costume contests and more for gamers of all ages and experience levels. SnowCon is held annually at the Black Bear Inn Conference Center & Suites in Orono, Maine, just north of Bangor near the University of Maine.

I picked up a copy of this book while at SnowCon, which is fortuitous because I've been looking for WarHammer adventures to run at PortCon. There are some great adventures inside (6 in all). They range from first-career adventures to end-of-first-career adventures to second-career adventures.  You could conceivably start new characters and run only these adventures for them for many, many months. This is the only problem with using the book for a convention. Some of the adventures could be condensed into four hour time slots, but most of them would suffer from being restricted so. One of the adventures alone promises many sittings worth of adventure. Therefore, while I definitely like my purchase, and I would recommend it to others looking for adventures for their 1e or 2e WarHammer groups, I can't use it the way I would like at PortCon. I'm still looking for suggestions if anyone wants to help me out.

I've been really bad at getting follow-up thoughts on the adventure I ran at the convention last weekend, so I'm just going to post what I have: Ambition & Avarice by Greg Christopher 1) Combat was too easy . This was my fault. I maxed out the PC HPs, but I left the HP of the creatures in the adventure at what they were rolled. We had a 22 HP orc ranger fighting 1 HP recently spawned orcs. To be fair, all the opponents should have been at max HP as well. Now, this isn't to say that people didn't get injured. We did have injuries, and we did need healing. I'll talk about that in the next point. 2) The Cultist changes things . Once the party saw what the Cultist could do, they suddenly wanted to knock their opponents out instead of killing them. We had a hobgoblin player trying to knock orcs out with the flat of his axe blade. A couple other players told me they were specifically trying to hit with the pommels of their swords.These players wanted their oppo...

Last weekend at the local gaming convention I got in on a playtest game of D&D Next. Yes, I've signed up for the official playtest and I get an email every time a new version comes out, so I'm not breaking any rules. I have two main thoughts about the game we played: It was too easy, and it was too hard.  I think one was thanks to D&D Next and one was thanks to the adventure the DM ran. Too easy: I had a cleric of Beory. I always had healing spells available of whatever level I could cast (0-3 for this playtest), and my healing spells did not count toward my limit of max spells. Effectively, I could cast any healing spell from Cure Minor Wounds (1 HP) to Cure Serious Wounds (3d8+13) as often as I wanted. This is too broken. No limit? Or rather, limited only by rounds? I liked it, as I was able to keep everyone else healthy, but it really is broken. Too hard: The first things we fought were ghouls and ghasts. If I had been attacked and failed my paralyze savi...

This morning I'm running a group at the local con (SnowCon) through Dwimmermount using the Ambition & Avarice rules. I'm pretty excited. I have character sheets, Race+Class print-ups, minis, a sheet of Dwimmermount history printed up (with portions of lines whited out) for them to find in the library, and a battle mat. I've got the What the Players Know section printed up, and a selection of the rumors (both true and false) for the group to start with. I almost wish I'd signed up to run it all weekend so I could see how far down the party could get.

I just filled my last gaming slot for SnowCon 2013. I'm in all RPGs; I play plenty of board games the rest of the year. Here's my schedule: Saturday 9:00 - 1:00 Running Dwimmermount using Ambition & Avarice 2:00 - 6:00 Playing Serenity: The Whitefall Tempest 7:00 - 11:00 Playing The Tick: A Filthy Return Sunday 9:00 - 1:00 Playing D&D Next Playtest Adventure 2:00 - 6:00 Playing Advanced Hackmaster I should be a good time, if a bit of a short convention!

We had a fun game on Saturday. The 3 character deaths all came from traps in the Haunted Halls. I'd decrease the power on at least two of the traps if was going to run the adventure for first level characters again. We didn't get a chance to try the combat system as the characters just happened to choose paths no where near any monsters. Even random encounter rolls came up with nothing. Lucky. I'll tweak this a bit before running it at SnowCon . I really want to see a party use the bomb I planted in the pile of metal stuff in the entry room. The weekend convention is over, so it's back to school and studying for me. Therefore I'm already excited for Dwimmermount next weekend. We should be able to finish level 1 in a sitting or two. I hope so, because I want to run a level or two at SnowCon in January. Finally, if I can get DodecaheDRONE in time, I'll run that at SnowCon, too. I want the game designers that are kind enough to interact with me on Google+ to ...

I had previously expressed somewhat of a conundrum I was in regarding which version of WarHammer Fantasy Roleplay to run at the upcoming gaming convention. This question has been resolved by my gaming group, the d5. For my birthday, the group got together, pooled their Wayne-like resources together, and bought me the newest edition of WarHammer. This is the same edition that I ranted about before on here. However, I figured this would give me an honest chance to get to know the game, play it with the group in preparation, and run it at the convention. Then, and only then, should I have an honest opinion of the game itself. I have to this point been running on the opinion that WH3e would be a waste of my time due to the large amount of homemade material I have for WH1e. We shall see. I will be man enough to give an honest report when the time comes.

In case I haven't mentioned it yet, SnowCon is coming up. I'm looking forward to running WarHammer Fantasy Roleplay (WFRP) this year (I signed up to do it at last year's con). However, I do have this one problem. I play the original version of WFRP, or 1e, if you will. Unfortunately, that version is no longer supported. Supplies are hard to find, and when you do find them they are expensive (I'm still looking for the disposable income to purchase the Doomstones campaign from Amazon). If I run 1e and people love it, they would be hard pressed to start playing. If I run 2e, I need to get used to the updated system, and fast. I've read the handbook, decided some things are cool and somethings aren't, and put the book away. Like 1e, it does come with an adventure in the back, so running it might not be that hard. I just have to decide. Also, I've heard tell that 3e is in the works. How long will it be before 2e isn't supported anymore, either? See...

Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending the first gaming convention ever to be held in the area (to the best of my knowledge). It was a great deal of fun. I arrived at 7 AM and got my hand-dandy little name badge and bracelet with my player number on it. Then I promptly sat down to wait for friends to show up, watching the classic Dungeon&Dragons cartoon, stewing because there was a sign indicating we weren't to bring in outside food or drink. I totally should have stopped at the convenience store first . After dawdling a lot, I arrived at my first game, D&D 4e Delve Night. I hadn't played 4e before, and wanted to know how to do it so I'd be comfortable at the 5 hour 4e gaming session I signed up for that night. At Delve Night, I was issued a Wizards of the Coast DCI card, whether I wanted one or not. See: It was a good learning experience, and the DM was very patient. As a matter of fact, our 1 hour time slot ran for 2.5 hours because we were ...