The New Dungeon (2)

I mentioned earlier that my wife and I just bought a new house, and I'm going to have a lot of space for a new D&D playing area down there. The photo here shows the desk I've set up in the laundry room. The previous owners had a stove there, but this is going to be a perfect sculpting and painting station for me. The oven hood with light that was left by the previous owners is going to be excellent lighting for painting. The little cupboard above will be nice for storing materials. On the desk, against the wall, will be my two Reaper wall racks for the master series paints I've got.

To the left, you can see into the room where the game table will be set up. It took some mental gymnastics to figure out the best orientation for the 4x8 table and so forth, but I've got a plan now and it will be glorious.

I've got to get that horrible flowered wallpaper covered. I bought some discontinued rolls of stone-look wallpaper from Lowe's and I'll be putting that up in there. I'll also need to hang some flourescent lights above the table because the room is very dark with the single incandescent bulb in there now.

Inside the room there is a walk-in closet that I painted and hung additional shelves to turn into the storage room for all my miniatures. They are arranged in alphabetical order.

I still have a little more rearranging to do.

Instead of the bookshelf at the end of the hall, I've already hung a 7x3 sheet of peg board to hang unopened miniature blisters.

That will be a far more convenient way to store unpainted metal minis until I can get to painting them than the current system I've been using--giant boxes underfoot on the floor.

It will also make it easier for my players to look at possible PC figures they might want to use. Nobody buys their own minis in my campaign, unfortunately. :)

A new dungeon...

My wife and I just bought a house yesterday. Many things about the house are wonderful, and we will be very happy there. One of the things I'm really pleased about is the huge increase in space, which includes a D&D room that will be amazing.

There will be room for the game table, but there is also a large, narrow walk in closet with two walls full of adjustable shelving. This will be a perfect place to display and store my miniature collection.

Photos to come!

Dwarven Forge!

Well, I finally took the plunge and got some basic Dwarven Forge sets to use as background for my campaign images.

I plan to use the gaming table and wet erase markers for actual play, but the "re-enactment" photos will incorporate the Dwarven Forge pieces. That way, I don't need to have more than the basic sets, as I can use the walls in a variety of configuration with only as much as can be seen in one photo showing.

Here is the first shot, of The Hopeful Seven.

Scribd

Scribd is a new online service that is sort of like the YouTube of documents, or that is what they are being called.

Essentially, you upload a document, like a PDF, and the file sharing service automatically converts it to several different file formats available for download.

I'm dubious about the legality and wary of the potential for copyright infringement, but I have to say that for someone who labors to back-engineer 3rd edition materials to a useful 2nd edition format, the service is a godsend. I hope they don't go all Napster on us geeky D&D file sharers. That would just be embarrassing for everyone. Besides, with 4th edition coming out this year, all these 3E files will be obsolete and unsupported by the parent company anyway.

When I'm doing up a Monstrous Manual page for my 2nd Edition game from 3E materials, it is incredibly time consuming to scan the text from the 3E books and because of the ebmedded graphics, I almost always end up having to just transcribe it myself.

With Scribd, all I have to do is download the Word version of the PDF and the text is ready to be converted to my 2E files. I am sure that at first blush this seems a lot like piracy, but I have purchased nearly every single book in 3E in order to convert the materials to my 2E game, so WOTC isn't losing any money from me by my taking advantage of this service solely as a document converter.

That's my story, anyway, and I'm sticking to it.

My life isn't going to be long enough to actually play all the adventures I have planned for my players, any time I can shave off prep and devote to play, I'm all for, and this is going to save me literally months!

Wow...I almost had a twinge of doubt, but I overcame it--D&D crisis of faith averted, hobby time is never wasted! Never!

Check it out. If you search and find a poster who has a lot of the same kind of files you like, click on their name and you'll probably get a very specific short list, like Wilbur07, who has uploaded a lot of WOTC pdfs.

I'm also actually happy about WOTC going to all online content for DRAGON and Dungeon for the same reason. Much as I miss losing a little more shelf space every month with the print versions, I had the same trouble scanning and converting. Now it is just cut and paste and it couldn't be easier for me...though I have to remember to keep logging on to the website regularly to keep up!

What I've Been Doing Wrong

I made a resolution to re-read my DMG from cover to cover. It has been a very long time, probably 15 years since I did that. When you use a book like this only as a reference to check rules when problems arise, you begin to let some basics drop. You can't quite remember a rule and don't want to break up the flow of play by looking up the specifics when a ruling on the fly will work just as well...then the next time it comes up you remember the rule made on the fly and don't even think to look up the real rule...and that's how different campaigns get different feels...because they start having different rules without you even knowing it.

I've been surprised by some of the things I've been doing "wrong" for years as a result. Most of them my players would never notice. Some of them are actual rule changes I've made as house rules, and some of those with the player's consent.

We haven't been able to play in my world for a long time, too many IRL conflicts, and it looks like the next time we have a chance to play is March 22 or 23. I might actually be able to read the whole DMG and PH by then, in addition to session prep. Hope springs eternal.

Among the things I've been doing wrong, that I've discovered so far, is that I'd been assigning a speed factor of 3 to natural weapons like claws and bites. The DMG says they have no speed factor. A discover that is bad news for the players, but delights me! Of course, there is the optional table that assigns an initiative modifer to natural attacks by size of creature, and I'm contemplating that...tiny is 0, gargantuan is +12 to initiative, which is essentially assigning a speed factor to the entire creature, even though they say that natural attacks have no impact on speed. I think with this table, the segments added to your initiative roll for a medium creature is +6.

I don't think I'll use it, or if I do, I may modify it. My reasoning is, ff people, which are medium sized, don't have a +6 to their initiative roll in addition to the speed factors, then why should creatures with natural weapons? It seems to me it would have been better to have medium creatures be 0 and give incremental bonuses to smaller creatures and penalties to larger creatures, if you do it at all.

In other matters related to speed and combat, I also haven't been using the attack modifiers for magical weapons to also reduce speed factors. A +1 long sword not only hits better, it is faster by one than a normal long sword.

There are other things, and maybe if I sit and read with the lap top fired up, I'll list some more discoveries of fundamental things I've been doing wrong here...if I don't think it is too embarassing to do so!

NPC: Ada Janko

Ada was the apprentice to Alzador in the town of Bug Tussle. She was born in Daggerdale and often visits her brother, Costa, who lives in a house in Dagger Falls. When she first left Daggerdale to go to Bug Tussle to seek to study under Alzador, she foolishly tried to cross the Dagger Hills by herself and was beset by brigands. She surely would have died were it not for the intervention of a gruff and silent dwarf who is very handy with a crossbow. The dwarf has remained her companion ever since, but has never said a word to anyone, anywhere, so far as we know.

She studied for over a year with Alzador and left his tower when her brother fell ill with the Sleeping Sickness in Eleasias, 1368.

In my current campaign, Ada was originally going to be used as a hook to get the PCs to Dagger Falls and into the Doom of Daggerdale module...but it turned out that it wasn't necessary. They were sent there by Shandar as part of the quests undertaken for him. Still, it will be a comfort to the PCs to have a few friends they knew from home in the strange town, so the details of the hook I'd planned on using were left in place...Ada's brother still came down with the sleeping sickness. The Janko house is near the burned Lathanderite temple and so could provide limited background information and a potential haven inside the town. Ada could also provide needed healing for the party if they had to scramble up due to taking a beating from the hook horror or something else equally nasty.

I got this miniature ages ago. She was made by Ral Partha. The No Name Band are a little NPC group that I toyed with using as my own party to play test areas I'd send the regular PCs through or to play on my own using randomly generated dungeons with the random dungeon generation system in the 1E DMG. Never seemed to have time for that though. They've managed to remain useful low level NPCs to have around, though. You don't want high level NPCs like Randal Morn rushing in to save the day all the time. Low level NPCs keep the focus on the heroes.

Origin of the Habit

On eBay I recently saw the exact same set that got me started playing D&D. I'd been buying a few minis here and there, but this was my starter set.

This set came out in 1980, which sounds about right, because I think I first started kicking the D&D tires in 1978 or 79. I still have many of the miniatures that came in the set, but the box and map have long since been lost. I'd even had trouble wracking my brain about what the company and name of the product were. When I was down at ReaperCon, Ed Pugh told me what it was and so I've been searching for a set out of nostalgia...my nostalgia budget this month didn't exceed $70, which was the winning bid range. Maybe later another will come up and I'll be better funded or more lucky.The set came with enough figures for a small party (wizard, dwarf, fighter, halfling thief). It also came with paints, a brush, a d6, a dungeon map, painting guide, and rule book.

The rules were really simple, and characters had only three or four stats to keep track of--everything was on a d6.

Speed
Endurance
Fighting Ability
Spells

My little brother, my friends Matt Clark and Audie McAvoy and I took the basic rule set and created our own complete and detailed rules system. We also took the premise of the map and did it up in 3D with balsa wood walls painted like stone glued to foam core board marked out in two inch squares. We built the dungeon levels to stack down to around third level, and down to the lower levels you walked on 2x4 bridges on saw horses to other levels around my basement...which we'd marked out in 2" squares using yard sticks and permanent markers. (I had a permissive mother)

Our version of the game didn't involve quite so much role playing, it was more board game based, I suppose. Each player had their own party of 5 characters and we all went into the dungeon each week in staggered turns, competing for the treasure to be found there. My little brother had three mounted knights who rode their war horses through the dungeon.

Each week we would rotate DMing duties, so that everyone got a chance to compete. We were very strict about turns--if you went to the bathroom IRL you had to secure a room and if your turn came up and monsters attacked while the player wasn't there, you were presumed to have been surprised and too stunned to react. When we stopped playing, everyone had to teleport out of the dungeon.

Those were wonderful days, and I've still got all of the characters, notebooks and other items we used back then...though the basement flooded while I was at college and the dungeon levels were destroyed. At some point, I hope to use the maps I still have to reconstruct the old dungeon for my current players.

I didn't convert to AD&D Second Edition from my own home brew game system until the 1990's...1991, I think. That conversion was the last one I'll ever do. I'm a 2E holdout for life, now.

Dwarven Forge

I've been doing postings over at The Severed Head Blog of my Player's miniatures as they proceed through the current module, Doom of Daggerdale.

They actually played all this stuff a year ago, but I'm trying to catch up so that I can record their history in real time with images from the digital camera. One of the rooms in the module is an abandoned dwarven forge, and there just isn't a lot in the way of dungeon dressing to equip such a room. I tried all over town to find something, even looked into a dollhouse fireplace and bellows...but nothing. The closest thing was a plastic representation of an outdoor brick grill I saw at a train shop, but the guy told me that it went for huge bucks because it was only made in the 50's and nobody does anything like it anymore...then he told me a million stories about model trains with a Lord of the Rings theme and I barely escaped with my sanity.

I decided that I would have to make my own out of brown stuff, and I got this toy plastic haystack for 99 cents and cut part of the bottom off for a base. Then I used the bottom part of a dice box and an upsided down metal base from Reaper and started adding on bits of brown stuff rock. I used a match to burn out the hole in the side for the fuel, and discovered that brown stuff both melts and burns.

I probably could have done a better job if I weren't in a hectic hurry, but I'm fairly pleased with the results. I stuck a couple of Reaper shields on it to make it more dwarfy, and then let it harden. I snapped the pics for the blog before painting it, figuring that if they bump into the forge again it will look different that way.

At any rate, my dwarven forge!

Campaign Histories

A while back I posted that I had created a unique way to handle hand outs for spell scrolls using Publisher. This program is a quick and easy way to create all sorts of posters, booklets and brochures.

What I did was use a great jpeg of parchment I found on the WTOC website, and then put the spell description over that. When a player finds or buys a scroll, I simply print it out and use a three hole punch to make it possible for the player to "write" it into his "spellbook" by simply slipping the page into a three ring binder.

Back in January I started posting to a blog (Severed Head Blog) my "novelizations" of the player's notes from our campaign. The player's notes are great, but tend to be heavy with game mechanics and light on the role playing. This makes them perfect for prepping for the next session, but less useful for maintaining the feel of actual role playing when trying to catch up on the full arc of the story. The blog is done entirely in character as though written by the main NPC, my "character" of Shandar. These posts include information from the module which the players failed to note but that the characters would have certainly been aware of. It also has photos of the various creatures, NPCs and terrain features which aid in keeping the details fresh no matter how long it has been since the last session. Lastly, I add some dialogue which may or may not have actually been role played by the players. The players are then free to make comments in character disputing anything Shandar has written about them, and making corrections where they feel that Shandar has been inaccurate or taken too many liberties in describing what their characters have done.

One of the flaws in blogger is that posts are done in reverse order chronologically, with the most recent first. I've had players request a way to sort the posts in the chronology of the story line and there just isn't any way to do that. As a result, I've decided to use Publisher to create a chronology using the same style as that used for the spell books. This can then be rendered as a PDF and distributed to the characters via the Yahoo message board for the campaign. If they wish, they can print it out and then can use it as a reference during the campaign. These PDFs will be annotated with maps and other useful info from the module and updated after each major section of the campaign.

Here is the image I'll use for the cover:
I don't remember where I found the image, I think I simply did a google search for book or maybe spell book. If the image is under copyright and you are the owner, please leave a comment saying so and I will remove the image or give credit accordingly. No copyright or trademark infringement is intended.



Here is the image of the parchment paper:
This image was on the free downloads page at Wizards of the Coast. You could probably find other images of parchment paper on the internet which are just as good or better.

Pardon Our Dust...excavation in progress...

Well, at long last, most of the rest of the house is in pretty good shape and once I get the lawn mowed, nearly all of the things which have had to take priority over cleaning up the D&D room will be finished.

I think I can get the game room ready for a session by the end of the week, but that will put us in the target range for the much needed summer vacation. The good news is that I can't mess up the place while on vacation, so I think we can finally play again around the last weekend of August.

No promises, mind you, but that's the target.

That's the target.

Still sick as a dog, but....

Well, predictions of my rising from the dead may have been exaggerated, as I've been unable to get out of bed since Saturday until this morning. I got a call from the glass shop and put out an emergency call to my friend with a truck, and told him that my 4x8 sheet of clear plexiglas came in.

We went and picked it up and now its on top of my battlemat and game table in the basement. It is really perfect, because there is no way for the vis a vis markers to stain the battlemat now.

Neato.

With luck, the phlegm and mucous will eventually depart from my body without an exorcism. Anybody got a spare cure disease spell on them?

An Excellent Session

Well, it was strange to be playing again after so many months off. But we managed to get back in the swing of things pretty quickly. One of my players recently picked up a nearly complete collection of 2nd Edition books from a guy who was selling it on eBay. He's started his own campaign in addition to playing in ours.

The disease is spreading. :)

Thanks, players, for making the trip down and for making the session so enjoyable--even if the thief did succumb to drow sleeping poison in the first 5 minutes and spent the entire rest of the session sawing logs while all around him was death and mayhem.

I've really begun in earnest to keep a readable chronology with notations and illustrations of the current campaign over at the Severed Head Blog.

If you're interested, now would be a good time to start reading, because I've just gotten finished with the posts dealing with background and the first two mini-adventures.

Feel free to post comments and questions over there. One of the really fun things for me is interweaving information, characters and history from the campaign I ran in High School into the campaign I'm running now. All the characters from The Hopeful Seven were the ones I ran back then as a player. Some of the things those old duffers set in motion are going to have profound implications for "the next generation".

Who knows? The old Dungeon of Doom might even turn up, restocked and more dangerous than it was in the 80's.

Session tomorrow...first since JANUARY???

Wow, time really flies when you're too busy to do any dungeoun delving. My players and I have arranged a session for tomorrow, and in prepping to post the notes our scribe informed us that the last session was in January. Makes you weep, really. I really miss the old days when we started playing at 6:00 every Friday and didn't stop untill we couldn't keep our eyes open, sometime Saturday moring.

Of course, I was in high school in the good old days and didn't have a job, but what difference should 30 years and a salary make?

Anyway, I'm in full out prep mode, trying to get my entire brain back in the DM saddle. The basement is clean, the monsters alphabetized, and I'm re-reading the module. I've got to sort through old notes and post a compiled synopsis to the Severed Head blog, update timelines, and pre-generate some of the random encounters to save some time.

Exciting.

Lazarus Rising

Since I got back from Reapercon, I've been down with a horrible sinus infection. I went in to the doctor on Friday with a mild cough that I wanted to make sure didn't progress to pneumonia or bronchitis...having been down that road before, I thought an ounce of prevention and all that.

He told me the cough was from irritation due to draining sinuses, and that I was more congested than he'd seen in a long time. He put me on Musinex and antibiotics and a prescription cough syrup and immediately upon taking these medications, my mild but irritating cough turned into me being sicker than I've been since the pneumonia incident.

Today is the first day (after a night spent in fervent prayer for release from this trial) that I feel about as well as I did when I went into the doctor's. Maybe a little better.

I've asked my players if they want to get together this Saturday for a session, since due to my schedule I may not be able to play again until end of July. The break in the sinus dam couldn't have happened any sooner, because if they say yes it will mean massive cleaning of the dungeon room and prepping (since they left the module when last we played).

As part of that, I've set my figure photography studio back and up and am doing inventory in my Monstrous Manuals as I go. I also went out and bought a cheap ($20) bookshelf yesterday and shifted my book and box set collection to it, opening up several more shelves for miniatures. I'll need it when the Reaper minis I've put on my wish list and the new Night Below set come.

I also shifted all the dwarves, elves, gnomes, halflings, and half-orcs from their spaces in among the "monsters" to the shelf dedicated to potential minis for PCs. This also opened up a lot of room.

Anyway...feeling better, and looking forward to playing again...someday.

The Company of the Severed Head

I've finally gotten around to starting the blog which will be the chronicle of my current player's adventures in my realms in short story form.

We have a Yahoo Group for limited role playing between sessions, and hammering out the details of play times, mechanics, and other issues.

Our primary scribe also posts his session notes there, along with additional notes from the other players.

I will be compiling those combined notes and putting them down in a narrative using my primary NPC voice, that of Shandar the Ashen One.

You can find those posts here:

The Company of the Severed Head.

All posts there will be in character, though comments need not necessarily be. Nothing will be posted there that is DM only information, though this blog might frequently present information on monsters and other items which the player characters would not be aware of.

So, if you are reading there and are familiar with the modules through which the players are adventuring, please don't give spoilers in your comments or questions. It might be better to ask a question on this blog about an inconsistent date, mechanics, or problems with continuity of canon between my realms and the official Realms rather than over where my players will be reading about themselves.

I hope you enjoy their travels as much as I am.

I'm Thankful for the D&D Room

While my wife and I were cleaning in preparation for the guests coming over for Thanksgiving, we found the small digital camera we bought last year. It won't work for photographing miniatures because it can't focus on things that small, but it works great for general purposes. I've posted often about my basement D&D room, but rather than describe it I thought I'd take a few pictures and share what it actually looks like. You can click on the images to see larger versions.

This is a wide shot. I built that table like a theatre platform, with a 4x8 sheet of plywood reinforced with 1x6 boards on three sides, a 1x12 on the DM's end, 2x4 center strut, and legged with 4x4's. There is a 1x8 shelf on the long sides of the platform so players can have a place to write notes, keep miniatures, etc. outside the view of other players. The entire top is covered in a 4x8 vinyl Battle Mat marked off in 1" squares. Vis a Vis markers tend to stain the mat if you don't wipe them off within an hour or so--especially the blue and the red markers--so I'm hoping to eventually cover the mat with a clear plexiglas sheet.

Surrounding the table are the shelves for my miniatures and books.On the table are a some dugeon tile catacomb geomorphs I made around 15 years ago from cardboard inserts meant to seperate 8.5 x 11 sheets of scannable computer forms at the place I worked in Iowa City. These were marked off in a grid of 1" squares and then the cavern areas marked off and colored in with black Sharpie. The coffe can lights I made myself, along with the lightboard dimmer thing you see at the far corner. I took an old wooden lecturn and cut out slots for 6 rheostat dimmers and a master on/off switch. I don't do as much seat of the pants theatre as I used to, so the extra lighting comes in very handy down in the basement. On the top shelf you can see the Sophie Christmas Card I got from Reaper last year, signed by all the staff!

This is a better shot from the player's perspective of the game table. Standing up at the DM's end is a clear plastic thing for signs you can buy at any office supply store. I'm using it to hold up the Tables of Terror sheet from the 2E Ravenloft box set with all the Fear and Horror check tables. I use these in my world to make things a little more interesting without having to send the party to the Demiplane of Dread.

This is a shot from the other player's side. This gives a better view of the geomorphs and the bookshelf I got to put up most of the books I had as well as the new additions I got from my friend in Iowa City I told you about last month. On that shelf are all the books relevant to players most of my modules and box sets, and the cardboard geomorphs. I don't use the cardboard ones very much, but they photograph better than the revised version of them I made later. For those I took stiff construction paper and had catacombs on one side with sidewalk and building interiors on the other which were then laminated. I'll post some of these next week maybe. For now, let's continue the tour of the D&D room.

This is the Dungeon Master's Command Center. The 1x12 facing means my shelf is lower than that of the player's on the sides so that I can put my lap top on it at a comfortable height for typing and the screen almost below the level of the table allowing a clear view of all the table top action. To the right you can see hanging on hooks the Games Workshop area effect templates for breath weapon and blast radius. You can also see my cup warmer. The cup warmer is one of the best Christmas presents I ever got, it is over a decade old and probably a fire hazard, but I consider it as essential a device as a pace maker. The swivel chair lets me spin around easily for 360 degree access to the scanner/printer, DM console, filing cabinet, book shelves, and all the monster miniatures on three sides. In the filing cabinet (thank you Brad, I'm still using it!) I've got all the DM related books I need and my back issues of Dungeon and Dragon magazines. In the top drawer are files realting to world building and dungeon creation. 2nd Drawer are the laminated geomorphs I told you about. Bottom drawer are the loose leaf compendium sheets of monsters I've already scanned and entered into my Publisher 2000 Monstrous Manuals.

In this photo you can see the inside of the lecturn I turned into an ersatz mobile theatre dimmer board. It has very handy shelves for storing all my monster manual books. That thing with the magnifying glass is the light my wife bought me for my birthday last June for scuplting and painting miniatures. The clamp broke the first day, but I drilled a hole in the corner of the D&D table and dropped the light into it and it works great. When I'm not running a session all the DM console stuff is easily removed and this is a perfect work area for painting and sculpting.

On my left at the station I keep a music stand with an easleback ring binder. Inside the binder I've got xeroxed a collection of the most important tables from the DMG for very fast reference. It also has tables from earlier editions of the DMG, PHB editions, the revised regular D&D hardcover book that came out in the late 80's because I like the checklists it used for game day, game turn, encounters and combat sequence. It also has the tables for calculating experience points and random results tables for lots of different things from lots of different sources. Behind it you can see more monsters on shelves and the giant wall map of the Forgotten Realms I've cobbled together from all of the FR boxed sets.

Here is a close up of the DM console. On the left is the famous coffee warmer--I'm left handed. On the table top I've got in black Sharpie 1-10 numbered in squares and then 11-20. Standing there is a miniature of the White Queen from Marvel Heroclix mounted with Super Glue on a penny. She functions as my segment counter in melee. On the foldable book holder is an enlarged xerox of the time track table from the hardcover D&D book (this was different from AD&D 2nd Edition and was the main book for use in the Mystara Campaign Setting). I took the xerox and had it laminated in very stiff plastic. This is an extremely useful tool. Before I had a lap top to keep track of everything, I would flip this over and use Vis a Vis markers to keep track of the hit points and damage of monsters encountered by the PCs. You can see on the laptop that I use the wonderful Core Rules and Core Rules Expansion programs made by TSR. I love having a computer to use as a DM. Everything is so much easier. And, because I have a wireless connection in the basement, if I don't have the information handy, it takes no time at all to search the internet to come up with the needed info.

On my right hand side is the DM screen from the 2E Planescape Campaign Setting. You can also see my dice box--I prefer black dice--calculator and the really cool random generator dice I got somewhere. These include dice that will tell you what the dungeon features are, where a monster is encountered, where a hit was taken, level of foe, foe reaction, size of encountered creature, alignment, character class, and race. There is also a nifty "Death Die" which has normal dice pips, but the number 1 is replaced by a death's head. I also have a six-sided die I've converted to a three sided by changing the 4, 5, and 6 to 1, 2, and 3. Easier than dividing. I also like my wireless mouse and gel filled wrist rest mousepad.

This is a better shot of the books I was talking about that combine my previous collection with the ones I got from my friend in Iowa City in October. The other shelf on wall brackets is where my players store their character sheets and other info in ring binders. I also keep plenty of spray on glass cleaner and paper towels for wiping off the wet erase markers from the battle mat. It is also a good idea to keep a box of tissue handy. Around the corner is a large table where we can put snacks and where I also keep all my paints and terrain making materials. Terrain is a whole 'nother post for a later date. This one is taking up enough of your time already!


And, of course, there are the minis. This bookshelf has all the minis which might be used by my players as characters. They are arranged by character class, with each character class divided by male and female. We start with Female Fighters, then Male Fighters, and go through the various classes as arranged in the 2E PHB. There are some non-standard classes for my world, however, including the broad category of Martial Artist, psionicist, witch, shaman/occultist, pirate, hireling, and mutant. All are human, however, with the possible exception of the mutants. The possible minis for use by players if they want to play demi-humans are on the shelves with the other creatures and monsters, all arranged alphabetically as they are in the Monstrous Manual I'm creating in Publisher.

Individual minis are pretty hard to see in these images, but on the top shelf are figures of Forgotten Realms personalities, most of which were from the offical AD&D series by Ral Partha, but there are a lot of minis by other companies which come close to the descriptions in the FR materials if there is no "official" mini for that character, and the WOTC official minis are growing in number. On the second shelf are figures of personalities unique to my world. For some reason there are a lot of DC comic book characters in my world. I don't know if my PCs will enounter many of them, but I like knowing they are there. The third shelf is currently empty, but only so that there is room to expand as the number of monster minis grows. On the bottom shelf the monsters begin, all alphabetized, starting with the aarakocra. (For that monster I use a really good Reaper Miniature that I think is called "Bird Man") Tucked against the next set of shelves on the right of this image you can see a small gray organizer with pull out drawers. This is where I keep all of my dungeon dressing items. Having the organizer makes finding and putting out on just the right items or artifacts easy as pie. Mmmmm, pie...how much longer till Thanksgiving Dinner????

And here are the rest of the monsters, ending with Zombie Wolves. I'm very thankful that I've been enjoying this hobby since the mid-1970's. I'm very thankful that my little brother read The Hobbit and that his excitement over Tolkein led him to get our mom to make him a Legolas outfit and to take him to a hobby store in Davenport to get lead miniatures of characters from The Lord of the Rings books. I'm thankful I went with him, along with my friend Matt Clark. I'm thankful I got hooked and that playing D&D was one of the things my brother and my friends and I could all do together that didn't involve surgically removing BBs from leg wounds, bloody noses, black eyes, or accidental stabbings with kitchen knives.

I'm thankful that I was able to keep involved in the hobby and for all the friends I've been able to enjoy playing with over these past 30 years or so. I'm thankful my wife doesn't mind the hobby (too much) and has actually enjoyed playing it herself. I'm thankful Matt figured out how to actually make a pretty good living in the miniature business and that we have reconnected since the 25th High School reunion (and not just because he keeps sending me big boxes of Reaper Miniatures), and I'm also thankful for a whole lot of non-D&D related stuff but that wouldn't be appropriate for this blog.

Enjoy your own Thanksgiving, thank whoever deserves thanks--from Higher Powers to little brothers--and I want to thank you for giving me this opportunity to share my D&D room with you.

Maybe one of these days I'll share the life size Uboat playset I'm building in another room of the basement. Did I mention my wife is very supportive and how grateful I am for that???

Fighting Evil Can Be Complicated

You Failed Your Saving Throw
by Todd Wm. Ristau

(Lights up on PRIEST, WIZARD, and THIEF seated at a long table. On the table are dice and some lead miniature figures. At the head of the table sits DUNGEON MASTER, behind a Dungeon Master's screen.)

PRIEST: What does it look like?

DUNGEON MASTER: It is a gold amulet.

PRIEST: There's no design on it or anything?

DUNGEON MASTER: Nope.

WIZARD: No design. That could be significant.

PRIEST: Like how?

WIZARD: Or, it could mean nothing.

(PRIEST stands there indecisively for a long beat.)

THIEF: Shouldn't there be some kind of timer between moves, like in Scrabble?

DUNGEON MASTER: It's not really a turn based game like that.

WIZARD: Does Scrabble have a timer? I think that's Yahtzee.

THIEF: DO SOMETHING!

PRIEST: OK, OK....I touch it.

DUNGEON MASTER: The amulet immediately transforms into the Holy Symbol of your diety.

WIZARD: Ah, that is significant.

PRIEST: Ok. Shit. What do I do?

WIZARD: Well, ordinarily I wouldn't trust something that makes itself look more attractive to me when I touch it.

THIEF: What would happen if I touch it?

PRIEST: It's MY holy symbol, nobody touches it but ME.

THIEF: I want to do something.

DUNGEON MASTER: You just helped wipe out a whole cave full of goblins.

THIEF: I want to do something now.

PRIEST: Why would goblins have a holy symbol of my god?

WIZARD: Maybe they ate the priest who wore it here.

DUNGEON MASTER: What are you doing?

PRIEST: I'm putting it on.

DUNGEON MASTER: Ok, it starts choking you.

PRIEST: What???

WIZARD: We probably should have identified it first.

PRIEST: You can do that???

WIZARD: Sure. I'm a magic-user.

DUNGEON MASTER: (rolls dice) You take another 4 points of choking damage.

PRIEST: Shit!!! Get it off me!

DUNGEON MASTER: Technically you can't say that, you're choking.

(PRIEST mimes choking and with red face and sputters indicates he wants something cut off his neck.)

WIZARD: I look through my spell book for an appropriate action.

THIEF: I take out my serrated dirk and start to saw off his head.

(PRIEST backs away and, still miming his being choked by an invisible amulet, glares angrily at THIEF.)

THIEF: What? I want to do something.

DUNGEON MASTER: (rolls dice) You take another 4 points of choking damage.

PRIEST: Gmbdt ibt duff fuhhhck offfdddt mmmmeeeee!

WIZARD: I'm going to identify it now.

PRIEST: Gmbdt ibt duff fuhhhck offfdddt mmmmeeeee!

DUNGEON MASTER: The gnome identifies the the obect choking the priest as an Amulet of Holy Might currently attuned to the diety Tyr, God of Justice in the Forgotten Realms.

PRIEST: (no longer choking) Then why the fuck is it choking me?

DUNGEON MASTER: You can't ask that, you're choking. (rolls dice) Another 2 points, by the way.

PRIEST: I'm asking you, not my character.

WIZARD: You must have had an alignment shift or something.

PRIEST: I'm evil now?

THIEF: I WANT TO DO SOMETHING!

WIZARD: Loot the bodies of the goblins.

THIEF: I did that already.

PRIEST: Why am I evil?

DUNGEON MASTER: Why do you think you're evil?

PRIEST: This isn't therapy, its a god damned game.

WIZARD: Maybe you're evil because you use profanity. God's don't like that.

PRIEST: I'm using profanity because there's no way in hell my goddam character turned evil. I was good this morning, Mighty Tyr granted me my prayers, didn't he?

WIZARD: That's right, your priest spells were instrumental in allowing us to surprise the goblins and wipe them out.

THIEF: I try to rob the priest while he's chocking.

DUNGEON MASTER: OK, but you'll have to take a penalty, because he's thrashing while he chokes.

THIEF: I'll just wait, how close is he to dead?

PRIEST: (making the time out sign) Pause! How am I evil?

DUNGEON MASTER: (with great patience) You're evil because you used your power to sneak up on this goblin tribe and wipe them out without provocation or allowing them the chance to defend themselves.

WIZARD: Did my fireballs at the goblin children change my alignment?

DUNGEON MASTER: You were already evil...Which was also a strike against the priest, because his Lawful Good diety didn't like his associating with evil characters.

PRIEST: I don't fucking believe this.

DUNGEON MASTER: Oh, that reminds me, your prayers won't be answered until you atone...

WIZARD: He could pray to an evil god.

THIEF: Who can I pray to for something to do????

DUNGEON MASTER: (rolls the dice) 3 more points of choking damage.

PRIEST: No! Goblins are evil creatures. They are inherently evil, they live in evil little caves and they do evil little things and the Forgotten Realms is better off whenever an evil creature gets destroyed so that it can no longer do any evil!

DUNGEON MASTER: So, you agree the world is going to be better off when you choke to death?

WIZARD: That's right, the amulet agrees with you, so it is eliminating evil by destroying you.

PRIEST: If the amulet agrees with me, then it shouldn't be punishing me.

WIZARD: Wow. Good point.

DUNGEON MASTER: It doesn't matter if the amulet agrees with you, it matters if your God agrees with you.

PRIEST: I killed these goblins in the name of my god!

DUNGEON MASTER: But Tyr didn't like that.

PRIEST: Says who?

DUNGEON MASTER: Says me.

PRIEST: You aren't the god of me.

DUNGEON MASTER: (rolls dice) 4 more points of choking damage.

PRIEST: No!!!

DUNGEON MASTER: You have two choices. You can atone or convert to an evil religion.

WIZARD: If he doesn't die.

PRIEST: This sucks. I thought I was doing the right thing. That should count for something. Why should I give the goblins a chance? They're EVIL for fuck's sake. They wouldn't have given me a chance, they'd have snuck up on us and slit our throats if they could.

DUNGEON MASTER: Right, because they are evil. That would be an evil thing to do.

WIZARD: Technically...Yes. Smart, but probably evil.

PRIEST: Isn't it good to protect the party, the villages, the other good creatures of the world by eliminating the threat of evil whereever you find it?

DUNGEON MASTER: Is it worth becoming evil yourself in the process?

WIZARD: Who Watches the Watchmen...

DUNGEON MASTER: Exactly.

THIEF: (brightly) Do we still have the prisoner?

DUNGEON MASTER: The one who told you where the goblin cave was?

THIEF: (sarcastic) Do we have more than one prisoner?

DUNGEON MASTER: No.

THIEF: Then, that one.

DUNGEON MASTER: You still have the prisoner.

THIEF: I start to torture it.

PRIEST: Why are you torturing it?

THIEF: Because I'm BORED!

PRIEST: (shocked) But...that's evil!

THIEF: (mocking him) Why is it evil to torture an evil creature? It'd torture me if the situation were reversed.

WIZARD: Uh-huh. And then it would eat you.

THIEF: Besides, I'm already evil anyway. I should do some evil stuff, or I'll turn good.

PRIEST: (sputtering) You're evil too? Everybody I was with was evil but me?

WIZARD: (cheerfully) But now we have achieved balance and party unity, because you're evil too!

DUNGEON MASTER: (rolling dice) No, now he's dead.

(Everyone looks at DUNGEON MASTER, lights fade to black.)

NOTE: This scene was loosely based on events which actually occured in a session in the last adventure our group played. If you you see an analogy to the invasion of Iraq here, that's because it is intentional. I remember back in 1990 I was working with a guy who was a very devout Born Again and an equally devout Catholic in Iowa City. Both were very intrigued by my working on D&D stuff during our breaks. The Catholic with a kind of academic interest and the Born Again very worried about my soul. Both came away feeling better about the game once they knew more about it and that I often used the game to create interesting ethical dilemmas for my players to work through which might then help them to more clearly define their own individual personal beliefs in real life. The Born Again told me he'd be interested in talking to me further about developing a Christian role playing game which would do the same thing...the project ended, however, before we could get any further than just discussing it on our breaks.

The above piece was performed on Jan 13th at No Shame Theatre in Roanoke, as part of Mill Mountain Theatre's Underground Roanoke late night series, and will be again this coming Tuestday at the Upper Valley Writer's Show in Staunton. All the T-Shirts, Baseball Caps, Miniatures, Tote Bags, etc were provided by REAPER MINIATURES...and we think you ought to go to their website and buy a whole bunch of their stuff.

Welcome to the last outpost of a 2nd Edition hold out

A long time ago, in the late 1970's, my little brother (Scott C. Ristau, the author of Death Brand)had started reading The Hobbit, and I made fun of him mercilessly over his growing fascination with elves and something called "Gollum." He had our Mom make him a Legolas costume and I kidded that he was the fairy version of Robin Hood.

Then he heard that there were little lead figures being made in the images of all his favorite characters from the book. Assuming there would be rich fodder for more riducule of my younger sibling, I went along with Mom to the Hobby store, and took my friend Matt Clark with me.

The hobby shop was a tiny hole in the wall on Brady Street in Davenport, Iowa. It was crammed to the rafters with the most amazing array of lead soldiers and a new line of fantasy figures. Far from torturing my brother with teasing...Matt and I got hooked.

I purchased a little set, I think possibly made by Grenedier, which had a tiny little chutes and ladders style cardboard map (great grand-daddy of the 3rd edition dungeon tiles for miniatures) that led from one side to the other. It also came with a figure for a fighter, a magic user, and a hobbit theif as well as a few monsters. There was a paint brush, a strip of small connected paints like you got with paint by numbers sets, and one six sided die.

The game system was not D&D basic set, or 1st edition. This was the ancient days before international standardization. There were only three stats, Speed, Endurance, and Fighting Ability.

I was totally hooked by my little game, but the tiny game board was far too limiting. Before very long I was building a massive 3D dungeon out of balsa wood and coreboard several levels deep. We had 4x8 sheets of plywood all gridded out in 2x2 inch squares for outdoor battles, and we were making up ever more elaborate rules and stats for our game we were inventing. We called it Dungeons and Dragons, but we never bought an official rule book or an offical TSR module. We invented the game as we went along, and it was absolutely amazing.

Each of us had a party composed of 5 characters, and we all competed with each other to loot our dungeon, the DM managing up to 4 parties running in the dungeon simultaneously. We'd invented notebooks full of spells, items, and character histories. Each week we'd rotate who was the DM, and since nearly all of the dungeon's treasures and encounters were randomly generated from the tables we'd created, that didn't matter much, the DM was more of a referee than an opponent whose team was the monsters.

My brother, Scott, had a main character named Morgan who was a paladin who actually rode his warhorse through the dungeon with his knight companions. Matt Clark played, and so did Joe Fick and Audie McAvoy. We'd play every Friday night.

Each Friday had the same routine, we'd start by buying large amounts of Doritos and Moutain Dew, drop the supplies off at my house where we'd pretty much taken over the entire basement for gaming purposes--levels spead out from one side of the house to the other--and then we'd go to Godfather's Pizza to eat a large combo and flirt with the waitresses, play a few games of Pac Man, and then head home to play until we collapsed from exhaustion sometime on Saturday. When we woke up we'd all head to Davenport to buy new figures, come home and paint a few and then confirm plans to meet the following week.

After a year or so of college, though, playing became harder and eventually stopped. I kept all my figures, which by that point had become quite a collection. So did Matt. He actually works for Reaper Miniatures now, and rues the day that he sold me a huge slice of his figure collection when I started playing again in Iowa City in the early 90's.

I'd found some people (who probably would rather not have their names published due to a deep devotion to privacy) who were far more than casually avid players of the official AD&D game. They, like many of those hard core pencil and paper players, disdained my enthusiasm for all things miniature but wanted to encourage my support of their hobby. They agreed to try thier hand at playing in my world.

I had a hard time convincing them to learn my self-created game system, but they honestly did give it a go. In the end, however, they convinced me to try learing official D&D so that I could objectively decide which was better.

I have never lost my love for the simplicity of my own created game, however there was no denying that having access to all the official products was a benefit almost as important as having players who fully understood the game they were playing and who didn't constantly compare what I'd invented to something else.

I purchased the Forgotten Realms campaign setting and from that day to this I have run a second edition FR campaign.

The purpose of this blog is to discuss not only my campaign, but also any issues related to 2nd Edition and the vast field of collecting miniatures.

I hope you will enjoy my musings, offer some of your own, and in the comments section discuss 2nd edition rules and errata in this archaic form of gameplay.

We can talk about pretty much anything we want, so long as the discussion is civil.

The one thread I won't tolerate is anything trying to convince me to convert to 3rd Edition or higher. I've made the transition from one gaming system to another once in my life, and I'm too old to do it again. Don't try, or I'll delete your comments.

Dungeons have their master, and blogs have their owners, and here...I am both.

Ejoy, and let the quest for the survival of 2nd Edition begin!