You want to end… D&D? White Wolf's ready…
I’m not dead… I’ve hit one of those deadly pockets of ‘work’ that drain all energy and creativity from your being. Plus my Friday game is not yet ready.
If I finish early tonight, I’ll put up a short ‘ending your campaign’ post with tips.
In the meantime, here’s something interesting that Tommi sent me.
As he says, it’s either a Marketing stroke of Genius or one of the most opportunistic/desperate grasp at market shares I’ve seen in a while.
It’s probably both as Graham surmises on Gtalk…
The bottom line is: Trade in your PHB 3.5 to get a Free Exalted 2e book.
How many are up to it? I’d be tempted just to have a look at that game…
X Marks the Spot
My wife and I went out to a bar in downtown Baltimore on Saturday night, with all of the typical inner city driving escapades that we love so much. What we didn’t expect, however, was what happened as we walked to our car. We decided to walk up a car-only entrance ramp as it appeared to be the only way into the garage from the side we were on, which thanks to some ominous car sounds from above caused Becky to comment, “Never have I felt more like I’m inside of Half-Life.” Once we finally made it into the actual garage, we noticed a tall man dressed like a security guard walking towards us. We both immediately thought we would somehow get yelled at for walking up a car ramp with minimal side areas to walk on.
Security Guard: Sorry to bother you, but do you play Scrabble?
Me: Umm, excuse me?
Security Guard: The board game, Scrabble, do you know the rules?
Me: Yea…
He led us over to a small security room where another man sat behind a desk with windows looking out into the garage behind him.
Security: Okay, now we have our judge. (to me) Can you play a game of Scrabble without the ‘X’? Is it important?
Desk Guy: Wait wait wait, let me tell you the story. [Read the rest of this article]
Adventure Prep: Planning Ahead for the End
This series covers the thoughts that go behind my Adventure Preps. I don’t go into details as my players read this blog, but I try to showcase the key challenges and choices I face every time I sit down in the days before we play.
Game week again!
For those who don’t know, our group usually manage to play every 2 weeks (with a few canceled games). Our ‘season’ usually spans from the end of August to mid-December, where we break for the holidays. Then it starts again in early January to peter out somewhere in May as everyone’s thoughts turn to vacations.
During summer months we usually get together once or twice to play a one-shot or micro-campaign.
We’ve adopted this formula ever since I moved back to Montreal in August of 1999. This make us going through our 9th RPG Season. Two of them were a Gurps Fantasy Campaign and the rest was D&D 3.0/3.5. In that time frame we played 4 full ‘in season’ campaigns and one aborted summer one.
Why am I telling you all that? Well, one of the common things in all these campaigns apart from the second D&D campaign, which we managed to ‘finish’ by revisiting it after an 18 months hiatus, were canceled mid-season (much like any Geeky show with potential on Fox) usually because of waning interest or when we got our hands on radically different source books we wanted to try.
With the advent of D&D 4e and it’s apparent compatibility with our group’s tastes in gaming (i.e. Trope-driven Action Fantasy Roleplaying), its a given that our current campaign is going to hit the curb by the June.
But here’s the key difference from all my other campaigns: since it’s death is announced, a mere 6 sessions from now, I can start planning for an honest to goodness end for a change.
So for this week’s adventure prep, I’m not just focusing on the next game’s scenes, but I’m actually trying to bring the campaign to a satisfying conclusions for all of us.
As you may know, I’m still playing an adventure that’s loosely based on WotC’s Expedition to the Demonweb Pits, which I’ve hacked quite a bit.
As the plot now stands, the PCs have recovered both Demon Slaying weapons that are to help them in the upcoming trans-planar conflicts.
As written the story remains rather weak so I decided to assume fully my hacking of the adventure and combine this with some End of the World trope of my very own… all in 6 sessions.
So here’s my high level plan for what’s coming.
Session 1: All out Assault on Ptolus by Bad guys, PCs go scout on Lolth’s plans in her realm.
Session 2: Players return from Demonwebs while Bad Guys trigger the mother of all Oh S#17 moments on them!
Session 3: A re-orientation session where PCs explore their new reality, reassess their priorities, check on their remaining allies and start planning on salvaging the situation
Session 4: Players secure the means to stop World’s End and head up for final Showdown
Session 5: PCs Crash the Ultimate Evil Pajama Party and slay some more Demonic butts
Session 6: Standing over a mortally wounded world, PCs ponder on its healing and the choices that need be made to save what can be saved.
Roll credits, drink a toast to 7 years of awesomeness and put 3,5 D&D books on Ebay.
I’ll leave you with that. Needless to say, if I can pull this off without being exceedingly railroady, this campaign may very well be one of the most memorable we’ll have played.
This week’s game is also going to be a tribute to Gary Gygax… I’m going to call it Knee Deep in Darkness! Ohhhh yeah!
I might skip tomorrow’s post depending on how much work needs to be done on the game.
Anyone else having thoughts of concluding their campaigns?
Inq. of the Week: Smashing Characters
Last week, asking about your systems operation, 77% of you responded that you use Windows… somewhere. The Mighty Mac came in second with 29%, and Loquacious Linux running in third with 20%. There was one lone “Other” vote, which I’m hoping was something exciting like a robot running his own Asimov-based operating system who is able to mentally connect to wifi and see our site before his eyes and vote in polls by blinking. Or something.
Over the weekend, following an exciting session of D&D as part of GaryCon festivities, I found myself with a pile of work both from my office and from grad school, which meant I sought out other activities to avoid actually getting something done. I caught up a bit on my Netflix, picked up Justice League: New Frontier on DVD and watched that, and read an entire run of a webcomic sent to me by a friend. (Which then further lead me to read a few hundred of a classic webcomic.)
Then on Sunday, my brother and I headed over to GameStop with two used titles in hand to trade in towards Super Smash Brothers Brawl. (Final cost to us:$1.49, paid with a gift card.) I’ll need some more hands-on time with it to really be able to form a review, but it did manage to take up a few hours of procrastination time. So far, I’m really impressed with what they’ve done with the latest (and last?) installment of the franchise, with the main difficulty for me being the controls.
During the main adventure mode, you’re forced to use nearly all the characters, which meant I was sword-slashing with Link and busting heads with Pikachu, something that never happens for me in multi-player.
So that lead me to wonder:
Loading ...While writing this poll I realized that playing this game with my brother must make us, indeed, Smash Brothers.
Mining Tropes for RPG Nuggets: This is the End, Friend
No no, I’m not ending this series, no worries. As mentioned here, I’m exploring “Endings” as applied to RPG campaigns…
Many long-lasting Role playing campaigns based on power-gaining PCs hinge around a progressively increasing threat that almost invariably escalate to the World Destroying level.
The threat usually takes the form of an impeding Cataclysm that would be caused by some sort of Doomsday Device (Technological, Biological or Magical) or assorted Lovecraftian horrors.
If left unopposed, such threats can lead to…
The End Of The World As We Know It [Read the rest of this article]
Theme Week: Endings
As I was planning my blogging week I realized that I had a running theme going on. So much so that I decided to make it official!
Since I’m planning the end of my D&D 3.5 campaign in the next 3 months, I decided to spend the week dealing with endings of all kinds:
- Today’s post was about the ending of the 1st Pathfinder Adventure Path.
- I’ll tackle a trope post on endings of the catastrophic kind
- I’ll write a post about ending an adventure arc or a campaign
- My adventure prep post will deal with how I plan to end mine.
- And I plan to start a series on transitioning from D&D 3.5 to 4e as my whole group agreed to make the jump.
- etc (I’m open to in-theme suggestions)
So stay tuned, this will be the beginning of many ends!
D&D XP Interview: Andy Collins and Scott Rouse (Part 2)
(be sure to check out part 1 first!)
Critical Hits: How did the 4e preview books do? (Worlds and Monsters, Races and Classes)
Scott Rouse: They’re a little tough since I don’t think we marketed them right. They’re a great look inside the heads of the designers and developers. We wanted to make it a behind the scenes/making of product instead of a real preview product. We thought that if you liked DVD extras, you’d like the books.
Andy Collins: I was a bit skeptical at first. No rules? But then I got the final copies and they’re great. They sit on my desk and I use them for inspiration. We plan to have a number of other previews through D&D Insider as well. Insider will be a great place to preview mechanical and story content, like stuff for Eberron. It also means we can try out concepts before they see print.
CH: How does the brand team work with the R&D team?
Andy: Sometimes the brand team drives product development.
Scott: Power decks are a great example. (referring to cards with easy reference to character powers for 4e–ed) That’s a product we started to see talked about on the communities, which we took to R&D as an idea. We’ll see if it works.
There are some failures for sure. The Dungeon Survival Guide was a great concept that we hoped would get along well with previous successes like Practical Guide to Dragons, but for an older audience. Unfortunately, it never was properly positioned to fit with that audience.
Confessions of a Part Time Sorceress is an example of a success. Shelly is in my department, and I couldn’t be happier with having her writing for us.
Dungeon Tiles are a great example of a successful collaboration between brand and R&D. People wanted this product for a long time, but we couldn’t figure out the best way to do it. The existing offerings ranged from files you print out yourself to the Dwarven Forge set. There was nothing that really was satisfying. Then one day someone brought in a board from a Fantasy Flight game, and it just clicked, that nice linen laminated finish.
Andy: It took us two weeks from there to make the first set of Dungeon Tiles. From start to finish with that product was six months. We put it through, and crossed our fingers.
It’s great that we can experiment with products and titles. The day they tell us to stop will be the day I look for another job.
Scott: Same here. [Read the rest of this article]
Pathfinder #6 preview and conclusion: The Lost City of Adventure's End
I just got the notification that issue #7 was shipped this week. That made me realize that I had to write a short blurb on the final issue of Paizo’s Rise of Runelords Adventure Path.
Issue #6: Spires of Xin-Shalast brings the stories of ancient, evil Sin-magic and the old empires based on them to a conclusion. One such Runelord will awaken from a thousand year old sleep and is ready to resume his conquering of all of Varisia (the country where the adventures were set).
This adventure tries to capture the feel of discovering a long-lost city and the ancient, lovecraftian horror that slumbers underneath it (and we’re not talking about the Runelord here). [Read the rest of this article]
Chatty's Out of the Box #004: Memories…
Here’s my Webcomic tribute to a great man. As usual, click on the thumbnail (and possibly once again on the picture) to get the sharpest image.
It’s funny how many memories one can keep of this game.
All stories you see in the comic truly happened and featured, my friends Nicolas (panel 1, gone to Sweden), JeeEff (panel 3 gone to Quebec City) and Math (panel 4, still around for more than 20 years). Thanks for the memories guys.
Also, note that all these monsters featured in the AD&D Monster Manual.
For the photo geeks out there, I use a Sony Cybershot 7.2 MegaPixel digital camera (it’s basically the family’s camera). PM made me discover the Macro photography setting on it so focusing is now easier. Also, until I get some descent lighting, I use the Camera’s low light, no flash ISO setting.
Have a nice weekend.
