Everything tabletop gaming since 2005
And I’m sick and tired of trying to “fix this”, I’m currently unhappy with our 4e games but was at a loss about turning things around until mid-week.
…and when it’s all said and done, an unhappy Dungeon Master is the surefire sign of a dying campaign/gaming group.
Shortly after my 28th birthday party, I sat in my living room with the D&D 3rd Edition Player’s Handbook in my hands. After a decade away from Trolls, Drow, Mindflayers and other Gygaxian-branded fantasy tropes, I felt the strong pull to return to the world of D&D. However, remembering my attempt at re-reading the 2e Player’s Handbook back in 1998, I expected the book to be really bad…
As I grew older, I grew progressively dissatisfied with playing AD&D only. As new RPGs emulating different genres came out, I wanted to experiment them with my friends. However, we soon observed that having to learn a whole new set of rules whenever we felt like switching genres was a significant barrier to entry.
I’ve recently discovered a pattern common to the gaming sessions where I’m not entirely satisfied with the way things went. I realized that it’s partly because encounters reach a state of complexity such that players become confused about the best way to navigate through them. The goal becomes fuzzy or the options are either too numerous or too complex mechanically to be used in full.
Amazingly, the Gnome Airship was still intact when the PCs own ship set in formation near it (along the Melorian’s living airship, and the Warforged chaos-propelled aerolith). Viscount Daven Sakran was joyously awaiting for them, all smiles and virginal innocence under the malvolent look of our semi-railroaded Goliath Warden.
Brought together to oversee the security of crucial peace talks, the PCs are faced with sabotage at 20 000 feet over the jagged surface of a world torn by 8 years of global conflicts. One of the diplomat factions turns on the other while demon-summoning clockwork bombs explode on the Gnomish airship housing the peace negotiations. Our heroes have to keep the negotiators alive.
by Dave
Maybe it’s because my early gaming experiences were at science fiction conventions (which definitely included plenty of outside influences) that I do like to weave in plenty of “winks” into my campaigns and lift liberally from pop culture. And yet, at the same time, I’m clearly embarassed by some of the elements that have made its way into my campaigns.
In this, my 800th post, I take a hard look at Wizards of the Coast’s Heroes of Hesiod, and its missed opportunity to tap into the tremendous potential of helping parents introduce kids to roleplaying. And I put my money where my mouth is . . .
The game’s action will occur entirely on board a Feywild grown, Clockwork-powered gnome airship called The Briarthorn Needle owned by ‘neutral’ fey privateers. The last warring factions of Sikkara (our Clockowork D&D gameworld) have agreed to meet on it to negotiate a peace accord and put an end to 8 years of global war.
Upon freeing themselves from the Fomorians, the gnomes knew that they could not rely on the other, more powerful races, to guarantee that they would not fall back into slavery. While many champions of the Gnomish causes have risen in the last centuries, the masters of trickery have created their own tricks to ‘convince” the world’s best heroes and scoundrles to help them.
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