10/20/08

Liscensed, Errata, and other updates

So...

I'm now an officially licensed Dungeon Master for 4e. It didn't really take too much, the hardest part was trying to get recognized as a a member of DCI. That's taken me since Game Day 08, which was back in June. But I'm now a "Herald Level" DM. Which entitles me to resources almost unlimited. I will probably begin getting a subscription to D&D Insider (mainly for the Dungeon and Dragon Magazine content, but I don't know for sure, my finances at this point are still up in the air.

However, because I'm a DM, that means that my books should be updated with the latest set of rules. This "errata" is a pain in the ass because while most things are simple updates (one to two word changes) there are a crap ton of them... 22 pages worth! Argh! I freaking HATE doodling in my nice PHB but stuff's gotta get done.

The advanced group finally left Fallcrest (the intro adventure) and started on their way to Keep on the Shadowfell. The beginners group will be doing that sometime within the next two weeks so cross your fingers and wish for good rolls.

Game on!

10/16/08

Sundays @ Dox

As a DM, I try and maintain a healthy level of humility for the players involved, which I emulate by running a game while I try and play a game. Unfortunately, the time constraints between this semester have got me so cornered down that my game that I'm playing is a simply PbP (Play by Post) online at http://forums.gleemax.com If you wish to follow it, here is the full link: http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=1097411 you should recognize the character I'm playing, the infamous goof Owen. (However this is him in his early twenties before he became a well respected adventurer)

anyway... so I'm running two campaigns.... well actually the same campaign, twice over. The first is with a group of my friends, Fox, Vossler, Snoop, Pirate, and Chip IV which is why I spend Sunday @ Dox. Dox has been a gracious host when we show up allowing us time and space to play.

The second campaign is the same one that the advanced group above is running, but it is the beginners group which is also the aforementioned Guild Sanctioned game of D&D. I'll be leaving more updates with each one of these groups later. I hope both adventures work really well. The reason I'm running the advanced group and the beginner group on the same level is because this way I can work out all my story telling kinks with the advanced group (who know me well and know my storytelling style) before running the same content with the beginners group.

Background

Wh00t! F!rst p0$t!

(okay, so now that that's outta the way... I've always wanted to publish something like that...)

This blog is for anyone really, a lot of it D&D based, but that's the way the cookie crumbles. I'm sure there will be quite a few insights into my view of the world. I guess we'll start off on a few of my experiences of D&D.

Unlike many people who write about D&D (Dungeons and Dragons) I've only been playing for about 2 years now. My friend introduced it to me during a fall semester that was pretty horrible and at the time I wasn't 21 so it became an evening social event for those of us who didn't go to bars. (Why is this thing not recognizing contractions as being spelled correctly? Google, get to work on that stuff!)

He sat me down with a wonderful book known to others in the community as the 3.5 PHB. (Player's Handbook for 3.5 edition) I created one of the greatest characters from a story that my sister and I are co-writing which you can find small bits and pieces on my myspace http://www.myspace.com/coderx (not anymore i've removed my account there) but he was a Bard, named Pinnak. I really had no idea at the time of character creation what I was doing, so I made him a particularly strong Bard and not having an optimal charisma score (which is what most bards need) this didn't matter though because as we fought the final bad guy of my friends campaign a number of weeks later, Pinnak being the last one alive standing as character was 3 sheets to the wind and kicking the curled over bad guy in the gut with his steel toed boot yelling "I AM NOT A SQUISHY BARD!" It was a good time had by all.

I then began planning to run my own campaign which was in and of itself a massive train wreck. It ran for several months and actually ended just a few weeks ago. But god am I glad it's over. I already have plans for a future campaign that I will be running and Co-DM'ing with a friend of mine whom I will refer to as Chip IV or just Chip. He was a former player in my first run campaign, a player in my current campaign, and will be a partial DM for the future campaign that I'm running. Probably the best thing to come out of this first campaign that I ran was the NPC (Non-playable character) or rather DMPC (Dungeon Master Playable Character) named Owen Tonamachè, the 35th level crazy Ranger. He was truly fun to play around with and will be lots of fun in the near future.

I also had two different charaters in Chip's campaign that he's running, the first one was a bardic socrcere by the name of Snaps McGreggor who played air guitar. He died when I decided to leave because of failing grades. My second character is still alive and he is a monk called Bruce Striker with the punch line of "You seem (insert random feeling here)... my friend... have you considered poverty?"

And now we come to today. I am the Head of Membership for a group of close friends on campus known as the NDSU Gaming Guild, and I'm running the Guild Sanctioned game of Dungeons & Dragons. This will consist of Fallcrest (in the back of the Dungeon Master's Guide) then running through the 9 adventures that will be available periodically throughout the next several months.

Happy Gaming.