[D&D 40th Anniversary Bloghop] Day Eleven

Day Eleven: First splatbook you begged your DM to approve.

I've said several times that my early days were spent in mostly skirmishing. We had the base set, the core rules so to speak. We didn't need or use anything extra. It wasn't until I started playing 2E AD&D in 2000 that I discovered the joys of splatbooks and supplements. In my case, I decided (on my own) that Boric needed a bit more OOMPH in the divine spell-casting department. Of course, back then--just as with the Dragon Magazine CD-ROM Archive--it was still quite easy to find 2nd Edition AD&D material, even if 3E was appearing on the scene.

So I scrounged around a bit and found these little gems.

The DM took a brief look through these and rapidly accepted and approved them, and some of the choicest spells were then transferred onto 3"x5" cards and carried into adventure in a recipe box. Yep. With these I had enough divine magic to open up a large can of whoop-*** at Moradin's will.

[D&D 40th Anniversary Bloghop] Day Five

Day Five: First character to go from 1st level to the highest level possible in a given edition. (Or what's the highest level character you've ever ran?)

My characters didn't last long, back in the day. Mostly because we were easily bored and changed it up far too often. So, once again I'm going to have to jump ahead to my first 21st-century game, Dragon Mountain for the answer to today's question.




I've spoken about him before, my namesake, Boric Glanduum. As I've said before, shortly after the turn of the century, I joined a newly-resurrected group as one of two new players. I was the last one recruited and so was shoe-horned into filling a party need--the cleric. But I made the best of it and rolled up a dwarf. I hadn't played in a LONG time, and certainly had never played 2nd Edition AD&D; I was a NOOB for all intents and purposes. The DM was willing to work with me, though. He and I had a killer backstory woven into the entire campaign. Yeah, it was full of the usual tropes: exiled royalty, stronghold-stolen-by-dragon, magic weapons, etc. You know the type. He put together much of the backstory. I started out as a chosen of Moradin, a High Old One, even, and then advanced from there. During the campaign we had visitations from Moradin's Avatar, I became a Favored of Dumathoin, and lost a clan artifact to a lowly rust monster. Boric spanned 2E, 3E, and then 3.5. He's had several incarnations in 3.5; currently he's 26th level and we're preparing to dust off these epic characters and bring them from retirement.

Let me share a few artifacts I've dug from my files about Boric. You can click on the links if you should happen to want to look at full-size PDFs of the documents. First, a little of his backstory (the introductory paragraph was updated as time went by to show some of the later deeds. It also relied heavily upon a Dwarven Lexicon I've built up over time from various TSR and WotC products.

I also came across a copy of the 12th-level version of Boric's Character Sheet, complete with THAC0 chart for his various attacks, both with his ancestral warhammer and with his clan's Rod of Lordly Might (featuring a hammer rather than a mace).

By the way, this chart is what I think of every time someone tries to tell me just how much more complicated 3.x Edition combat is than, say, 2nd Edition combat. It features every possible iteration of each attack, special attack, or power, including certain common buffing spells such as prayer and bless.

September Blog Meme Challenge Day 8

DAY EIGHT

What is your favorite character that you have played?

I made a list of my favorite characters earlier in the Challenge Meme entries. I'll narrow it down a bit to this:

#4 - Malgrim Irontomb, Rogue
The rogue is what I'm playing now. Malgrim is fast becoming a favorite, not just of mine but also of the group as a whole. I've never played a rogue before; Malgrim has enough hit points that you're not concerned about him dying, and while he doesn't have terrific strength, he can do sufficient damage with what he has (and his sneak attacks) that he is a very useful and efficient second-line asset to the group. We've never had a rogue that could soak up so much damage (and do so much damage at the same time) and be as efficient as he is in opening locks, etc. We've had one or the other, but never all three in one character.

#3 - Urdin Darjyr, Storm Druid
The storm druid was introduced in Dragon Magazine, Issue #328. Instead of focusing on nature and plants, etc., the storm druid looks to the skies, channeling nature's raw, untamed energies. In addition, this particular dwarf was a dream dwarf by race: a sub-race introduced in the 3.5 Races of Stone supplement. From the D&D Wiki page: "Dream dwarves feel the hills slumber beneath them. They see the world as a resting giant of inestimable power, and they are caught in the dreaming. While other dwarves shape metal and stone, dream dwarves contemplate and meditate. Wise and cautious, they understand nature in a way at once similar to and wholly alien to the understanding of druids and shamans of other races." Yep, a dwarven hippie. His backstory made him quite interesting and fun to play, while the special druidic class gave him some serious awesome nature-magic firepower. He wielded a pretty wicked dwarven warpike, too. However, if I remember correctly, he was a multi-class nightmare. I think I had a couple levels of fighter and of barbarian to give him some additional oomph feat-wise. Urdin took his retirement and sacrificed his freedom for the party (and the world) by linking himself to a MAJOR magical item. That link allowed the item to slumber once again, but meant that Urdin would forever be trapped on a small island... at least until his replacement appeared.

#2 - Azarr Stonetower, Barbarian
Speaking in a rough patois, a mix of dwarven and english, this character was a straight barbarian. He cut first and and asked questions later never bothered to ask questions ask questions after burning the remains of his foes to ashes. He eventually became a lycanthrope--a werebear--thanks to the DM's wickedness. He was a mean, tough, unrefined, and uncouth kick-in-the-door-arrow-magnet type. He was a LOT of fun to play and was responsible for some of the most memorable moments in our group's gaming history. He used a wooden bench as a club in a tavern fight, right before he killed another foe with the long table. He sprinted up a stairwell into an area of darkness taking crossbow bolt after bolt without stopping. He also saved another character's life by stabilizing him by force-feeding him a goodberry; the now-infamous quote: "At least it weren't me wipin' hand!" Azarr was axe-bladed death on two stumpy legs.

#1 - Boric Glanduum, Sonnlinor (warrior-priest of Moradin)
Boric, as my namesake, is obviously my #1 favorite character. I said in my previous post that editions subsequent to 2nd Edition have nerfed him. Truthfully, he's not as fun to play as he used to be. But he remains my favorite. I like to picture him as retired, with the other characters from that epic group. He's a silent partner in the elf rogue's Lawful Neutral/Chaotic Good endeavors and Guild, all the while while working to bind together the scattered dwarven clans. He still participates in Matters Of Importance to the world, but nowhere near as actively as he once did.

September Blog Meme Challenge Day 3

DAY THREE

What is your favorite playable class?

Some of my favorite recent Dwarven characters:

• Malgrim Irontomb, Rogue
  
• Kilvarn Dornkral, Sonnlinor (warrior-priest of Moradin)
  
• Thain Dorzring, Paladin
  
• Urdin Darjyr, Storm Druid
  
• Azarr Stonetower, Barbarian
  
• Boric Glanduum, Sonnlinor (warrior-priest of Moradin)
  

By and large, I've enjoyed what each of these characters brought to the table. Part of it may be the backstory I build into my characters. Part of it is the class itself. I'll be honest, of this list, my LEAST favorite was Thain Dorzring, Paladin. I hated playing the paladin. I didn't like the class, didn't like the build, and I didn't like the character. I couldn't even come up with a likeable backstory for him. But this post isn't about my least favorite playable class, but rather my most favorite. I will be honest, it's a kind of tough decision. It would probably be the dwarven cleric/Sonnlinor. The Sonnlinor originated in 2d Edition AD&D days, a character "kit" presented in Demihuman Deities, if I'm not mistaken. While not as powerful, necessarily, as a straight cleric build, it has a warrior aspect to it -- they are the elite warrior class of Moradin. Now, WotC has come up with some other builds that seem to trump the Sonnlinor, but nothing else had the same flavor.... So my group sat down and created one, just so we could have one in the party. Yep, it's my party's most favorite dwarven class too. Just enough oomph in melee with some divine magic thrown in to balance out the party.

Oh, yeah.

September Blog Meme Challenge Day 2

DAY TWO

What is your favorite playable race?

Umm...

Have you seen the name of this blog? The graphic up top? Yeah, my favorite race is actually the kender.

--deadpan mode--

No, but seriously, it's the dwarves. I relate to them on many levels. I like their solid-ness, their hardiness. I like the traditional values and even the stereotypical gruffness (at least to outsiders). About the only thing I don't like is the ubiquitous Scottish accents and a penchant for writers to turn dwarves into the buffoons of the story. (**I'm looking at you, Salvatore, and your Cleric Quintet!**)

Really, though. Scottish accents? This LONG pre-dates Peter Jackson. Back in 2000 I wrote up a quick campaign journal for some extra RP for our campaign. My dwarf character had a unique vocabulary. The DM's response to it? "I had a hard time reading it because I couldn't reconcile his vocabulary with a Scottish accent." I'm sorry? Did I ever ONCE speak in a brogue when playing this character? NO. And yet the DM automatically assumed that he had one. Sigh. Yeah, it's a pet peeve.

I really do identify with them, though, in many ways. I love caves, rocks, jewels and semi-precious stones. I love to craft things with my hands. I would, someday, dearly love to learn ironmongery and blacksmithing. I'm gruff and impatient at times. Strong convictions and morals. The list could go on and on; suffice it to say, people who know me well are not surprised to learn I have an affection for dwarves.

LTUE Wrap-Up

I don't suppose any of you are really sitting on the edges of your sofas wondering what happened to two days' worth of posts from LTUE: Life, The Universe, and Everything Writing Conference. But there may be a couple of you interested: well, I wish I could really tell you. Unfortunately, the morning of Day Two dawned with some manner of gomboo bug inhabiting my body.

No, really. It was almost as if I had one of those Alien face-huggers latched onto me.
I was exhausted and I felt as if I'd been stuffed in cotton. I had a really powerful bad cough. Congestion. My eyeballs were practically throbbing, for crying out loud. I had aches and pains all over. Developed a weekend-long migraine by Friday night.

But I went anyway, because it was important to my wife. Despite my illness, I think she had fun. I don't remember anything about any of the panels, except for remembering listening to Larry Correia talk about writing action scenes. I think I may have dozed off in other panels. My sickness, unfortunately, meant that we didn't travel back down for the Saturday session. Apparently I wasn't the only one; some Typhoid Mary apparently attended the Conference because I got reports that there were quite a few attendees and possibly even some presenters that wrote off Saturday and didn't attend. I still feel bad about my wife missing out on Saturday, though, and need to find some way to make it up to my her.

One highlight that I do remember was having lunch at a little sandwich shop talking shop with Tracy and Laura Hickman. Great people and a great conversation. It had been awhile since we'd lunched and had a good chance to talke and catch up, so it was definitely a highlight of the conference.

The second highlight was this:
I was finally able to procure my copy of XDM: X-treme Dungeon Mastery. And I was able to get it signed by both Tracy Hickman and Howard Tayler. I've been trying for a couple years to get this, but the financial stars, the times, and the places have just not worked out. Until 2013.

Descriptive blurb:

The cure for the common game! Throw off your chains! Too long have your role playing games been held in the bonds of substandard gamemasters, bound in needlessly complicated rules sets, and enslaved by players who will avoid doing anything unless it counts toward leveling up! It is time to take a stand!

Learn from the masters the ancient secrets of how to:
Officially become an XDM and impress dates. (Do-it-yourself secret initiation rites included.)
Master the secrets of designing adventures that tell stories.
Create magic illusions that can even make your players disappear!
Use actual fire in your game properly.
Hijack the game as a player, and how to deal with a player revolution as an XDM.
Plus loads more!

Perhaps the best description comes from the book's Wikipedia entry: "The book is written as though from the perspective of a secret society of game masters passing on ancient secrets of role-playing games beginning in Babylonian times and extending to the present. Within the satire, the text offers advice on performance techniques, adventure game design and classical story structures." The book prescribes a system called X20: rules-light in that everything is decided by a roll of 1d20 and a decision by the XDM as to success/effect. Such a system would definitely frustrate rules lawyers, as the only rules are what the XDM decides are the rules.

It's an overly simplistic description of the book, but a good one. The book is full of humor, tips, tricks, suggestions, and great illustrations by the creator of Schlock Mercenary, which is arguably the best and funniest webcomic Space Opera on the internet. Howard autographs his books with customized artwork and this book is no different; the last page in the book was left blank just for this purpose. And here's my own, personal autograph from my book. This is Boric as seen through Howard Tayler's eyes.

Anyway, back to the face-hugger gomboo.... It pretty well put me out of commission for over a week. Then it's taken a week more to get caught up with leftover work at the office. Hopefully I can get some of my random thoughts out on paper. I still owe Tim Shorts some critters for issue #4 of The Manor. So I have a bunch of stuff to do, and Guilder to blame for it. I'm swamped.

At least I have my health...kind of. As you know, If you haven't got your health, then you haven't got anything.

What D&D Character Am I?

Courtesy of this site:

I Am A: Lawful Good Dwarven Cleric/Paladin (3rd/2nd Level)
Ability Scores:
Strength-16
Dexterity-13
Constitution-18
Intelligence-14
Wisdom-15
Charisma-11
Alignment:
Lawful Good

Interestingly, that is exactly what Boric is: A lawful good dwarven Cleric with a house-ruled flavor paladin. He's a bit higher level, though. Considerably higher.


Detailed results below, for those who are sick and twisted about such things care.

The Master Thief

After posting pictures of my namesake's miniature representations, I felt that I had to post up images of his closest ally, the Master Thief: Simon.

Simon and Boric have been through Hell and back with each other--side by side and back to back. Because of their joint heroics, Boric has been named Elf-Friend and Simon has been named Dwarf-friend. They've travelled through 2nd. Edition AD&D, Third Edition, 3.5E and now "epic" 3.5E.

Like last week, I will not bore you with tales of the characters' in-game deeds. There are other times and places for that.

Post 100: The Namesake

It's taken 1 year, 6 months, and 11 days to reach, but today I can celebrate 100 posts at the Dwarven Stronghold!

I could have made it an even 1 year, 6 months if I hadn't suffered a couple bouts of the gomboo and some work-related issues, but that's beside the point. The point is we've reached 100 posts!

To commemorate this day, I've decided to dig into my miniatures and give a sneak peek at my namesake, Boric.

I won't waste time spinning tales about my character--I know that becomes all too dreary to outsiders. Suffice it to say that I had a DM who wanted to get a gaming group together years post-high school. I had been out of the gaming scene for roughly fifteen years and was eager to jump back in. I knew him through our wives; I wasn't a high school buddy.... He'd already gotten commitments from all his high school group and a co-worker and the group needed one more: the cleric. This was where Boric was born.

Yeah, I was shoe-horned into filling a party need. But I made the best of it and rolled up a dwarf. For one thing, I hadn't played in a LONG time, and certainly had never played 2nd Edition AD&D; I was a NOOB for all intents and purposes. The DM was willing to work with me, though. He and I had a killer backstory woven into the entire campaign. Yeah, it was full of the usual tropes: exiled royalty, stronghold-stolen-by-dragon, magic weapons, etc. You know the type.

But it was fun. This was in early 2000 and we jumped into 2nd Edition AD&D with both feet. Splat books and Player Options everywhere; the DM didn't care so long as everyone had fun. He ran a wicked-cool game. I became the "prop-master" for the campaign and painted nearly all of the miniatures used in the game. All was well with the world.

And then, shortly after we started the campaign, Wizards of the Coast came rudely into our lives. Third Edition was announced. We researched it, the DM and I (mostly through Dragon Magazine) and decided we didn't need it at this time.

We resisted "The Change" for about two years. Finally we started seeing some things we liked and picking up books. Slowly but surely we started figuring out ways of converting the still-ongoing campaign (we were playing, on average, twice per month so game-time hadn't been all that long). We took the plunge, bought the books, and started the conversion. There were some things that had to be changed on all of our characters. Some ret-conning took place; there was a bit of the same thing that the world of the Forgotten Realms would suffer in a few years with the Spell Plague and 4E. It was a convenient time in the campaign because our mage had just taken some steps that led to a royally pissed-off Mystra in our non-canon Realms. The result of those acts changed the landscape enough that Third Edition was possible.


Hey, let's be honest: it also gave me a chance to paint another miniature.

The change-over, as you could probably predict, was not that smooth or easy. The first problem came when we realized that we were running technically epic characters and that had its whole separate set of rules. The second problem came when we thought we could just use the Epic Level Handbook and call it good.

Stop laughing.

You see, to those who may not know, the Epic Level Handbook is widely considered to be the worst and most broken rulebook Wizards of the Coast ever produced. Those who don't consider it #1 surely have it in their top 5, possibly top 3. I consider it the worst, so I can't even offer 2 or 3 others that may be worse.

Our third problem? We had not waited quite long enough to make the switchover: here came 3.5E. And a whole new round of book-buying occurred. Once again we were retro-fitting characters and rules that simply were no longer possible under the existing ruleset. Yeah, we had that mindset, to my hindsight-induced dismay. We limped into a good place to end the campaign--or at least suspend it. Playing these characters, at the end, just wasn't fun any longer. Everyone agreed.

We rolled up new Third Edition--OK, 3.5E--characters. Life went on. Fast forward five years. Same group, but the old DM's departure from the group necessitated a new DM, and a new campaign. He needed some high-powered NPCs to help out as a shadow organization. He called me up and queried about the possibility of using my dwarf and his elf from the old campaign as these high-powered NPCs. We quickly statted up 23rd level characters, agreeing NOT to use the Epic Level Handbook this time. Problem was, we needed new miniatures for both of us.

Both Boric and the new DM's elf got a makeover (I'll post pics of the elf sometime soon). We added on to the backstories of our old characters, and by now were well-enough versed in Third/3.5 Edition that we made better choices with the characters. They made some great cameo appearances in the then-current campaign. In fact, it may have been the best use of DM NPCs I've ever seen: they were used for information sources and interaction. Nothing more. They weren't called upon to slay the mighty dragon while the PCs watched. They also didn't give away the answers sought--we had to work at it. Masterfully done, I still say to this day.

Now we're in 2011. The old DM came back. He had an idea to pick up threads of the original campaign, again epic level without the use of the "Epic" rules. The idea was to run a quick campaign to wrap up the original campaign once and for all. (The BBEG got away all those years ago, after all.)

This, of course, meant we had to update the miniatures. OK, we didn't need to, but I wanted to take another stab at Boric. This was the result.

I hadn't painted in about a year and I was a bit rusty. But I'd had this miniature sitting around for a while and he seemed to fit the new attitude. I now had a chance to use it. I also had a chance to play around with the figure itself and went out on a kit-bashing limb: I added magnets. I'd wanted to try it out for years since reading about it in White Dwarf in the early 2000s. I'd just never had a miniature that called for it. Now I did. Both his pack and his shield are, as shown below, removable.

I'm pleased with how it turned out. Both paint-wise and magnet-wise. [Although looking at these pictures tells me that I forgot to seal the figure. D'oh.]

The new DM allowed us to once again retro-fit all our old, original characters. I had several years' more experience with the rule system and started from scratch; I used none of the previous "updated" characters' information, except maybe the backstory.

Although there were some things that still could not be duplicated in 3.5, I'm fairly happy with the new incarnation. There is enough out there between WotC and third-party publishers that we got dang close.

How close, you ask? Close enough that he was able to stand toe-to-toe with a gargantuan black dragon and win (although the fact that my miniature was not, at the time, wearing his pack almost caused his demise).

How close? Frankly, he's close enough to make playing him fun once again. He's about as close as possible to the High Old one of Moradin, the Sonnlinor of old, that could call down the fires of heaven upon his foes, the dwarf that I first came to know and love. My namesake.

Happy 100th, my friends.