'SHROOMS!

Game night last Friday.

I was really excited about it; new DM sitting behind the screen, new campaign. Well, technically an old campaign...call it a new old campaign. And I was juiced.

I started playing in '81. But would you believe I've never played through—or DM'd —The Tomb of Horrors?

That was the DM's choice for the new campaign, and I was really excited. Did I say I was excited?

And then, 2 hours before our only chance at a game this month...one of the guys got sick. Really sick.  We were at risk of having to wait yet another month to march to our doom. I—as propmaster—and the DM put our heads together...and he said he had something. A little side quest to get us all to know each other, or at least 3 of us. And then came the request: instead of the previous list of miniatures, he needed a druid, some piercers, and some Myconids.

Myconids? Where the Hell was I going to get Myconids? And on short notice, too....

So I loaded the car with all my other gear and headed out with a little bit of inspiration. A quick stop at Hobby Lobby...and I had my myconids.
As you can see, they look pretty good. They're cast of a heavy resin, fair amount of detail with the stems (at least they're not smooth), and the bottoms are flat and stable enough that they don't really need basing...unless I want to go through the effort.

Even the scale is about correct, at least in our campaign.The small ones are just barely above the top of the human miniature's head, so they're about 6'–6.5' tall. The big ones are about twice that. Both sizes have bases that fit in the 1" squares.


Each package held four small ones and one big one; with a coupon, it was actually quite economical.  It was certainly cheaper than doing it myself.

Hobby Lobby was actually my second stop because the local Michael's was closer. All they had was some tiny ones (scaled at about 2'-3') with floral wire coming from the bottom that were more for wreaths or "fairy garden" use. I actually stopped at Hobby Lobby to grab a pin vise because Michael's didn't have one. I only asked about the mushrooms at Hobby Lobby on a whim. After a pack of those tiny mushrooms, several packages of 1" discs, and some quick-drying epoxy...well, I would have spent more—especially with conversion/prep time—than I did on the packs of the big ones.

Come to think of it, I could base the bigger ones, and use these tiny ones to add detail to the bases. I was going to return them...but.... Hmm.... I'd need some bases bigger than 1". Dang it. I should have stopped thinking while I was ahead.

The big ones represented a series of shrieker guardians in the lair of an anti-druid. The small ones saw double-use as some smaller guardian 'shrooms as well as a group of Myconid warriors captured, caged, and used as a food source for the anti-druid's Beholder companion. None of the characters had any idea what these things were; I was actually the only player at the table that, in meta-game, knew what Myconids were. They didn't register as "evil" to my character, so he risked life and limb to release these things that were speaking to him telepathically. As a result, the three PCs were named "clan brothers" to this group of Myconids. The photos were taken as we returned to the cave from a quick jaunt back to town, post-Myconid rescue but pre-anti-druid confrontation. (A dozen of them returned from their cave to aid us in our quest to destroy the anti-druid.)

The DM actually ran several test-runs of this scenario—both the beholder fight and the anti-druid fight—and it ended in TPK Every. Single. Time. Somehow we pulled both off; the only casualty was, of course, our elf, who was turned to stone. [Aside: I say "of course" because in our group, somehow, the elf is always the first to die. It has been that way for 16 years. The player who routinely plays our elf has had at least as many characters over this time as the rest of us have had...put together. No joke. We go through elves like they're made of Mountain Dew and Doritos. End aside.] My trap-finding and lock-picking skills and rolls were STELLAR and the DM kept rolling Critical 1s...so the dice were falling in our favor on every side. All in all it was a good night.We found the Crown of the Gods where the anti-druid had hidden it and returned it to the local temple, only to be offered the chance to go on several more quests to find teh powerful gemstones that accompany the crown.

So now we're left with the choice: go after the gems? or head to the Tomb of Horrors?

Choices...choices...choices.... Either way, the next month won't go fast enough!

Fuzzy Tentacle Monster Action!

That title sounded a LOT better in my head.

I consider myself the prop-master of our group. I provide most of the minis for the various DMs; sometimes maps and other materials.

Our new DM, starting a new campaign, enlisted me on Wednesday to provide "some kind of sea monster." Well, of course, that's the ONE type of critter I don't have, mostly because we've never been on the water before. He was getting a little desperate, mostly because he hasn't DM'd in years, but also because he hadn't had much time to prep. He had some general ideas for the campaign, and then decided yesterday that we needed to board an ocean-going ship to get to the starting point.

[Aside: This is where I should point out that I'm playing a 3d-level Dwarven Barbarian. Based on recommendations from the DM, I made him a desert/wasteland barbarian. Completely desert-centric. Our first major encounter? Loading our butts onto a ship for a weeks-long trek across the freakin' ocean. End aside.]

Then I had an epiphany. I told him that I'd put together some tentacles. That way, he'd just need to stat the individual tentacles and could leave the real big baddie (or baddies) completely anonymous. He could even just use a stat block for a giant constrictor. He liked that, so my little grey cells started churning. I've scratch-built a bunch of place-holders and minis in the past, including a ping-pong ball beholder eye-beast.

Here's what I came up with after a trip to the craft store and the hardware store:

• Loctite GO2 Glue
• Gorilla Brand Super Glue
• Fender washers, 1/8" x 3/4", 10 each
• Fender washers, 1/4" x 1-1/4", 10 each
• Zinc nuts, 3/4", 10 each
• 3 Packs of 25 each pipe cleaners: black, green, pink 

[Aside ²: Actually, the pipe cleaners were called, per the packaging, "Fuzzy Sticks." No mention of "pipes" or the cleaning thereof to be found anywhere. End aside ².]

Step One: 
Assemble the ring base using the two sizes of fender washers, a couple dabs of GO2 glue, then clamp for 30 minutes to set. Repeat 10 times.

Step Two:
Take one black and one green "fuzzy stick," insert them into the end of my power drill, hold the free end tightly, and start the drill spinning. (One interesting note: The drill, when drilling in reverse (counter-clockwise) gear actually made a shorter resulting spun combo fuzzy stick than when moving in forward (clockwise) gear.)

 You can see in the background there a stack of already-spun combo fuzzy sticks, the drying ring bases, and my GO2 glue (not to mention my disgustingly stained painting tray of 15 years). Also in the background is my first attempt, gluing a green, black, and pink fuzzy stick together, straight. This turned out to be messy and incredibly awkward. Hence the power drill and spun combo fuzzy stick idea. Now to attach the pink fuzzy stick as the suckered underside of the tentacle.

Step Three:
So here's where I had to start experimenting. Seeing how awkward and messy it was to try and glue the entire length, I tried to spot-glue and then tie (or wrap) the points together with black embroidery thread. After doing several this way, I resorted to wrapping the pink ends tightly to each end of the spun black/green tentacle, then simply tying together the longer tentacles with thread at different points, and relying on the wrap, pressure, and tension to hold the pink to the spun tentacle.

Step Four: 
The now-three strand tentacles were bent at different points to form a misshaped "U", with the point threaded through the hole in a ring base. Then I'd snip another length of tentacle and worked it down in through the hole and the "U" tentacle. This was the hardest part: you're essentially cramming six layers of "fuzzy stick" through a hole barely big enough for three or four. Then spread the ends out on the underside to keep the tentacles attached to the base.

Step Five:
After realizing how messy, awkward, and time-consuming the GO2 glue was to work with, I switched to good ol' Gorilla brand super glue. Four dots on the cardinal points of each nut, working the bent underside ends into the center of the nut, and holding the ring base against the nut until the glue set. (This was a much faster process than the GO2 glue, further "cementing" my love of Gorilla glue--and super glue as a whole.)

Step Six: 
Pose each tentacle into a sufficiently threatening pose.

Here's what the final product looked like: 

And here are some in-game glamour shots. My dwarf is the little tyke down here on the right hand side, right at the bow of the ship. Somewhere between these two pictures my dwarf was grappled, lifted to the sky, and then sliced himself free, dropping dramatically to the deck, rolling as he landed to minimize any falling damage.

All in all, the guys were impressed with the tentacles. I am too, speaking from the utmost of humility. 

They worked pretty well and looked good at this level, allowing (as you can see) for grappling and positioning of victims. We only lost one crewman from this attack. Fortunately, the DM didn't use the full box of 10 bases (2 or 3 tentacles each) that I'd prepared.

[Found Items Friday] PC Inspiration

I'm just gonna leave this here for now. Story to follow.

Comments welcome.

"Fun" vs. "Balance"

As I was thinking back upon last weekend's 3.x session, and reliving the sheer hopelessness of the situation with my (all-too tolerant) wife, one of my kids said, "Dad, that just doesn't seem fair that Uncle L would throw that at you." It was then that I realized--truly realized--for the first time that there was a generation gap in the definition of "fun."

Don't get me wrong: several of our former players ditched the group and dumped 3.x play in favor of 4E because, and I quote, "Third edition is broken; there's just no balance to some things." BALANCE became a four-letter word to our gaming group. Seriously, everything needed balance for these players. Challenge ratings had to beclosely monitored and followed TO THE LETTER. Everyone needed to receive a powerful magical item if one character received one. We were (nearly) always assured of a victory, knowing that the villain/foe would be BALANCED. After ten years of gaming together, the one time we didn't actually see "balance" was when the DM at the time decided to throw everything he had at us as a "I'm leaving and want to show you how broken 3.x is!" effort.

The fact is, it probably would have been fun if we hadn't been on the DM's personal railroad.

You see, to me (and to most of my group) fun does not necessarily equate to victory. Certainly not "certain victory." We've long accepted the fact that everything in the world doesn't scale with our character level. We're going to be handed tasks and missions that are WAY out of our league. "Running away" is as much of a part of role play as "kicking butt and taking names." You learn from each.

Picture from Exfanding Your Horizons
by Flashman85

Let me explain simply: Just because the DM puts a dragon in front of your characters, doesn't mean he's going to let you win. Period.

Look at the difference in size. Dragons are majestic. Unless you have a group of characters that are equally majestic (and not just egotistical) then "running away" should be considered a viable option. You can always regroup and come back later.

I'm not alone in this. Consider this quote from the author of the Hoard of the Dragon Queen (5E), Steve Winter:

A mistake (from my perspective) that many people seem to be making is assuming that every situation in D&D should be "fun." If my ambition is to have nonstop "fun," I'd be better off playing Lego Star Wars or Whack-a-Mole. D&D can also be thrilling, frightening, inspiring, maddening, depressing, frustrating, immensely gratifying -- name a reaction on the human emotional scale and there's probably a place for it in D&D. The match against Cyanwrath was never meant to be "fun." It was meant to trigger an emotional response -- anger, even hate, and a desire for revenge against the Cult of the Dragon. I haven't seen much to indicate that it isn't doing that.

Amen. Even "frustrating" D&D can be fun, if only in retrospect. Frightening or depressing? Yep, but they're still moments to reminisce about later.

And before I get called a hypocrite for saying these experiences can be edifying in nearly the same breath that I said the railroad campaign was not, let me point out a key difference: our responses, reactions, etc., were all scripted for us. We had no chance given to us to run away. (We even tried to, individually, commit character suicide at one point. It wasn't allowed because it wasn't in the script.)

Of course, thus is only my 2¢ worth. I realize there are as many ways of having fun as there are players. I'm not saying that this is BADFUN or WRONGPLAY...just that, I suppose, that younger players may have different expectations than an old Grognard. When you have some of each of those parties entering the same game, you mp (as DM) need to be aware, and should set forth your expectations regarding "balance" and "fairness" at your table.

[D&D 40th Anniversary Bloghop] Day Sixteen

Day Sixteen: Do you remember your first Edition War? Did you win?

After several years of playing Second Edition at the turn of the century, and several years of putting off changing over to Third Edition, we eventually made the switch. The book-buying and materials-buying went crazy. Then came Fourth Edition.

Apparently our DM at the time decided that he'd had enough of 3.x oddities--concerns and oddities he'd never bothered to share with any of us. It truly was sudden: almost overnight he became enamored of 4E and convinced of its ultimate superiority over all prior things D&D. Even now, I'm not sure what happened or how it happened. I almost wonder if he wasn't somehow in on the playtest. He knew about it almost before it was publicly released.

He also seemed to take it personally when we didn't jump at the chance to change over. You see, we're all middle-aged. We're all really busy, with family, jobs, and church responsibilities. We're also none of us rich. We all determined that it was too expensive in terms of time and money to change over to 4E with nothing earned (at least that we could see) except the DM's worries about 3.xE. So we said no to the change.

And our DM walked away.

Yup. He'd been friends with most of the group since high school, or before. And he walked away. He'd told us he wanted to play football instead of baseball, and when we didn't jump at the chance, he took it personally, he took offense, and he took his football and went home.

As I said, I tried 4E. I really did. I even sat in on a couple of sessions he ran. And I just couldn't do it. I don't know if the other guys ever went further than just reading the 4E Player's Handbook. But none of us ever saw anything in 4E that we wanted to incorporate into 3.xE; neither did we see anything that won us over to 4E to any degree, let alone the highly-personal commitment the DM had apparently found.

That was the first Edition War I experienced; to this day, I'm not sure who won the war.

[D&D 40th Anniversary Bloghop] Day Fifteen

Day Fifteen: What was the first edition of D&D you didn't enjoy? Why?

{GROAN}I've been dreading this question. To me, it smacks too much of a lighted fuse on the powder keg of Edition Wars. No, really. I'm going to stay in my own little corner of the internet today and not read the other bloghop blogs because, frankly, I hate the edition wars. The answer, for me, is settled. To me, there is only ONE "correct" edition of D&D.

That's the one that you enjoy. That's any edition you find fun.

Now that's out of the way, I guess I need to provide an answer. If I were to pick out ONE edition that I've played that I don't enjoy, I guess it would have to be Fourth Edition (4E). Honestly, I can't pick out exactly one reason for that feeling. I've played several times in several different settings with several different DMs. Every game was different in nearly every way. It was a pleasant way to pass a few hours; at least, it beat a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. That's less than a rousing endorsement, I know, but it's the truth. When I returned home, my wife asked "how it went"--my response? "It was O.K."

Maybe it was the DMs' styles. At the time, i thought that they were all different. Looking back, perhaps they were closer than I thought. There was very little intellectual buy-in with the encounters/adventures and some other stylistic issues. But I also kind of disliked the (possibly perceived) tendency in 4E to make all characters exactly the same, regardless of class, race, etc. I had a DM once who preached the absolute gospel of "BALANCE". (Hopefully you heard the great, booming god-voice there.) Everything had to be balanced. All I have to do use use "the B-word" around one of my current group who also experienced the other DM...and if I do use "the B-word" around him, I have to run from his flailing fists. But I digress....

"Balance." You have fighters casting spells through rituals. You have everybody healing themselves, and not with expendable potions. And yet, you seem to be pigeonholed into specific roles in the party, and each role is "necessary" for an adventure to "work." Again, this may only be a perception, based on limited play, so please don't flame me. I'm not trying to tear 4E down, but merely explaining what I didn't like about it.

I'm at a writing conference today, and have been here since Thursday. I wore my Pathfinder shirt on the first day; one of the first people I ran into was a teenager who looked at my shirt and said, "At last! Someone who plays the REAL version of D&D." As a Grognard and a member of the OSR, I snickered at him, considering I've been a gamer nearly twice as long as he's been alive. I just smiled in response and shook my head. I said it above, 4E is not "bad." It's just not for me.

[D&D 40th Anniversary Bloghop] Day Six

Day Six: First character death. How did you handle it?

I've discussed this one before too, in passing at least. I have to look back at Urdin Darjyr, my Dream Dwarf Storm Druid. Yeah. Really.

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.

Urdin's 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. If I remember correctly, he'd started out as a fighter, one of Boric's bear-riders. Then he was trapped, alone, in the wilderness for several years which gave him a few levels of barbarian--mostly for the rage ability and a couple others. Then he had levels of storm druid. He had forsaken the worship of Moradin for the worship of nature after he was stuck without shelter during a tremendous thunderstorm.

Ultimately the adventure led Urdin and his compatriots to a small island--Mezeketh Isle--in search of the Jathiman Dagger. The Jathiman dagger is a weapon capable of killing gods and, at least in this campaign, was kept in check by a "curator" whose will and soul kept the dagger's powers from manifesting. He also acts as a physical guard to keep the dagger from being removed from its current location. Urdin died in the fight to keep the dagger out of the hands of the villains. He was resurrected shortly after the battle ended. In an effort to protect the dagger from the world (and vice versa), Urdin took his retirement and sacrificed his freedom by trapping himself on the small island, at least until a replacement could be found. Through a little post-campaign PBEM, he actually became a Death Delver, a Prestige Class that "delves...deeply into the mysteries of death...to better understand and eventually gain some small power over it...and thereby draw strength from his understanding and indomitable courage in the face of it." {Heroes of Horror, Wizards of the Coast, p.93}

In effect...and we said this at the time...by being struck down he became even more powerful. Of course, he can never leave the island to exercise that power.

[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.

[D&D 40th Anniversary Bloghop] Day Four

Day Four: First dragon your character slew (or some other powerful monster).

Kobolds.

Yeah, you read that right. Kobolds. No doubt you were expecting to hear about the ancient red dragon that we slew, or the lucky crits I rolled on the half-fiendish fire giant. Instead, I give you: Kobolds.

Don't click away from the blog in disgust just yet, though. Let me explain.

This was back in my first 21st-century campaign, the DM was running Dragon Mountain for us. Now, since that time I've never once picked up the actual adventure to see what it was actually like, partly because I have fond memories of the entire campaign that I don't want to ruin. I say this as a preface because I genuinely don't know what was in the adventure as written and what was added by the DM. That's important because this particular DM was a fairly Evil Rat Bastard DM.

Nothing, I repeat nothing was normal. Stats were played with, traps enhanced. We even discovered--too late--that one of the NPCs he sent with us was actually the ancient red dragon we were trying to kill. Well, he filled the lower part of Dragon Mountain with kobold minions. And they were tough. And wily. They were almost Tucker Kobold-tough in their own way.

The biggest problem with them? They swarmed. On at least two different occasions we nearly lost players to the swarming kobolds of Dragon Mountain. The leader of them all turned out to be a polymorphed fire giant.

So, imagine my horror when my cleric (I wish I remembered what level he was at that point) kicked open a door and found upwards of 20 kobolds in a small room--a joint barracks/dining hall was how it was described. I was all alone. The kobolds all looked up in the same motion and locked eyes. I could have easily died in the next few rounds. So, I did the only thing I could think of: I threw my Hammer of Moradin (the only real magic item I had throughout that campaign)--a Rune hammer--and activated the fire rune. Then I slammed the door.

The dice were with me. I maxed out the damage roll from the massive fireball created by the rune activation. On top of that, and something I didn't know and hadn't bothered to ask, was that there were barrels of accelerant--moonshine in this case--stored in the room. My cleric actually took damage from the encounter. The resultant blast blew the door off its hinges and threw me across the hall into a stone wall, squashed between the door and the wall. But it also incinerated Every. Single. Last. Kobold. In the room. Did some significant damage to the walls and structural integrity of the room, even. Suffice it to say there was no treasure (or furniture, for that matter) to be found in the wreckage. The DM never did disclose to us whether I'd incinerated anything important.

But we all agreed: it was worth it. The guys in the group still talk about the event.

[D&D 40th Anniversary Bloghop] Day Three

Day Three: First dungeon you explored as a player-character or ran as a DM.

I'm going to take advantage of this one and play a two-fer.

Back in the day, I don't know that we ever actually ran a "module" or a dungeon that had a name. Mostly it was creating characters, painting miniatures badly, and staging battles and skirmishes between the miniatures. So, I'm going to fast forward to the re-birth in 2000. The DM put together the group of players, and gave us all detailed (I'm talking REALLY detailed) backstories that tied us all into some part of the adventure, including story hooks and motivations. Then he put together a modified version of TSR's Dragon Mountain, plopped it down in Faerûn where we could find it and where it tied in with our various backstories. Then we were off and running. That campaign ran for...oh, probably three years. For the climax, the DM dug out of storage and assembled the only Red Dragon of Krynn (vinyl) miniature I've ever seen in the flesh.

(BTW, it's real and it's spectacular.) Wizards of the Coast put out a Colossal Red Dragon. They tried to make it spectacular. And yeah, it's cool. I don't like how they squeezed it all onto one square base. It doesn't have the awe-inspiring pose that the vinyl miniature did. And then, I've seen them side-by-side. No comparison. None at all. If I had a choice, the vinyl miniature from "Screamin'" would definitely be my go-to red dragon of choice. Putting that old girl on the table is a real pee-in-your-pants moment for your players. The picture here really doesn't do it justice.

Back to the story.... That was the first real dungeon I'd played as a PC. For the other part of the question, the first dungeon I ran as a DM was a little side adventure I threw together a couple years ago to give the then-DM a chance to rest for a couple of sessions and unwind by playing a PC for a change. I ran out of time and fell back on a little freebie that Wizards of the Coast published, a little thing called "Start at the End." The idea is that you run into the dragon at the very start of the dungeon, and then various other inhabitants as the PCs work their way through the various caverns. Xorn, bodak, and other various nasties lie in wait for the players; I modified it throwing in some small critters and molds of my own as well. Now that I think about it, this was, in fact, the site of the first PC to die at my hands as a DM. The then-DM was playing an elven rogue and was scouting ahead of the rest of the party. He turned a corner, came face to face with a bodak, and promptly failed his saving throw. BAM! Dead elf. I loved every minute of it. Immediately texted my wife the news that I was no longer a "virgin DM." The group still laughs about that moment.

Unfortunately, it appears that, although WotC still has the base article online about this free adventure, they've actually removed the content (as they have with most of their 3.5 content) from their website, so the link is apparently broken. Fortunately, I think I downloaded the adventure back then and saved it on one of my various drives somewhere. Maybe someday I'll stumble across it and pull it out again.

Rival Adventuring Parties

James over at Grognardia had a post this morning questioning both the apparent loss of the Rival Adventuring Party (hereafter "RAP") in D&D as well as the amount of information required by a DM to utilize said RAP.

His post got me to thinking. I'm in the camp that likes to have these NPCs mapped out and statted as much as possible. I find it's easier to have a pool of random information to draw on rather than try and come up with it on the fly.

In other words, I like to consider myself a sandbox DM, but a prepared sandbox DM. Let me explain; no, that will take too long...let me sum up. I have a large binder for each of my sandbox games: those big hefty 3"+ binders. Each one is filled with lists of NPCs, descriptions of people, places, things. Random treasure. Maps. Things like this. These binders are constantly expanding as the campaign progresses; if I find something I like or something I need, it goes in there. Each binder is tabbed and organized in what I call a "chaotic anal-retentive style." Included among these binders are several pre-prepared NPC RAPs. I even have separate thumb drives for each campaign; much of the information in the corresponding binder is duplicated in digital form on the drives. This is not only for backup, but also ease of use.

My groups largely use a program called DMGenie. It was the best 3.5 electronic support we found years ago; sadly it's now all but defunct. Fortunately, we have enough coding knowledge among the groups that we can still make it work for our uses. Each of my thumb drives has an NPC file for each of my NPCs, monsters, and yes, the RAPs, just so that they can be quickly plugged in to the program and included in an encounter when needed.

Again: it's partly my own anal-retentive nature that requires this level of preparation. But my DM-style also dictates that I have this information and my players expect a certain level of detail. It may not be completely spontaneous, but it comes as close as I am comfortable. Don't get me wrong: I still love and use the random tables. I just like to have some details already mapped out for me and ready for use when called upon. I find that it honestly takes very little extra preparation time; it's something I can do while the television is on or while waiting for my wife to finish shopping. It certainly feels better filling time this way when compared to the pressure of having six player stare at you while you try and create an NPC's description on the fly (and then try and remember what you said so that it can go in your DM's campaign notebook).

For the next week or so, I'm going to dig into my files and share a few of these individuals with you.

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.

A DM is Trustworthy, Loyal, Helpful.... Oh, wait....

In my pre-work scanning of the gaming blogosphere this a.m. I came across an interesting concept from Stuart, the mind behind the Strange Magic blog.

GM Merit Badges.

That got me to thinking: "What kind of a DM am I?"

Then I got to thinking: "Where can we have these made/sold for real-life use?"

Then I got to thinking: "Real-life DM Badges...is that really too nerdy of an idea to work?"

Anyway, here's my electronic DMing Bandolier: