[D&D 40th Anniversary Bloghop] Day Nine

Day Nine: First campaign setting (published or homebrew) you played in.

Faerûn. Plain and simple. From day one of the new century onward, that's where we've played, adventured, laughed, cried, lived, and died. Previous to that, as I've said, was largely skirmish miniature play. Post-turn-of-the-century, well, there was the abortive attempt to have the "spouses' game"; that was set in one of the guys' homebrew world. Other than that one failed attempt to deviate from our norm, it's been the land of Drizz't and Elminster.

That being said, however, it's an unwritten rule that none of the "heavies" from the novels or from the campaign setting will actually ever cross paths with any of our parties. We just don't want them in our world, so...they aren't. I know that's one of the common complaints about settings, and Faerûn in particular. We just work our way around that; they're not even mentioned. Canon too, is played with fast and loose. We don't care what's happened in the books or the setting previously unless it directly relates to the adventure at hand, which it seldom does.

Mostly we use Faerûn because it's easy. We have a map. We have established regions and cities, cultures and deities. Where canon works, we keep it. Where it doesn't, we toss it. We don't have a lot of time to create our own world(s); we're all forty-somethings with largish families and careers so we don't look a gift horse in the mouth. It actually adds to the flavor; our characters know about Waterdeep because Waterdeep is an infamous location. We know what to expect when we go there, just like someone from our world knows what to expect when they travel to New Jersey. There's some basic knowledge there that helps move the game along. We don't treat it as a closed setting either. If we find something non-Faerûnian that works, we sandwich it in somewhere. We've taken the campaign setting and made it our own.

[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.

September Blog Meme Challenge Day 4

DAY FOUR

What is your favorite game world?

Well, with the limited playing time my group has, it's interesting to note that we've had several home-brewed campaigns interspersed with our published worlds. I had a DM try and play us in the Amber universe. That failed miserably: all the players agreed with that assessment. We've had some interesting planar adventures and a jaunt to Pathfinder's Golarion setting. All in all, though, I'd have to say I enjoy the Realms the most.

Mind you, it's an "edited" Realms. This ain't your daddy's Forgotten Realms, in other words.

I found a kindred spirit in this respect this morning, perusing the other participants in this month's blogging challenge. I happened across The Tower of the Archmage and was interested to see that he plays in a similar Realms that we do.

All of the major figures/players are absent. If they DO exist, they are elsewhere, putting out fires. Elminster is the only one that really has been named as existing. Drizzt and his companions? Nowhere to be found, happily, although we HAVE had one player dabble with a Drow character. He did it well, and different enough from Drizzt to be palatable.

The events of the novels and the campaign settings do not effect our Realms, unless we are actually playing through one of the campaigns. Largely, we are in a Realms sandbox, and take bits and pieces from published settings as it suits us.

My experience with the Forgotten Realms in this way is one reason I do not understand people who say that they can't play in this-or-that Published Setting because they don't like the major characters, don't want to worry about canon, don't want to be stuck following the guidelines of the novels, don't want to blah-blah-blah.

Make it your own. That's all it takes. Just like complaining about a rule set--take what you want and leave what you don't. Just because it's in a book--campaign setting or rule book--doesn't mean you HAVE to use it, unless the DM and/or entire party decides to use it.

We've journeyed through Our Realms since 2000. We've gone through 2E, 3E, 3.5E, and now Pathfinder as we've traveled. We care nothing for Salvatore or Greenwood's opinions on the matter, and we certainly didn't bother with any 4E Spellplague drivel. It's our Realms. And it's going to stay that way.