The Pink Dice Chronicles

Our gaming store host, GameQuest , had a late night / early morning Magic release event, so we used the opportunity for a late night event -- Tomb of Horrors Pathfinder.  This morning, I am quite certain all of my players are crawling out of bed with a caffeine / sugar hangover. I ran the 3.5 version of Tomb of Horrors with notes on adaptation to Pathfinder (modified DCs, reformulated monster stats). The first party of five: Felix the Rogue Avatar the Half-Giant with a Cannon in a Bag of Holding IV Sheena the Ninja Another Ninja Banyetta A fighter with a Lucerne Hammer The party got lucky and found the right entrance first.  They avoided the first set of traps and found their way to the four-armed mutant gargoyle.  No one died, but it was close.  After becoming frustrated with the secret doors labyrinth, the group decided to go back to the main hall and jump through the mouth of the demon (a sphere of annihilation).  The last half-gi...

Monday night we got back to our game.  Kyte, the female magus, Jacen, the rogue captain, Sheene, the ninja cook, and Dugen, the half-giant that thinks he's a dwarf, were back in action.  The Druid missed the announcement that we were restarting but will rejoin us next week.  The other Magus has left the group. The ship was hit by a surprise squall and the old Magus was knocked overboard and lost at sea.  In addition, at the end of the squall, a bottle washed up onto deck.  The captain very cautiously examined the bottle, an old wine bottle from Candlekeep.  Inside was a wand marked on the side with the words 'Wubba Wubba' -- a wand of wonder. Getting back underway, the crew continued on towards Luskan.  A day out from port, a large warship appeared on the horizon -- the Dominator.  The crew ran up a Neverwinter flag to attempt to appease the warship running under the Waterdeep flag.  The Dominator ran up the black flag, calling for parley...

I've been getting to know Monte Cook 's contribution to D&D and other RPGs, both through his kickstarter for Numenara and through various other public appearances and interviews .  I'm also digging into some of his older D&D contributions. His genius is reflected in his creations -- for example, a blackguard mindflayer riding a beholder: I have to admit, I am becoming a big fan.  Numenara is going to be a really interesting new setting, and the related rule-set so far looks elegantly simple.  I am still looking to pickup a copy of Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil, and I am looking forward to the Call of Cthulu d20 manual that I should be getting this week. I'm also trying to find interesting new uses for the sphere of annihilation.  And someday... someday... I will get around to Ptolus, City by the Spire. Thank you, Monte Cook.

I had a lot of time over the summer to stay inside while avoid allergens and heat and air quality ozone action day alerts.  Cruising around the net brought me to a blog talking about an old school map -- I think it was drawn by Gary Gygax.  The image conjured up a lot of memories from when I was a kid and I would spend hours drawing maps on notebook and graph paper.  I'd even make my own graph paper so I could make maps. So I started drawing, and drawing, and drawing.  It was just a simple dollar store mechanical pencil on a tablet of graph paper, but the layouts just flowed.  Tombs, halls, secret doors, hidden rooms all were fit masterfully together into mazes and puzzles on 8 1/2 by 11 sheets.  Beholder tunnels appeared attached to caves.  Pencil shading filled in the negative space.  A large multi-level temple took form.   Unfortunately, the more a made, the more faded my first drawings became.  Pencil smudg...

Excellent  article  over at The She DM on how they did PvP in D&D and it worked out well. As a GM, I am always up for interesting requests like this.