The Pink Dice Chronicles

For Halloween, I hosted a special event of "Expedition to Castle Ravenloft" at my home for 6 select gamers from my groups and family.  Unfortunately, one of the players bailed at the last minute, but a party of 5 was sufficient to get going.  There was a plethora of food and drink (no Pinatas).  I tried out the prototype build of my new 'gaming extension table'.   The party spent over 3 hours building characters.  We used HeroLab for some and had to fight it a bit on the spell-less ranger build.  The group consisted of: Zephyr, a Kitsune Rogue / Druid Sam the axebeak J, a blind Oread Fighter / Cleric Kratos, a spell-less ranger Lloyd, a wolf Orflex, a half-orc barbarian who flex into a rage anytime anyone messed with his juice Berth, an Aasimar inquisitor During one of our breaks.  From left:  My sweetie, my GM assistant, the ranger, and the inqusitor. (What's up with black T-shirts and blue jeans -- nearly everyone was wearin...

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...

The original shadow curse in the Dungeon of Death causes PCs to lose one prime ability score point per hour while in the dungeon.  What a pain!  That means each character sheet is changing constantly while going through the dungeon. So, talking with some of my players, I proposed this alternate Shadow Curse: Characters lose 1 permanent hit point per hour while in the dungeon. These hit points can be restored 3 ways: While at full hit points, take a potion of curse serious wounds (or better) Use a healing potion that restore ALL hit points. Any restoration spell Resting for 8 hours after leaving the place that is cursed. Keep in mind that the dungeon of death has over 40 rooms, and averaging 10 minutes per room, that is 400 minutes of in-game time, not counting rest.  That is 7 hit points lost.  Throw in a few rest 8 hour rest periods for mages, and that is some serious motivation to keep healing the hit point loss.

I was able to pick up an excellent copy of Dungeon of Death the other day on Amazon.  For being published in 2000, the copy I got was impressive, almost new.  The Dungeon of Death is the second major dungeon in Lurkwood, the first being the Dungeon of Ruins.  I wrote my own Dungeon of Ruins, but it seemed fitting to try to convert the original AD&D Dungeon of Death. Though conversion from D&D 3.x to Pathfinder is pretty straightforward, with there even being a conversion guide, converting AD&D is not.  There is not conversion guide, so far as I can find.  So basically I get to convert the entire adventure piece-by-piece using my GM instincts, a stack of bestiaries, and a lot of gaming paper. As I go through this process, I think I'll post my experiences on here, as reference for other GMs that might take on a similar conversion. First Impressions: There is nothing quite like a well-written AD&D adventure.  It has an entirely differe...