Hojas's page

What a great community!

It is so hard to choose because of all the kind people that post their opinions and answer questions here. I will say that I would pay good money to watch Rexx DM his AoW Greyhawk game! In the meantime, I brought the Kalamanthis so I will see you guys under the bleachers.

I also had the C64 and loved all the early games. "Hey Taxi!!" "Pad One Please!" haha I also loved the impossible mission "arrrrghhhh". Anyone remember Y's for the Sega?(not genesis, just sega haha) I will be on DDO tomorrow and I hope it rules!

For the love of god, please let Paizo get full control of Greyhawk!! *Another member willing to commit any crimes necessary to further Lilith's cause
I am trying my hardest to run the Age of Worms in Greyhawk and it has been a task to find all the background information for the surrounding regions in the Adventure Path. It would be incredibly helpful to have an official Greyhawk sourcebook just like the FR and Eberron campaign setting hardcovers. I used to play a lot in the 80's and my group is loving the fact that the campaign is in the same setting that all of our previous dungeon crawls were based in all those years ago. I must say that I am also enjoying 3.5 more and more with each session. As an old DM who has been away for awhile, this is my favorite D&D system ever. We just need the Paizo crew to start producing a full line of Greyhawk products!
P.S.
The difference in attitudes between Paizo and WOTC is unbelievable. Paizo just has that "by the players, for the players" vibe that can't be imitated by any marketing strategy. Praise Lilith and the cause!

You scare me and that is very hard to do haha *when someone who owns goats says your evil.....

I am calling for a ban of "white plume mountain" myself :) *Hits self in the face for making joke

My new system will be arriving soon and I can't wait to meet some paizo players in the game! My game arrived on Wednesday and it's killing me that I have to wait for my computer now :) Arghh

I am curious to see what MM looks like in D&D online :)

We will be playing our 5th session on Thursday. The party has cleared most of the cairn and should finish lair of the laborers(and meet Alastor) by the end of the session. There is only about 1.5 to 2 hours of actual playing each session. We have been trying to play at least 3 times a month to keep the action moving forward. It has been a blast to DM this AP so far! I have been away from the game for about ten years and I was worried about learning the new system(3.5), but it has been surprisingly easy to use. I must say I am very happy with the current direction of D&D/Dungeon magazine. Cheers to everyone playing the AP!

Nice Sage!! My players will be finding the ring next session so perfect timing :) It looks great.

Another thing that's mighty suspicious looking is a large bag of oregano. I buy my herbs in bulk, and I got some really strange looks carrying it around

Did they think it was Kalamanthis? :)

Go leatherman! I lost my dad's leatherman about 20 years ago and I still get crap for it today. The telescopic rods are nice to carry and remind me of D&D for some reason. I live in AZ where everyone owns at least a few guns as well.

And Stryper was cool, how dare you say otherwise!

You said it, not me :)

I love Swensen's Ice Cream Parlor.

Yeah!! I used to love the swensens in AZ! Remember Ferrels?(sp?)

I also love playing D&D with the same group again ten years later(thanks to AoW for getting us back together)and finding out that I enjoy it even more now. Sadly, I also love narcotics so let's hope I stick around long enough to see the end of the AP! :)

"Your mother ate my dog!!"
Peter Jackson when he was my hero :)

Well meaning people that don't know enough about a given topic can do a lot of damage, no matter what reason they have for being concerned in the first place.

Amen

It's also funny that people even become so concerned with topics they know nothing about. Of course it is always a lot easier to bash something you don't understand :)

I hate ultradan :(

*laughs and buys ultradan an ale

I remember running "horror on the hill" for one of my good friends when we couldn't get any other players to start a group. I had him run 2 characters and I handled the third. It ended up being one of the best modules ever and I still have lots of good memories from those sessions. Someone else (above)mentioned running an adventure like this and I have to say that it worked out well for us as well. I found his sketches of the old ladies from the adventure the other day while I was cleaning out old D&D stuff and it reminded me just how good "horror on the hill" was. Good luck and have fun with 2nd edition! :)
Those modules the other posters have mentioned that are specifically designed for one player sound very interesting though.

I hate rant threads :)

Oh, and where does your gaming cell -err, group- meet?

LOL :)

I am an old DM/player (early 30's) just getting back in to the game and I clearly remember the witch-hunt days of D&D, but this cover isn't even close to being offensive. There will always be a small percentage of people that see the word "demon" and automatically think that anyone who reads the magazine is going to "bow down and lick Satan's bootstraps", but of course the truth is much less exciting. If someone doesn't want to game with you because of the cover, light the magazine on fire and prove to them that it doesn't "scream" like the 1st edition DMG will! It scares me that this thread even exists over something so small. I run a small record label that releases underground gore/death/grind bands and I can only imagine what would happen if any of the CD's and Vinyl I have released ended up in the wrong hands. Luckily, Paizo isn't releasing the new BURN VICTIM cd and Paizo continues to deliver some great magazines for gamers of all ages. I really enjoy all of the great artwork and articles about the various pantheons in both of the D&D magazines and I hope that no one tries to make the game bland by regulating the demonic imagery. Let's face it, saying "Bow down before Baphomet" just makes the whole thing fun and exciting, adding to the feel of the game. At the end of the day Slayer was amazing, and Stryper was totally lame. Keep em comin!

Size 10 1/2 like most of the fools on here. Don't go skateboarding in your new MJ's! (just a tip)

That was amazing! It seemed so great to me because I can remember my good friend's mom burning all of his D&D books after their church told them to. The church also claimed that the books would "scream" while you burned them. She allowed him to play Gamma World for a little bit after that episode, but of course it ended with his mom banning everything, including his friends. Let's hope that christianity doesn't lead a full-scale assault on D&D again! :)

My old group finally got together and started the Age of Worms campaign! It was so much fun to roll some dice again and "The Whispering Cairn" is the best starting adventure to bring old groups back together with a bang. It has been almost nine years since we played(we are late 20's to early 30's) and the old feel of this 1st adventure has everyone anxiously awaiting the next session. I was so nervous when I sat down behind the screen and you can bet I didn't drill every mechanic correctly but the game flowed extremely well thanks to the good story of the AP as a whole. We only made it past the wolf den in the 1st session but I think we have worked the rust out of our rolls and it was so great to actually hang out with old friends in person instead of sending tells to each other in the latest MMORPG. Thank you Dungeon for allowing us to do some "real" adventuring again!! The whole group owes you an ale.

Trent Pittard AKA Hojas
Chandler, AZ USA

I posted this on a thanks thread awhile ago and I just can't express how much fun the old group has been having thanks to this AP. We have played two more sessions and everyone is still talking about the skittering sounds that erupted in to a geyser of acid-beetles! Another Ale for the whole staff! *At this rate the keg will be dry before part 2 of the AP begins :)

My old group finally got together and started the Age of Worms campaign! It was so much fun to roll some dice again and "The Whispering Cairn" is the best starting adventure to bring old groups back together with a bang. It has been almost nine years since we played(we are late 20's to early 30's) and the old feel of this 1st adventure has everyone anxiously awaiting the next session. I was so nervous when I sat down behind the screen and you can bet I didn't drill every mechanic correctly but the game flowed extremely well thanks to the good story of the AP as a whole. We only made it past the wolf den in the 1st session but I think we have worked the rust out of our rolls and it was so great to actually hang out with old friends in person instead of sending tells to each other in the latest MMORPG. Thank you Dungeon for allowing us to do some "real" adventuring again!! The whole group owes you an ale.

A while back someone shared their site where they had posted original watercolors of items in WC, I've lost the link and can't find the post. Does anyone still have that address?

I think you can find what you need at www.therpgenius.com

The watercolors look great :)

Black Hell, Yob, Graves at Sea, Burn Victim = great pounding combat music :) You can never go wrong with Maiden though!

on the gnome's

licking the bones

Ed soon discovered

The encounter takes place in the belly of a titanic animal. (A fish, to be classical about things, but really whatever.) In combat, any sufficiently bad miss hits the fish's flesh, causing it to flail about and throwing everyone inside around. DC20 balance checks for all.

This seems like a great encounter to throw at an old school group that thinks they have seen it all. Nice!

While I can't say the scene was an homage to "Dead Alive" (which I just saw again in a theater a couple of weeks ago--thanks for being so awesome, Seattle!), I can say that there are some creative benefits to writing stuff between the hours of 1 and 3 AM.

--Erik

I am so jealous that you actually got to see it on the big screen. (Phoenix is lame)

The whispering Cairn is the 1st adventure our group has played in almost ten years and it is blowing everybody away. Thanks a lot to all of you at Dungeon for helping the "band" get back together.
P.S.
As a long time horror fan I still get a kick out of seeing "wingnut films"(or productions??) at the start of every LOTR movie :)

I am sure the dinner party had to be paying homage to the Peter Jackson classic "Dead Alive". I have always wanted to see that scene placed in an adventure. Now I am just waiting for the "punch-bowl" scene from "Bad Taste".

Thanks a lot for sharing the artwork!! My group is going to do AoW for our first campaign in years and I know they are going to be amazed by the handouts. I never used to incorporate handouts in our old sessions and I can't wait to see how it improves the game :)

I have been away from d&d for quite some time and I am totally enjoying the jump to 3.5 edition. I like how combat is based around miniatures and the battle grid. I just wish that WotC would have made a specific line of minis for all of us that just play rpg style and aren't interested in the "collectible" random miniatures skirmish game. It almost looks like a scenario where WotC purposely switched to the miniatures combat system just to promote and sell more of their collectable products. Collectable games like Magic, is what WotC excels at and it makes sense that they would want to add that aspect to the original d&d game. My only problem with this is that it seems to go against the "by the players, for the players" attitude of d&d that attracted me to the game in the first place. Dungeon magazine and Paizo seem to have this type of mentality, and that is a major reason I have become so happy with the game again. Of course I will buy the pewter minis when possible and have my players paint them(I am terrible at painting) and you know I have spent a few hundred dollars on the skirmish minis hoping to use some in my brand new AoW campaign. It would just be nice to see some rpg specific minis even if they needed to cost a little more per box to ensure a profit. Someone mentioned earlier in the thread that these rpg minis could be different in a way that it would be obvious they weren't for the skirmish game. I hope to use as many minis as I can in the AoW campaign and I am so happy to be a serious d&d enthusiast again! Praises to dungeon and paizo for bringing me back in!!

I am just getting ready to start AoW for my 1st campaign in almost 9 years and I am debating if I will let "Hawggs" the evil thief join the old group again. On one hand, "Hawggs" was an amazing role-player and was such an evil bastard that we still laugh about things from 8 years ago like they happened yesterday(killing a sleeping innocent the 1st night of our adventure in the inn- guards spot him jumping out of the window - he hides in the bushes and removes his clothes- runs in to the inn naked yelling something about thieves attacking him- they don't believe him and he gets an arrow in the bare ass from a guard while running again). The bad part though is we were never able to get moving along and the second session ended with all of us having to stop "Sativ", the party cleric(and no stranger to real life fist fights), from literally giving "Hawggs" a very real life beat-down for his evil antics.
I am thinking of letting "hawggs" play again but only as a lawful good character to see if he can actually roleplay something different. "Sativ" is long gone and won't be joining our sessions :(

That would be great!!

I think my pool table will be turning in to an arena when our group finally gets to the champion's belt. I can't wait!!

I am just getting back in to the game (almost 10 year hiatus) and Dungeon and Paizo have made me a hardcore fan again. So much good material and the most helpful messageboards I have ever seen. Keep up the great work!! I can't wait to start AoW with the old group! (1 week and counting)

Thanks to all of you for the info! I am almost prepared for the 1st session and I must say that I am having a blast reading all the new rules and getting familiar with this campaign. I will definately check out "swarms" because this is the 1st I have heard of them and I don't want a TPK to kick off the group's 1st journey in ages. Maybe the players can do some asking around in town and find out a little more info on swarms so they can still experience something fresh and new right off the bat :)

I have dusted off the old books and the group is getting back together. All of us have been playing MMORPG's for some time now and it dawned on me(after 10 hours of endless ganking) that we haven't seen each other face to face in ages. I also noticed that all the stuff that we liked in the on-line games was the stuff we were comparing to D&D. So I called up the crew and everyone was just as hyped to get back to the dice and do some "real" adventuring again. I decided to go to the hobby shop to see if D&D was even available now. I was so happy to see that D&D was going stronger than ever before with a wealth of new material available. A few bills later(ack!) and I have the new version 3.5 core books, Forgotten Realms campaign setting, City of Splendors, and minis that I never should have started to look at. Then I spotted a Dungeon magazine on the shelf. I remembered the magazine from years ago, but I really didn't read it back then :( I bought it and when I got home I was amazed to see how much quality material is in the magazine. The whole idea of running an adventure path as big as this through 12 issues is great. I am bummed I missed out on "The Shackled City". Our group has always enjoyed epic plots with the combat so I was thinking "AoW" would be a great place for us to start fresh again. Since it has been awhile for all of us, do you think that we should start with a side quest that would tie in to the start of "AoW"? Just so everyone gets the rust out of their rolls? Any suggestions for the tie-in? It sure feels good to be back :)

P.S.
I can't believe how much positive information is being given out by fellow DM's on this messageboard! Thanks a lot for the time and help that you give to the new DM's and those of us who need our skills refreshed.