Rexx's page

Seriously, if you're reading this board, you can find a zillion gaming-related comics on the web. Dungeon can lose the comics and I would be much happier. Mt. Zogon gets read occasionally but I couldn't even tell you what the others are as they fall in the same catagory as off-brand advertisements. Once the comics were related to the scenarios presented. Often they were humourous enough for me to read the adventure. That was fine.

Order of the Stick is great but it cannot even maintain it's own schedule, let alone meet other users' needs.

Farewell's points mirror closely my logic to why powergaming has become more prevelant. In the early years of RPGs, the players were typically avid readers and found the RPG a way to create their own stories without sitting in front of a typewriter (yeah, that long ago). Their games focused on the story aspects of the campaign rather than the mechanics of the game (albeit simple mechanics compared to today...except for those bloody 1E psionic mechanics...oi!).

Today I suspect a lot of new players come from the video connection, wanting to have an adventure that is uniquely theirs and not so "canned". Video games focus mostly on action and action is derived from the mechanics of the rules. To be a bad-ass in the video game, you need to have the best widgets and the most pumped up stats/abilities. This mentality translates to the RPG as the best stats/feat combos/prestige classes/magic weapons.

Realizing what that combo is takes reading/research which takes time. In the "MTV" generation, time comes in small chunks before the mind wants something else. This is where Farewell and my theories blend. The mechanics-driven generation will either find the rules and use them, or get bored trying and move back to the video game (or card game or miniature game or Texas Hold'em). The story-driven generation often pursues the mechanics but always has the story to fall back on.

And thus, the bell curve has shifted so that the average is still over that group that came in primarily in '81-'88.

I must say I'm pleased to see some new blood chiming in on the boards. It gives me hope that I'll continue to find new blood to add to my extended gaming family, adding new perspectives and concepts and keeping the Old Farts' games fresh and young.

Free Kyuss worms for all subscribers!!!

I have a bunch of those Cheetos that turn your tongue green that I've been licking to turn them green and slightly soggy. I plan on throwing a hand full of them at the first player to come in contact with the worms...

ASEO out

LOL!!! I hate Cheetos so I'll have to put the kids to work making me some worms. That's a great-funny idea, ASEO.

Thanks for the suggestions, Steve. I actually remember the Porphyry House of Horror now that you mention it. Maybe it's the geological name or maybe I actually read it. I'll dig into the Box(s) of Dungeon Magazine Storage and take a look.

I had thought of sending them off to Hepmonaland to look for the Shadow Spire of the Age of Worms plotline. You have to assume the Shari's spy network would have some inkling of what is going on and try to get in on the action. I'd like to get the PC's up to 9th level before sending them to Oerik proper to do some "real" Brotherhood work.

The Vast Swamp is lined up for their 15+ PC LVL careers. The Hopping Prophet and this huge box set that begins with "Return" will definitely be pursued.

Again, thanks for the suggestions folks and keep any Scarlet Brotherhood/Pure Blood anecedotes coming. I'm curious if people have used the Scarlet Fist advancement path from Dragon...#260-something.

Old school fantasy bigotry...well, this is a "mature" game but I made it clear that this game wasn't to become the Fascist Revival Society. The game has been more of an exploration into a socialist society with strong opinions of what is "right". From their world view they are "good" and the rest of the Flanaess is "evil". It makes for great roleplaying (the players often comment that they forget their alignment is LE because their duty to society makes their actions "right").

Sometimes players just guess right, give them some rope and let them hang themselves... don't hang them yourself.

Amen, brother!

It does no good to get angry at the players if they seem to have precognitive abilities to predict the scope of the scenario. Before you start the game it's a DM's responsibility to establish the game's protocols. Tell them you're using a "canned" adventure and that you'll be tweaking things slightly to fit your DMing style. Tell the players they are not to consult the sources of the adventure or troll the internet for other players going through the scenario.

When you first suspect the players of having some foreknowledge, don't jump to conclusions. Adventures tend to have repeating thematic elements (Faces of Evil reminds me of the Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil for example) that savvy players will pick up on. Only after repeated instances of suspicion should you then turn the tables. Go ahead and play the first two scenarios as written. Take the third and totally change it on them. Replace the lizardfolk with wererats or bullywugs or bonesnapper or giant space hamsters. Replace magic items. Remove treasure. This ought to leave your players frustrated and an observant DM will notice this and have their suspicions confirmed. Then, only then, confront the player about it.

Premature accusations will only ruin a game with hurt feelings and resentment.

I have been running a Scarlet Brotherhood-based campaign set in Greyhawk year 591 CY. Using Sean Reynolds' "The Scarlet Brotherhood" sourcebook, I've been able to create a vision of the Shari that allows for great roleplaying without the hackneyed interpretations of an non-good society creeping into play.

The basic premise of the campaign is that six PCs from various segments of Shari society have been placed in a "cell" with a directing Asahar giving occasional instructions from his offices in Hesuel Ilshar. Their first task involved the cell tracking down information about "illegal breeding" in the township of Ris. Their investigations (eventually...) gathered enough clues to determine a former Assistant Director of the Bredthrall program was a member of the High Unity faction and was trying to use high level polymorphing magic to change elves into Sueloise-looking humans so they'd breed with Suel and produce offspring with half-elven benefits (namely low-light vision) but with outwardly Suel-appearances. In short, the players quickly became embroiled in the political backstabbing of Shar society. They've completed their mission and averaging 4th level.

What next?

This is where I could certainly use a nudge from the great pool of Greyhawk affecionados I've seen on the boards here at Paizo. The "heat" is on the cell and Asahar Ob-vuul wants to get them off the Tilvanot Pennisula. I'm aiming to send them to Hepmonaland. Does anyone have suggestions for appropriate adventures that have appeared in Dungeon? My DMing prep time is limited (partially because I've become sucked into the AoW campaign and am running a game of that too); a scenario that can be "cut and paste" would be ideal with minor adjustments for the LN/LE alignment of the cell. I vaguely remember seeing some yuan-ti themed adventures in the past 2-3 years. I have to make my storage trip targeted as I cannot haul the whole Dungeon collection home; issue numbers would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

Pssst Erik Mona: any chance of getting Sean to write a Scarlet Brotherhood-themed scenario?

I give up!!! Fine! Dungeon and Paizo's MBs are going to force me to dig my Greyhawk collection out of storage!!!

The crux of the Tenser story developed during the Wars/From the Ashes period of Greyhawk. The "Rary the Traitor" suppliment/adventure adds more. "Return of the Eight" is an adventure where the PCs take a trip to the moon and recover Tenser's last clone (help me folks if my memory is bungling this; I will get my GH-geekness up to snuff again shortly) and he retires from the Circle of Eight. This scenario also had 2E stats for all of the CoE members, including the "newbies" that replaced the retired/dead.

I don't think any of this is critical information to the AoW story (yet at least), but if you have a PC wizard apprenticed to Allustan (as I do in my game), this information is likely to be known by Allustan to some extent and will likely clarify his political view when compared to Tenser's. This may be relevant for later segments of the story arc? Elucidated with the facts, I'll make it relevant for my game...

((What really scares me is I remember more of the facts of the Greyhawk Wars than I do...say the events that led up to the Kosovo hostilities...sometimes I worry about how much of brain is devoted to innane facts...))

Did anyone actually buy BoVD or the good version(I forget what it's called)? It seems like a waste of money to me.

Yep, they were for this consumer. I cannot even say the books made interesting reading since I remember little or nothing about them other than they take up shelf space. I'll have to revisit them if I'm ever laid out in the hospital for an extended stay. Otherwise...

If you can track down a copy of the World of Greyhawk folder or original box-set, there was a lot of good historical data in one of the "folios". Most of that has survived the rewrites and is in "The Adventure Begins" which gives much more detail of the hows and whys of Greyhawk. The "Player's Guide" is much lighter reading and tends to leave a lot of questions unanswered...which makes it a great player book (thus the name, imagine that!).

I find adding/deleting a key magic item or two with the NPCs helps to flush out the player that has "snooped" through the documents and really wants that amulet of natural armour +3. Otherwise, there's lots of great suggestions already, some I use as SOP since the days before boxed text. Snoopers are to be expected when a campaign is as widespread as this one with such a convenient medium to discuss it. Damn you Paizo... ::sardonic smile::

Im 14... been playing since I was 12. I have a small group of friends who play in the sacremento area, although I live in Elk Grove.

Justin, check under "Gamer Connection" under NoCal Gaming: Difonix.com if you'd like to network with some other Northern Californian (mostly Sacramento area) gamers. We don't bite and love to have some new blood full of questions. :) I hope your games have been as fun and memorable as mine were when I first started.

AoW takes place in 595 CY and all the older Greyhawk materials are 591 or older. The Living Greyhawk book was...593 (nope, 591, thanks Callum!)? As already stated, the 2E Greyhawk: The Adventure Begins by Roger Moore is perfect if you're going to be running AoW as it has an excellent map of the Domain of Greyhawk along with a map of the Free City of Greyhawk. Holidays, historical moments, geography, pantheons, the nuances of Suel/Oeridian/Flan/Baklunish are covered (vital to any GH game) and even the Domain currency of plates/orbs/luckies/nobles/commons are covered. If you prefer something "lighter", perfect for players in an AoW game, I prefer the Greyhawk: Player's Guide which presents much of the above but orientated towards what is "common" knowledge to the typical adventuring PC. It also has the superb map of the Domain of Greyhawk.
Good luck and I hope you find Greyhawk ideal for your use. It's a perfect setting for the DM that likes a strong campaign world framework to craft their own plots and machinations without Canon Buffs crying foul.

Huzzah Randy Saxon (et. al.)! It's good to see some "new blood" in the hobby. I hope it's been fun and constructive for you thus far.

This hobby is getting long of tooth, at least by this impromptu demographic study. This is something that has been plaguing the industry for years as I recall. As long as the products are $35 a piece on average, it'll be difficult to get the hobby young again as I would certainly balk at shelling out $30 for a book for my 10 year old. It'll be a case of passing the tradition on to our children (if they don't rebel). I'm 35 and have been playing since '83. I still prefer the old "biodegradeable" dice compared to the current dice. I prefer a one minute round with 10 six second segments. 3.x Skills and Feats are well conceived but I prefer to go back to 2E if anyone were still interested in it. At least I could keep the story in the foreground and not the mechanics then. Still, the Age of Worms arc has renewed my interest in the game and made me appreciate keeping the Dungeon subscription going since #2.

Those that fall below the average, thanks for playing and pass along the game to your younger siblings/cousins/associates so we can keep a young element in the game. Too many "old farts" leads to too many "flashback" conversations and the current game fails to get past the old games. ::wink::

Oh, R-rated material is unnecessary in standard print. GMs have a tendency to push the R envelope repeatedly on their own without a product dictating it.

I apologise if this has been touched upon already:

I look at this product and admit that I'm somewhat interested in it. The material that would lift the $$$ out of my account quicker than Arizona Cardinals Super Bowl tickets (yeah, snowflakes in Baator and all that), is seeing the alignment knights from Dragon 106 appear. Illriggers, garaths, paramanders, lyons, etc. I had a whole culture of my homebrew based on these alignment knights and it would be wonderful to see them treated once more (as a Prestige Class I'd expect). Any hope?

Evolution of Game Mentality:

In the "old" days the typical RPGer was an avid reader of fantasy/sci-fi. They were attracted to RPGs because it provided a basic mechanic for them to write their own character driven stories. The game mechanics were light which put more focus on what happened rather than how it happened.

In the early/mid-'80's the video game culture began to pervade the RPG industry. While technology was still primitive, the games still focused on doing a lot of reading and the action of the game was minimal.

Then Nintendo happened. Final Fantasy. The action became more relevant than the story. Also about this time 2nd edition came out and there was more emphasis on the mechanics of the game than the story.

As video game technology improved and became more visually exciting, the story became a minor linear footnote to the heaps of magic, muscle, and metagaming that the players could apply to their character. The same happened to RPGs as more mechanics were created to allow for more uberization of the PC. The goal now was to create the biggest bad-ass with the minimal story effort.

As a player (either GM or PC) of a RPG in today's environment you'll have to expect that the Metagamer is more prevalant than the Thematicgamer. The number of years that video games dominated a youth's entertainment time rather than reading fantasy/sci-fi favours the Metagamers. It's up to the player to find a group that matches their "upbringing".

When a GM is putting together a game of strangers, it doesn't hurt to ask some questions to gauge the mentality of the players. Ask them about their favourite D&D related novel. Ask them about their favourite fantasy (non-D&D) related novel. Ask them about their favourite D&D related video game. Ask them about the favourite non-D&D related video game. The answers to these four questions should give you a good idea of what makes the player "tick" and whether they'll mesh with your DM/GMing style.

And that's where I say "huzzah!". Greyhawk remains truly "mine" the less material is out there for the masses. Having a small volume of "official" material means less money and time I have to devote to stay "current". Plenty of goodies have snuck through the Living Greyhawk sieve via Dungeon to spark the imagination and keep the campaign fresh.

Or was all of the above a case of reverse psychology?

Two bards? Sounds like a tune for disaster. Good luck!

Finally have had a game so I can at least attest to three of the four PCs:

Graum, half-orc Wiz1
Miö, dwarven Clr1
Akabane, human Soulknife1
The fourth PC is a rogue but I'm still waiting on details of race, etc.

I'm running a version of the Culvert prelude scenario (thank you to the author!; look for it on this board) before Whispering Cairn. This has been a great way to get the aloof PCs to work together which makes the start of Whispering Cairn simple.

The word on The Vein is this new "meat" is "soft" and full of "wind". Thus the PCs in my game have heard them referred to as the Flowery Trio.

I suppose it doesn't help that they come across as the Governator, a J.A.P., and Palpatine with my roleplaying...but it makes for memorable NPCs!

Thank you very much!!!

The key to motivating the players and thus their PCs in wanting to stay in and around Diamond Lake is having their backgrounds seeded with reasons to stay.

Two PCs are motivated by honour/revenge to stick around Diamond Lake and get the answers they need to settle their souls. One PC is the bastard son of Ragnolin Dourstone and has spent the last 50+ years living in shame in Greysmere. He wants to confront his father about the dishonour he paid his Clan and mother. Also there's this accident in the mines where his mother's family was killed... The other was the youngest son of a modestly wealthy merchant from High Ery (downstream from Diamond Lake in the Domain of Greyhawk). His Baklunish father was a Dragonchess expert and frequented Lazare's when business allowed him to. After one such evening of play in Diamond Lake, the PC awoke in a puddle of his own blood, injured but not dead from a blow to the head. His father did not survive the same injuries and the murderers made off with the Baklunish Dragonchess pieces (passed down through the generations) and a lot of coin. The PC experienced Cubbin's justice and vowed that no others would suffer as he did. His anger and frustration at not catching the killers lead to his discovery of his latent talent (soulknife).

A third PC is the former bodyguard turned apprentice of Allustan, a half-orc wizard with a touch of earth genasai in his blood. That'll be realized at a later game at an appropriately dramatic moment.

Having backgrounds rich with hooks will keep the players interested in the setting, no matter how much a *bleep*hole it is. A sense of ownership in the area will lead to positive results later and a potential improvement to the area.

I can hope.

Excellent. Thanks for the memory refresher. My copies of S2 are in storage. This may be a case of a later term surplanting the verbose text in my memory. And thus the language of gaming is created.

I had run a game a few years ago that was based in the Free City of Greyhawk. The characters were "contractors" for the Thieves' Guild and had done some work along the Ery River (which empties Diamond Lake). I've been mostly out of gaming the past couple of years but reading the AoW arc actually rekindled the DMing flames and I'm running this is in GH. The NPCs of AoW meld wonderfully with the NPCs I had already established. This makes it all fun to build upon. There are just too many cool iconic NPCs that the PCs will rub elbows with during the story to not run it as a Greyhawk adventure. Regardless of the setting, I've enjoyed reading everyone's experiences on the boards. Keep the good insight comin'!

Agreed. Game related material that is of a general enough topic to be usuable by the majority of the readers. Game-related comics are a dime a dozen anymore. If you can read this post, you can read 300+ gaming related comics right now.

What ever became of SideTreks? Hack a page off from the ads (blasphamy, I know) and have SideTreks return.

Or, take some of the notable NPCs from the pre-3.0 era of Dungeon magazine and convert them! I'd love to see Flame in an official 3.5 format. The old Challange of Champions can have 3.5 skill checks plugged in. You get the idea I'm sure...

"The Assassin's Knot" was one of the best 1st edition adventures ever written. "Secret of Bone Hill" and the "Assassin's Knot" are my two favorite AD&D modules.

I think that since my current Greyhawk campaign is still in CY 576, I might give my players a chance to involve themselves in the "take-over" of the Lendore Islands by the elves.

Excellent idea, Farewell. I had run such a game for a time as well. Track down a copy of L3 (Dwarven Delve it's called I think). The events in that adventure will certainly be enough to tick the elves off enough to boot non-elves off the island. In my game I had the elves in a Native American mode of having been conquered by Suel/Oeridian humans to have their population dramatically reduced by disease. They've recouped enough to begin start hatching the plans they've been working on over the past 500+ years.

So many of the early Basic/Expert modules were locationless but were intended to be placed in WoG. I recall that B1 was supposed to be in the Bone March (or was it Ratik), B2 in the Yeomanry, B4 in the Bright Desert, etc. All of those locals were adapted to the Known World/Mystara once that became it's own distinct entity. The blurring of worlds is obvious when you look at Arneson's Blackmoor being both in Greyhawk and Mystara.

The LGG is the most current material that condenses a lot of information from previous editions of WoG. The 2E "Player's Guide" for Greyhawk is a nice item for giving just enough details to let the players get in-character without overwelming them (calendar/holidays/NPCs of note). It also has an excellent map of the Domain of Greyhawk detailing the locations of many of the "settings" for AoW arc. Also there's a map of the Free City in the booklet. A local shop has a couple used copies so if you have trouble tracking it down, drop me a post at forums.difonix.com and I'll get you hooked up.

~~~TSRORexx

Help this degrading memory of mine, but didn't the old Erol Otus map in S2-White Plume Mountain label Dragotha a "dracolich"? This map was the first time I had seen the term. I didn't know what that implied back then, but it sure made White Plume Mountain look inviting in comparison! Twenty-two years later I am beside myself with anticipation to see/use an icon from my D&D formulative years in a real game. They say "dracolich", you say "The Undead Dragon", I say "I cannot wait!". Sometimes we have to look past the metagaming implications a word now has and remember the words are just nouns, adjectives, verbs, etc., and not some bloody stat block.