Tim Hitchcock's page

I am beginning an adventure that starts with "A Box of Flumph" and will run through the City of Istivin arc. I am making "the Grackle" from "A Box of Flumph" a little more sinister and mysterious but running with the idea of a shady character who has made enemies everywhere and burnt every bridge he has ever crossed.

The whole campaign is based around chasing Jonas through a mish-mash of Dungeon adventures (Fiendish Footprints will show its face) that I am implanting in a homebrew world. I am asking all my PC's to invent a terrible thing that Jonas has either done to them or taken from them to give proper motivation for revenge. In the end I am going to let the PCs either sate their lust for revenge in a battle to death in the midst of the world being torn apart by a rift in time or I am going to let them join Jonas and travel to the past to help rectify all the wrongs he has done.

All the adventures can be easily linked by following the Grackle's rabbit trail straight into and out of each module.

Ok, now I'm completely flattered...

Please let me know what happens to Jonas once you get started.

Here is the path I am working on for my next campaign (a dark campaign for which I plan on using Heroes of Horror... I probably will not start it until December or January):

Bogged Down - Dungeon #91
An Icy Grave - Rpg Archive
Deep Freeze - Dungeon #83
Frozen Whispers - WOTC
The Soulscape Paintings - RPG Archive
Totentanz - Dungeon #90
The Stink - Dungeon #105
Rana Mor - Dungeon #86
Bloodlines - Dungeon #94
Tears for Twilight Hollow - Dungeon #90
Ravager of Time - 1E I8 converted to 3.5
The Styes - Dungeon #121
Bad Moon Waning - WOTC
The Dying of the Light - Dungeon #84
The Death of Lashimire - Dungeon #116
Beyond the Light of Reason - Dungeon #96
Seekers of the Silver Forge - Dungeon #125

This path should take the party to level 15 and beyond. I usually pare the list down as I go, but this is the working list I am starting with right now as I am in the early planning stages.

DM

Cool, another person out there who wants to run my adventures!!!

Thanks Wolf70!

I am currently developing a campaign set in the FR, waterdeep to be specific, and will be using many bits pulled from the pages of Dungeon culminating in a githyanki incursion into the realms. I will be creating 3/4 of the advenures myself, and will be running a "superhero-esque" style, but thus far the Dungeon modules I Plan to adapt are:

Kambranex's Machinations-#91 (Substitute "the Tinker" a mad gnome inventor for Kambranex)
Heart of the Iron God-#97 (Same "Tinker" substitution for recurring villain)
Beast of Burden-#100 (Substitute sauhaugin for gnolls and make the kadtanach an amphibian)
The Lich Queen's Beloved-#100 (incursion campaign, enough said)
Foundation of Flame-#113 (not whole cloth but I will use many of the encounters)
Death of Lashmire-#116 (it requires plot tweaks but it has some great psionic githyanki action)
Lost Temple of Demogorgon-#120 (I'm just pilfering the monkeys from this one, oh yeah)

That's all I currently have slated for inclusion but I am taking monsters/NPCs/traps/etc from other issues. Those I have chosen all share a uniqueness that fit well into the envisioned "superhero" campaign. I would really appreciate any suggestions for other off the wall adventures I may have missed.

Thanks for throwing in "Death of Lashimire" in your personal Adventure Path. I'm glad to hear you enjoyed it. (also wrote a follow up to it in issue 125)

I too enjoyed the Sheens issue and would like to see an up to date conversion.

As a side note Malhavoc's Chaositech is a great little book somewhat along the same lines.

Chaositech is definately one of my all time favorites. Too bad we can use it adventures for DUNGEON.

I'm still 37, last I checked.
I started playing in 4th grade, so I guess I must have been around 10. I had a copy of Blackmoor I bought in a hobbyshop. I don't know why I bought it, I think I thought it was a story or something, maybe a fancy comic book, and it sort of reminded me of a cross Conan and the Hobbit. A few months later I figured out it was a game and that I was missing some pieces so I went back to the hobbyshop (it was in a mall several towns away so i had to convince my mom I needed some pants for school or something)
I got a copy of the blue book and Keep on the Borderlands and as soon as I got back I tried to get someone to play with me, my friend John agreed, but he couldn't come over that day, so we played over the phone and I ran up a really big phone bill.
My mom got pissed.
The rest of the year I rode miles on my bike to anyone nearby that would play.
Now I just drive hundreds of miles to conventions in Indianapolis, or take a ferryboat into Manhattan.
My wife won't let me play over the phone either.
Dang I miss the 70s.

Tim Hitchcock wrote:

I just find it a little curious that after reading the Amazon reviews 17% of the review readers then purchase a Dragon subscribe , but 18% instead purchase a subscription to Curves of Men.

WTF!

WaterdhavianFlapjack

I dunno, but I wish I could make this stuff up.

Tim Hitchcock wrote:

Quote:

I have a player who wanted to play a renegade githzeri with extensive brain-damage and totally bent on merging with Limbo rather than fighting against it.

Cool. Might have to "borrow" that idea!

WaterdhavianFlapjack

Careful, Gith are fun, you might never want to play anything else.

Also, since their favored class is monk, you can combine it with the formerly unavailable Psychic Warrior... Its.. well, if you try it, you'll know.

I hear ya,

Just to be clear on my end, I'm not saying that Dragon should cater specifically to new players (which it doesn't), and I don't think that's its selling point (or the selling point for Class Acts). Still, I'm ok with some of the more obvious Class Acts, because they aren't always obvious to new players.
I'm not usually a player, I generally DM so I look at the magazine as a source of readily available info I can throw at my players. I know I'm supposed to keep my copies in mint condition, but I bring them to games so those players that only own the PHB can have a few other options.

And I do get a ton of new players with a wide demographic of education, age, culture, and sex.

I run three regular games.
One with 20 some odd players of all ages, sexes, races, and skill levels.

One with 6 advanced players (pretty much all female)

One with my students, usually between 6 and 12 inner city kids between the ages of 11 and 14 (minorities of mixed sex).

So if an article doesn't hit me, it is often useful to someone else, and if that make them happy at my table... I consider it money well spent.

Kudos on the Chaos Monk. It's really good, and something I might actually consider playing, if only for the interesting chaotic roleplaying oppurtunities. Or, maybe I could make a chaos monk street brawler...

WaterdhavianFlapjack

Thanks, glad you liked it. I have a player who wanted to play a renegade githzeri with extensive brain-damage and totally bent on merging with Limbo rather than fighting against it. Anyway, that was the initial theory behind it. Though I made it so you could also just Drunken Master it.

They ignore me all the time (particularly when I've sent a rotten article), but it hasn't stopped me from sending stuff, and it hasn't stopped them from pestering them at conventions, and it hasn't stopped me from getting published on a few small occasions.

Its just as much fun waiting 3 years for something to come out, or to have a piece accepted and paid for and never see print, or writing a thrid of a book and having it released with your name credited on the inside cover following the thrilling caption of "Additional Text by:". Or worst of all, you could submit a bad sketch of something you want an artist to render, and find it has been published as the artwork for another author's piece.

I've suffered all of the above (to be fair, not all of these examples were from Paizo, and only one from the current batch of editors- I just like the drama of it).

Conversly, sometimes I hear nothing for months and then I get a check in the mail with a note saying I have an article in next months Dragon.

Its a screwy business, we all feel your pain.
I'd imagine you could even include the Paizo editors who are probably experiencing the same thing from the places they're trying to get published.

I wonder what the legalities of that would be?
I'd love to take a crack at that!! They look real hot on the game table. I've also used a couple of his other figures in play such as the Conan serpent thingy (I forget what its called) and a barbaric version of the violator (which I used as a Titan in a Scarred Lands campaign)

What I'd like to see is some more depth instead of a 1 page blipvert.

Compare Chaos Monk from 335 to the Ariel Avenger from 319.

The Ariel Avenger article (it's a prestige class) has an exciting, inspirational picture, a bit of history to it and some nice class features.

The Chaos monk article has some nice rules but that's it, it's just rules. And a disclaimer: Beware, these rules may seriously alter your game. What I'd like to see is the background to Chaos monks, maybe their history, a typical character or the leader of their order.

That's what would instantly add flavour and atmosphere to my campaign (as the Ariel Avengers have already done), and that's what I'm looking from Dragon articles. I don't really need to add more rules.

I have to agree with you on that as well, and it was my article. I would have loved to provide more development.

However, that's not what the article was really about. It gave some down a dirty quick rules for playing a chaotic monk for the person that shows up wanting on friday night saying hey, I want to play a chaotic monk.

There is another point many of you seem to be forgetting here. If your posting on this board, you probably play D&D a lot. You might even have played for years and are really good at.
Not everyone is, and the class acts articles make great stepping stones for new players. As a GM I thrive on new players, and over the years, I have taught dozens of people to play. Most of them don't want a ton of information shoved in their face immediately. Its intimidating and drives people off. A nice simple article suggesting someone take bless as a first level cleric, is cool for someone whose never played a 1st level cleric.

I just find it a little curious that after reading the Amazon reviews 17% of the review readers then purchase a Dragon subscribe , but 18% instead purchase a subscription to Curves of Men.

MAN, DO NOT HATE ON THE FLUMPH!!!!

I bought a copy of Dundjinni for 35 bucks at Gen Con.

I haven't used it yet though as I was so psyched I could run it on OS X that I forgot to check the minimum processer speed (I have an older mac).
Regardless, it seems to make maps that you can play on.

I also like the concept of scanning in maps and cutting and pasting the parts to make new maps, in whatever program folks want to use. I think that was the point of this thread originally. I don't think it has anything to do with photoshop except that that happened to be the program he used to do it.

One of the cool things about being a GM is you can change the way you use certain elements of the game. Flaws in particular have great uses aside from the way they are presented.
Rather than give characters the standard feat per flaw, I sometimes let players use flaws to knock down LAs on a 1 to 1 basis. Its cool if you have some one who wants to play say a hagspawn when your trying to start a new campaign.
Another good use for them is to use them as a substitute for xp penalties for multiclassing.
As far as preventing abuse for sneaking into PrC classes at lower levels goes, any balanced PrC is going to have a Skill, Spell level, or BAB requirement that limits easy access to the class. If you have introduced a PrC to your campaign that doesn't have one of these requirements, by all means, add that one yourself. I run a game with 20 players, so balance is a real important issue for me, if it even seems like I've given an unfair advantage to one character over the others I have a bunch of angry New Yorkers ready and willing to beat my... anyway you get the picture. Thus far, using flaws hasn't upset the balance on my table.

That would rock mightily, Tim! We need to convince one of the Paizo guys to DM. :D

I vote for James, but he probably knew that already. In fact he probably knows the adventure I'd want him to run too.

Evil twin.. That's so cool. I've always wanted one of those myself. Next year it is then.

btw I keep thinking it would be really cool to get a freelancers game going at GEN CON. Playing with new people was something I really didn't get to do this year. There's so many great contributors to the zines that I'd love to sit at a game table with.

I kind of like weird little critter like Rot Grubs and Throat Leeches That said, I have never used them as written, for all the reasons mentioned above.
First off, I never use insta-kill stuff, when I use these guys, I tone them down so that they only do ability score damage and can be killed by energy damage and cure spells. Secondly, I try to make their presence somewhat, if not entirely obvious to the characters.

Here are some examples
As a contest or test: the antagonist has a bottle of water containing one throat leech and challenges a PC to trade swigs with him.

As a trap: The treasure is in a springloaded box of rot grubs. When opened, the character is sprayed with grubs instead of say acid or poison.

As weaponry: An assassin places a throat leech in the wine glass of his victim (instead of say poison).

Also, I just don't use them as common hazards, instead I use them as rare quasi-magical things rather than common creatures with potent adaptations.

The dialogue in those Gord stories was priceless; perfectly horrible pulp language chockful of anachronism and profanity.
No other character in the history of D&D novels sounded as much like the players at my table. Please, please, please bring back Gord.

The writing seminars are always my favorite part of GEN CON.

Btw: Amber, I was going to try to introduce myself to you at the
Sean Reynolds seminar on Sunday, but you cut out early.
Anyway, I just wanted to tell you that I really like your work.

Oh, and not to sound all negative, two good examples recently were Keith Baker's Steel Shadows in #115, which spent half its pages on a murder mystery, and The Death of Lashimire, which was combat focused but completely open-ended in regards to who the PCs decide to kill or ally with.

Thanks Stalkre..

I hope you like part 2 as much...
There's as little dungeon in it as I could get.

Tim Hitchcock