d13's page

This is whatchawant brutha':

http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0046/0046_01.asp

I stumbled across this awhile ago while I was bored working a crappy temp job. I Googled "Dungeons and Dragons is satanic" and BINGO! instant hilarity.

I laughed at this and immediately showed it to everyone in my group.

I've been playing this game for over 20 years now and have had to defend against the satanic accusations for almost as long.

Remember that awful movie "Mazes and Monsters" with Tom Hanks? Ugh. That wasn't any help.

But these are the same people that sited an article from "The Onion" as containing proof that Harry Potter was teaching kids to worship the devil.

Maybe Kansas should change its state motto to:
"Imagination is Scary"

This is a really interesting idea. Character creation is often such a solo effort - I had never thought about doing it as a group exercise. This would be a fantastic way to create a sort of "Dirty Dozen" group. A group of characters that has a certain goal or a certain worldview - right from the beginning. An initial brainstorming session using the "yes and..." principle would guarantee that everyone had input and draw on the creative instincts of the whole party in its creation. Nice.

yes.
and. . .

Its been awhile since I looked at the old AD&D "Unearthed Arcana" but I think that the wood elves (back in the day at least) were physically stronger and heartier than the other elven races, but a little less refined. Not primitive in any sense, but a little more inclined to the natural state of things.

I think that High Elves would be more inclined to work with precious metals like mithril, whilst wood elves would use well. . . wood.

or would they?

that made no sense.

I just wanted to say it.

Owwoo!

I was hoping that I had just missed "introduce yourself"

A lot of the people on these boards have great ideas. It would be nice if there was one thread to get to know more about them and the games they run.

Anyway, I aint gonna be a newbie schmuck and try and start it.

Thanks Nomad.

Just remember, "between the velvet lies there's a truth that's hard as steel"

Well, you've hit 500, so you must know what you are doing. I just recently came to these messageboards and have been checking out a lot of the old posts. There are some really great threads out there but I cant seem to find a "introduce yourself" thread. I'd love to know a little about some of these people - how long they've been playing, where they run games, what type of game they run, etc.

Does an "introduce yourself" thread exist? Where can I find it? Advise me, oh master of the 503.

"Mars: The Bringer of War" has got to be one of the most used (and overused) D & D battle themes, but I do love it.

It always cracked me up that there is a track in that symphony called "Uranus: The Magician"

Gustav, what were you thinking?

I have used "Neptune: The Mystic" a bunch of times too. Nice and moody - good for dungeon crawls.

If you like "The Planets" you may also like "Finlandia" by Jean Sibelius and "Symphony for a New World" by Dvorak. Listen to the Allegro in New World and tell me John Williams didn't rip off Dvorak for his famous "Jaws" theme.

If you want a creepy feel the "Signs" soundtrack is good.

Does anyone have any suggestions for music that helps color an adventure regionally?

For example, I recently ran a game in a Bavarian/Ravenloft setting and decided that the area was famous for making finely crafted string instruments. Because of this I used a lot of string quartet stuff as BGM. It got me to thinking about more location specific BGM.

If the gang is ever in the highlands I will of course use "Braveheart" but does anyone have a suggestion if they are in the jungle? There must be some good world music/traditional Brazillian artist that can help flavor that. What about an adventure in an African/safari type setting?

I would love any other ideas on this. I use a lot of classical and movie scores, but sometimes I want more local color and less sweeping majesty.

I run two games - one has two players (A Bard and a Paladin) and the other has three (Fighter, Necromancer, Thief). I have run groups as big as nine before, but it gets a little difficult to handle.

I like running groups of two or three because it assures me solid role playing with each person and also affords me opportunities to play to their strengths and weaknesses.

Some wonderful character choices have even been borne out of the groups weaknesses. The necromancer in my group has become a kind of field surgeon in the group - patching up the PCs after a fight. He isn't anywhere near as helpful as having a cleric in the party, but he has come up with some incredibly innovative ideas to try and cover that weakness. He invented a painkiller derived from a stirge's natural sedative.

Sometimes the weaknesses inherent in a small group can present a clever player with great role playing opportunities.

I haven't seen anyone mention the "Glory" soundtrack for military campaigns. Near the end of the CD is a track called (I think) "Charging Ft. Wagner" that is terrific. There are also some great sad sounding tracks that can give a nice, moody touch to the aftermath of a battle.

All of M. Night Shymalan's movies have great scores. If you are running a game with horror aspects, I highly recommend them.

If you are running an urban campaign or a game that involves lots of "sneaky" activities, then "The Usual Suspects" has some great tracks.

On the purely classical side I was watcing "Excalibur" the other day and noticed that they used Siegfried from Wagner. Wagner has a lot of great bombastic stuff.

And of course there's always "The Planets" by Holst. . .