David Gehring's page

At this point I am going to call our group "The Defenders of Cauldron" because right now we are doing chapter 9 "Foundations of Flame" and saving the citizens of Cauldron from fissures in the ground, stampeding horses, earthquakes, an falling buildings. So defenders has a nice ring to it.

It doesn't quite count as a kill, but let us go for an "almost" kill by my DM.
Zaara, my female drow paladin missed her save vs the beholder's disintegrate ray and then I realized that she has a magic resistance. A roll of 8 or higher was needed for her to be destroyed and a 6 was rolled. What a major relief. I would have been depressed had she gone away.

We have been in the SCAP setting now for 5 years from late 2005 - 2010 and still going strong. My party is nearing the end of Lords of Oblivion as of last Friday 12/10/2010. Fun adventure!

I had my wizard use the spell passwall to circumnavigate the doors and just tunnel around them. I won't give out any spoilers as to what was contained in any rooms or corridors that we came out of.

My group got Zarik to surrender after they got him down in hit points. He is now aiding the party in their attack in the temple of Wee Jas, but currently they have their hands full figting two stone giants, 2 half orc fighters, and that dang wizard assassin who escaped the fight when he and the other two assassins attacked the party in the tavern to start the adventure.
Thankfully we now have faerie fire on this pain ( wizard ) and we are aiming to take him out soon. The stone giants worry me. My wizard got them in a web spell, but only one missed his save. Fun, fun.

Dave

I have always been a BIG fan of Leela. I grew up on the Tom Baker Dr. Who eps. and I always felt that some of the best eps. had Leela as the companion. Great shows like "Talons of Weng Chiang" and "The Sun Eaters" ( when is this one coming out on DVD ? ) come to mind. Even the Lovecraftian "Horror at Fang Rock" was good.
I suppose second I would go with K-9. Sarah would be third.

And who the hell is that guy with the strange accent speaking???

Stefan

He was the worst part of that whole video. I also wasn't too keen on the bashing of all the other versions of the game.

I thought there was talk of a 3.5 update to "Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth" floating out there. Any word on this at all ?

"Greg V (Contributor), Sat, Mar 31, 2007, 06:12 PM Reply

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WotC is doing a 3.5 update of S4 The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth as one of their free web downloads. The author's pretty much done, so I would think it would be appearing in the next few months."

Well, this was at the end of May. I was wondering if it was still on the drawing board ?

I have also been a reader of Dungeon and Dragon for many years. I bought ( well, my parent's did ) my first issue at the old hobby store that use to be on a corner in Lake Geneva, WI itself. I believe the issue was somewhere in the #50 range. I will really miss both mags. I really think Dungeon was hitting it's stride with the AP's and I will truly miss getting those magazines in my mail box on a monthly basis. I can only hope that Pathfinder fills the void left by these two great magazines.
And online content just doesn't compare to sitting on a lawn chair in my backyard and reading the actual magazine.

I thought there was talk of a 3.5 update to "Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth" floating out there. Any word on this at all ?

I remember my folks taking me for a drive to Lake Geneva which was only 45 minutes or so away from our house and I picked up my first issue of Dragon. I think the number was somewhere in the 30 range. The cover had two adventures with treasure climbing up some stairs and at the top was a devilish looking IRS character awaiting them. Phil Foglio did the cover. Anyway, I cherished that magazine and all the Dragons that came after. I was just getting into the game at that point with the basic box set and though "advanced" D & D seemed so complicated to me at that point having just read the basic rules I knew someday my group would be moving on to advanced D & D.
And so in a few months when the last issue of Dragon comes to my mail box it will indeed be a sad day. The game and magazine are an institution and indeed art. It will be greatly missed.

I would also love to see a Dungeon Annual. There were a lot of great early 2E adventures that I would love to see given the 3.5E treatment including Wolfgang Baur's "Kingdom of Ghouls" from issue #70 and "Ex Keraptis Cum Amore" by Andrew Miller from #77 to name just a few. I think this kind of annual would go over well.

My DM ran Aushanna straight as an arrow ( no pun intended ) and she lived up to her billing as a bad a$$ devil wench from hell. I ran out of a lot of my options when my wizard bought the farm from all her arrows.
I think what I may have to do is flee the Kuo Toan city ( I can put the wizard in a bag of holding and I believe there is a spell called "gentle repose" that will preserve the wizard's corpse ) so that once we get back to Cauldron we can pay for a ressurection on him.
My DM said that three adventurers just won't be able to make it through the rest of the adventure. Especially now that we lack a wizard. I guess we will be paying through the nose to bring the wizard back to life. Sigh. Oh well, that is what all that good loot is for anyway no ?
Go Brewers!

I had just found out today that Tom Moldvay passed away. His "Castle Amber" and "Isle of Dread" adventures were perhaps my two favorites since those were among the two earliest modules that I was either a player or DM. I liked the story that Steve Winter told about Moldvay keeping a note in his boot for two weeks as a visual aid for a Boot Hill game. The idea that this note probably smelled horrible only added to the realism. Apparently, Moldvay had a LOT of ideas that got incorporated into adventures and campaign worlds. He will be very much missed in the gaming community.

I don't feel so bad. So far for me it has only been:

Zenith Trajectory: elven wizard riddled by Aushanna's arrows!

I would also rather have more pages for content then any cartoons in Dungeon although I would like Dragon to bring back fan submissions as far as cartoons go since I have had one of my cartoons published in a Dragon Annual years ago.

Aushanna obliterated my wizard a few rounds into the Kuo-toan battle with her fire arrows and that left the party with three members: a half orc barbarian, a dwarf fighter/cleric, and then a drow paladin/sentinel. But before the wizard bought the farm he was able to snuff two of the eight Kuo-toans with a fireball.
Thankfully Aushanna departed after 10 rounds because she had my party on the ropes. The kuo-toans are all dead. My party is severely battered and methinks it would be nice to head back to Cauldron for a little r & r IF we can get out of the city first.
My question is this: did any have their party re-group and head back to Cauldron only to return to the Kuo-toan city with a better plan ? Or did you trudge onward despite dead party members ?

Brent,
I am truly sorry for your loss. My thoughs and prayers are with you and your family.

Dave

WotC is doing a 3.5 update of S4 The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth as one of their free web downloads. The author's pretty much done, so I would think it would be appearing in the next few months.

Boy, ask and you shall receive. Thanks! Any future updates on any classic adventures that us "old timers" can look forward to ?

Seeing as this thread is pretty much full and mostly a repeat of the favourires of 2006, and its a looong way to go to best of 2007 I am going to post a new thread of what kind of adventures we would like to see in dungeon magazine.

See you guys all on that one.

Well, I actually wouldn't mind a 3.5 update of some classic D & D modules such as "Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth" or S-4 I believe as well as "B-4 The Lost City" perhaps in a condensed format since James already stated why Dungeon couldn't put this into a full issue due to length and space and such. Otherwise, I am quite happy with the variety of adventures offered in the monthly mag along with the AP's as well. BTW, we just finished "Flood Season" a month back and it was a great adventure!

Since I am currently playing the SCAP my current favorite location has to be Cauldron. And the thing that makes that city tick with me is all the interesting NPC's that preside in the city like the shop owners, priests, mayor, etc... that my party has met and we just started "Zenith Trajectory".

I guess being an old school D & D gamer I am most looking forward to the Expedition to the Demon Web Pits, Ruins of Greyhawk, and Undermountain books. Keep them coming!
But what about the actual "Expedition to the Barrier Peaks" adventure in hard back ? ( Hint, hint )And perhaps a Giant and Underdark/Drow expedition as well ?

Well, my last group was made up of two Catholics and one Pagan.

I don't own the PHII, but I did catch Skip's Character Class
article on the Duskblade on the Wotc web site and after reading it I am thinking of making one.
One of the first characters I ever made way back 1E was a f/m and he was also one of my favorites. Granted, we didn't restrict spell-use wearing armor ( sue me, I was 15 ), but Tallus Darkhold was fun to play.
I don't think the standard f/m was meant to be as strong in combat as a straight fighter or as good at spell tossing as a wizard, BUT he would reap the bennies of having good combat skills and the ability to cast some spells which is pretty much what you want if you wish to play a f/m or variant thereof.
I do agree with Lilith in that the idea of a f/m may be more in making his/her spells condusive to combat by using spells such as daze, mirror image, hold, slow, haste, etc...A hasted duskblade would be quite scary on his own, but with the addition of a full party of characters watch out!

This campaign will reward those who come up with alternative ways to engage the enemy over and over again. Straight forward tactics will leave those playing in store for some tough encounters.

Sean Mahoney

Our party tried the forward approach in the first adventure and almost didn't survive to tell the tale. With the second adventure I wanted to try it a bit more stealthy, BUT I wasn't planning on having the toughest cookie in the first part of the adventure fighting our party that early.

*Possible Spoilers*

Toungeater and his baboons roughed our party up, but we defeated him in the end. The funny thing is that the party went to the back of the inn to perhaps gain a measure of surprise. They spotted the
corpses in the back and using mainly missile fire they took care of the "mini dinosaurs" eating them.
Our party also tried to quietly get in the back way, but Tongueater was on my half-orc barbarian right away. The two had an epic battle while the baboons fought the dwarf cleric and the drow paladin. The elven mage aided the half-orc and thankfully due to the barbarian rage we were able to vanquish all our foes.
The mage went through every spell at his disposal. We entered the inn bloody and tired and then managed to get into another scrap with occupants who heard noise. After dispatching them our game ended for the night.
I thought the encounter was a tad rough for a party ranging in levels from 2 - 4 at that juncture, but then again I thought the final battle in the first part was hard as well.
I will say this though, I do feel like the party is being challenged.

Well, the paladin is my favorite D & D class to role play. One of my all time favorite characters was a paladin.
I was telling a friend of mine that it is a shame that paladins always come off as pompous, stick-in-the-mud, holier than thou characters whenever you see them written in fantasy short stories or novels and the one that comes to immediate mind is from a Paul Kemp written short story in a Dragon mag a few years back of which I forget the number.
I tend to run my paladins as fair, but strong leaders and currently I am running a female drow paladin in the SCAP campaign who is of NG alignment.
If anything, at least in 2E, the paladin was getting the knock as the strongest and most over powered character in D & D, but with the advent of 3.5E, feats, and all classes having rather neat special abilities the playing field is rather even.
To wrap up, I still love playing paladins as the armored tanks that they are and I suppose it could be interesting someday to play one w/out the heavier armor as more of a Aragorn-type. But that day hasn't come for me yet.

We were nearly TPKed by Kazmojen as well.

Vhalantru was no pushover either.

Our group was given quite a run for their money fighting these two also. If not for some help from some of the prisoners we released we would have been toast.

Nice work Festivus! Why do you only keep track of gp in your game ?

I didn't see Emirikol the Chaotic listed yet by anyone. What a blast from the past IF we were to see him in STAP!

What about running the adventure twice with a 4 person party and a 3 person party ? Granted, time tends to always be a factor, but in this day and age of D & D 3.5 it seems like every adventure is generally geared towards the standard 4 person party. A group of 7 seems like a lot to me.

Well, paladins are my favorite PC of all time followed by clerics. I generally tend to play one just about every campaign or at least every other.
I would figure that paladins would be as compatible to play as any other class and by this I mean the whole "being lawful good doesn't mean being stupid" quote. I believe there was a Gygax article on this in an old issue of Dragon.The article basically saying that at times a LG character in general or a paladin ( at the time paladin's could only be LG ) in particular may have to bend a bit when it comes to making choices to further the cause of good. I think the example used was should a paladin slay a wounded baby dragon or wyvern or something like that despite the monster not being an immediate threat. The answer would be to kill the monster because it could be a potential threat to anyone or have babies that could be threats.
So long story short I would actually like to play a paladin in the Savage Tide when my group gets there.

B.A. in Art 1989
B.A. in English 1990

After the paladin the cleric is my second favorite class so to me it is odd that someone dislikes the cleric as much as your friend. I think the real cool thing about the cleric besides the healing, ability to wear armor and cast spells, command/turn undead, is the fact that the class tends to over lap with other classes.
Take a priest of Mask in the FR. I think you are able to have thieving abilities as part of the class. Then there is a priest of Tempus who has a barbarian type of bend to it. Plus the addition of a cleric using a sword which would have been unheard of in 1E makes it a class that has the least amount of restrictions next to say a fighter.
Just my two cents.

Great question! The first adventure I was the DM for was B-2 Keep on the Borderlands. And I was winging it mostly because I really didn't have much of a clue, but everyone had a good time so it was worth it. We are probably talking the Fall of 1980 here when I was in 8th grade.
My first adventure that I took part in was Castle Amber and I was running two characters: Perigon a 4th level paladin and Taarna a 3rd level fighter. This was probably late 1981 or early 1982.

I think it's pretty striking, myself. Hot chicks and spiders! What more could you want?

I almost thought it was Lolth at first, but she is too pale to be a drow.

I really wouldn't want to see too many of these. I'm looking forward to Mud Sorcerer's Tomb, as it's so highly spoken of and I don't have it, but I don't want to see rehashes of lots of old stuff I do already have taking up space that would bring me new adventures. I would definately shell out money for a big hardcover book of them, though: "Best of Dungeon" with some of the classics updated. That would be sweet.

~Qualidar~

That is why I would vary the publishing and coversion of "classic" Dungeon adventures. I wouldn't do a conversion too often, but judging by fan votes and such ( which I think they did once to my knowledge ) it would be a nice thing to see 3 or 4 times a year.

I realize that with the soon to be converted "Mud Sorceror's Tomb" that the conversion of past Dungeon adventures won't be a common practice, but I don't think four times a year would be asking too much. There have been many great 2E Dungeon adventures over the years that could live again in 3.5 format.

Excellent job Jeffrey! I can tell you put a lot of work into fleshing out these clerics of St. Cuthbert. I passed your work along to my DM for the SCAP. Thanks!

Is there any chance that "Kingdom of the Ghouls"
by Wolfgang Baur would be given the 3.5 treatment anytime in
the pages of Dungeon ? One of the few underground adventures with
something other then Drow as opponents.

Our party finished the first adventure and we are level 3 so experience can be quite relative.

Our current Cauldron party does not have a party name but some of my previous party names have been:

-The Company of the Sword
-The Emerald Brotherhood
-The Scarlet Brotherhood ( before I ever heard of the organization named this )
-The Fists of Torm

It can be hard to come up with a decent group name.

Make sure you have variety in your party make up. A rogue would really come in handy as would a cleric.

Given the choices, I think I would rather talk to the giant then fight him. My party took a beating from that armored half-troll in the first adventure.

And who's idea was it to actually do something with the undead dragon who I still can recall being put on that old map from White Plume Mountain ?

Well, we are two sessions into the start of SCAP and our party make up is small and lacking a rogue but nonetheless it is:

-female drow paladin ( NG Sentinel )
-Male Half-orc barbarian
-Male cleric shifter
-Male human sorceror

This first part seems quite tough for the four of us for some reason. The pit traps have not been too nice to Gorg, my half-orc. I am figuring on giving him a level of rogue once we level up.

I pretty much have all of the latest Conan material like _The Coming of Conan_ , _Solomn Kane_, Dark Horse Conan comics, etc...
The comics are really good and right now they have a fantastic adaptation of Howard's _Tower of the Elephant_which I think is one of his finest stories.
I am also glad to see the tpb format being given to the Marvel Conan the Barbarian series. The new coloring is awesome and I hope they continue their run.

D

I would also like to see a reprint of these articles with any and all updates to 3.5. Easily one of the highlights of Dragon along side the Baba Yaga's Hut adventure by Roger Moore.

This is some question. I am 38 years old and I have been playing D & D since I was in 8th grade in junior high school. I would have been 13 years old at that time. I bought that first basic box set and then moved to expert and then to advanced. The advanced game did seem just that to me at the time but my group and I caught on quick or at least we thought we did.
I am still gaming today. My old pals and I get together about once a month and we are finishing up TTOEE hopefully in Ocotber. We will be starting the Shackled City when we complete our current game. Oh, paladins have always been my favorite class to play.