John Crovis's page

More information concerning the game

What: Eberron Campaign starting in Sharn. Characters are all members of a small adventuring guild. Adventures will not have an over-arching story line. House rules yet to be determined.
How: A laid-back game for folks that just want to have fun and explore the Eberron world.
Who: The group will consist of myself, my brother, and two or three other individuals. I am a 27 year old married man, and my brother is 25. Although I prefer to game with individuals around our ages, I am willing to game with folks who are older or younger.
Why: My brother-in-law and sister-in-law have become inaccessable for gaming. My wife is unfortunately uninterested in gaming with a new group. That leave myself and my brother... not much of a gaming group.
Where: The game can take place at my apartment, or if you want to host, I can go as far north as Towson and as far south as Dundalk. No smoking in my apartment and we do own a cat.
When: Every other Wednesday. Exact time still yet to be determined. Both myself and my brother are completely free on Wednesdays.

I’m looking for form a new D&D group to play on Wednesdays, every other week. If you are interested, please e-mail me at jmcrovis231 comcast net.

I'd like to ask a question concerning the month-to-month subscription plan as well. Can we change from a month-to-month plan over to a one/two/three year subscription? How would one go about doing that?

Thanks
John

For the Poll: I keep them in hopes of finding a use for them someday.

For Jason's Question: I want tiles that I can use to build my own locations. Versatility... think versatillity. :)

So....

Any news on either a submission or a query meeting? ;)

Well, I recently received a note from Jason Bulmahn, saying that he hopes to get to my queries soon. Maybe we'll hear something by the end of the month. :)

... or not. *shrugs*

I am either looking to form a group or join an existing group of D&D and D20 enthusiasts. I would be available to game on any weeknight and would be willing to travel within reason or provide my own home as a location. I am 26 years old, and would prefer to game with other adults. I am completely open minded about all settings, genre, and game styles. I am also willing to run Age of Worms, if no one else is interested in running a game.

If you are interested, contact me at: crovis#comcast/net.

I would also like to add that wizards should only follow one school of magic sooo lets develop each of the schools of magic. Time of the "jack-of-all-trades" wizards should be ended. One school of magic only. This would make wizards have their unique strengths and weaknesses amongst each other.

You could accomplish that by making all wizards required to be specialists. :)

WoTC should just do away with the concept of "character class", convert the various non-standard class feats into regular feats and then have the characters simply accumulate Feats as they progress in experience - the more experience, the more feats you possess...

While I have enjoyed classless RPGs in the past, I don't think WoTC should do away with classes. Classless RPG's have a tendency of becoming generic, easily min/maxed, and hard to identify with. Gurps is a fine example of this phenomenon; sure, you can play a flying superhero who fights gun wielding Elven Cthulhu Cultist with two ancient katanas in space, but why would you want to? Classes give focus to a game through implied setting, by making characters easily identifiable, and providing sources of inspiration for character creation. Even more importantly, it has served D&D very well for the last 30 years, and seems to be continuing to do so. Why fix what isn't broke?

Given the 11 core classes, the "witch" class description in the DMG, and the 3 classes detailed in each of the Complete books ...

I was wondering if there is a strong fantasy archetype that has yet to be detailed as a character class?
If so ... what is it and what shape should it take, conceptually?

Lets see:

That's a grand total of 34 base classes! And that's just the WoTC published products... Lets not forget the possibility of new classes in the upcoming Complete Psionics! Assuming that there would be three, that would bring the total 37!

So, no, I would say that we're pretty well covered in the classes department! ;)

No, a month-and-a-half isn't too bad at all - especially given the fact that time frame smacks right into the GenCon schedule.

I have to admit, I didn't take GenCon into account... I'm just getting a little antsy, I guess. :)

I'm a little concerned myself, being new to the query process. So far, I've written two proper queries, one of which was sent in over a month and a half ago, and I have not recieved a responce for either. I've sent an e-mail inquiring about the status of my queries, but haven't had a responce yet.

Sometimes I am amazed at how often this subject comes up...

As I started playing in the early 90's, I never recieved much flack for playing RPGs. My parents were alright about it; they figured that if I was holed up reading a book, I wasn't out doing drugs or getting into fights. The only time I experienced the "D&D stigma" was when a co-worker was absolutely sure that it was an evil game... this was the woman who had a hood piecing, had relations with our boss (a married man), and admited to occasionally experimenting with other women. Yeah, talk about glass houses. By the end of our conversation, I had convinced her that D&D wasn't so bad...

The truth of the matter is that the "D&D stigma" is closed mindedness on two fronts; A game that is different than your average card or board game, and an aspect of religious practices that has been seperated from religions proper only in the last 200-400 years. Having studied "the occult" myself, I've come to realize that occultism is composed of elements of modern religions that were declared unorthodox a long time after the founding of those religions and elements of religions that were displaced by modern religions. Essentially, it's a melting pot of religious beliefs. Other religions despise it because they like to believe they have a monopoly on the "Truth" and "God," and occultism seems to indicate that they have nothing of the sort.

John Crovis wrote:

Hmm... Has anybody been *submitting* Winning Races articles as of late?

There haven't been any in the last few "let's pick features" meetings, which means we either haven't received any or Jason has nixed them himself. It sounds like we might see one from Hal in the next "let's pick features" meeting, however.

Well, this is good news! I've sent three in a query fairly recently... And if it isn't one of my races, then at least I can look forward to another Winning Races article. :)

I have to agree with Zherog here. While I have not actually put any of the articles to use, as of yet, I find them all to be fairly imaginative, especially given the length of the article. Word for word, these little articles pack more punch, has more crunch and fluff, then some of Dragon's longer articles.

The next Ecology is a Behir, and after that we'll do the Kraken.

We'll bring back Winning Races when we get submissions that offer something other than simply more animal heads. Until then... we wait.

--Erik

Hmm... Has anybody been *submitting* Winning Races articles as of late?

John Crovis wrote:

66 points to spread among ability scores.

@#$%&!!!

Are you serious? Doesn't that give your PCs an average score of 16 for each ability? Are you planning to increase the difficulty of some of the encounters to compensate for this?

I use a straight 30 point buy system.

If I was a player... Hey, you don't happen to live in Washington State, do you? I might be interested in seeing what a game like yours would be like. :)

Just because I said "points" doesn't mean I'm talking about the DMG's point buy system... You could have figured that out if you had read the rest of that paragraph. :P~

Robert has the idea... by making it so that no two ability scores can match, you end up with +3 in total modifiers every time.

My house rules for the AoW campaign, in brief.
1) 66 points to spread among ability scores. No score above 18 or below 5 before racial adjustments. No two abilities may have the same score.
2) No evil characters. :)
3) No two players may play the same race or level in the same class.
4) No multiclass penalties. Ever. Humans gain the "Adaptive Skill" ability to compensate.
5) Action points.
6) Players roll all dice.
7) A natural roll of 1 on an attack provokes an attack of opportunity. (I thought I was the only one who did that!)
8) A bunch of new feats along the same lines as "Ascetic Hunter".

Perhaps Dungeon should hold a contest to see who can come up with the best use for the space - the winner awarded with a dungeon/dragon magazine subscription extention of five years. Er, something like that.

That being said, I really like the idea of a one-page adventure or a puzzles and riddles page.

But when I'm writing ..... forget it. Piles and piles of notes ... and post its ... and rule books splayed out all over the floor. Course, I have to step over the kids' toys to get to the desk, which also is cluttered. Broken pencils, overflowed trash can, empty beverage containers.

Does this ring a bell for anyone else? Or am I hopeless?

Wow... You're describing me the day before I run a game. I think it's in the nature of creativity to be messy. We even have a type of artist that specializes in being messy - Abstract Expressionist.

Noooooo, I like semi-colons!

It's the bastard son of a comma and a period; the semi-colon must be eliminated!

I got my first (and only) rejection from Dragon in 1999 for some Ravenloft and Birthright related fiction. It was a form letter and I still have the rejection slip on a nail on my wall. It did stop me (shame!) from submitting to Dragon again, but I was able to sell the stories later to a fan-zine (The Inquisitor)with some minor changes.

Why not try again? Unless, that is, you prefer writing fiction. Unfortunately, as I understand it, Dragon is not accepting fiction anymore. But if you enjoy writing rules material or background material for the D&D game, there is no reason not to give it another shot.

John Crovis wrote:

I want to know if I'm the only one to experience this; I'm looking forward to getting a rejection notice for my first Dragon Magazine queries! Is that so strange?

Yes, I know I should be optimistic, but this *is* my first query. I really just want a response! Am I the only one to feel this way?

That's the spirit!

Damn strait! I wanna come in second! :P~

I want to know if I'm the only one to experience this; I'm looking forward to getting a rejection notice for my first Dragon Magazine queries! Is that so strange?

Yes, I know I should be optimistic, but this *is* my first query. I really just want a response! Am I the only one to feel this way?

Geez people. What would you do if there wasn't a free supliment? Remember, this is just odds and ends that they couldn't fit in the magazines. It is not going to be earthshattering information. All of the most important stuff is already published, that is why this is going to be free. Slow your roll a little bit and remember that the best tool you have is your own brain and imagination.

Arran, think of it this way; it's one more thing shorten prep-time for DMs. Of course we could do with out it! Matter o' fact, we could do without the adventures, without the new classes, without the new gods, and just use the core rulebooks... but that would mean every time we wanted to try something different, we'd have to make it ourselves. I'd rather pay someone else to do that, which is why I'm subscribed to Dungeon in the first place. :)

Total Number of Words in Age of Worms Overload: 24,632

Total Number of Words in an Average Dungeon Adventure: About 15,000
Total Number of Microsoft Word Pages: 47

ARE YOU KIDDING? Now, I am upset; I expected so much more from all you at Dungeon/Dragon. I'm just fed up with the whole thing! Time to cancle my subscription - burn my magazines!

*Sigh*

...

...

Gotcha! :D Great job guys.

How do you suppose one would go about incorperating OA classes and XPH classes into an AoW campaign?

It's been harder for me to keep an eye on the messageboards this week as I have been trying to catch up from my vacation, but I think I need to make a few comments here.

<<SNIP>>

So... your avatar isn't just a pretty picture after all. That whole post was the wisest thing anyone could have said about this dilemma. I, too, await Age of Worms Overload, and thank the whole Dungeon crew ahead of time for their work. :)