Kirwyn's page

Fight on!

Johnette Napolitano's voice was made for that song.

Short answer? Yes, it is ok for a DM to mess with a players character concept.

Check this out.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSjGouBmo0M

The fifth sentence is what gets me.

Sweet!
I'm really looking forward to next months anniversary print editions too!

Holy cow that's a lot of work! Good on ya! That is fantastic!

1. Does your spouse game?
Not at all. She has no interest in pen and paper games and HATES video games and video gaming.

2. Have you ever asked/encouraged them to join in your hobby? How? Also, how did they respond?
I asked, she declined and has no interest in gaming. She is happy with my gaming, her best friends hubby spent $10000 or thereabouts at strip clubs a couple years ago. I was golden after that.

3. How do you handle the conflicting interests (if they conflict)?
They don't really.

4. Did you meet them at a traditional gamer event? (Tabletop session, Con, etc.)
Nope, we met at REI, and still mountain bike together when ever we can. :)

5. How do they handle you spending on your hobby? (Finances can sometimes be an issue)
My spending on D&D/geek stuff is pretty minor to our biking and related expenses. We're on average buying a new mountain bike every other year for one of us. When you add in helmets and shorts and hospital bills(an ER visit is a $100 deductible, and $150 dollar copay), trips to Moab UT, Colorado and Sedona AZ plus replacement parts for bikes my gaming $ is pretty chill.

6. Neither of us has kiddos...

@SteampunkObrimos: That sounds really awesome! These are very cool ideas. I have been messing around with taking historical maps of great cities and tracing over them my own fantasy cities. The furthest I've gotten is London and Prague. I hadn't thought of taking the whole country or whole world or of using an atlas. Genius!

It figures the only way to deal with the Russian winter is with zombies!

Pretty funny, I live in the Demon Wastes.

@ SteampunkObrimos Any chance of posting that map? I'd really like to see it.

I liked Eberron but also felt it was too mapped out. Been working on a semi gothic Eberron influenced Jack Shearesque version of the Palladium Fantasy RPG map and world.

I've fixed the caster/martial disparity by not playing 3.x and its derivatives.

Yay! A new set. My players love these.

And besides. When was the last time you saw a clean house that a witch lived in?

Bummer.
Not a fan of most 3pp due to rules bloat and power creep. ...and I just ordered Dragons Demand too.

My girlfriend laughs at my gaming. However she does not laugh too much so knowing that I don't go an blow $200+ bucks at a strip club every two weeks with my friends who are "acting like kids who dont want to grow up."
Skeld has good advice though. I might check into shorter biweekly games too. That 6-8 hours of gaming while having a kidlet, being a Dad and Husband might be what's getting her feathers in a bunch.

This is why I have given up on 3.x, 3.P and 4E. There is too much to break the game, too much mechanical dependence upon attribute modifiers, Bab numbers, skill ranks etc. as someone said on the first page, doing E6 pulls the promise out from under the players.

As a DM I tend to follow the golden rule of Paizo's message boards "Don't be a jerk." This has kept players from walking away, getting frustrated, getting hurt feelings etc. A game is a social contract. Break the rules and there isn't game.
Only once I've done the "you're captured and all you're stuff is taken away" shtick but the very first priority after escape was getting their stuff back. I think it was A 4, one of the slaver adventures.

Slightly off topic but I agree they are super light for minis. I superglued the kobolds to older GW bases and green stuffed pennies into the base to keep them vertical and table jostling friendly.

Huh.
Lame all the way around.
However at my table the cleric of Gorum would be spell free for a day or three for displaying cowardice.

It appears the fighter can fight but the cleric can't cleric. The fighter might not have displayed the best tactics but refusing to heal an obviously potent resource is displaying worse tactics.

As a player I would rather than vote the out cleric than the fighter. .

My 2cp.

I was thinking at least once in the campaign ( and prolly only once) have the party's fighter charmed to the other side. If done only once it would be super memorable and fun had by all.

I am stoked for this change, planning to sub as soon as it goes in to effect.

Yes! Several times a year at least with my regular crew. As others have stated it does cement the way the players and characters work together for the rest of the campaign.

I think I gotta give a spoiler warning.

I would start level one, a couple gp extra for scrolls and potions. Start with a wee baby city adventure in Magnamar. With their newfound "rep" they meet Aldern who hires them to go to Sandpoint and find his obsession. Enroute maybe a detour with some fireworks wielding Licktoads,rescuing a pig, some kobolds with a wounded wyvern master and catching a Scarneti mill burning while saving the family from the burning windmill...wicker man kinda thing.

Don't forget, Vin Vendors smoking hot easy daughter will want to score too when they get to Sandpoint.

Foreshadow the second chapter by showing/describing the Foxglove manor in an lightning filled windlashed thunderstorm. Little haunted house action.

Good luck!

#5. Really? Roflmao!
Guess I'm a dick DM then.

In 4E encounters I got that dick DM label for not allowing characters to use free heals from clerics in between sessions because they were "out of combat".

I'm a 31 year DM. In MY experience, splatbooks unequally increase power between characters. Meaning that some characters are awesome and some characters suck. This causes player frustration, interplayer friction and player apathy and people quit playing till the next game. It also unnecessarily increases encounter design difficulty and time required to construct encounters. Then the cycle repeats.

The splatbook powercreep happened in AD&D(Unearthed Arcana), 2nd Ed (kits) 3.X (splatbook of the month) 3.P (-sigh-), 4E (PHB 2 especially) and now I'm seeing it in the 5E playtest materials ( and it doesn't even have splatbooks yet!). You would think in 28 years we would figure out how to handle powercreep.

I really wish that all of the core classes were on equal footing with splatbook classes. But you you know what they say:" if wishes were horses then beggars would ride."

Now I wanna "Dick DM" t-shirt.

I'm all for it. 
However, there is certainly such a thing as too much information. I hope there is more adventure and couple pages of barely sketched out background and history.

I certainly get more out of the old school modules and their three paragraphs of background information than out of a 128pg sourcebook. A DM can take three paragraphs and run with it, filling in some blanks and keep that sense of mystery alive. A detailed sourcebook doesn't have the room so to speak and ends up functioning more as a straight jacket or a ball in chain. 

If you get the chance google "Tucker's Kobolds" for some ideas on whipping your parties keister.

I ran an encounter where about 12 goblins with a total of sixteen NPC levels walked all over my players with cleaver use of terrain and abilities. Seven players all about level six with couple level sevens.

I guess I kind of disagree with most of these. I have come to the opinion that Feats have essentially ruined an edition of D&D. (no I'm not just trolling :-)) The original feat system is ok but the power creep that follows with each successive splat book greatly increases the pain in the ass factor for the DM and players.

I think the Basic (1981) and AD&D fighter actually offered more by being less codified and having a few iconic class abilities. In AD&D the fighter got a Whirlwind attack at fourth level against 1HD mobs. Gotta be sixth in 3.x and you're certainly focused on following that feat tree. Yes the 3.x fighter can attack more than 1 HD mobs but usually by then he or she needs to begin to focus more on single target damage.

Any-who, I'm hoping future iterations of the wolds most popular role playing games pare down feats or remove feats in favor of iconic class abilities. Maybe even block 3rd party development of feats via an GSL or something.

I cannot tolerate the intolerance of tolerances.

I loved reading this adventure, thinking it had great potential as a Norse/Irish flavor with the horned god of the hunt or using it with LotFP. Good job Sutter!

Woot, I'm looking forward to this possible, maybe, kinda, thingie!

Superman, Batman and what's her name the fungal druid chic from Mt. Zogonia. Downer and Conan are pretty pimp too. Maybe Grendel as well.

I love rolling!!!!
Behind the screen though it presents some issues. I've had a group where the top two characters were equivalent to the rest of the group in terms of being challenged.
I'm working on my own B/X D&D, 3.x,4E amalgam rule set and ironman rules will be in play. Roll'em in order!!

Basic D&D by Tom Moldvay

I keep it tight. Core races. By core I mean Tom Moldvay Basic/Expert D&D core; Human, Elf, Dwarf and Hafling. I have been super open in the past but in my experience it did not really add to the game.

As I have matured as a DM I have found that it is my job to be the monster(s), the players to be heroes(or anti-heroes).

Your mileage may vary.

I pay a monthly fee to Paizo for the AP, I pay a monthly fee to WotC for DDI, I pay a monthly fee to Blizzard and another to Bioware for MMO subscriptions.

I buy pizza and soda and chips and Oreos for my gaming group.

You gotta pay to play.

Definitely put Hommelet near Sandpoint or Magnamar. Bigger town and even bigger city for Burne and Rufus to have support of nearby noble house(s). I don't know what history you want to associate with the abandoned moathouse but there was a series of conflicts between the settlers from Cheliax and the Shoanti. "Conquest of Bloodswone Vale" for more info, afaik.

The suggestion of Falcons Hollow is a good one, if you have the Temple of Elemental evil Falcons Hollow does a great job as a replacement for the town of Nulb.

I would also suggest Diamond Lake from the Age of Worms AP. Old school feel for sure.

I like this a lot. Thanks for posting it!

Kirth Gersen wrote:
Nos wrote:
when you roll your stats you keep what lies, in the order they fall.
then you argue for an entire game session on wether it is str dex con, or str con dex.

IMPOSTOR! If you were old school like me you'd know it was Str, Int, Wis, Dex, Con, Cha.
And then Cms, if you used "those new books."

This! +1

Alas I didn't go to Gencon.
However the common call for a bigger room might actually contribute to the cacaphonous sound level. I have experienced this effect at conferences and seminars. Heck, at my weekly session at my flgs my players have a hard time hearing me and we only have five tables.

Not really in order but ones that have stuck with me.

The Falcon Hollow kobold trilogy.

The Mad Gods Key. (Dun114)

The Whispering Cairn. (Dun 120 something)

The Tamerauts Fate ( Dun ?)

The first three RotRL

The Forsaken Arch ( Dun 120)

Howl of the Carrion King

I haven't finished reading it yet but I really like the Brinewall Legacy so far.

The Madness in Istiven trilogy (Dun 117-119?)

Thank you for asking for my favoites!

Varisia has hulking bald barbarians, hot tattooed gypsies and a grip of ruins everwhere from a couple of failed civilizations. Whats not to love?

APs are in Varisia because Varisia is cool. Kinda like California. Notice that Katy Perry sings about California girls not Iowa girls. Daisy dukes and bikinis on top? Check. Coveralls? Not so much.

I've played seven maybe ten games tops since 3.0 released. DMed the rest of those years.

In the end the Supreme Court decides what is and isn't porn.

That's right, eight dudes and a chick, each wearing dresses decide what porn is...

I don't know much about the sci fi sites in Washington, but my trip into British Columbia was WAY too short. The people were great, the sights were amazing. I really loved mountain biking on south mountain, Whistler was really cool (although their bike park wasn't open yet) and Victoria on Vancouver Island is a blast. Its more "victorian" than London. Great inspiration for a steampunk game.
I hope you enjoy your trip!

Oh yeah about the Nor Cal section... There is a great micro brewery in Ft Bragg, a kick ass ice creme shop in Mendocino's tourist area (I can't remember what its called) and do not forget Bodega Bay where the movie "The Birds" was filmed. Don't eat at the Tides restaurant, there is a little shack outside of the restaurant that is cheaper and has better food. Pt Arena light house is cool and Pt Reyes is a neat section of coast.

K.

Threeshades, it is the way it goes. As Dark Mistress pointed out life gets complicated. I rock a three player group almost weekly but...we bail on two or three sessions every six or seven weeks. My Geeks are 25-39 in age if that's any help.

What ever you do, do not take it personally. Things just get in the way. Don't get me wrong, I get bummed when we don't play, I start jonesing for the DM screen and itching to roll some dice.

One thing that has helped our games is a "restart" if we miss three weeks or more. You don't even have to tell your players about it if you dont want to. I'll retool the adventure and start'em out all over again or move on with something different. (the arguement could be made that as we get older our memory starts to slip...)This helps a lot, I use recurring monsters/NPCs to keep flow and continuity but adventures or modules that take three decent sessions to get through seem to be best.

Hope that helps.

Penguin Cafe Orchestra, Zak Baney and MC frontalot.

I've been gaming with the same basic group of people for nine and a half years. Soon after I usurped DMing the group with relatively new first and second level characters ran into an owlbear that schooled them pretty badly. I use owlbears as a test monster to gauge the players progress with their characters and as a group.

They have taken to it with gusto and usually I am reminded every two or three levels or so to throw one or more owlbears at them. Kinda fun really.

I will run a games with one player and I have several friends I will do that with. Maturity is required.
Otherwise I enjoy three to four players at the table. I have found that fewer than three players for modified Paizo/TSR adventures is about the minimum and with more than five players I find the game slows down too much for my taste.

Hmmm.
I have been to Canada a couple of times. Vancouver, Victoria and Calgary, and Banff. Each time I met really cool people, ate good food and saw absolutly stunning scenery. The girls and the outdoors. I got no beef with Canada, I think it is freeking cool.

This is from an eleventh generation Texan.

Good Job!
I have started running a converted Wizards Amulet and Crucible of Freya.

I am converting Mad Gods Key and There is No Honor into one adventure for my 4E Game.

I am looking at combining all of the 'Hollow adventures with Burnt Offerings.
Let me know if you want anything.

My 2 cp.
I have played about 5 games of 4E since it s release. What I enjoyed is that in combat every one has something to do. What I found interesting is that out of combat everyone was doing something. All of the folks I was playing with were Jazzed.

I am in the process of converting The Crucible of Freya by Necromancer Games and The Whispering Cairn and Three Faces of Evil by Paizo to 4E. I will reserve my opinion on 4E until these have been played through.

I agree with one of the prior posters that the PFRPG Alpha 1 release had a really cool skill system. I wish it had remained.