ShadowMoon's page

I will miss many things about Dragon; but, the comics section will always have a special place. OOTS celebrates the great Dragon comics with its final offering. I recongnize Fineous Fingers, Snarfquest, Wormy, Phil & Dixie, and The Knights of the Dinner Table. I assume the halfling in the red shirt is another character I missed during my hiatus from the mag. Let us not forget the beautiful "Jasmine" or the rather odd (imho) "Pilsom". Thanks to Rich for reminding me of the great enjoyment this section of this great magazine brought to so many of us.

I support this idea fully! I will be proud to wear my "DUNGEON: TRUE TO THE GAME" shirt for years to come in celebration of some the the most entertaining adventures I have ever read or played. A wake for these long time friends is certainly in order & I can't think of a better place than GenCon.

Well, my group had their turn at Zeech's table tonight and had a blast! The entire meal looked SO ODD! The second course was very tasty while the third was met with more than a bit of dread. The aspic had a good flavor but a texture that was a bit off-putting. By farming out the first, second & fifth courses out to my players, I was able to cut down on the work and still offer the shock of the other two. The guy who made the worms had fun crafting just the right shade of green. The cake looked so cool; it even had ramps spiraling aound the levels!

I am running the feast in two weeks. One of my players has offered to help with the cooking. The trick is to have her fix the items that won't give a way any of the shock value. I assigned her the 4 & 20 blackbirds and sweet conclusion. When I present my offerings she will be just as repulsed as everyone else!

That is one of the coolest set-ups I have ever seen for a D&D game! Great job on the keep itself and getting the players involed with the guardians.

I have 7 players, 4 experienced & 3 newbies. So far they have had some close calles but no TPK's yet. THe main problem they have been facing is slow advancement. With XP divided 7 ways, progress has been slower than adventures project. A few side quests have been used to keep them close to expected level. They are about to reach the climax of "GoW" and the highest rank PC is 9th. Still, with 7 of them most challenges have been met.

From the "my Subscriptions" section:
Issue #135 shipped 04/18/06
Please, please, Mr. Postman!
Deliver the letter, (okay, the magazine)
The sooner the better!
After spending all this time running AoW I am looking forward to playing ST. Now I just need to get one of my players to subscribe to Dungeon...

I would say 7 is about right to start him out. Of course, I wouldn't just drop him into a regular campaign with a bunch of 25 year olds. A small group of kids around his age would be my prefered method if introduction. You could be the coolest dad in the neighborhood! (or maybe have a prayer chain formed around your house by anti-gamer crusaders)

How will Paizo make use of the existing Demo Monkeys that have been serving Cheapass up 'til now?

About to start Champion's Belt. With about half the characters worshiping Kord, They have been chomping at the bit to get in the arena. Ever since they got to Greyhawk, they have asked everone they can find for sponsorship. Eligos has told them he may know of someone... They are ready to take on all comers! Boy are they in for a surprise!!

I can hardly wait to run this for my players. A chance for the bard to shine and the "whack everthing" cleric of Kord to be smacked in the head by other players and told to SHUT UP! The fact that the palyers of these two characters are dating should really make things interesting.

My players made the most naive error. They had Filge cornered and all his creations distroyed. When he offered to surrender they accepted and questioned him. At this point he offered to assist them in learning more about the Ebon Triad and they agreed easily. He asked if they could give him a few days to prepare some potions to bring along and they though this was a grat idea. The party left him with all his equipment in the observitory and headed back to the mine office to rest and heal. Filge, realizing that he was no match for the group alone, ran to Smenk to give a full report then left town pausing only to gather up his valuables that he had convinced the players he needed to make the potions. Needless to say, they were shocked to find their "ally" had split with all his stuff.

Our group is almost through 3 Faces having gone straight from the battle temple to the Vecna maze. They are about halfway through the caves of slaughter.

"Ding"-Halfling Rogue 3/Wizard 1
Brenna- Human Barbarian 4
Cyrus- Xeph Soulknife 4
Ahlaine- Human Fighter 4 (with Vow of Poverty)
Goran- Human Cleric (of Kord)2 / Fighter 1
Quinlan- Human Ranger 4

The group in mostly Chaotic Good and each had decided to follow Kord on their own. Imagine our surprise when we gathered the party for the first time to discover that they had all picked the same deity including the cleric!
So far they are doing rather well dispite their lack of arcane spell power. This has been my first experience with the Vow of Poverty and it has worked just fine. Having a fighter take the vow has been very interesting as he is using all his feats to improve his quarterstaff and unarmed combat abilities.

My players left the cairn three times, not counting the "bury the bones" section of the adventure. I didn't feel compelled to penalize them as they took precautions to cover their tracks and keep the location of their discoveries a secret. The Three Faces will keep them pinned in the locations as will Blackwall Keep. They neede the break to have a chance to survive to a level where they could take on the next sections without extended rest periods.

My players actually believed Flige would come with them to the mine. Of course he fled for the Free City as soon as they left for the mine office. He told them he "had a few things to gather up before joining them". I can't believe they fell for that line! I can only thinl that it was at the end of a long session and everybody was ready to pack it in for the night in character and for real. They haven't mentioned moving into the observitory but are rather intimidated by Smenk.

Only one more to reach 400!
My group has a fighter using Vow of Poverty as an experiment. As a human he used both 1st level feats to take Sacres Vow & VoP. His fighter bonus feat was 2 weapon fighting to make full use of his quarterstaff. So far he has kicked butt. but time will tell ...

The group I am running includes a xeph soulknife. His race makes him a bit of an exotic in the area but the class seems fine. As a side note I'm wondering if his place of origin, a dark rift valley in the east, may offer some special knowledge as the adventure progresses. They haven't found the worm in Filche's lab yet.

Hope springs eternal in the hearts of GM's around the world! I feel sure that the Overload will be out when it is ready. Then the boards will explode with "we waited all this time for this!" posts regardless of the amount of material or the quality of the product. It seems to me that no release ever lives up to its build-up in the minds of many posters.

This looks VERY useful. Great job!

Will we be seeing updates to this list as new sections of the AP are published?

I'm running a Greyhawk based version as we normally play in a homebrew setting. The group has made some interesting choices:

Human Ranger
Xeph Soulknife (psionic)
Human Barbarian
Halfling Rogue (raised by GNOMES???) a long story
Human Fighter who has taken the Vow of Poverty from Book of Exhalted Deeds

You may notice a distinct lack of spell casters of any type. A dwarf cleric and a human warlock were supposed to be inthe group but they dropped at the last minute and the ranger came instead. I have tried to warn them that this may not be the best assortment but they feel that this will make the arc more challenging. We will see how things develop.....

I have a two players that are running rather unusual characters. The first is a hafling rogue that was raised by gnomes????? Ding, as he is known (his gnomish name being unpronounsable by anyone but the person playing the character)has all the standard halfling abilities but a distinctly gnomish outlook and flavor. The player has a long standing hatred of gnomes for no particular reason and is trying to work through his issues. The second is a human fighter using the vow of poverty from Book of Exalted Deeds. We were both interested in how a completely equipment free character would fair long-term. Armed only with a great set of ablility scores (rolled in full view of three witnesses including myself) and a quarterstaff he is taking on the Age of Worms.

Always great to have a clue! Thanks again, Eric, for keeping us informed. My players are making noises about exploring the area around Diamond Lake before entering the cairn again and continuing their seach for that missing red lantern. (they have dealt with the swarm from the shaft but were pretty chewed up (no pun intended) and are resting up a bit.

Great work! I will be using this tonight.

I was called out of town on business for 4 weeks recently and one of my players asked if it would be alright to run a short "side trek" type adventure for the others while I was gone. I figured, "What the hey!" This particular group has been playing together almost 5 years and most are veteran players.(Three of us go back to the first printing AD&D days)

This was our experimental group of characters all crafted using Savage Species monster classes. We were just completing an extended adventure and were on our way to establish a home base in a nearby city.

Imagine my surprise when I returned to discover the short side trek had resulted in THREE levels of character advancement(from 7 to 10!), a literal wagon load of gold and magic items far overpowered for the level of the group, and "random encounters" specially equipted to exploit the weaknesses of two members of the party resulting in the primary fighter of the group having his CON reduced to 6 with enough vile damage to make his maximum HP 4 and the arcane caster turned to stone.

I am now faced with several unappealing choices:
1) pretend the whole thing was a dream and reset the characters to their previous levels and gear.
2) try to bring them back in line by throwing out the entire story arc I had planned since they are now able to walk through the encounters without breaking a sweat and writing for the new levels.
3) Abandoning these characters to the sub DM and starting fresh with a new campaign.

I know I should have been more careful in allowing a sub. Any thoughts or suggestions as to where to go now?

My long awaited copy arrived today, just one week after my initial post. Thanks for such quick action!

Is the compass rose on the "Lair of the Architect" map on page 27 correct? If it is, then why would characters try to topple the 8' high stone blocking the exit of area 9 to the NORTH (as described on page 28) where there is only 5' of clearance instead of pulling it EAST (toward the top of the map) where there is 15' of open space? Would it be safe to chalk this up to "North is always toward the top of the map" syndrome on the part of the area 9 trap description?

Thanks for the speedy response. I look forward to reading the issue.

My subscription copy of Dungeon #121 was never delivered. Do I have any alternative to simply buying the back issue?

Another possible source for the rules of Dragonchess is the Dragon Magazine Archive cd-rom published a few years ago. I see copies for sale once in a blue moon on ebay.

Identity Crisis
Astro City
Doom Patrol
Outsiders
JSA Strange Adventures