My run of acquiring older boardgames has allowed me to pick up an unpunched copy of this 1979 SPI game… I was extremely happy to win the ebay auction for this one. To understand my joy at picking this up, it might help to know that in my teens, I worked my way through all of the Edgar Rice Burroughs “Mars” books, and they remain … Continue reading John Carter, Warlord of Mars
I’m currently running one of my groups through E2: Kingdom of the Ghouls, and our first session of the adventure was quite a lot of fun. It helped that some of the more egregious Warlock and Cleric powers have been nerfed just recently, and I’m also using the updated damage codes for monsters. So, combats have been enjoyable. Conceptually the HPE series from Wizards works … Continue reading Thoughts on Epic D&D
Well, the new version of the basic Cleric class is up on the wizards website, so we can now see how much Greg’s character for the epic campaign is affected… Of course, I don’t actually have a up-to-date version of the character. (Greg, could you e-mail me at merricb@yahoo.co.uk with the file of the most recent version?) However, looking at my out-of-date version, here’s what … Continue reading Greg gets hit by the nerfbat!
Last night, I continued to make my way through all of the Bones episodes I’ve missed this year, mainly because I was doing something else when they were showing. It hit a snag when the last five or six turned out to be repeats – in fact, the Australian showing of Bones has been paused since March, and we’ve still got about 7 or 8 … Continue reading Catching up on TV whilst playing wargames…
Well, thanks to the wonder of ebay, I’ve recently picked up three old Avalon Hill games. Magic Realm I’ve already talked about a bit; it’s a fantasy adventure game which is especially deadly. Really, really deadly. Each characters has monsters they can take on with moderate safety once they know the rules – and a lot easier once they have friends with them – but then … Continue reading Getting a few old Avalon Hill games
My most recent D&D session was unusual: no combat, just role-playing and exploration. And staying in town… Adam asked me before the session if his bard could create a number of (uncommon) magic items and learn a ritual. I’m moving towards restricting which magic items are available in my games, but I’m willing to let PCs create the items they really want. However, there’s got … Continue reading D&D Downtime
Mike Mearls just asked on twitter what panels we’d like to see at GenCon. My reply: I want to see apologies and mass resignations from the DDi team. I would add the resignation of the invisible D&D Brand Manager as well. What is going on at Wizards at the moment is a disaster. The last six months or more have seen them destroy … Continue reading Can Wizards turn around their support of 4E?
I notice with some interest that we’ve reached 40 sessions in our City of Greyhawk campaign. I spent a few hours last night going through my old blog posts and the calendar, combining all the details into a long, long post that summarised what’s happened so far in the campaign. The resulting post can be found here: From the Archives, 40 Sessions of Adventure It … Continue reading The City of Greyhawk campaign – all 40 sessions
I recently located an old page where I stored “news and rumours” inspired by my Greyhawk campaigns. The date attached to the file was December 2003, so there has been a *lot* of subsequent adventuring. Players in my games may remember some of the events; others were invented from whole cloth to flesh out the chronicle. The current date in our Greyhawk campaign is about Spring … Continue reading Once upon a time… News from my Greyhawk campaigns
Martin recently expressed an interest in his character becoming the “Druid of Greyhawk”, the term I use to describe the leader of the Druid’s Grove that services the Free City of Greyhawk and its wilderness. By the old AD&D tables, Martin’s 11th level character was one level away from gaining the “Druid” level (he was a “Initiate of the 1st Circle”). In the original AD&D, … Continue reading Becoming the Druid of Greyhawk
