Adding another brick to Castle Ravenloft’s Walls
Posted inRaventloft

Adding another brick to Castle Ravenloft’s Walls

The Castle Ravenloft box art

So this Sunday happens to be the season finale of Trueblood on HBO, and right now you may be wondering “well what the hell does that have to do with D&D, and why am I reading this?”and in fact it has a lot to do with it, at least in my world.

I take a lot of inspiration for my D&D games from movies, games, and television – particularly from the horror genre as it’s my favorite, and my gaming group regularly gets together to watch this show before our D&D game.

So I’m inviting my group over early for a day of vampires and good times and I figure what better way to kick that day off than with a game of Castle Ravenloft! Problem is, my group of friends including myself totals to six, and Ravenloft being a DM-less game only accommodates for 5 players.

Cryptic’s “Neverwinter”, looking bleak?
Posted inDungeons and Dragons (D&D) Video Games

Cryptic’s “Neverwinter”, looking bleak?

Neverwinter Nights EyeI’m gonna come right out and say this, I have some pretty low expectations for the next installation of the Neverwinter PC game series. However it’s not because it’s hard to live up to or come close to standards set by the Bioware/Black Isle folks when it comes to PC RPG’s. Any company can come out of nearly nowhere and blow us all away with an outstanding title, video games a bit less often though because of costs involved in making one. Nevertheless I’d really love to root for the underdog here and hope that Cryptic pulls off a winner, but so far that’s looking to be a dismal prospect.

Cryptic’s past titles have been mediocre at best, and this is where my suspicion lies. It’s also worth mentioning they probably should get their lore right, before they go attempting to win over hardcore FR fans. While I may have started playing D&D when I was 13, I’ve been playing video games since I was 5 – which means I can honestly say “20+ years of experience” when it comes to this subject matter. When the announcement for “Neverwinter” was made, like many of us I was pretty excited at first glance.  I’ve always beeg a huge fan of the series and the Forgotten Realms world, but a lot about this title (so far) seems iffy.

Given a projected quarter for it’s launch date, already having determined it’s 5 classes (via the front page graphic), the creation tools being announced and more, yet they still don’t know what the hell the games core genre will be other than an RPG?

One shots: Introducing a new player & refreshing old ones.
Posted inDungeon Master's Musings

One shots: Introducing a new player & refreshing old ones.

First go read “Burning down the tavern” over on @rjschwalb’s blog to understand where I’m stealing this concept from. Go on….go. Okay now that we’re on the same page allow me to introduce the cast of my Monday night one shot coming up next week. I had originally planned to have a good friend of mine (@danjbailey) who’s never played D&D come over for a night of beers and some role playing boot camp but after realizing I’d only have  two players I put some calls out.

I only expected maybe 3 of the 6 people i contacted to respond with a possible yes but instead I got all of them. Turns out when people don’t get their D&D fix they pull out all the stops to get together for a game – either that or my exquisite DM’ing skills are just that alluring (just kidding, I’m terrible).

Anyway, I decided to ditch the tavern for the first time in a while and opt for something more predetermined on my behalf and chosen to go for the ‘band of traveling entertainers’ option. Hey, anything beats that awkward “uh yeah so we’re all in a tavern, we have drinks and become friends – can we kill stuff now?” I’m pretty excited about running this one shot because it’s going to be the first one shot I’ve done in a long while and because of the following:

  • Group dynamic should be much better than those starting arbitrarily in a tavern.
  • I made all the characters myself so class synergies are already built in and optimized.
  • Players don’t have to bring anything but dice and their imaginations.
  • This will be a great first time experience for some and really encourage role play.
  • I can’t wait to get @danjbailey playing D&D!

I’ve come up with a light background and personality trait or two for each character to help in adding flavor and since the players will all have the option to pick whichever character they want I think they are unique enough everyone should feel they have a specific role and there won’t be any squabbling over who get’s to play who. Since this is a first time for at least one of the players