Introducing: ‘Pixels & Polyhedrals’ and #D5C

Autumn is my favorite time of year, Halloween also happens to be my favorite holiday so it’s only natural that I start a creature feature in it’s honor! So consider this post my kickoff to doing just that, I’d like to introduce a new feature called “Pixels & Polyhedrals” that will become a regular part of things here at The Dread Gazebo. Many of the gamers in our community reminisce of box sets created long before I was even thought of or times and places where tabletop gaming was omnipotent, unfortunately I do not share many of those memories. I grew up on video games so naturally pixels and MIDI tunes are forever etched into my brains ‘fond memories of gaming nostalgia’ region. We all borrow from many sources when creating our games, I myself admittedly draw from mainly two sources – video games and horror so if you like video games and/or horror elements in your D&D game, stay tuned to the blog!

I’ll be posting a ghastly new monster from video game origins each weekday for the rest of the month of October, starting out with all of the special infected zombies from the Left 4 Dead game series. I’ll be providing tactics with each one but leaving the fluffy bits to you, so they might fit properly into your game world. In the spirit of “go big or go home’ I’ve decided to start off with the boomer to whet your appetite (or lose it entirely), he’s a minion because he goes pop quite easily, enjoy!

Also in the works is a weekly community based post where I’ll be asking you all for your most “dreadful” ways to trap, kill, maim, confuse and outnumber or otherwise ‘mess with’ your PC’s. I’m going to be reaching out to the D&D community via twitter for the best answers and posting them here every week. Keep in mind the topics will change from week to week and you mustn’t always respond with TPK material, though I’m not opposed to it. I’m calling this series “DM’s Dreadful Deeds Done Dirt Cheap”, but we’ll be calling it D5C for short! I chose such a long and ridiculous name to legitimize a hash tag that was not in use, I am not an AC/DC fan nor will I ever be. The idea borrows heavily (see also: completely stolen) from ThadeousC’s DT140 posts, but I’m in Thads good graces and also have no shame.

Just to get everyone’s sadistic juices flowing I’m going to be kicking this all off with two guest posts from a couple of guys who are well versed in the more hardcore practices of abusing PC’s minds and bodies. Macrogeek and Sersa V from the Save Versus Death blog will both be contributing posts detailing trap schemes that dig inside your players heads in most heinous ways. Since I’m a notoriously un-hardcore DM and I’d like to learn a thing or two from these guy, mainly because I’m sick of being a care bear so keep your eyes peeled for those articles coming up real soon. Two new campaigns kick off this week for me (one as a DM, another as a player) so I’m getting pretty excited to learn some mean new tricks and share my expoloits with all of you. Check back tomorrow for one of L4D’s finest controller zombies “The Smoker”!