Happy Halloween - Let's Talk D&D

 Sadly this will be in no way, shape, or form Halloween related.  

Dragon Mountain

I keep turning over in my mind this idea of using both Dragon Mountain and Return to the Tomb of Horrors in the same D&D campaign.   Both are box sets published by TSR back in the 1990s for Advanced Dungeon & Dragons Second Edition.   Dragon Mountain was for levels 10-15 and featured the planes hopping mountain lair of a red dragon, plus the investigation leading up to finding the mountain.  Return to the Tomb of Horrors had suggest levels 13-16, but the one time I played in it the party was comprised of 20^th level characters and the adventure still seemed challenging.  So I’m thinking whatever level a party ends up at after Dragon Mountain ought to work just fine for Return to the Tomb of Horrors.

 

I foresee a few different issues.  I don’t currently have a plan for getting a party to 10^th level to start Dragon Mountain.  Depending on the group I could certainly have them start as 10^th level characters, but I wouldn’t want to do that with relatively inexperienced players.  If I do start them at 1^st or low level, then I’ve still got to actually get them to 10^th level, a not uncommon stopping point for many campaigns, before we can even start my apparent goal of this campaign. Then I’ve got to figure out how to transition from completing Dragon Mountain an adventure that really does feel like a campaign climax, to but wait there’s more here comes Return to the Tomb of Horrors.  Also I’d likely want to run this in 5^th edition, and both of these are definitely 2e adventures. 

Return to the Tomb of Horrors

 

I love the idea of Dragon Mountain, but there are some details I’m not in love with.  The whole first third involving investigating the Mountain and obtaining the needed plot coupons to move on (if I recall correctly a map and a game breakingly powerful magical amulet) has some issues.  The plot hook seems really weak to me.  A dude in a tavern is telling a story about a plane hopping mountain with a dragon horde in it, the adventure assumes the party will naturally want to talk to after hearing this tale.  Even assuming you get 10^th level characters to bite on this hook, the most obvious and logical path forward (the storyteller’s old adventuring companion who the storyteller explicitly identifies to the party as having been to the mountain ) is a red herring.   I’m not saying don’t use red herrings, but maybe give the party a win or two to get them good and committed to this investigation before dropping a false lead on them. 

 

I have some issues with the starting town as well.  I’ll concede these are mostly minor nitpicks that few players would either notice, or care about (but I’m definitely one of those few).  The starting town was supposedly founded (and the adventure assumes the party will learn all this as it has the above storyteller drops all this background on them before ever getting to the dragon treasure bit) by a guy running a ferry at a strategic waypoint on a trade route.  Then the founder managed to offend a powerful wizard who dried up the river to teach him a lesson.  And that is the why the town is in its current shape when the adventure starts, an otherwise unremarkable pseudo medieval fantasy village next to a dried-up riverbed with a rotting dock and ferry.  That just makes me wonder, if the river has been gone long enough for the dock and ferry to start rotting, why is this town not abandoned?  If the river has been magically dried up, why does the region map in the adventure show the village on the second biggest river in the region?  If this is supposed to be a waypoint on a trade route, why is the village not actually located between any two points of interest on the map (it mostly just looks stuck out of the way on the map, river access not withstanding)?  I know I’m probably overthinking this. 

 

I have also played with many players who would immediately latch on to this dry riverbed and wizard story as the plot hook and doggedly pursue it completely ignoring anything about a mountain with a dragon horde in it.  And frankly in most the actual campaigns I’ve run, that would be fine.  Generally, I don’t have any specific goal in mind for the players, I just throw stuff at them and see what they get interested in and expand on that.  I have no doubt I could come up with numerous sessions worth of content regarding a party learning how to and then actually fixing the river.  It’s just the point of this exorcise is I want to run a specific adventure here.

 

Then we get to the actual dungeon part of Dragon Mountain, and the main opposition the party would

face before getting to the dragon. . .  Tucker’s Kobolds (from a Dragon Magazine issue 127 editorial by Roger Moore).  There isn’t anything wrong with Tucker’s Kobolds in principle, when implemented by a GM/DM that knows what they are doing.  When it works, the DM remembers that monsters (even ones weaker than the party) want to survive, they want to win, and they know the place they live in much better than the PCs.  So it’s just a question of the DM running the monsters in a devious, tactically smart manner that takes advantage of the monster’s natural strengths and knowledge of their home turf.  However not every DM is all that tactically sound (I certainly don’t think I’m any kind of tactical genius), so the danger of Tucker’s Kobolds comes in two extremes.  When implemented poorly, either the much stronger party repeated steamrolls the weaker monsters (less of an issue in 5e where numeric advantage can be a great equalizer, but still a real possibility when the monsters always fight on the PCs terms), or the party has to suffer through a seemly endless barrage of DM fiat, unavoidable damage, all the other little power trips used by a DM to keep a party in their place (because otherwise the stronger PCs would just easily defeat the weaker monsters that again aren’t fighting intelligently).     So while Tucker’s Kobolds can absolutely be done well, I just don’t know that I’m the DM to do it justice. 

 

On the plus side the adventure does a pretty good job of giving you some ways of differentiating between the different kobold tribes in the mountain, and provides a handy chart of which tribes are allies and which tribes are rivals.  A canny DM could certainly make sure the party gets this information, and intelligent players can get a lot of millage out of exploiting different factions inside a dungeon. 

 

On the other hand, although I haven’t yet reread it to the same extent that I’ve been looking at Dragon Mountain, The Return to the Tomb of Horrors doesn’t seem to have as many issues.  So far, my biggest complaint is I’ll need to rename Moil the City that Waits to something else.  The problem is, and I’ve witnessed this in action as I’ve been a player in a campaign using this adventure, the presumed pronunciation of Moil, is quite similar to the presumed pronunciation of mohel.  In the campaign I was in every damn time the DM mentioned Moil, the flow of the game ground to a halt as the next two-three minutes was made up of various players (and I probably joined in) making circumcision jokes.  Every damn time.  I need to keep looking over the adventure, I have no doubt I’ll find other things, but for now it’s just I’d need to rename the city where much of it takes place. 

Surprise Post after a "Brief" Hiatus

 

Hello from 2022.  So been awhile hasn’t it?

 

I make no promises of any future posts, but really quickly here’s what I’ve been up to.

 

I moved from Saint Louis Park to Eden Prairie, and from Eden Prairie to Saint Paul.  I’m still at that job I had just started back in September of 2011.  I greatly enjoy it.  After working eight years as a telephone operator in rural Minnesota (which wasn’t a bad job at all), and spending however long I spent working for CPP (a company that doesn’t even exist in the US any longer) trying to convince people to not quit their identity theft memberships they signed up for on their random credit cards, I find working for a company that manufactures actual useful physical products to be amazing. 

 

We mainly manufacture and sell variable-frequency drives and related products.  I started in customer service and a few years back moved to technical support of all things.  It’s great.

 

I still play WoW off and on (I tend to come back for an expansion, play a bit at the start and again a bit at the end).  I still play City of Heroes (thank you Homecoming) off and on.  I play the odd other video game off and on (Final Fantasy XIV for example) as well.

 

Still role-playing.  Ran a second BESM campaign set in Nayado using BESM 3^rd edition that ran for five years.  Enjoying D&D 5^th edition quite a bit, trying to DM when I can, and playing in a campaign as well.

 

I still watch the odd anime here and there.  Still read the odd comic book.  Still do most of the same things as before really.

Totally lost that game of chess back in 2011, but I'm far to lazy to go digging around in old Facebook posts to find the moves.

 

Until next time.

Nutshell

So you may have noticed, I haven't had much to say here in the last few years.  So the brief overview of my geeky life:  I've stopped playing WoW, I've resumed playing City of Heroes, I've obtained a Wii (but I don't use it very much), I still enjoy tabletop RPGs, I plan on running a new BESM campaign soon, I got a new computer, I changed the OS on my old computer to a Linux distro (Linux Mint, plus dual-booting my main computer to Kubuntu alongside the Windows 7 it came with), I'm still watching anime (but not as much as I used to), I've rediscovered my love of Doctor Who, and I'm currently engaged in a game of chess over Facebook.   For any who care less about my geeky hobbies, but may be curious about my personal life in rough chronological order:  I left Onvoy, I moved from Morris to the Twin Cities, my father died (October 19, 2008), I floundered around a bit working some jobs that weren't very good fits for me,  my roommate moved to Vermont, I paid off my car, I became unemployed, I remained unemployed for far too long, and most recently (as in this week) I started a new job that I am extremely excited about.

So that's been my last three years or so in a nutshell.

Now to keep me honest, the breakdown of the Facebook chess match with my friend Joel:

             Me                   Joel
             White               Black

 1.         e4                    e5
 2.         Nf3                  Nc6
 3.         Bb5                 Bc5        (Ruy Lopez, countered by the classical (Cordel) defense)
 4.         c3                   Nf6
 5.         d4                   exd4
 6.         e5                   Ne4
 7.         O-O                dxc3
 8.         bxc3               d5
 9.         Nd4                O-O
10.        Nxc6               bxc6
11.        Bxc6               ba6
12.        Qxd5              . . .

I leave you with an amusing video found on CollegeHumor (the ending veers into NSFW territory YMMV):

It's the best day ever tomorrow!

I don't imagine it is that terribly hard to find amusing videos on YouTube. I just don't generally have the patience to go look for them myself. Fortunately for me I have several friends who are very good at finding them.

A fair warning, the following is probably NSFW do to language reasons (I guess you all know your respective work environments best, but just so you can't say I didn't warn you).  In any event this was originally uploaded to YouTube by bishopvids.  Enjoy.

My gift to you.

I felt like sharing some positive feedback. So here you go.  To anybody that has done something good:

 And to anybody that I like:

 

 You may now return to your regular Internets. . .

How to Give a Surprise Post

Basic Instructions

I'm not sure why I keep forgetting how funny this web comic is. I really should read it on a regular basis. To be fair the list of things I should do on a regular basis probably has a few more important entries than go read this excellent comic, but that doesn’t lessen the fact I really ought to add it to my list. For some reason it always make me think of an old coworker of mine from the days I worked at Onvoy Voice Services. With that non sequitur out of the way, I disappear back into the void of no updates I emerged from.

And again

Just to reestablish the primacy of my geekdom:

Out of the blue

As much as I identify myself as being a geek, there is still a healthy dose of nerd in me. I found this link very interesting:

Math is not linear on Prezi

Comfort Food and Short Work Days

As it turned out I only had to do a half day at work today. I’m about 75% thrilled, 25% annoyed by that. I am generally always happy to get out of work early, especially on a Friday - by all means let my weekend get started Friday afternoon instead of Friday evening. However there is a small part of me that cannot quite stop thinking, “I couldn’t go home and see my family for this, a stinking 4 hour day at work!” It’s not like I didn’t think there was a halfway decent chance some people would get to go home early, of course there was no guarantee I was going to be one of them, so I couldn’t really make any plans around it. If I had known for sure, I could have had my laundry done, been packed, had my car’s oil changed, and been ready to leave the cities straight from work. I had a few fleeting thoughts about quick tossing some clothes in a bag and hopping in my car for the seven hour trek back home anyway, but in the end I decided I really probably should make sure I have something to wear to work next week, and I suspect my roommate would appreciate having the dishes be washed when he gets back to the apartment on Sunday. So instead of a road trip, I’m blogging.

I realize looking over yesterday’s post I perhaps came out sounding just a bit more pathetic than I’m actually feeling. I didn’t spend the day sitting in the dark, drinking alcohol, and weeping over missed turkey dinners or any similar activities. I had a perfectly enjoyable time playing a few video games, and listening to the Theft of the Dial marathon on The Current. I also implemented the first step of my “Make This Weekend be About Comfort Food Plan” I had come up with earlier this week. I started things off pretty simply, I went with tomato soup and grilled cheese for supper. I have not had either for years, and I’ve been craving tomato soup for the last month so all in all it was an excellent substitute for the nonexistent turkey dinner leftovers.

I was about halfway to my car after getting off from work when a new step two dawned on me. I very quickly placed a to go order for some fettuccine alfredo, and a bowl of chicken and gnocchi soup from the Olive Garden down the street from my office. I’m probably going to have to rethink my supper plans however; I had planned on deciding between Annie’s Shells & Real Aged Cheddar, and Annie’s Shells & White Cheddar. Again something I haven’t eaten in years (I used to pick them up at the food co-op back in Morris), but I don’t think I’ll eat two pasta dishes on the same day. I may go with cooking up a half cup of rice (probably with some chicken or vegetable broth added for flavor), and one of those individual servings of chicken cordon bleu you can get out of a store’s frozen food section (strangely enough one of the few times I’ll willing eat ham). Alternatively I may have to go with a baked potato, the point is I have plenty of options.

Enough about food, and enough blogging, it is time for me to decide between (or probably more accurately choose an order for) anime, manga, movies, and video games. Surprisingly I have to report as a dark horse possibility I find myself actually tempted to go out shopping. This would be pretty unusual behavior for me as a basic rule-of-thumb I try and avoid retail on Black Friday (and really for as much of the Christmas shopping season as I possibly can), but for some reason I keep thinking that a trip to Best Buy, and Barnes and Noble could be rather fun.

Regardless of what I end up doing today, I bid you all a good Black Friday however you choose to spend it - be it sane or otherwise.

Another Bachelor Thanksgiving

For the second Thanksgiving in a row, I’m hanging out alone at my apartment. In many ways it is just as depressing as it sounds. I would prefer to have made the seven hour car trip to South Dakota to have Thanksgiving with my family, but as I have to work tomorrow that was impractical.

Like last year I went to my local Perkins to eat. Their turkey dinner is passable, certainly not in the same league as a proper Thanksgiving spread with friends and family, but nothing really to complain about. It certainly made me feel thankful for the Thanksgiving meals of my youth (probably not the feeling Perkins would like to invoke). Mostly it was seeing all the children there that made me feel that way. While you can spend an enjoyable time with family in most any setting, I was still quite glad I never had to settle as a child for a trip to a restaurant instead of getting an oven roasted turkey with all the accompaniments.

The alternative to my trip to Perkins, and this weekend I may still end up doing this, would be preparing the bachelor Thanksgiving meal. I did this once while I was still living in Morris. The main ingredient is picking up a broasted turkey breast from a grocery store. Everything else is just selecting what sides to go with it. When I did it in Morris, I went with carrots, potatoes, stuffing, and gravy. I boiled the potatoes and carrots until they were just shy of being done, and then arranged them around the turkey breast in a baking pan, I added some turkey broth to supply a little moisture, and finished cooking them while I was reheating the turkey in the oven. The stuffing and gravy were sad compromises as the gravy came from a jar (I shuddered while typing that) while the stuffing was made on the stove. All in all a tastier, if more expensive option then a meal at a restaurant, but it does have the benefit of leaving leftovers.

Happy Thanksgiving all.