Back at the Table

Back at the table

Wow! It has been a while and I’d lost my way. Too much going on to indulge my hobbies, but I’m back. After some unexpected surgery and the mandatory recovery time, I’ve realigned with some of the fun things in my life.  This post was originally entitled “Father’s Day Update – Summary Campaign with my Minions”, in which I described my re-emergence, my recent involvement/re-involvement with Table-Top Role-playing Games, and described the fun new campaign I’m running with my family this summer.

You read that right….”Father’s Day”. I’ve been working on this post for more than a week now. Now some of that is related to making decisions on the nature and form of the campaign as I wrote about them, but mostly, I think I was just trying to write about too many different things at once. Obviously, that isn’t helping me actually complete any writing in a meaningful time frame and it certainly isn’t developing the sort of engagement for which I was hoping online. So I’ve decided to break things down into smaller bite sizes and see how that goes.

As chance would have it, somehow Baldur’s Gate started itself up as I was typing this….Boo must need me.

I’d been filling the gaming void in my life with some Baldur’s Gate with one of my minions (10), but it is now time to come back to the table and table-top games. Time to come back to Dungeons & Dragons.

By D&D, I have come to mean essentially any table-top role-playing game (generally, meaning with a fantasy slant, but not always).  HAG and Aega Mythea essentially grew out of my need to house-rule and tinker with game engines/mash stuff up and out-of-the-box D&D is somewhat of a rarity in my gaming history, but in this case (as it were), you will see that I actually mean actual D&D…D&D 5E to be more exact. More on that later.

With regard to the most basics of the campaign, let’s start with the players and their circumstances. First of all, due to some unexpected surgery, I am home on the mend, healing up from that. Hence both my time and inclination to play again (you look death in the face and you may find yourself refocusing your life a bit….in this case, time with family). I have three players: my wife (who loves games, but was never really into D&D, but is excited to give it a go) and my two kids (12 and 10, both of whom have a little experience with D&D and such games). We are very excited to do this together and I’ll be sure to provide updates and expansions on this post as appropriate.

With regard to Baldur’s Gate, for those not in the know, the game is now available on Steam and elsewhere as an Enhanced Edition. I highly recommend you pick it up.

~AoB

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2E to 5E

Moving from 2E to 5E! I thought my move from 3E/PF/CnC to dabble in 5E was a jump. Way to be Evil DM! I do agree though that  there’s a lot of good materials available in other editions (esp. 2E settings).

http://evildm.blogspot.com/2014/11/moving-forward-with-dungeons-and.html?_sm_au_=iVVZ61psj40VNZNH

~AoB

How did I not know about D&D 5E?

OK, when it became clear what D&D 4E was going to be all about, I essentially checked out of the whole D&D thing. Not to say that I left gaming or anything like that; I’d essentially adopted the Pathfinder RPG for my crunchy bits game and Castles & Crusades (coupled with my old standby The Atlantean Trilogy) for my regular (commercial) gaming. I also have been working on various incarnations of my HAGIS/Aega Mythea development.

All of that being said, though I largely rejected D&D 2E when it came out, I’d always been at least aware of what it was, its release schedule, and all that….I just wasn’t playing it (at least not until many years later when I joined a game that was run by a good friend who ran 2E). In this case, I was caught flat footed as it were. Not only did I not know 5E was in the works, I actually missed its launch. I was that far removed from the gaming world. I’d stopped reading the gaming blogs of others, stopped visiting gaming forums, basically checked out of the public discourse of gaming. I was just doing my own thing.

So when I became of this 5E and what it was all about, I was both ashamed of my ignorance (would they take my geek card away???!?!?) and intrigued by their back to the basics approach. This weekend, I ran out to my local bricks and mortar gaming store and bought the PHB and DMG for the new D&D 5E.  So far, I am liking a lot of the design decisions. My minions are chomping at the bit to give it a playtest…and I’m planning on acquiescing in the very near future. We’ll then be in a much better place to determine just what the take home is for 5E. Watch this space for more on D&D 5E, my own gaming projects and just general gaming stuff in general as I return to the public face of gaming. I’d been using my facebook page in place of blogging, but it is now clear that approach is severely lacking.

~AoB

S&W Whitebox

I just downloaded the S&W Whitebox. It’s a retroclone of the original D&D. I most certainly won’t play it as is, but my nostalgia and academic interest in it got the better of me (I should be working on my Aega Mythea game, but needed a little break). I’m kinda digging the art (see the cover right)….very old school.

~AoB

Player-Facing Rolls

There’s been some discussion on the web relating to using “player-facing rolls” (e.g., Gamer: The Blogging: Player-Facing Rolls.). In D&D, this is where you flip the mechanic over and have the players roll defense vs a static offense statistic (offensive rolls are made normally). Here’s a link that explains it more from the SRD. The DM essentially never needs to touch the dice (unless they’ve got some hidden roll they want to make).

I’ve considered them before and while I’ve never used them, the idea intrigues me. However, I’ve noted that there is a strong polarization around the idea. People either love the idea or hate the idea. Some of the “Love” may be the shininess or appreciation of its cleverness and some of the “Hate” may be related to “don’t mess with how I’ve always played my game!”. This thread on the Troll Lord Castles & Crusandes forum speaks to how old-school type games seem to perceive the idea (I know “Old-school” is a loaded term that may mean a lot of different things, but I think my point remains the same regardless of whether you view C&C as strictly Old-School or not).

I’ve been thinking of using it for my Atlantis/C&C/HAGIS mash-up, but am leaning against it. Not that I don’t like it, I do. I just want to remove any perceived bumps in the road. With the limits on all our time, all the logistics in setting up a game, and all the changes I’m making to rules that will require some explanation….I just don’t want another thing to explain. Perhaps another time I’ll use it….or swap it in later. We’ll have to see. I’d love to hear what others think about it….especially those who’ve used it.

~AoB