AD&D 2nd Edition Revised

Starting off with a classic.  So, I have returned to the first game I tried running as a DM about 6 or 7 years ago.  I had only been accustomed to 3.5 at the time and was starting to run modules in Living Greyhawk.  So I figured I would try running 2nd ed., its not that different and I had played Baldur's Gate a lot on my computer.  Totally unprepared for the challenge.   My first dungeon was a bunch of hallways, doors and I totally forgot to describe things.  Earned the "Worst DM ever" award and still have it to this day.  Although, I have been practicing DMing since they still want me to run stuff.   I can only get better, right?  Well, we'll see.

So now I am starting my 2nd ever 2nd Edition AD&D revised campaign.  Luis, Jayson, and I are running PCs.  We are all Elves.  Luis has a Cleric of Corellon Larethian, Jayson has a Fighter, and I have a Ranger/Thief.  We started from the Elvish city of Luthain.  We were summoned by the Elvish High Council known as the Council of Elders and were given a task of ridding the local human village of Stout of a serious goblin raiding problem.  After two and a half days of travel, we entered Stout and were greeted by a Priest of Chauntea.  He told us of a tracker who followed the goblins to the castle north of Stout.  The tracker isn't here at the moment, however, if you would want to know more about the castle, talk to Jam the Bard.  He is at the Inn of Grahm's Tears.  We went and talked to him and he told us a little about Phrum's (pronounced Phroom) Castle.  How it's been abandoned for the last 30 years and that the Lady Phrum had liked the view so much from atop the cliffs that the Lord Phrum commissioned a castle be built and so there was.  After ten years, there was a incident that involved the murder of everyone inside the castle.  Lord Phrum's fortress was a two-day march away and by the time the soldiers had arrived, there was nothing left in the castle.  No furniture, pictures, people, nothing; nothing was left.  It was blamed on the local Bugbear clan.

After that story, we were on our way out when the innkeeper gave us some bread, cheese and two pitchers of wine for lunch on the house.  After paying 5sp for a good dinner later per each of us and one room with 4 beds for 5sp/night.  That's 2gp total.  A free lunch seemed awesome since he just made a month's wage in one day from us.  After eating our lunch, we went outside to see what we could see.  We noticed besides the Inn, Diragg's Bazaar, Jud's Forge, and the Temple of Chauntea, that the other local commerce was: Slim's Bakery, the Physicians, Kram the Saddler, Gab's Wine's and Thom's Wagon's.  There was one other sign, beaten and worn,  looked like there was a hammer and saw crossed with a brick and some numbers.  Since we didn't know what kind of shop this sign was for, we went and knocked on the door.  A older human man answered the door and when we asked what he did, he said he was an engineer.  We all looked like we hadn't ever heard of it; and we hadn't.  He explained that he designed and built the castle.  We then asked if he had any drawings of the castle left.  He said that he only knew where the first and second levels were and that he would transfer them onto paper for us and show us how to read them.

That is where we left off for the first night.  Not bad.  Have the next time already planned out.  Mwhaahhahahah!

The game of chops

Where to begin.  I suppose I should start at the beginning.  My friend Brian, when we first met and started talking, invited me to join a local Larp.  I had previously heard from different friends that Larp was lame and that people take it way too seriously and stuff.  Like people using real weapons and stuff and mistaking the real world for the game world so they got in trouble when the killed someone for real.  Blah, blah, blah.  These horrible things happened like in the 80's and that is where Larp got it's bad reputation.  So, I told my friend Brian no, but he asked me why and I told him about all that horrible crap.  Blah, blah, blah.  My curiosity finally got the better of me and I decided to show up one day after he had invited me.  I haven't stopped playing ever since.  I even became the Storyteller (ST)/Game Master (GM)/Dungeon Master (DM) of the game and had a go.  I am now going to start STing again.  I have a couple ideas on where I want to take the game, but I hope it's good and fun for all the players.  That's the golden rule in Larp, have fun, hell, it's the golden rule in any game.

The rules we use are out of the Laws of the Wild 3rd Edition Mind's Eye Theatre (MET) published by White Wolf Publishing.  The MET rules are simple:  Have fun, no weapons (we use item cards), and everything in the book can be changed if you don't like it or just don't use it.  Our game is part of The Garou Nation (TGN), a national organization dedicated to Live Action Role-Playing (LARP).  Each game from every city follows the standard rules and some of TGN's bylaws, but otherwise has chronicle sovereignty.  We basically act out what our characters would do, throw chops (which is what we call Rock, Paper, Scissors), and keep tally of what we have on character sheets.  We use item cards for weapons, armor, fetishes (magic items/weapons), and talens (magical consumables).  The game can otherwise be called Werewolf: the Apocalypse.  There are games in other cities that we can travel to and play our same characters from our game, but if the character dies in that game, it dies in this game, since it is a shared World of Darkness (WoD) within TGN.

So this is what we call Larp.  It's fun, and anyone can play.  You just need to know how to play Rock, Paper, Scissors and you got like 50% of the game.  Oh, and you portray a Werewolf.  How cool is that?

Anyway, that's it for now.

Jayson's Rifts Game Session One

First off, we have only three people, Me, Luis, and Jayson. This is Jayson's first attempt at running a Rifts Campaign. I am playing a Lanotaur R.C.C. and Luis is playing a Seljuk R.C.C. Luis's Seljuk named Cy'tech doesn't have a tail because it was either surgically removed or cut off in battle. Sato, my Lanotaur, was raised by a Worldly Sasquatch when found in Canada. Is originally from Japan and wears his MDC Samurai mask with homemade MDC armor. The Worldly Sasquatch taught him how to pilot a robot (It was only afterwards that I learned that he is way deadlier without the robot). So initially, I started out with something that Lanotaur can't have because I misunderstood Jayson because this initially was going to be a carryover from our Mech Warrior game (which is why I came up with the being raised by the Worldly Sasquatch because they can kinda pick up that pilot skill). Anyways, we got situated and we began.

Get magically transported into a cave via a Rift. See a Seljuk there. Ask him if he speaks American. Yes, he does. His name is Cy'tech. Two other beings are there, the magic on them is big. The Goddess, which is what she calls herself, tells us of a prophecy or something like that and it includes us and its our destiny, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, well according to her, the Megaverse is going to end if we don't find a bunch of crystals. Specific crystals that when collected will do something. Anyway, she tells us that it is both our destiny and that we need to work together in order to complete this quest and in order to find all eight crystals and that they are very powerful and the first one is outside this cave and somewhere near the city.

We get out of the cave and start heading towards the city. While in the forest before we get to the city, we come across a Homosapien. A D-Bee that is around these parts. She speaks American and tells us that the city is Washatch and she scampers off. We get to the city gates and are having difficulty getting inside past the guards. The same Homosapien comes up and the guards start acting wierd. Then the guards let it slip that she is the queen of the area. We get led inside to the Guild of ArchMages, they give us a map that shows travel routes from Ogden, Utah to Salt Lake City.

That is where we ended session one on November 23, 2010.

Summer Rifts

Officially started the second campaign for my Rifts game. Bringing three new players, who have never played Rifts before, into the fold of the MegaVerse. I kind of want more players to experience this ultimate gaming system that I find especially awesome. So, I have brought three new players into the game, they are joined by two of my previous Rifts gamers and a third gamer who has previous experience with the Palladium system. The new players are Brian, Jessica, and Chris, the two veterens are Jayson and Luis, and the third gamer is Ed. In this summer session of Rifts, the group will consist of the following O.C.C.s:

Jessica (Jesse) - Female Human Headhunter
Brian - Male Tribal Mystic (Ojibwa)
Chris - Male D-Bee Merc Soldier (Avione)
Luis - Male Mutant Professional Theif (Dogboy)
Jayson - Male Human Nazca Rune Warrior
Ed - Male D-Bee Gunslinger (Quick Flex Alien)

I am not sure if I have all the spelling correct.

I started them out by making them make saves versus drugs, it was to get them unconscious as to have the NPCs kidnap them and get them to their base of operations. They regained consciousness and they saw four Chassuer Verts torturing a human. They threw him into one of the three cells that occupied the floor they were on. The PCs being in the other two. The cells were 10' by 20', bars made of MDC material and electrified, kind of magical as well. Luis's character heard a buzz when they opened the cell, and another when they had closed the door to the cell. He informed the other PCs and Ed's character was looking up and noticed something that looked like a bad soldering joint. He got on the shoulders of Jesse's character and punched the spot where the joint was, it took him awhile to hit the right spot, but when he did, he recieved a jolt for his efforts. He had sustained quite a bit of SDC damage since everyone was without their gear, weapons, and armor. The kidnappers however had overlooked Jesse's character's wrist needles, which they used to pick the lock of the cell since Ed's character had disabled the electricity through all the cells. Once out, he looked for what was in the large room and spied two smaller rooms tucked away in the corner where there was no light. Jayson's character being an MDC creature, broke down his cell door making a lot of noise. Everyone heard things moving about above them. Jayson's character, wanting his staff, broke down one of the room doors while Jesse's character, after picking the cell lock, picked the other room door. In the room that was picked open, was all their gear, plus shelves and shelves full of other gear. In the room that was broken into, was all their weapons, armor and shelves of all kinds of weapons, armor and miscellaneous of varying degrees of dustiness.

This is where we left off, since we had also done character creation a little past game start, then we went and got some food, all in all, I thought it was a good start. Combat will be interesting when we return.

YouTube videos

I have officially been posting videos to YouTube. So, you can find me there. Most of my videos will have to do with gaming in general, so if you want an actual video on gaming, watch them, comment on them and subscribe to my channel. I will then slowly take control of the world. Probably not, but here's to dreaming big.

East 1-4

I was disappointed that there were only 3 encounters within this module. My Invoker is almost to second level and should be there after just one more module. I don't want to wreck the play of this module, but any player who knows what they are doing can get the mod for themselves and read up. I have played in better mods.

If you haven't played this module, you shouldn't read any further.

We start out taking a job as caravan guards for the Kobold company, we get to Delvenmer, we get paid for our delivery and the Dwarf that pays us tells us to take a bath in one of the local bath-houses, which are free. We then meet the Admiral, who hires us to clear out this warehouse for him. We are to get rid of any squaters and miscreants within. Inside the warehouse(skill challenge), we coerce the patrons to leave and we won't kill them (Diplomacy) and we find a false room (Perception) and within false room find a locked trapdoor (Thievery or Strength). We find stairs leading down, it is dark. Our wizard has his orb light up. We descend into the room below. We find 3 associates who are doing paperwork, looks like accounting. We grab the paperwork after getting them to tell us that the group at the Kobold company are involved in some kind of illegal action. We tell the Admiral, who then inspires us to clean out the other miscreants at the Kobold company. After we take them out, we find a letter telling us that the Dwarf that paid us when we got here is the leader. We locate him at the marketplace(Streetwise). He proceeds to try and give us some time off, permanently. After killing him, we go back to the original Dwarf who hired us and give him the documents we confiscated and we call it a day. Yeah.

Star Wars cont.

So, we completed our very first mission that we didn't have any help with. We had to deliver some merchandise to the Empirial Red Guard, which have effectively become a splinter of the Old Empire. After said mission, we received word that we are now being noticed by the Empire, the Dark Empire and anyone else who has their ear to the ground, sort of, in a way. Our droid, Aurora, apparantly is biological and just has a droid exoskeleton, which has the top of her body looking like a protocol droid and the bottom is that of a four-legged destroyer droid (don't know the name off the top of my head). Apparently, she has a sister, who is also a Jedi and she informs us that her sisters tomb has been discovered on Yavin. So we hyperdrive over to Yavin and find a whole Empirial fleet surrounding it. We are hailed, we tell them that we are there to pick someone up from the surface. Aurora informs them that we are Archeologists, which we are not, and we get clearance to land on Yavin. Before we are told this news, we hear in the background of the intercom the voices of Darth Vader and Darth Valdoon (who is actually Luke Skywalker, apparently this isn't like the movies. Luke and his Dad control one side of the known universe while the Palpatine Returners control the other half of the Universe. Luke's side is known as the Dark Empire, while the other side is just known as the Empire. Each side has splinter groups, which makes it even more confusing, but that isn't what makes the game great. It may have something to do with the Star Trek technology which we have on our ship. Yeah, so we are also mixing genres. Awesome).
So we land on Yavin and go into this ruin, which is guarded by like 15 Sith and a bunch of Stormtroopers. As archeologists, we discover a secret door to a tomb underneath the ruins. We enter and retrieve this item, a dual-sided lightsaber, and procede out of the calamity. We are confronted by the Sith, and we pretend to have been trapped inside this hole (a wall having come down behind us silently to block passage to the Evil Jedi spirit and the lava-fall and waterfall) and were just waiting for them to let us out (about 3-4 hours). We get out, but are quarintined on our ship. Now we get to see what happens next time.