Escape from Zanzer's Dungeon

Gaming Stories: Escape from Zanzer’s Dungeon

In  1992, after months of poring over my mom’s old character sheets and marveling at her hand-drawn maps, I saved up a whopping $20 and bought my first D&D boxed set, billed as “The New, Easy to Master Dungeons & Dragons Game.” In the depths of Zanzer Tem’s dungeon, my foray into the world of RPGs began.

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White Dragon

Gaming Stories: I Put the Dragon in a Sack

Anybody who got into Dungeons & Dragons through the 1991 beginner’s set probably remembers Kamro the white dragon. While not the first villain introduced in that boxed set, he was the first dragon, hiding in the central room of Stonefast. For many new gamers, he was essentially Baby’s First Dragon Fight.

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Deck of Many Things

Gaming Stories: Hubris and the Deck of Many Things

One of my main GMing strategies when I run a D&D or Pathfinder campaign goes something like this:

  1. Give the PCs the deck of many things.
  2. Wait for them to draw from it.
  3. Have fun with the results.

If I ever doubt this strategy in the future, I just need to think back to a Pathfinder game in 2017 which cemented this as a terrific strategy.

The Setup: The PCs, a group of high-level mythic characters, ventured into the Abyss to rescue an entire city that got sucked through a hole in reality. Continue reading “Gaming Stories: Hubris and the Deck of Many Things”