I can’t help myself when it comes to putting the deck of many things in front of my players. Now it’s back again, and it’s thrown my campaign on a very unexpected course.
Continue reading “Gaming Stories: Revenge of the Deck of Many Things”
I can’t help myself when it comes to putting the deck of many things in front of my players. Now it’s back again, and it’s thrown my campaign on a very unexpected course.
Continue reading “Gaming Stories: Revenge of the Deck of Many Things”
A longer time ago than it seems, I got married. Sometime around the date of my wedding, I created the following template for Pathfinder first edition. I swear the timing is coincidental and in no way reflects upon my own lovely wife Sarah, who was nothing but composed and gracious all through the planning for our wedding, who is the most gorgeous and intelligent woman I know, and who would be even more attractive if she stopped threatening me with a fire axe as I type this.
Continue reading “The Bride-to-Be”
Originally published in Wayfinder #15
Once the pyres start burning, it’s hard to tell the dead from the undead. It doesn’t help that one becomes another so easily.
Continue reading “Fiction: Matters of Faith”
The destruction of the SS Stupid brought an end to one of the more bizarre chapters of my GMing experience. But great stories often get sequels, and it wasn’t long before the SS Stupid returned in a new, grander form.
Continue reading “The SS Stupid Rides Again”
Character death is a touchy subject in RPGs. Some people think the PCs should always be at risk, and that an adventure is an outright failure if at least one character doesn’t get killed off during the action. Others never have PCs bite the dust, using house rules that cause a hero to go unconscious but not die when the rules as written would have them pushing up daisies. And, as with any divisive topic with extreme opposite stances, the majority of players fall somewhere in the middle of that scale.
Continue reading “On Character Death”
Night Below: An Underdark Campaign is a classic AD&D adventure that I purchased when it came out in the 1990s but which I never got to run all the way through until the 2010s. Beginning with D&D 3rd edition and eventually converting to Pathfinder, my final version of the campaign saw some changes, including revising the Rockseer elves and adding a secret villain behind the aboleth conspiracy: the Red Mage.
Continue reading “Gaming Stories: Curse Your Sudden but Inevitable Betrayal!”
One year after my original Pathfinder Fantasy Adventures course, I took a class on how learners use their brains. This allowed me to overhaul my lesson plan to give a better and more educational experience should I ever get to teach the course again. While I have not yet had an opportunity to run this course, here’s what would have been, along with an outline for an adventure roughly based on Paizo’s Crypt of the Everflame module.
Continue reading “Pathfinder Fantasy Adventures Revisited”
Our fifth day wrapped up the Pathfinder course. The PCs escaped from Zanzer Tem’s dungeon and made their way home in different ways.
Continue reading “Pathfinder Fantasy Adventures: Day Five”
On Thursday, I learned that the Friday session would be shortened, so I needed to wrap things up quickly and with a bang.
Continue reading “Pathfinder Fantasy Adventures: Day Four”
Three days in, the distance began to grow between the two groups. Group One was initially behind because of some bad rolls that kept them in their cell for an extra day, and then fell further because they didn’t work very closely together as a team. I had to institute the initiative system not as a way of keeping track of combat but as a way of determining who got to act when the group was trying to decide on a plan. Things were complicated a little bit by the player who is in both groups, who I had to give an actual warning about metagaming. Since Group Two had befriended the goblin, he was convinced the same tactic would work with all goblins. The rest of the group, though, wanted a fight.
Continue reading “Pathfinder Fantasy Adventures: Day Three”