The Torture Continues...

To continue,

Alron was now 500 years into the future. He still had his really nice magical bow, and his funky floating mirror-shield. And now, rather than it just being me playing his whole group, I actually had a group of other characters to play with! Steve has ruined solo adventures for me. I never want to do that again. :)

So, when he first dropped into the future, he ended up in a tree, and saw a bunch of guys ride past, with a prisoner over one of their horses. He dropped down and followed, curious what was going on. He came upon what appeared to be a bandit camp. A bunch of ruffians, who weren't treating their prisoner very well... and the leader having taken the prisoner's sword and was flashing it in the sun and waving it around like an arrogant prick.

So, Alron put two arrows into him (which I think killed him outright), then changed location. When the others moved in the direction where Alron was, I put four more arrows into two different guys (I found out at this point that the special magic bow was giving me four attacks per round, instead of the normal two), taking them down as well, and I continued with this process of him shooting and moving, until he'd whittled it down to just one guy, whom he'd shot in the leg to keep him from running away.

Moving in, I released the captive, who turned out to be Richard, and I joined up with the group after that. Okay, that was a bit of a backtrack from the last post, but I thought that was pretty funny at the time, so I thought I'd relate the story. :)

I should introduce everyone.

Sarek, the half-elf fighter/cleric, played by Mike
Zoroaster, the half-elf fighter/magicuser, played by Joe
Milamber, the human magicuser, played by Francis
Richard, the human ranger, played by Jonathan
Bishop, the human thief, played by Wayne.
the human "druid", played by Terry... I don't remember the character's name.
the gnome or halfling jester, played by Jennifer, Francis' girlfriend. Don't remember this one's name either.

So, continuing on for real now, after finishing the adventure with the haunted house... I don't recall much more about it, other than an evil spirit that was already possessing Richard caused him to attack Alron while we were exploring the house, and the magical sword that Amanda gave him way back got broken by him touching a strange glowing circle in the ceiling of one room, which turned the sword's blade to crystal, and the sword got shattered on the next attack he made... and then he and Richard (as two "men of good") were the ones that went back into that bubble room to grab ahold of the tattered remains of the bubble and pull them together again to reform it.

After that... as I was saying... we continued to travel, and went through a bunch of weird adventures. We encountered this blob of rainbow light that enveloped Alron and talked to him. Francis' girlfriend decided to screw around at this point, and was using her Ventriloquism spell to "make it talk to me", while it was actually talking to me... so, I alternately got notes from Steve about what it was saying that were silly/stupid, and notes that were more serious, with no indication of what was really going on there. It was a little bothersome, since hey, this thing could have been consuming Alron's soul and here's the jester sending magical messages saying "Hi! I'm Globby the Glob! Tee hee!" I mean, we're all for fun and such during the game, but come on. Well, anyways, it turns out this thing was benevolent, and granted Alron a gift. It would benefit him in a time of great need. That really wasn't explained to him at all. The only outward difference in him is that his normally grey eyes now changed color randomly, like the thing did.

We continued on, and Richard brought us to the place his father used to live, or own, or whatever... basically an outpost in the forest. Richard was supposed to inherit it, so we were checking it out. We were staying in one big room, and while Alron was on watch (we thought something was going on here), it sounded like someone was trying to pick the lock. So, Alron whipped the door open, surprising two men who were fiddling with the lock, and he grabbed one and pulled him in the room. The other ran. We questioned the man, who said that he was just "checking the lock" (Pft. Yeah, right.), and then the other guy came back, with the "authorities". They took Alron in for questioning, and possibly Richard (I vaguely remember that), but unbeknownst to me, the thieves in the group followed us (even when we told them to stay put), and Francis' magicuser turned invisible and followed as well. So, while Alron is being questioned, the men leave him alone in the room, and the two thieves pop in to talk to him... and are promptly caught by the guys when they come back to talk to Alron more. Lovely. And I found out afterwards that Francis' magicuser discovered that there was some evil conspiracy going on, and decided to kill the conspirators... which Alron got blamed for, because he was the only one there at the time (Milamber was invisible).

As a sidebar, up to this point, Alron was of Chaotic Good alignment. It's the "Do whatever you want, as long as what you do doesn't hurt you or anyone else" philosophy. After this, though, he changed to Neutral Good, which is more of the "Yeah, that Chaotic Good idea is alright, but there has to be SOME rules, otherwise things just devolve into complete chaos, and that's not good" idea. The whole fiasco bothered him so much that he decided there had to be a change.

So, Alron was brought before the magistrate, and because he had the magical aura from "Globby" inside him, they figured he was the one that killed the people there, and so they were sending him to the south to go on trial for it. I finally convinced Francis to come clean about it, since he was all "Well, if they're actually going to put you to death for it, I'll come forwards then..." Wow, thanks, friend! You're awesome. =P

Anyways, Alron agreed to accompany him to the south when he went on trial, but we actually never made it. We got attacked by berserkers about halfway there, and I had to use up that "Globby" help when they pushed the coach we were in over the nearby sea-cliff. Basically, it kept me at 1 hit point, when I would have been dead.

So, we worked our way back to the others, since all the guards and such were dead, and we had no idea where they were taking us... and we continued on.

Now, my memory is a little fuzzy on this, but maybe I waited until now to actually change Alron's alignment... because the rule at the time was that if you change you alignment, no matter the reason, you lose 1 level, and I remember that Steve thought that was rather unfair, so instead he said "I'll roll a d6, and that's how many game sessions you can't gain experience points for." I agreed, and I think it came up as a three. So, for three sessions after this, I couldn't gain any more experience. After that, I would be fully Neutral Good, and I could gain experience normally. It was kind of a "transition period".

Now, if you think that this was going to be an easy transition, well, I'll recommend you to be calling up Vince for the ShamWow or the Slapchop, 'cause you know the Germans make good stuff, and you'll love his nuts. ;)

More in the next post...


Oh, if I were to play Alron now, I think I'd probably use this miniature, or something similar. He's supposed to have black hair and a 'salt&pepper' beard and grey eyes... unlike the mini in the previous post, who has blond hair.

The Seventh Circle of Hell!

Thinking back at what Alron has been through, the title of this post seems rather appropriate.

It was fixed a long time ago, but for most of the time, the tip of Alron's nose was gone. The miniature has a very small base, and thus any nudge of the table would send him toppling over (you'd think he'd avoid that more with an 18 Dexterity! heh). One time he tipped over, the paint on the tip of his nose flaked off, and he stayed that way for a long time.

Alright, so, now on to what he's been through...

- Captured by evil cultists and tortured by one of their orcs.
- Contracted Lycanthropy from some wereboars that attacked him.
- Spent weeks trying to get back home after who knows how long running around as a wearboar.
- Captured by elves for trespassing on their lands, who were then going to put him to death for being a lycanthrope (he admitted it, and wanted help from them, but they were going to kill him instead. Oh, so very nice).
- Escaped with a band of werewolves, then had to escape from them (they're EVIL!).
- Captured by ogre CHILDREN, then dragged back to their lair when Mom showed up. Escaped, taking several other prisoners with me, but lost them when he changed into a wereboar that night. Never found out what happened to them. I hope Steve didn't have Alron kill them.
- somewhere in there, got captured by orcs, that tied him up to a post to bake in the sun for days, demeaning him the whole while, and then put him to work in their mines for what seemed like weeks, or longer. He eventually was rescued by a force of elves that decimated the orcs.
- after helping him to get back to full health, they asked him to help them recover prisoners from a large humanoid army. He took on the job, and didn't do a very good job of it at all, but it turned out that he was mostly just a distraction anyways, to divert attention away from the main elven force that was descending upon the army. Didn't feel really great about that one. Although he did meet a beautiful human Paladin named Amanda, that was working with the elves. I'm not sure who Steve had in mind when he described her... black hair and green eyes. I wonder if it was one of the heavy-metal babes he was listening to at the time. Lee Aaron, maybe? Hmm... nah, she has brown hair and brown eyes. Oh well. She gave Alron a magic sword in return for his help.
- He made it back to where he first turned into a wereboar and found that all his stuff was gone, except for his magical plate armor, which probably too heavy to lift for whatever lucky local happened upon his equipment.
- Finally got back to Saltmarsh, and met up with the group again. Was attacked shortly after by cultists, and was blinded by a spell. Actually, I'm unsure of the chronology of this one... this might have happened before the lycanthropy thing. Well, had priests remove the blindness and the lycanthropy. That was finally over.
- Next, was tested by the gods, having to fight a Drider archer, then a drow with a funky floating mirror-shield, both of whom he bested, and got a nifty magic bow, with a bunch of special arrows (like fireball, and lightning bolt, and stinking cloud... it was very Green Arrow), and got to keep that funky floating mirror-shield. All of this in preparation for a big quest. I don't think we ever found out exactly what the full quest was... might have been something about the big army of humanoids he helped the elves with... some "evil from up north" or something like that.
- Started on the quest, we needed to return to the cultist lair in the Caves of Chaos to deal with them. Jumped through a portal to escape a massive demon the lead cultist summoned, Alron got trapped on some alternate plane (where he unfortunately lost all his special arrows), and when he escaped, by finally finding an exit portal by looking through the back side of that mirror-shield, he ended up around 500 years into the future. (This was planned, as a way to get him into Steve's university campaign)

Things calmed down a bit then. Alron saved a fellow Ranger, named Richard, from some ruffians, and hooked up with Richard's group. I'm fairly certain that this group had already been playing 2nd edition AD&D. Alron was a 1st edition Ranger. I converted him to 2nd edition, but thinking back, I should have asked Steve to just keep him as a 1st edition ranger. It would have made sense, as an evolution of the class over 500 years, that he and Richard would go about things differently. Would have made them each a bit more unique in the group.

Oh, I'll tell you a story about a particularly good experience. The group was contracted by someone... can't remember who... to go into this Paladin's house and retrieve the Paladin's Holy Avenger. I assume it was for a good reason, since I can't remember specifically who was sending us. We had to beware, though, since along with the Paladin's sword, there was an "Unholy Avenger" there too... an Anti-Paladin's sword. They were identical, so we had to take the right one. We agreed and proceeded into the house. It was a fairly straight forwards dungeon crawl... I don't even remember what kind of enemies we had to deal with... there might have been a beholder, but I might be thinking of something else. I'm not sure.

The real "fun" started when we entered this L shaped room. At the bottom right corner of the L there was a strange bubble protruding from the wall. It was very curious. Before any of us could slap a hand over her mouth, Francis' girlfriend piped up with "I burst the bubble!". She was playing a... gnome jester... halfling equally-useless-character... I don't know at that point... but regardless, she whipped out a dagger and stabbed the bubble. A sudden wind blew us all back, and then just as suddenly reversed and started sucking inwards, into a black void beyond the wall. We managed to secure everyone so that noone would go tumbling off into the void, when this giant demonic hand came reaching through the hole in the wall, and it grabbed several of the party, who were currently trying to work their way up a rope towards the anchor crew, so we could get out of there. Alron was one of the fortunate ones to have been flung back against the wall opposite the bubble, so he was far enough away to have avoided getting grabbed.

He secured himself with a rope, and then rushed up to the hand, pulling out his sword to attack it, hacking at the fingers and then wrist, trying to get it to release the others. As he continued to wrack up damage on the hand, those grabbed were able to start escaping, one at a time, so he kept hacking at it. At one point, a fire began to crawl up the creature's arm, towards the hand, threatening to burn those inside the hand if it reached them, but Alron's sword, at that time, was a +3 Frost Brand Longsword, a sword that was capable of generating intense cold, and could extinguish fires if thrust into them. So, just before the fire reached his friends, he thrust the sword into the fire and it went out! Yay!

The celebration died on everyone's lips as the second last person escaped, and it was only our half-elf cleric, Sarek (yeah, I mentioned before about "original") who was stuck in the hand's grip. One more strike by me would sever the hand and save him, but I didn't do enough damage and the hand pulled him through the hole. As the hand withdrew, Sarek tumbled through the void, and Alron took out his bow, quickly tying a rope to one of his arrows and firing it at Sarek, aiming it for just between his body and his arm, so he could grab the rope. I rolled a 20! Then the celebration started up! Sarek grabbed ahold of the rope and we pulled him back in, getting everyone away from the hole and then out of the room.

Whew.

Of course, the whole house was messed up at this point. Bursting the bubble made the whole place possessed, with funky stuff happening all over the place. Richard and Alron had to join up to close the bubble to fix the place again.

This is getting long now, so I'll continue again next time...

The Worst...

Okay... the worst adventure...

Now, I'll preface this with something:
I've worked with the author of this adventure module, Lenard Lakofka. He's a really great guy, and it was a pleasure to work with him. He even put Caroline and I into his latest module because I did a LOT of work for him to transcribe an old magazine article he'd written about creating magic items, for which he only had fuzzy pictures of the pages. I bear no ill will towards Mr. Lakofka, and what follows is simply what a bunch of 15 year olds thought at the time, and I know now that our problems with the module were our own fault. :)

That said, Steve had bought this new adventure module and he wanted to play though it as soon as possible. He and Francis and I planned the whole thing out. We'd go over to Steve's on Saturday night, and we'd just play all night, getting through the whole adventure, no matter how long it took. We figured we'd be up until 6am playing, but that was cool with us. We'd order pizza, and drink pop and completely over-sugar ourselves in the processes, but we'd do it.

So, Francis and I show up, and Steve shows us the module...

"Cool! The last module with 'Secret' in the title was awesome!" I'm sure we thought at the time. Hoo Hooooo... wow... okay, I won't spoil anything yet.

So, we sat down, and started to play. There's a bunch of stuff in the town of Restenford in the module, but we went directly for the tower on Bone Hill, looking to get right into the action. We found the entrance to the dungeon under the tower and started exploring.

My memory of the module isn't perfect, but here's what I recall...

We found one room that had a statue of a winged woman, poised with a sword lifted above her head, set to strike. It had a helmet on that wasn't part of the statue, so Francis had Merlin go up and try to take the helmet. When he touched it, the statue struck him with the sword! He figured that he'd set off the trap, so he tried it again, and again, the statue struck him! Damn! Alron had a lot more hit points, so he went up to try. He reached out, took the helmet off the statue, with no attack! Cool! I rocked! ;D

The helmet gave Alron the ability of True Sight, I believe. I'm not sure if Steve gave him the full ability of it, or just something lesser. It was still cool, either way.

There was another room with a mirror, and if your reflection was cast by it, you were drawn into it, where you had to fight yourself. A Mirror of Opposition! I think Merlin had to fight himself... or maybe it was Chuck. I remember the rest of us wondering if we could go in and help him, but figured we'd probably just have to end up facing ourselves, alone, so we didn't try. Whoever went in obviously won (or maybe the Mirror version took his place! *gasp*), and we moved on.

Next we found this Beholder-looking thing, called a Spectator. It's a spherical creature, with four eye-stalks on the top, a large central eye in front, and a toothy maw underneath. It told us it was guarding a book, that was behind it. There was a bunch of other treasure lying there, and it told us we could have it, as long as we didn't touch the book. If we tried to take the book, it would have to attack us. Not knowing what it could do to us, we decided to leave the book be, and took the other stuff.

Then we hit the room that caused the problem. We opened a door and looked in, to find what looked to be a study. There was a bookshelf, a desk with a chair, and a skeleton chained to the back wall. Curious, we entered, and everyone that stepped across the threshold had to roll a saving throw. For those not-in-the-know, a saving throw is a twenty-sided die roll, and you had to roll high... higher than a specific number laid out by your class and level... this particular one was likely versus Spells. Anyone who failed was charmed. They would walk into the room, pick up a book and sit down to read, or sit at the desk and write something, or lie down and go to sleep. They would show no desire to leave, and would fight to stay in the room.

The only three characters that made their saving throw were Aubry, Merlin, and Chuck. We tried to get people out of the room, and found out first hand about the "would fight" part. The skeleton was animated... it had eyeballs and a tongue, but it couldn't actually talk to us... it could just roll its eyes and move its mouth as if it was trying to talk... which made it very difficult. We got it down to a "yes or no answer" situation and got what little information out of it that we could... it pointed to the fact that there was a wizard in this tower, and maybe we could get him to cast the necessary spell to break the charm.

So, our three characters headed out, finding the staircase up into the tower, and found a room with some bugbears in it. We expected a fight, but they just asked us what we wanted. We mentioned the wizard, and they pointed up. Shrugging, we proceeded up.

I never asked Steve at the time, but I think he was probably just being lenient with us. A bard, a monk and a magicuser probably wouldn't have done very well against the bugbears in the room.

Reaching the top of the tower, we found the wizard's laboratory. He was less cooperative than his subordinates downstairs, and we had a fight on our hands. We tipped over some tables as cover against his spells, and you know, to be honest, I have no idea how we beat him. It was probably a combination of Merlin's spells and Chuck kicking the crap outa him. Bards could fight pretty well, but I don't remember having a big role in his defeat.

The thing is... we killed him... a little short-sighted on our part, since we needed him to cast the spell. Oops.

Oh well, we had Merlin with us, so we looked through his spellbook... he had Dispel Magic in the book, which was good, but here's the kicker... and the problem with the module...

- The module is written for characters level 2-4

- Dispel Magic is a third level spell.

- In order to cast a third level spell, your magicuser has to be 5th level.

Merlin was 4th level, and was not even close to 5th level.

So, everyone who'd been charmed was now stuck in that room, permanently. Oops.

After all of that, we'd had enough. I think it was only around midnight or 1am. We were frustrated, angry, and we'd just wasted what we thought was going to be a very cool night of gaming. Steve just told us that it was all a dream. We all woke up on an empty hilltop, with all the stuff we'd gotten in the adventure, and then we went to sleep.

After that, Steve didn't buy adventure modules anymore. He made up all the adventures himself.

The Best...

I don't remember much more about my gaming experiences in gradeschool. I know we played a few other games... Star Frontiers, Gamma World, Palladium Fantasy (then, just known as "Palladium", since the company hadn't produced any other games at the time), Champions... I think there was one called Thieves' Guild too... a little independently produced game.

Star Frontiers was fun, but it was more realistic scifi, as opposed to more fantastical stuff. You had to obey the laws of physics and all that. pft. heh.

Gamma World was post-apocalyptic, where you had mutants with crazy powers, intelligent mutated animals and plants, robots and lasers and destroyed, radiated city ruins. I didn't play that one much, but I still have my plans to run a big game of it someday. It's just a fun concept.

Palladium, I really liked. It took D&D a couple of steps further, giving you many more races to play (like orcs, and goblins, and trolls, and kobolds), and lots of skills for your characters. One annoying part was that the writer seemed to have a bone to pick with D&D, and pointed out how his game was far superior at every opportunity he could get. The adversarial nature of the writing got a little tiresome. Overall, not a bad game, though.

Champions was fun, since you got to create a superhero character in fine detail, and they had the rules to do pretty much whatever you wanted to do. I once created a character that was a telepathic brain in a metal sphere, and the rules were there to let me do that (Disadvantage: Physical Limitation - No body, 20pts). The problem with it is that it took FOREVER to play out combat.


However, on to the actual topic of today's post... I moved on to highschool. I went from the top tier of my old school to the bottom tier of the new one. A humbling experience, and I wonder if they do that on purpose. Along with this, I met new people, which included two brothers that were in my homeroom, Francis and Mike Steel. We called Francis "Frank" at the time, but it's so foreign a thing to me now, that I can't call him that now, even reminiscing back. :)

Both of them were in The Squires with me, which is the junior "branch" of the Knights of Columbus (my dad is still a member of the KofC), and I found out that Francis also played D&D. His DM was his best friend, Steve Nemec. So, Francis introduced me, and I arranged to join in a game with them. Another guy in the Squires, Jeff, joined the group, and another friend of Steve and Francis (I think they knew him from gradeschool), Bing.

I played Alron (reincarnated), a ranger. Francis played Merlin, a wizard. Jeff played Conan, a barbarian. Bing played... a thief, I think. I honestly can't remember. Bing spent most of the first session with his shirt collar pulled up over his head, and his head down on the table, sleeping. I don't think he played much past the first session, if at all. Jeff lasted longer. We also had some secondary characters. I played an elven bard named Aubrey, and Francis played a monk named Chuck Norris (damn, we were ORIGINAL back then, weren't we??).

As our first adventure, Steve proceeded to take us through. . .

It was a fun module. It's a fairly simple one, but generally considered to be of the highest quality by those that play the game (here's a review). We had a great time, and it was a very fun start to a very cool campaign for Steve. He had even created his own world, with a huge map of all the terrain and political divisions, his own gods, and he used a lot of his own monsters (sometimes coming up with them on the fly, it seemed). We continued on with Danger At Dunwater, and The Final Enemy, which are the sequels to Saltmarsh, then went through The Caves of Chaos, from the original Keep on the Borderlands adventure module.

Those all went along rather swimmingly... okay, well, the delve into the Caves of Chaos took a disastrous turn when I got overconfident. Francis wasn't available to play, so Steve and I continued on for a session, which had me trying to shoot down an evil cultist with an arrow... that only did a few points damage, and he had a lot more hit points than that. That quickly devolved into a really bad combat that had us all knocked unconscious. We found ourselves chained to the walls of a large cell, with the evil cultist high priest going from character to character asking why we were here and why we had attacked them. I spouted off more overconfident BS and really didn't help our position at all... so he had us tortured, one by one, starting with my loudmouthed Ranger. Ooo, FUN! I learned to keep my mouth shut after that. heh.

Yes, we escaped from there. I don't recall how, honestly. Maybe Steve remembers.

These were definitely the best adventures, though. Next post, I'll tell you all about the worst adventure we played through!

Building Character...

I've talked a bit about Alron, I figure I should go into why he's my favorite character. This is the second iteration of Alron, I mean. The first iteration was pretty good, but I don't remember enough about him to really go into it.

Partly, it's mechanics. Partly, it's what he'd gone through and survived.

By mechanics, I'm talking about his stats and what his class can do. When I rolled the character up, I used the old method, which is to use 3 six-sided dice, roll them, and add up the three to get a total between 3 and 18. That was your value for that particular stat. Starting sometime after that, people started using 4 six-sided dice, discarding the lowest die, and adding up the three remaining. This gives a slightly better chance at getting higher rolls. However, I used the old school method. Steve handed me a six-sided die and I proceeded to roll it three times for each stat.

First roll was for Strength... 6! 6! 6!! A total of 18 on the first roll!!! Wow! Steve and I were boggling at that. Holy Crap!!

Second roll, Intelligence... 6... 5... 4... damn! 15! That's really good!

Third roll, Wisdom... 5... 5... 4. 14! Impressive!

Fourth roll, Dexterity... 6... 5... 5... WOW! 16! He's really beating the odds here!

Fifth roll, Constitution... 6... 6... 5... What the hell?! How was I doing this?! 17 Constitution!

Sixth, and last, roll, Charisma... 6!... 3... 3... okay, 12, that's not bad... but I got greedy at this point, I recall... Alron was supposed to be the leader of the group, so I wanted a higher Charisma for him. I asked Steve if I could re-roll and he agreed, but I would have to keep the second roll, no matter what the value turned out to be.

Reroll... 6!... 2... 1... ah, damn! Burned! I got a 9 total. I should have stuck with the 12! Crap! Oh well. I figured it out in my head that he's more the "common sense" kind of leader. He's not the inspiring type.

Now, Steve had said that he was going to give each character an 18 in their primary stat at the start of the game, so that we were special, but Alron already had 18 in his Strength, by the roll, so since I was going to make him an Archer/Ranger, he gave me the 18 in Dexterity instead.

Also, in 1st edition AD&D, there was something called Exceptional Strength. It was only for Fighter characters (Paladins and Rangers included), and it was a "percentile die" roll... roll 2 ten-sided dice, designating one as the 10's, and one as the 1's. My roll... 76. Not bad at all.

So, his stats became:

Strength 18/76
Intelligence 15
Wisdom 14
Dexterity 18
Constitution 17
Charisma 9

That's pretty damn good for rolling 3d6. I don't think I've ever rolled up as good a character, even using more "modern" die-rolling methods.

Each of these stats gave particular bonuses.

- 18/76 Strength gave me +2 on his attack rolls, and +4 on his damage rolls for melee attacks.
- 15 intelligence gave me a couple of more languages, but Steve didn't start us off with any, so they were just ones that he could learn later. He learned Elvish, eventually.
- 14 Wisdom actually didn't give him anything. The bonuses started at 15.
- 18 Dexterity gave him a +3 reaction bonus against being surprised, a +3 to hit with his ranged attacks, and -4 to his armor class*
- 17 Constitution gave him +3 hit points per level, and excellent chances to survive system shocks and resurrection.
- 9 Charisma... gave him nothing. He could have a maximum of 4 henchmen. That's it.

*These days, armor class goes up, and after adding all your bonuses to your d20 attack roll, you just have to roll equal to, or greater than, your opponent's armor class in order to hit them. In those days, armor class went down. The better your armor, the lower your armor class. I dunno why they did it that way; there were tables that dealt with the statistics. So, a -4 to AC then is equivalent to a +4 AC bonus now. Pretty damned good.

Now, this "Archer"/Ranger is a bit different than the standard rules. The Archer was a class written up for Dragon Magazine, and it was supposed to be for Non-Player Characters only, but Steve thought it was pretty cool, so he let me play it. It gave Alron bonuses to hit and damage with a bow, based on his level and the range at which my target was at. It also let him make his own bows and arrows, including what the article called "a bow with greater pull". This would allow him to use his strength bonuses with the bow, in addition to any other bonuses he had. Basically, it made him very good with a bow.

His basic Ranger class gave him bonuses to damage against "Giant-class" creatures, +1 bonus per level. "Giant-class" creatures include orcs, goblins, hobgoblins, gnolls, ogres, trolls, and giants. He was 6th level when I stopped playing him. So, any attack against one of these creatures dealt 6 extra hit points damage. That was devastating in some cases.

Steve still has the drawing of Alron that a friend had done for me, and even though I'd found the miniature we used for him on ebay a couple of years ago, I can't find it. I can't even find a picture online of it. Boo.

This miniature, a plastic one for the new edition D&D game, seems to have been sculpted as an homage to the one I'm looking for though, so I'll leave you with that one... for now...

Next post, I'll tell you what he went through...

Game-ography

(Updated as of June 1, 2012)

Player:
- Captain Korinn Snowshard (2011-12) - 15th level Dragonborn Bard/Warlord/Ardent (4e, Craig's Astral Sea game)
- Thomas Nathan Tremblay (2010-11) - Undead Union Army Sharpshooter (Craig's Deadlands game)
- Randall Forrester (2008-10) - 10th level Human Ranger (Craig's first major 4e game)
- Aurik (2008-09) - 9th level Tiefling Wizard (4e, second game with Ray's group)
- Serellian Leaflord (2008-09) - 5th level Elf Paladin (4e, Dave's game)
- Rokan Ironfist (2008) - 2nd level Dwarf Fighter (4e, with Craig's group, but Roy DMing)
- Geldan Kamarov (2007-08) - 13th level Human Fighter (3.5e, first game with Ray's group in Atlanta)
- Zorenthiel Moonshadow (2007-08) - 3rd/4th/2nd level Elf Cleric/Sorcerer/Mystic Theurge (3.5e, first game with Craig's group in Atlanta)
- Clay (2007?) - high level Incarnate Golem Fighter (3.5e, 'monsters' game.
- Shandara (2005-2007) - 6th/5th level female Halfelf Cleric/MagicUser (1e online play-by-post game)
- Warren Livingstone (2005-07) - 12th level Human Paladin (1e online play-by-post game)
- Eginhard Dunstill (2004-2005) - 4th level Human Cleric (3.5e online play-by-post game)
- Glyce (2003) - 5th level Githyanki Fighter/Psychic Warrior (3.5e online play-by-post game)
- Laarde Torosken (2002) - 3rd level Wroonian Smuggler/Jedi (SW online play-by-post game)
- Adrianna Whitestar (1999) - 6th level female Human Paladin (2e, FR Waterdeep game)
- Thorn Greenwood (1993-1994) - 6th level Human "Cleric of Teutares" (2e, Steve's Trikon campaign)
- Mizraith Den'duarn (1992-1993) - 8th level Dark Elf Magic User (2e, Steve's Trikon campaign)
- Rainara Goldenbow (1991-92) - 5th/5th level female Wood Elf Ranger/Magic User (2e, Steve's Trikon campaign)
- Alron of Haven (1984-1991) - 6th/6th level Human Archer/Ranger (1e/2e, first character in Steve Taylor's Trikon campaign, but temporarily retired in the late '80s)
- Githrandel Tiele (1991) - 4th level Human Illusionist (1e, Steve's Trikon campaign)
- Geldan (1981-83) - 16th level Human Fighter (1e, Danny's game)
- Alron (1981-83) - 14th level Human Ranger (1e, Danny's game)
- Clarissa (1981) - 5th level female Grey Elf Cavalier (1e, in my friend Danny's "Tolkien-esque" game)
- Ballinger (1980) - 4th level Human Fighter (1e)
- Unnamed Centaur - 1st level Centaur Fighter (Basic)
- Brandon the Fourth (1979) - 1st level Human Fighter (First character, ever. Steve Henry's Basic D&D Holmes ed. game)

GameMaster:
- D&D Encounters, Season 7: Beyond the Crystal Cave (2011-12)
- D&D Encounters, Season 6: Lost Crown of Neverwinter (2011)
- D&D Encounters, Season 5: Dark Legacy of Evard (2011)
- 4e D&D Gamma World campaign (2010-11)
- 4e D&D homebrew campaign (2009-10)
- 3.5e D&D Dragonlance War of the Lance online campaign (2002-2005)
- Star Wars Roleplaying Game in-person-turned-online campaign (1994-2002)

Oh, these aren't all the characters I've played, or the games I've run. There were a lot of generic characters, and a lot of generic adventures that I played in grade school that I'm just not going to remember. Mostly ones that I played in the killer-DM games. I do remember rolling up two "Samurai", which were just human fighters (I think in Basic D&D, but might have been Advanced). I made them brothers, and their names were fairly similar. Having studied some Japanese, I'd probably be embarrassed by the names I gave them, if I could remember. I just get the impression that they were pretty hokey.

There were lots of Champions characters, none of which I can really remember, and a Top Secret character I nicknamed "The Sandman". That was a game that Craig ran. The Sandman's "thing" was using a tranquiler gun instead of one with bullets. A tranquiler gun was cheaper than a regular one, and he didn't have much money. Still, he rescued the President. Not bad. heh.

**A note about names... I've played with two different Steves and two different Craigs. Steve Henry was the "killer DM" I've mentioned in this blog. Steve Taylor is one of my best friends from highschool, who ran a couple of great long-term games in his 'Trikon' campaign world. Craig Miller played several games with me in grade school, including running Top Secret. Craig Campbell was my DM in Atlanta. Also, Roy and Dave were fellow players in Craig's games, and Craig and Dave were fellow players in Ray's games. Danny ran 1e games in grade school, and his campaigns were known for their 'over the top' style and for being overpowered.

My top three:

- Alron. He's my longest running character, and he'd gone through the most fun adventures. There have been two versions. One was long ago, in grade school with Danny DMing. I've forgotten most of the details of his adventures, but I do remember him owning a lot of Lord of the Rings magic items... Glamdring and one of the rings of power (Aragorn's?). The other is more recent, played with Steve as DM, and although I've forgotten much of the details, but I can still remember quite a bit. I'll be making an effort to post the majority of what I can remember in subsequent posts.

- Adrianna. She was a pretty cool character. The DM running that game commented that it was the best paladin he'd ever seen played. Nice. A couple of examples: We were down in Undermountain, the huge dungeon underneath the city of Waterdeep, and the guys we were going up against had a pet Rust Monster. If you don't know what one of these things is, it's a creature that can reduce ferrous metals to rust in moments (and it eats the rust). Paladins are typically head to toe in metal, and Adrianna was no exception. Still, when confronted by the rust monster, everyone else was cowering, and I figured this thing would just chase us down, so I had Adrianna charge it and try to take it down. She had a crystal sword, so that would survive, but her armor was gone a couple of rounds into the fight. The group thought that was awesome, and gave me the next suit of magical armor, even though it wasn't my turn to pick a magical item.

Another one, actually the quintessential act... we were trying to find out why women were being attacked and killed on the streets of Waterdeep at night. Adrianna even witnessed one poor woman being killed, as a cloaked figure with a knife slit her throat and then lept up onto the building next door, escaping. Doing some research, we found out that the knife apparently took over its wielder, forcing them to do the evil acts. In order to stop the knife, it either had to be wielded by someone pure of heart, or it had to be wielded into the heart of someone pure... the translation of the document we read wasn't really clear on that point.

We lost track of this frustrating killer until we were at a party, acting as bodyguards to one of the city lords. The killer showed up with a bunch of mercenaries, whom we took care of, and when the killer's plan was thwarted, he ran, and Adrianna gave chase. She caught him in a hallway, and attacked, only to find out that the cloaked figure was just an illusion... the knife was actually wielding itself! She dropped her sword and grabbed the knife out of mid-air, causing the illusion to vanish. She attempted to wield it, but it was struggling against her control, so the true way of stopping it was revealed. She turned the knife around and attempted to plunge it into her own heart, but it resisted that too. It took a supreme act of will to overcome its control and stab herself with it, but she did it. She died, but the knife was stopped. She sacrificed herself for the good of the city and was rewarded by her god. A sad day for the group. They'd grown fond of that character, but I was moving out of the city, so it was a good end for her. Well, at least it offered some heroic closure.

- Laarde. Ship pilot for S.A.R.C. (Search And Rescue Corps). Former swoopbike gang member and fledgling Jedi Knight. I didn't get to play him as much as I wanted to. The GM, Russ, decided to "reprioritize" his gaming, and dropped that game. Too bad, too... it was fun. I had some good adventures, and some good plans for the future for the character. I'll tell you more about him later.

Dungeonmaster Notes

There are a few different "types" of Dungeon Master that play the game. Now, for those not-in-the-know, the Dungeon Master is the person who runs a specific game of Dungeons & Dragons. The players each have one character (or possibly more) that they control in a specific game, and the Dungeon Master controls all the other characters (called Non-player Characters), all the monsters, and pretty much everything that goes on in the world. They are the Writer and Narrator of the story, and the Referee during fights (between the characters and the monsters, not between the players. ;) ).

Two types I've already mentioned:

1) The Killer DM. This type sets themselves up as the adversary of the group. "Oh, so you beat those 12 orcs, huh? Well, let's see how you do against 20 OGRES!!" Typically they are quite stingy with the treasure too... you fight those 20 Ogres and you might get a few silver pieces out of it. They favor a gritty style of play, to my experience, with broken bones and missing limbs, so hit-location tables and critical hit tables seem to be favored by them. This type of DM can be alright for awhile, especially if you're just interested in "one-off" games, rather than campaigns, but eventually you get tired of never being able to progress a character... since unless you're incredibly lucky, or Batman (he's always prepared for everything), you'll never survive to the end of the module.

Honestly, I don't think there's any redemption for the Killer DM. People eventually just stop playing with them. That's what we did. Eventually we just told Steve we weren't playing in any more of his games. He offered to increase the amount of treasure in the games, but we pointed out that there wasn't much use for that, since we'd never survive to do anything with it. So, he became a player after that (and a rather disruptive one, unfortunately).


2) The Monty Haul DM. Yes, that's a deliberate misspelling of Mr. Hall's (stage)name. This type of DM is all about the treasure... the more you get, and the more fantastic it is, the more satisfying it is for him or her. Typically this type of DM learns this behavior from the Ooo's and Aaah's they get from their players about treasure and magic items, and they want to please their players, so they give them more. However, the rewards are typically quite larger than the risks... "Okay, the two goblins are dead, what do we find? A +5 Holy Avenger and 4000gp, plus the crown jewels?!"... and so it eventually becomes tired after awhile. You know that commercial with the poor man who has the Skittles Touch? It's like that... but not with skittles, 'cause skittles are ass. Yeah, I could have talked about King Midas, but why, when I have such an obvious pop-culture reference to draw upon... plus the opportunity to diss Skittles. :)

There is redemption for the Monty Haul, though. I was one when I first started. It just takes a bit of maturing, and realizing that it's okay to make the players fight for their rewards... and that the rewards don't have to be as fantastic (but still keep 'em good). I think I recall it being a tough transition, as I think the guys were expecting a good haul again, but eventually it all evened out. Danny, though, wow, his games were FULL of crazy shit.

My characters alone had: Glamdring (Alron), Orcrist (Geldan), Stormbringer (Geldan), "Diamond-alloy" armor (Alron), Nenya - the elven ring that Gandalf wore (Alron), two "sun-swords" - ever seen Thundarr the Barbarian? (Clarissa)... Alron flew in a spaceship, it was some kind of fighter, maybe like a Colonial Viper from the old Battlestar Galactica, now that I think about it. Crazy stuff.

I should explain Diamond-alloy, I think. This was a creation of Danny's, wherein, through magical forces, iron is infused with the strength of diamond. In the game there are several "special" metals, arranged by strength: Meteorite Iron, Mithral, Adamantite. Diamond-alloy topped 'em all. I always had the view in my head of this being crystaline armor, with facets and the like, but I guess it would be more like iron that shimmered as if it had tiny flecks of diamond in it (and it probably did). An interesting idea, but pretty funky at the same time. :)


3) Hack & Slash. This is another one of those that's not so bad, if you're just looking for a one-off adventure. This is typically how we played to start. Little or no story involved. We just swung swords and flung spells. One big slaughterfest with big treasures at the end. Nothing particularly wrong with that, but it does get a little tired after awhile. Ho, hum, another randomly thrown together dungeon with little to no reason or consequence. Why is there a dragon in the 30'x60' room, next to the 30'x30' room with the beholder? Who cares! Kill 'em both! It was kinda like a game of pirates, really. To paraphrase Barbossa: "Kill 'em all. Take what you can. Give nothing back."


4) Pretty much everyone else. Easily the most generally rewarding kind of play. A good mix of evil creatures to fight, mixed with the right amount of story and roleplaying, with excellent but appropriate rewards at the end, and usually all with a purpose in mind, and with your character's continued survival being the best interest of both player and DM. I didn't encounter much of this type until high school. I'd probably put Craig down as the closest up until then, but we didn't really run a lot of campaigns at the time. It was just mostly one-shot modules or adventures, so the story and purpose really didn't matter, overall.

Next post... I'm levelin' up!