GRAIL QUEST

 I mentioned in my last post that I’m in a second gaming group now. The game master is an old friend, Carlisle. He was part of our first gaming group when we first started our The Fantasy Trip adventure years ago. He got me and a couple other local gamers to join him in playing the 1980 programmed adventure GRAIL QUEST.

GRAIL QUEST was written by Guy W McLimore Jr for MetaGaming. It was the third “microquest” after Steve Jackson’s Death Test and Death Test 2. It is a programmed adventure for one to four players set in Arthurian England searching for the legendary cup of Christ.  When Grail Quest was written gamers were using Steve Jackson’s original rules. Our group is playing the updated rules and examining how these newer rules might affect the adventure. Our group is comprised of three players experienced with TFT. Carlisle is our game master, and one player is unfamiliar with the system, but learning fast. 

After two Session Zero practice games, we started. Leaving Camelot we choose a direction and travel to the next point on the map where there maybe a village or inn and villagers who may have information to pass on. As we travel we face random challenges like bandits, wolves, or wandering knights who will challenge us to single combat. Some locations have their own unique challenges like this:
 

Day 29: The party arrives at the castle of Lord Krast, who is holding a noble woman captive. From the tower the woman calls down to us to help her. The guards allow only one of the knights to enter and Sir Titus chooses to face Lord Krast. They meeting the castle courtyard. Krast says he will only release the noble woman if Titus can best him in combat. They face each other across the courtyard.

Sir Titus charges across the yard and attacks with his spear. Krast responds with a mighty blow with his sword. Now toe to toe they exchange blows. Lord Krast’s sword bites deep and Titus disengages for a moment. Sir Titus strikes again with his spear and then disengages again, but it is only to back up and charge attack again. Lord Krast though is ready and knocks Sir Titus to the ground.

3Once Sir Titus is conscious Lord Krast offers the party hospitality and allows Sir Titus to rest and heal for four days. Unfortunately as the loser, Titus must forfeit his horse and all his arms. The party pools their resources and buys back Titus’s possessions.

Day 37: After resting at the inn, the party returns to the castle. This time Sir Barnard challenges Lord Krast.

The two men run at each other and clash shields in the center of the courtyard. Lord Krast hits first with his sword while parrying Sir Barnard’s blow with his shield. The two combatants move around looking for an opening. Krast swings and misses while Barnard’s sword hits, but does little damage. Lord Krast’s sword gets under Barnard’s shield and draw blood again. 

Sensing advantage, Krast strikes and hits, but over extends himself and drops his sword. Sir Barnard hits and forces Krast back, preventing him from reclaiming his sword. Barnard swings again, but is blocked by Krast’s shield. Krast responds by slamming into Barnard with his shield. Thrown a little unbalanced, Barnard drops his sword when he attacks again. Lord Krast draws his dagger and thrusts, but cannot pierce Barnard’s armor. Barnard quickly picks up his sword. Krast desperately lunges  again with his dagger, but leaves himself open and Sir Bernard’s blade strikes true. 
 
Lord Krast drops to his knee and yields. He will release the noble woman to the knights and presents Sir Barnard with his chainmail, shield, and magic (+2) broadsword. Before they leave Krast tells the knights that his spies have found no sign of the grail in the west.

Time to catch up again.

 

Welcome back to my infrequent blog. Let me tell you about our current game. The main group is playing an adventure Joe created called Nautical Nonsense. Our motley crew of nare-do-wells are sailing between islands in a shallow sea seeking treasure and glory. We have moved up from the White Box rules to Old School Essentials, another set of rules that has come out of D&D’s old school renaissance. 

I said main group wbecause I have joined a second group of gamers lead by Carlisle C. He is starting a Fantasy Trip adventure, the Grail Quest which actually predates Steve Jackson’s TFT revival. It was written by Guy Mclimore in 1980 for the now defunct MetaGaming. Carlisle wants to run it using the current rules and explore updating the adventure.

So far we have met online using Roll20 and created characters and refresh our memories of game play with the TFT system. Ultimately Carlisle wants to use Foundry VTT to play. He has purchased a subscription and is working to setup the TFT module for it. 

That brings us up to date. We’re still playing our main game on Monday nights. We have five gamers plus Joe, our GM. The other game has three players plus Carlisle and will meet on Tuesday or Thursday nights.  I’ll try to post more often. 

The Dark Druids

 ANOTHER INCOMPLETE POST FROM APRIL 2024

Our White box campaign continues. We have fought many battles and lost many companions. Out of the original six PCs only one remains, Vilhelm Klink, fighter and knight of Osland. Our party is much stronger now. Most of them have reached level 8.

During the past year and a half we cleared out goblin bands, took on a demon in a wizard's tower, traveled to the city of Southport and cleared the sewers of rats and were rats. We marched into the mountains to search for a famous artificer and brought back nearly 1000 pounds of a strange metal ore, Orytalcum, that produces armor and weapons of superior quality. 

Unfortunately it can only be refined in the hottest of dwarven forges. That lead us to the mines of Hadramkath which were under the control of a dracolich. We managed to kill the dracolich by destroying its phylactery which was guarded by a frost giant.

Within a month (game time) the dwarves had relit their forges and produced armor and weapons of amazing strength and quality.

But before we could deal with the dracolich we had to deal with another problem. The Witch King had amassed an army of his cauldron born united with a large band of ogres, and had surrounded the walled town of Vericonium.

I’m a fanboy, part 2

 Gaming is a big part of my life now that I retired from teaching many years ago. I played Melee and Wizard in the early 80s. Mostly I played it solo with the Death Test and Death Test 2 micro quests. I added Advanced Melee, Advance Wizard, and In The Labyrinth and every other micro quest I could find in my FLGS (friendly local game store). The times being what they were I got too busy with school, job, and family and my games gathered dust in the closet. 

Years went by and then Steve Jackson won back the rights to the games he had created. I jumped on the opportunity to be part of the Kickstarter for the Legacy edition of The Fantasy Trip. Through the internet I met two local guys who were putting together a group to play TFT. One owned my FLGS and we started playing there on Monday nights. 

I started this post months ago and have forgotten where I was going with it.

So let me catch up on what been happening. Our gaming group, which varies from 4 to 6 people, has been on the same campaign now for close to two years. We're playing using the White Box Medieval Fantasy Adventure Game rules (Old School Renaissance), an updated version of the original D&D game. Many of our characters have reached level 5-6. We've lost a few along the way. My son has bad luck with clerics in particular.

Some nights we don't have enough people to continue the adventure. When that happens we fall back on other choices, most commonly playing a quick HeroQuest. Recently though Joe (our DM) offered us the opportunity to play a one-shot of Mörk Borg. According to their website "MÖRK BORG is a pitch-black apocalyptic fantasy RPG about lost souls and fools seeking redemption, forgiveness or the last remaining riches in a bleak and dying world." The mechanics are simple enough and there is a character generator on the site so you can quickly create a character or two (or three. You'll go through them fast. My son and I had a great time playing the initial adventure, Rotblack Sludge.

I guess this page has expanded from just posts about The Fantasy Trip, a game I still love and continue collecting materials for, but now it is so much more as my gaming horizons have grown. Next post I think I'll talk about my ever growing dice collection.

Back to the Beginnings

My first exposure to table top gaming was the Avalon Hill board game Gettysburg. My mom bought it for me shortly after it came out in the sixties. She had no idea how complicated it was. I skimmed through the rules, but didn’t get far. Other than moving the chits around the map I never actually played the game.

Years later I came home from the Air Force and started hanging out with a couple of younger high school friends, Jim and Gerald. I joined them in their activities of building and launching model rockets. I think we broke every safety rule with the exception of using metal parts. We also built model ironclads using balsa wood and thin aluminum sheet armor, and then had battles where we shot at them with BB guns.

Our most elaborate endeavor was trying to replay the naval war in the Pacific in World War II. Our mastermind, Gerald, was using the SeaPower II rules and 1:1200 waterline models made by Alnavco. To supplement our meager (and expensive) metal ships, he cut out and glued together an balsa wood fleet of everything from battleships, carriers, and cruisers all the way down to destroyers and submarines. 

Using ships in 1:1200 scale is not something you play on a table top. I've seen photos of scenarios that were played out on the floor of a gymnasium. We played in my mother's living room. With the time needed to setup, movement, measure ranges, refer to gunnery tables and recording hits and damage of multiple targets, not to mention air battles of opposing carriers, the battles would literally take days to play. Thankfully the room was not used for entertaining a bridge club and Mom was forgiving of the mess. It all ended after the US Navy (me) was soundly defeated in a battle in which all of the American carriers were sunk and the American admiral (me) threw a fit.

That didn't end our friendships. We are still close in spirit although we are separated by time and space. Gerald went on to build wind tunnel models. Jim and I both became teachers. We all have families and lives that have separated us from our youthful endeavors.

Somewhere in my attic there is a box that contains the few metal waterline models I own. Waiting for another battle.

Backstory

 

There is a lot of truth in that cartoon. I love creating backstories for my characters, but so far the back story doesn’t fit into the campaign’s storyline. 

My dwarf character is a thief. He has multiple aliases to hide his true identity. I’ve been playing fairly straightforward, just being your basic thief (who tends to roll badly when using his thief skills). 

Then something happened. I love it when a PC takes on a life of his own. Ulfgard had a traumatic experience last week. The party had taken on the task of ridding the sewers below Virconium of the rat men that inhabited it and were stealing from the town. 

As all adventurers know well, all sorts of vermin reside in sewers. Rats, giant rats, and rat men are just the tip of the iceberg. Our party had a random encounter with a giant catfish. It randomly chose to bite Ulfgard. He suffered a horrible wound and nearly was swallowed whole by the great beast. The party survived the encounter and the fish swam away, but Ulfgard’s mind was torn. 

Now in Joe’s (our GM) world, the Shattered Kingdom of Valenor, dwarves are not born of women like humans, elves, and other humanoid races. They are carved out of a rare stone and brought to life by their parent in The Sacred Ritual of the Forge God Klanggeddin. When Ulfgard was created there were flaws in his stone. He was created with a tendency to having multiple personalities. That may help explain him becoming a thief and being banished from his clan for stealing a rare family jewel. I.e he is not right in the head. 

Ulfgard’s personality fractured and his saw himself as an “Ahab” to the great white catfish’s “Moby Dick”. In this week’s session he hired a crew of dwarf pirates with guns and harpoons. Along with the rest of the party, they enter the sewer to hunt the great white beast. It was a glorious battle with Ulfgard jumping on the monster’s back and providing the killing stroke with his axe. 

That wasn’t the end of the story. His team of dwarves carried the fish from the sewers and Ulfgard invited the entire town to a gigantic fish fry. 

The Hundred Killers

 Once our party got started on our new campaign, I’ve been trying to adapt to a system that uses lots of different dice. The Fantasy Trip uses a number of six-sided dice where old school D&D uses polyhedral dice, most notable the d20. 

Joe really wanted to go all the way OSR, so our campaign is using the same map that Gary Gygax used, the map from Outdoor Survival. That game was published by Avalon Hill in 1972. 

As level 1 characters we started out in a small village that was being plagued by raiding goblins. Our quest was to explore the surrounding area and locate and destroy as many goblins as possible. 

As our story goes, we discovered that there were several different bands of goblins that seem to have been organized under the leadership of a mystery leader. Over the weeks since we started we have fought many goblins, cleaned out bandit camps and a dungeon. Once we had killed over 100 goblins we were named the Hundred Killers. 

There are three players, myself, my son and a young man named Quinn. We each have two PCs which include a paladin, a magic user, cleric, fighter, thief, and Druid. 

 

Then there was Omicron

 It is now January of 2022. My family is vaccinated, even the grandchildren thank God. Most of us are boostered as well. We wear our masks when we are in public. Thankfully none of us have caught the virus yet, but some of our friends have and some people we know have died.

Not the best opening paragraph for a gaming blog is it? Our gaming group was put on hold by the pandemic and we waited until everyone was vaccinated for Covid. We finally got together in August and Joe (our host and GM) introduced us to the setting of GAMMA WORLD with a taste of Fortnight mixed in. We used Joe's rules-lite system to play. 

In November we started playing HERO QUEST. I had heard the name before, but knew nothing about the game. It has been fun playing it, especially because Joe owns the game and several expansions. If you don't know HERO QUEST uses special dice for combat. The game had been out of print for years, but I was able to find custom made dice on Esty. This worked out nice.

We didn't play last week because we had some snowfall and the back roads can be tricky to drive at night, but the week before it was just Joe and I. We took two characters each into the dungeon. As we played, we talked about his ideas for our next campaign. Rather than use The Fantasy Trip, or Joe's rules-lite Lord of the Dice rules, he wants to go Old School Revival (OSR) and use the White Box rules based on the original D&D rules of years gone by. 

The White Box in the title refers to the original version of D&D that came in a white box. This version, written by Charles Mason, takes the original rules and simplifies them and organizes them in a small, easy-to-read book. 

Purchase it on Amazon. The price is $4.30 and shipping is free if you have Amazon Prime. Joe lent me a copy to read and I was so impressed that I ordered a copy of me and one for my son.  You can also find a free PDF of the book on DriveThruRPG, as well as a free character sheet and DM Screen.

I've only played D&D once with my son and a couple of his friends. I think it was 5th edition and I didn't like it. My character died in the first 30 minutes. I think I can get into this version, especially when it will be run by an experienced game master.

Hopefully we will get started on the new campaign as soon as everyone is well from coughs and colds, nobody has Covid, and the roads are not treacherous at night. 

There’s A Light…

 It has been a long since things have been normal in this world or in the gaming world, but things are changing. Here in Virginia over 50% of the population has been vaccinated now. Restrictions are being lifted on stores and restaurants. And the best news is that our group’s game master is ready to start a new adventure.  

Life Still On Hold...

It is now five months since we started quarantining ourselves from the Covid-19 pandemic. Life has settled down into a dull routine. We stay at home for the most part, going out for groceries and medicines as needed. None of my immediate family has been sick with the disease. Our children have been able to go back to work after a long break. My daughter is a hair stylist and her salon has reopened with a limited number of clients coming in at one time. My son has applied repeatedly to get unemployment compensation for his time off, but it has been a slow, irritating process. Our grandchildren finished school for the year through assignments completed online and we have been babysitting them again while mom and dad work.

We have finally finished the adventure that several of us were playing through the Discord: TFT server. The final battle stretched out over two months of real time as we fought and maneuvered through about 18 turns (1.5 minutes)! It was an exhausting experience with very little in the way of satisfaction at the end.

To fill my empty days I have played some 3500 battles online in World of Tanks - Blitz. Since I refuse to pay money to upgrade my garage of mechanical beasts, it has been a slow process of gaining credits and experience points to improve and update my tanks. I have a garage of tanks ranging from a lowly Pz III to a T-1 heavy. I have American, German, French, English, Swedish and Russian tanks. Out of respect for our flag I only fought using US tanks on July 4th.

Swedish Lago

German VK 36.01 H

When Life Gets Put On Hold - Part 2

Well we have been in quarantine for a month now. The USA has had more cases of Covid-19 than the rest of the world combined.

Steve Jackson Games had their second Fnord Con scheduled for April, but had to cancel when Austin Texas went on lockdown. I was on the TFT Discord server one day some weeks ago when we were talking about it and someone said why don't we do a virtual con online on Discord. Steve Jackson himself joined the discussion and asked questions. We set up a thread to discuss the idea. Someone created a Discord site for the virtual Fnord Can and shortly after that control and ownership was haded over to SJG. A test was run last weekend and the event will go live this Saturday, April 18.

As I was saying in my previous post, our weekly game got put on hold. The game store, One-Eyed Jacques is open, but in a limited way. I think you can call or order online and pickup merchandise at the curb. Still no gaming going on.

I'm in a play-by-mail game online using Discord. We text our moves and our game master replies. It's a slower paced game, but we are finally near the end. Our team of intrepid heroes have walked many miles and faced many challenges. We are now in a dungeon searching for the source of the magic that has been disrupting life in this part of Elynthia.

There's not much more to talk about. The country is for all intents and purposes shutdown until we can find a way to avoid contagion.

When Life Gets Put On Hold

Our Monday night game has been put on hold as the world deals with the Covid-19 crisis. Non-essential businesses like our game store have been ordered closed, schools have been closed, and families are sheltering in place avoiding contact with the outside world as much as possible.

My wife and I have been in self-quarantine for 12 days now. We've only left the house for a medical appointment and groceries. We miss our children and our grandchildren, but we call or FaceTime with them daily. I post daily updates on Facebook and follow the latest news.

Being a gaming blog I guess I need to talk about my games. Until we were forced to stop, our Monday group was playing a rules-lite form of Traveller. We've had a good time with it. Our ship, the Double Deuce, has criss-crossed the subsector in search of a Vrusk genetic scientist who has spent years developing new lifeforms for her own twisted reasons. We located several of her bases. Finally we located her ship in a distant asteroid belt of one system. We fought and disabled her ship despite it being much larger and better armed.

I'm having a hard time writing. My mind wanders off to other things. I'll try again later.

Catching Up On Everything

Good Grief Charlie Brown. It's been a long time since my last post. A number of things have happened since October of last year.

1. We finished play testing Joe's Lord of the Dice rules. We've moved on to another adventure based in the Traveller universe using Joe's Lord of the Dice... in Spaaace rules. I had a set of the Traveller basic rules ages ago, but never played it. Joe combined some of the alien character types from Star Fronters with a mashup of the classic Traveller and updated Mongoose rules and blended with his Lord of the Dice system of roleplaying. More on our campaign later.

2. My Decks of Destiny finally arrived at the end of January. All the materials are well done and I am nowfaced with the problem of how to organize and where to keep all this stuff.

3. To add to that my Pocket Box games also arrived a few days later (during the Super Bowl). I now am the proud owner of reprints of the original OGRE and G.E.V. games, plus two supplements, and Awful Green Things From Outer Space. Pocket boxes are cool.

4. Almost forgot. I've been playing games online for awhile now. I got involved in one adventure played out on Roll20 in a dungeon. I dropped out of that one. Now I'm doing a Play-By-Mail adventure on the TFT Discord server with several other guys. We are exploring a bit of Elynthia in the Huldre Forest. Giant spiders have destroyed a village and our team of hardy adventurers are investigating.

Well that's all for now. I'll be writing in more detail about all of this very soon.

Live or Die

First an update. Since the Bridonia campaign ended we have been experimenting with a new gaming system -- Lord of the Dice*. Joe, Mr. Lord of the Dice himself, created the rules-lite system to encourage more roleplaying and less reliance on rulebooks. I won't go into the details of the system other than to say that everything is based on rolling no more than two six-sided dice.

Ah, the dice...
When I prepared to start play The Fantasy Trip after many long years, I went into our Friendly Local Game Store (FLGS) and bought a bunch of D6s from the bargain barrel. They worked well enough and I didn't think a lot about how fair or random they were.

Once I got my big box of goodness, i.e. The Fantasy Trip Legacy Edition, I had several sets of red (Melee) and blue (Wizard) dice that I used regularly in our sessions. I generally favor the blue dice over the red, but that is just a color choice.

Joe, as game master, used a set of finely made, aircraft-grade aluminum dice from Ultra Pro. He bragged as to their feel and balance. There is no discernible bias in them. When we started this new game I was prepared to use my newly acquire Munchkin Rainbow dice, but Joe stopped me and
handed out sets of two of these dice in various colors to us so we all would be rolling completely fair dice with no bias.

Soon after that Joe told us that a supplier of his had the same dice for sale at a ridiculously low price. Even better, the set of five die were the same price as a set of two. We placed our orders and last night Joe delivered. I got to say these dice are awesome. Of course now I need a dice tower or tray to roll these bad boys in. Otherwise they are going to ding up the table top.

* Lord of the Dice, copyright 2019 by Joe Starza.

THE SIEGE OF GROMLY CASTLE

In the first week of the siege the army of East Riding took control of the town and built barricades across from the castle moat. There were exchanges of arrows and each side lost men. Ralph, our loyal ogre threw rocks and one petard (that exploded harmlessly in the moat) and managed to break down the castle door. Our wizard harass the guards with gargoyle illusions flying into the battlements. We cut off the supply of fresh food. The castle's supply of fresh water came from a well in the lowest level.

 On the eighth day the catapult arrives and our catapult operator put it in action smashing the portcullis with rocks. Indorel cast a magic rainstorm over the castle to demonstrate our powers. John sends a gargoyle to attack the battlements. The guards are more prepared and kill it. Both sides exchange missile fire.

With Stilton, the thief, guiding us, Bantra, Meat DeShield, and Indorel go down the tunnel that night. Bantra is carrying a fear potion to pour into the well. At the door to the dungeon, we see through a peephole that there are three guards. Indorel casts an illusion of a large hornet that flies in and distracts the guards as the team opens the door and sneaks in. Bantra stumbles and makes noise. Indorel tries an occult strike. Bantra strikes one of the guards and tries to push him into the well. Failing that he goes to the well and pours in the potion. Indorel cast 3-hex fire. One of the guards splits Bantra in half with his sword. Stilton stabs one guard from behind and kills him. Then he runs and tackles the last one that is trying to escape. Indorel kills him. The team hides the bodies in the tunnel and leave.

On the ninth and final day of the siege Jack Swifthand shouts to the castle guard to surrender. Having drunk from the well, they are more fearful. John casts a cloud of smoke over the castle that spells out “Surrender”. Six more flee leaving only a few with the ogre. We storm into the castle and find the Ogre lord with his six remaining men in the keep. The ogre is far bigger than we imagined. He is a megahex in size with a strength of 60. He is twice as big as our friend Ralph. 

We enter the keep with four archers, four swordsman, and the rest of the party. The only obstacles in the room are the pillars. We face Mortimer with six warriors. One is heavily armored and seems to be in command. Another appears to be wild-eyed and crazy with two knives.

We enter the room and move cautiously forward. Our soldiers engage theirs, while our archers provide covering fire. Jack advances close enough to throw a grenade. It hits the ogre and does damage to him. It also hits a couple of his men. The concussion in the room knocks down our archers and Indorel. Petra shoots the ogre with a poisoned bolt. Archie does the same with a poisoned arrow. Meat and a new guy named Bill advance on the left. The ogre moves up and pushes over a column. Meat gets crushed. One of our soldiers gets trampled. John casts two gargoyle illusions. They fly around behind the ogre, land and attack from the rear. Finally, Indorel has moved into a position close enough to cast a creation spell. He creates a tunnel in the chest of the ogre. Blood and guts fly everywhere as he falls forward, dead. The remaining fighters are quickly killed with no quarter given. The battle is over.

The campaign is over. Maybe one day we will return to explore more of Bridonia, but for now we rest and celebrate. The Lady Archie will marry Lord Rumbold in 12 more days. The word will spread that Bridonia has a new queen in the castle. The crisis of government is finally at an end.

Boss Battle

In our campaign we have many enemies, but our oldest one is Snidley Whiplash, a whip carrying lawyer in a black suit who is the real power behind the Ogre Lord of Gromly. We have been plotting for months to somehow get him and the ogre outside the castle where we could face them in battle.

On Monday night we got a surprise visit from Snidley with a company of his men. He wanted to meet with our Lord Mayor. We agreed to meet with him and an entourage of only six of the company of 14  inside the manor house. His other eight men waited outside and were watched by an equal number of our soldiers.

Inside the manor house our party of Archie, Bantra, John, Jack, and Krupke (PCs) along with Lord Rumbold, Petra, and Meat DeShield (NPCs) faced our enemies across a long table. Snidley brought with him his right-hand man, Lefty, an unnamed mage, two swordsmen, and two crossbowmen. He tried to sell us on the idea of signing a contract that would allegedly give Lord Rumbold a clear, hereditary right to East Riding, but we were suspicious

Archie subtlety signaled and we attacked. It was a wild battle. John cast a rope spell that caught Snidley off guard. Meat DeShield jumped the mage before he could cast a spell. Bantra jumped on the table and used the chandelier to swing across and land on Snidley. Arrows, bolts, and daggers flew. John summons one bear and then another. Archie and Petra neutralized the two crossbowmen.

In the middle of all this Indorel, who had overslept, walks into the room and was struck down by a sword. Snidley made a run for the door. We gave chase outside.

Snidley leaves his men to cover his retreat and runs for the woods. John uses his elvish speed to run after him. He cast a gargoyle that swoops down and grabs Snidley and rips him apart. The battle of the Manor House is over.

NOTE: I didn't take any photos of our maps so I recreated the scene using Roll20 and tokens to illustrate the setup. There were two doors to the room on opposite ends of the table. Indorel chose to enter behind Snidley and his group. As the saying goes, "He chose poorly."

UPDATE: We fought the Siege of Gromly Castle on Monday, September 30, 2019. It was the culmination of months of planning and we finally faced the Ogre Lord, all seven hexes of him! That story is coming up next.

Elven Ear Fungus

or... I can't make the game tonight.

Life of the Party

What do you do when a player can't make a gaming session? We have a tight group of gamers in our campaign and everyone makes an effort to show up on Monday nights. But every so often someone is going to be out of town, sick, or the boss says they are needed for the evening shift.

The first time it happened our game master said, "No problem. Hemorrhoidus has come down with dysentery and is confined to his bed and nearby chamber pot" and we played on without him. Although dysentery is a common illness in the fantasy world, it does get tiresome to give the same disease to all the players again and again. So here are a few others we've come up with.

Pneumonia. One character developed a bad cough after being exposed to toxic smoke in one week's adventure. He was absent the next week so we gave him pneumonia and had him suffer the woeful medical skills of the local barber who tried to cure him with leeches and bleeding the poor man.

Wrong time of the month. One of our PCs is a female archer and thief. She found herself out of sorts. (Maybe this was payback to my son for shooting my character in the back.)

Hang nail. We claimed that the character, our healer, was with us, but he stayed in a tent outside this tower we were exploring. That hang nail was difficult because we used it as an excuse for two straight weeks while the player was out of town.

And lastly... Elven Ear Fungus. We have two players who play elves. They were both absent last week so I got creative. Here are the details from the journal I keep on the game.

Elven Ear Fungus is a highly contagious disease, but fortunately, only to elves. It consists of colorfully red fungus that implants itself in the ear canals of its host and drawing nutrients from it. As it fully develops in two to three weeks’ time, it covers the ears completely creating a large puff ball with a particularly foul odor that attracts insects to break it, releasing its spores. During that time the patient is nearly deaf. Tincture of Diazinon is the only successful treatment. If caught early enough, four drops of the tincture in each ear twice a day for a week will prevent the puffballs from forming. The remains of the fungus will dry up and can be removed with irrigation.

So what do you do to liven up the absence of a player?

A New Level of Play

I've been away from the blog for a few weeks. I got involved in another group of players for a different adventure. This one is being played online using the Roll20 website. Roll20 provides players with a virtual tabletop (VTT) on which the GM can draw his/her maps and populate the world with creatures and foes that the adventurers will have to face.

The great advantage of all this is that you can pull together a party from many different cities (and countries) into a play session. The hardest part is dealing with several time zones. The last time we played the GM was from, I believe, New Jersey, one player from Florida, another from Missouri, one from California, and me from Virginia.

Membership on the Roll20 site is free, but if you want to add the bells and whistles you can pay a monthly fee. I got the basic membership, but that allows me not only to play in other game maps, but I can create my own. So far I have created an outdoor map with roads, fields, a campsite, a stone circle and a small cottage. I've populated it with a couple of gangs of bandits, a giant, and some wandering animals like wolves and bears. There is also an entrance to a cave that will lead to a dungeon map, which I've sketched out, and I am now drawing on the VTT. Once I get it completed, I'll try my hand at being a GM.

Here's a small view of the outdoor map. I started out with a hex grid on a green (grass) background. Then I added roads, rocks, trees, bushes, and water. I've been working on this for several days. The tokens are all downloaded from Pinterest.

Monster of the Week

We fought an AHNKEG this week. Not being a D&D fan, I was not familiar with it. For those of you who are also unfamiliar:

The ankheg (pronounced: /ˈæŋkɛg/ ÆNK-eg was a huge insectoid monster with many slender limbs and large antennae. It burrowed underground and hunted from below.

The ankheg was an ambush predator that waited around 5–10 feet underground for prey to wander into position. The attack was quick, as the prey was crushed and ground in its mandibles and assaulted with acidic digestive enzymes. If a foe proved too difficult, the ankheg could also squirt acid to take it down. (Ankheg)

Our party was chasing a pack of wolves led by two werewolves that had kidnapped a baby. The trail circled a hole in the ground which we decided to investigate. Archie lit a lantern and approached the hole. Krupke with his fine broadsword (2d+1) and Petra with crossbow ready right behind her. As Archie's light peered into the depths, this monstrous insect lunged out. Archie threw her lantern, hoping to set the beast on fire. Petra's bolt flew true and pierced its chitinous armor doing some damage.

Krupke rolled a 4 on his attack and then a 12 on the 2d+1 fine broadsword which produced 26 damage, slicing the monster's head clean from the body. It was glorious!

The rest of the evening was almost anti-climatic even though we still had to fight a werewolf and its wolf pack, and eventually save the baby.

Our GM has played so many RPGs that he tends to pull from all of them for ideas. This tends to keep us on our toes since we never know what kind of monsters we are going to face.

Igor - Rest In Peace

Igor, the goblin bard and fire mage was a member of our party. He was full of life and always prepared to lift our spirits or light our grenades, and drink our wine.

He died the other day at the hands (claws? pincers?) of a giant beetle that attacked the party while searching for dragonet eggs in the nearby forest. Our Physicker was not with us so we poured all the healing potions we had into him in an effort to revive him. That was not enough and his companions, Petra and Krupke, picked up his body and raced through the forest in an attempt to get him back to the village in time for the physicker to save him. Alas we were too late.

The Lord High Mayor Rumford declared the funeral day a day of mourning for this hero of East Riding. Goblins from the Moon Wolf clan came to honor him and the goblin shaman, Moon Dawg led the services. There was much crying and knashing of teeth. Igor will be long remembered.

He is survived by his cat, Pudding.