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.