The day I became a dad

Now finally at home and with some time to write, I proudly anounce that my son Ivan was born by C-section on March 23rd. Mom and baby are in good health, and we're all very happy (though a bit tired and sleepy :>).

I guess my DMing of the Blackmoor and Maure Castle games will be on pause for some time (not too long I hope), as well as my participation on the Millenium's End game. I'll try to keep up with the Google Wave game though. ;-)

Happy birthday to me!

Today I've reached level 40! :-)

Catching up

Last weekend was scheduled to be a gaming one, but it wasn't. Every two weeks I play Millenium's End on Friday and DM my Labyrinth Lord sandbox game on Saturday. I started playing ME about a couple of months ago through one of my players of the sandbox game. He warned me that the gaming style of that group was not as high-paced as I am used to. And he was right. It is more like a social gathering of friends, than a proper gaming session. By proper I mean you get together with the main (only?) purpose of role playing. Of course there's always some catching up and pauses to eat, but this guys have such a low atention span! I mean the play every Friday (one ME and the other Vampire) and are online all week. How much do you have to catch up? I know it sounds like I'm complaining, but I'm not. I just find them amusing! It's always good to meet new people with different gaming styles.

The thing is that last Friday there was only a couple of hours of proper gaming, and then I have to cancel Saturday's game because one of the player's girlfriend was sick and he wouldn't leave her. Another two (a couple) had a birthday party and could come after it, but since last session ended on the verge of a combat, I wanted everyone to be present. So, next game would be in two weeks. I'm going to miss the ME session since I'm DMing my Maure Castle 3.5e sort-of-monthly game, and hope everyone could make it to the sandbox game on Saturday.

In other topic, according to the Old School RPG Blogger Advancement Table at From the Sorcere's Skull, I'm one follower short of becoming a Comentator! Thanks to all and a warm welcome to the recent ones.

Over 100 posts!

I've just realised that I passed that mark. Thanks everyone who take the time to read this blog. ;-)

Imagination quotes

Almost a year ago, when I decided to start blogging in a more or less regular way, I changed the look of the blog an added a quote about imagination. On either side of the DM screen, I think imagination is the most important thing in role playing games. Imagination to create adventures, give life to characters and monsters, to picture what is going on when the DM describe a place or the players describe their actions, and so on. At that time I chose a quote by Carl Sagan:

"Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it, we go nowhere."

How many worlds are out there, canon and homebrew, teeming with characters adventuring, monsters to be vanquished, places to be discovered, treasures to be plundered, dungeons to be explored and more? Thousands, perhaps millions and every one of them, wonderful.

I then thought of changing the quote, not because I didn't like it anymore, but to see what has been said about imagination. So I searched the web and came across this quote by Albert Einstein:

“Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.”

Yes, logic will take you from A to B, with only one random encounter in between according to Vaarsuvius, if I may respectfully add. And everywhere are all those worlds we created and those yet to be. Then my search led me to a quote by Pablo Picasso:

"Everything you can imagine is real."

This is so very true in our hobby. Everything that that happens when we gather to play, around the table, by post, by Wave or even Twitter, becomes real to DM and players alike. As a side thought, it would have been great to have a monsters manual illustrated by Picasso, wouldn't it?

Then, why don't make this a regular thing? A weekly post with a quote about imagination, the heart and soul of role playing games. Let's see what I find for next Monday.

Strange session

I'm not prone to comment much about our gaming sessions but last Sunday one was kinda strange. First, let me do some recap. I'll try not to spoil the module.

A couple of sessions ago the group found, under the Tower of Magic, what it could be a magical way into where the simulacrum of Iggwilv might be. After learning how it worked they left for the city and came back with the magical means to use it and get there, but in the last minute they decided, although knowing that time was a pressing matter, to try another route. And so, they went into the Tower of Zagig. I must admit that, with their decision, they caught me off-guard and I had to make it all on the fly. They explored the tower ruins, killed several undeads, found a secret staircase and took their way down. Of all the traps and constructs I put in their path, none of them prevented the group to reach the crypts . Then I begun throwing at them several mummies which they managed to turn or destroy in what they called "Mummy frenzy". With that, after two really enjoyable sessions we reached last one.

When they entered a maze of corridors and rooms, a ghost appeared, warned them not to continue further and left. They just ignored it and pressed on. After a little exploration, they reached a couple of unscratched magically warded double doors... guess what? They decided to go the other way! What they found were clues that they were in a place that has been already plundered. Visibly forced doors, those once trapped had the traps jammed or disabled, niches desecrated, sarcophagi pilfered, pit traps marked on the floor, crosses and arrows marked on the walls, tunnels made to bypass heavily warded doors, etc. They even found the corpses of an unfortunate group of adventurers. When they finally realized there was nothing to be found and decided to go back to the double doors, there was no more time to play.

After the session my wife told me that it has been a bit boring, with no combat and only some saves made. I just said that the players, with their decisions make the game funny or boring. There were plenty of hints of what was going on. They just chose to ignore them, kept going and backed away (for a second time in the last three sessions) from what would have looked important to any adventurer.

I don't like railroading, but I confess last session I was tempted to do it. They're all experienced players and that's why I found strange what happened.

Don't let the trolls win

It's sad to see two very interesting RPG-related blogs to go down in a few days. I'm talking about Michael "Chgowiz" Shorten's "Old Guy RPG" blog and Christopher Brackett's "A Rust Monster Ate My Sword" blog. The former has been taken is off-line by its owner and the latter won't be seeing any update for the time being.

I specially didn't referred to those blogs as "OSR-related" because they covered many other, equally interesting, topics. I very much respect the reasons that each one had to made their decisions. Maybe I don't agree but I respect them and hope to see both online soon. And if not, others will come forward and pick their flags to carry on.

Happy 2010!

I wish all of you out there a happy New Year full of health, job, love and, of course, many dices (no botches!), a lot of adventures and plenty of fun playing your favorite(s) RPG(s)!

I hope to post more the next year, to resume two of my hobbies: drawing and hand painted miniatures, and upload pictures of them. I'd also like to attend a convention, but that's a little more complicated living down here.

Feliz Navidad...

Just a little post to wish a Merry Chistmas to all of you my fellow gamers!

D&D in Google Wave

I've been following for some time several Waves about playing D&D and other RPGs as well. There are some of them that even includes mapping and dice rolling gadgets. I find many of them very interesting and an alternative way to play when is not possible to gather around a table, and PBEM doesn't suits you. I'm looking forward to join a game on the Wave soon and also trying to get our Oriental Adventures campaign into it since some of the players couldn't always meet. Let's see how it develops. Oh, and if anyone is interested I've got spare invites for Google Wave!

Two months without posting... shame on me!

The truth is that I've been DMing a lot trying to finish before the end of the year the module Expedition to the Ruins of Greyhawk (3.5e), but I won't be able to do it. I've also been working on the Spanish version of Labyrinth Lord Rev. Ed. but the advance has been sluggish at best. It's a titanic task for one person only, so any help is welcome. No wonder the recently released Italian version was done by seven people.

I was expecting to begin the new year with a new campaign under a new system. It'll most certainly be Labyrinth Lord but I have some doubts about the spell system. What happens in the actual system is that the party spends almost all their most powerful spells in one encounter, so after that the group calls it a day. I'm afraid the same will happen with any other system based on Vancian magic. Any thoughts?

Those are my plans for the future, but first I'll gather my players and ask them what kind of game they want to play. I know some of them may want to try 4e (be my guest, go find another DM) while others may give a rules-light system a try. We'll see.

Labyrinth Lord Revised Edition

I've got from RPGNow my PDF version of the latest edition of Labyrinth Lord by Goblinoid Games. This new effort by Dan Proctor has more artwork, which I fancy a lot, and corrects some minor details from the previous version. I hope to have it printed and binded soon. I also find really handy Lord Kilgore's idea of printing booklets with pages 1-60 for the players. If we continue to play every weekend, I hope to end our current campaign (3.5e) before the end of the year. And I say "hope" because we spent last session (9 PM to 3 AM with 1 hour break for dinner) in just one combat. Man, this is so wrong. I guess we're not playing a roleplaying game anymore but a tactical wargame. In combat every decision taken by the players is the result of a maximizing algorithm, and that's what makes the pacing so slow. I have nothing against wargames (hey, RPGs evolved from them and their creators were wargamers first) but it's not what I want to play. At least for now.

Followers

Well this blog got its first follower! It's like when you find the first comment on one of your posts and say "Hey, someone out there actually reads this!?". Thanks to Aslan, a fellow gamer from the End of the Earth and the World of Aeran, whereever those places are. ;-)

On game rules and fun

Today I was reading the MicroLite74 rules set booklet, considering it as a possible candidate to use once I finish DMing my current 3.5e campaign, when I came across a sentence on the Designer’s Notes section that caught my eye:

"So don’t search your character sheet or the rules for the perfect solution [...]"

It was like having a deja-vu. When you look over the DM screen and see your players going back and forth their character sheets (or rulebooks) trying to find the answer for any given situation, you should know that something is wrong. It's then time to stop and ask:

People, is this really the game we want to play? Are we having fun?

In the end that's what games are all about: having fun. I've come to believe that in a game (at least in RPGs) the quantity of rules is inversely proportional to the quality of the fun you get playing that game. This has no scientific basis but an emotional one, and by no mean intends to be a static statement, so maybe someone could prove me wrong.

Later in the booklet, on the same section, there's a summary in reference to A Quick Primer for Old School Gaming by Matthew J. Finch, and under the item "Player Skill, not Character Skill " you can read the following:

"Players don’t need to be rules lawyers."

And I would humbly add, neither do DMs. Amen.

Goodbye 3.5e

I never played D&D or B/X. I started playing AD&D 1e, then switched to AD&D 2e, then to 3e, then to 3.5e, always thinking that the new rules set was better than the prevoius one without giving it much thought, but no more. I now DM three 3.5e campaigns all set in the World of Greyhawk; one ongoing (Expedition to the Ruins of Greyhawk) and two other "on hold" (a long term one that we left in the middle of Maure Castle from Dungeon magazines - heathens! - and a homebrew one).

With time I've realized that allowing the use of books like the "Complete" or the PHB2 was a mistake. I should have known better that with the three core books was more than enough. What was done in the eagerness of adding flavor to the game, in the end became a cumbersome corset for me. I don't need more rules, spells, feats or classes to do what I intended to.

So then it's decided, once we've finished EttRoG I plan to go back to the roots, back to 1e, or B/X, or some of the OSR rules set like Swords&Wizardry or Labyrinth Lord.

New look!

I decided it was time to give the blog a new look, so I changed the template and modified its HTML code in order to add a background. The chosen background is the image on the left. I used GIMP to have it resized and then applied an "old photo" filter. All but two of the miniatures were hand-painted by my wife (BTW she plays D&D too!) and me. The other two (Caramon at the front and the barbarian at the center) were painted by a friend and fellow gamer.