New Campaign

As I said before, I was waiting for my group to complete the Expedition to the Ruins of Greyhawk module in order to begin a new campaign but, since we're not gaming as often as I'd like so finishing the module will take longer than I expected, I decided to start a new group for my Labyrinth Lord campaign.

I'm planning to also set it in the World of Greyhawk, more specifically in the legendary Archbarony of Blackmoor. It's a region in which, after all these years gaming in this world, I've never played nor DMed so it's a bit of a challenge. So far I've found a great article on the Oerth Journal #5 detailing the whole region and a low-level adventure on Dragon Magazine #115 called "Raiders of the Black Ice" (thanks to Bubbagump @ Canonfire!) which I'll have to convert from 3.5e to LL but that's no stress. I've also purchased from Faster Monkey Games a couple of adventures compatible with LL called "The Hidden Serpent" and "Wheel of Evil" (well done Bighara!) which I plan to adapt to the setting.

I know that Blackmoor has a strong component of sci-fi which I still haven't decided what to do with it, since the combination of medieval fantasy and sci-fi is not my cup of tea. Perhaps I'll check with my group to see if they like that or jump right into the water and see what happens. Of the people I've contacted so far only two have played both pen&paper and online RPGs before and only one in the World of Greyhawk. The rest are new to board RPGs but all play World of Warcraft online.

I plan it to be a sandbox game with the group starting in some whaling village on the wind-swept shores of the Icy Sea. Let's see what the future holds...

How I keep track of initiative

Reading one of the many RPG feeds I have in the Google Reader, I came into this article about how to keep track of the initiative rolls. It's a nice article worth reading, but it made me think "Hey, why don't I share the way we do that in our game?". I guess every DM has its own way and thinks it's the best one. So here it goes:

1. In your favorite word processor (I used Word) just make a 4-column table and as many rows as you like. One for each charecter and enough for monsters or NPCs.
   
2. Columns 1 and 4 are 1,5 cm. wide and columns 2 and 3 are 7 cm. wide. All rows are 1,5 cm in height. Make sure all cell borders are a least 3 pt. wide. All are suggested values.
   
3. Use you favorite font type to write the name of the character in columns 2 and 3. For the example I used this one.

By now it should look something like this:

Make sure to use a heavyweight paper when you print it. Then cover the printed sheet with transparent contact paper. That way it'll last longer and you can write the initiative in the little box with whiteboard markers. Then you cut them along the rows like this:

The idea is to hand them down to the players, they write their initiative and the DM hangs them (not the players, put that rope down), in order, over the DM screen (you do use a DM screen right?) and use a pointer to mark whose turn it is. If you're using 3.x, and someone declares a ready or delay action, you just take it out of the queue util they act.

This is how it looks from the player's side (sorry about the worn-out markers).

An this is from the DM¡s side.

Hope you like it and find it useful.

Oriental Adventures

Yesterday we gathered to continue our OA campaign. We are five guys, four are married and three got small children. We get together maybe 3 or 4 times in the year, if we're lucky. It's more like a social reunion in which we hang out, catch up and roll some dices. As we waited for everyone to come, one of the guys commented about playing with his 8 years old son, so I mentioned some blogs he could check out and read about other dads' experience.

Later while having some pizzas, one of the guys made us notice that we begun this campaign back in May of 1994! That's 16 years ago! Since all of our characters are level 6, our party must have the worst campaigning time-level achieved ratio ever. It's not that we care about it, but we laughed heartily at the thought and I took mental note to comment it here.

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.

Gary Con II

I've just realized that tomorrow Friday starts Gary Con II (March 19 - 21) and it made me get green with envy for all of you attending. No seriously, I wish everyone there good gaming and hope to read many cool stories in the blogs I follow. I hope some day to attend and share a game with some of the people I know from here, the Google Wave game, Canonfire! or the Greychat. Happy Gary Con! I'm still green... Bleh...