d30 NPC/monster disgusting actions

Here's my first attempt at a d30 table.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzMxqOxwwSOyQ1RCdDEtNEh0Vk0/view?usp=sharing

Another site update

I guess I should write more often or change the name of the blog to "My RPG updates". Well, what happened since last April?

Wednesday nights games (OSR):

- Continued a D&D 5e campaign, run by me, set in Greyhawk (Yeomanry-Hool Marshes-Hold of the Sea Princes area). The group finally exited the tomb unharmed and loaded with all the valuables they have found. A bullywug horde led by a toad-riding Wastrian acolyte was waiting for them. After defeating them, the group decides to find the attacker's base before going back to the town. The trail went North deeper into the swamp, until it reached a series of mounds in the mist. One of them is covered with semi-buried sarcophagi and crowned with a statue of four cobras with jewelled eyes. The thief climbed one of them to pry out the precious stones. Immediately one of the sarcophagi opened revealing an undead yuan-ti that attacked them with magic and sword. With the thief paralyzed, and the fighter badly wounded, it was only the monk's abilities that saved them from a certain doom. After that they went back to town.

- Then switched to a Warhammer (1e) game run by +Craig Brasco set in Urlund, his homebrew setting similar to Westeros in regard to Major Houses and regions of land. Our characters, a noble (Jason), an entertainer (Adam), a pit fighter (Phil) and a woodsman are investigating a series of attacks to a village by Chaos creatures.

- Also rolled a character for a Metamorphosis Alpha game that +Adam Muszkiewicz hopefully will be running after Craig's game. A mutant humanoid with 11 arms, among other mutations. 

Thursday nights games (DCC with the Metal Gods of Ur-Hadad):

- Played some DDC Lankhmar run by +Doug Kovacs. "Jumped off building. Stood in 2nd floor window. Watched thieves and murder. That's what I recall from Lankhmar game." - DK

- After that some more DCC in "The Hunt for Red Varza" run by +Edgar Johnson. Ritual murders, house burnings and critical groin hits. Let's see where this goes.

Friday nights games (D&D): 

- Started a 5e game, also set in Greyhawk (Great Kingdom-Alhissa-Solnor Compact area), for a couple of friends from our old F2F group and my wife. Even though we live in the same city, we all have children so it's hard to play F2F anymore. A fighter, a wizard and a thief arrive with a caravan to the Free City of Ountsy during the Forefathers Festival. During the festival assassins attack the crowd, the Duke is murdered and the killer transforms into a hideous monster, that is killed by the characters, The three factions struggling for power in the city, will try to get the group to work for them.

Last update I forgot to mention that +Michael S rebooted his Dark Ages - Southern Seas campaign (AD&D/OSRIC/house rules) after about 4 years. The previous campaign was played on the now defunct Google Wave platform and, since the backups of the old waves were lost, we rolled new characters and started again using Rizzoma. 

Received from +Wayne Snyder his "It's wizard time!" t-shirt, and from +Edgar Johnson copies of  "Against the Atomic Lord", "DCC #82: Bride of the Black Manse" and copies of the original "Blood for the Serpent King" maps, all autographed by the Dr. Rev. himself. Thanks amigos!

The DCC Megazine (The Gongfarmer's Almanac 2015) was published and my article Healing Spllburn was included on Volume I: Men and Magic. You can download the five volumes here. 

Until next update! :)

Site Update

What happened since our last post back in September? Here goes a well deserved update.

Wednesday nights games (OSR):

- Resumed a D&D 5e campaign, run by me, set in Greyhawk (Yeomanry-Hool Marshes-Hold of the Sea Princes area) that we started before GenCon. A mysterious figure is seeking asylum in the Yeomanry from the Hold of the Sea Princes. The party has to meet her at the border and escort her to the city. Meanwhile the Scarlet Brotherhood will try to thwart their plans.

- Then switched to White Sands, an ongoing ACKS game run by +Jason Hobbs, in which we  explore the Badlands of Shaidar legend in the Eye of Opjamar.

- After that we started Griffin Mountain an awesome Runequest campaign run by +Adam Muszkiewicz. A group of initiates passes the tribe's rite to adulthood and become hunters. As the seasons go by their nomad tribe travels Balazar, breaks old alliances and forges new ones, everything amidst an internal struggle for power.

- Now we have returned to the D&D 5e campaign mentioned above. The party is helping to recover a magical mask from a reptilian civilization buried in an ancient tomb deep in the marshes. So far they've bested the swamp's perils and found a ziggurat full of traps!

Thursday nights games (DCC with the Metal Gods of Ur-Hadad) :

- Finished a short arc run by +Doug Kovacs that started right after GenCon in which, after exploring the "The Tomb Of Ulla Gandur", what was left of Sybian the Whoreforged humanity got transferred, by the goddess of Nature, into a human body affixed to a suit of full plate armor adorned with an intricate filigree of vines.

- "Un-death & Taxes" run by +Edgar Johnson. An escort mission in which the group must protect the Imperial tax assessor as he makes his rounds of various far-flung hamlets and villages.

- "Into the Lair of the Feculent Swine" run by +Adam Muszkiewicz. Employed by Master Guang-Yuan Jo to retrieve the feathers of the slumbering feculent swine, Jerkal the Blazin', Scorpion Boy and Nimue of Cthulhu from the Divine Order of the Purple Tentacle, along with some fresh faces, have set off for the mountains that separate the Satrapy of Kuth from the Duchy of Karel

Received gorgeous +Drink Spin Run - An RPG Talk Show Podcast and +Wayne Snyder's "Secret of the Serpent Moon" t-shirts. Also received an awesome poster of Metamorphosis Alpha Warden deck cross-section by +Doug Kovacs, and issue #3 of  the +Metal Gods of Ur-Hadad zine. Can't complain about our postal service so far.

Contributed with an article about Healing Spelburn to the DCC Mega Zine.

EDIT: Also received in the mail "The Art of Dragon Magazine"!

EDIT2: And started to play Conspiracy X in a F2F group every 2 weeks.

GenCon haul

Let's see what's inside the bag. It came with badge but I picked it up the second day because I didn't knew about it. Thank (the Metal) God(s)! A backpack is not enough...

I split the haul into art, books and miscellaneous categories. Please don't pay attention to the tablecloth. I thought the 25" x 36" combat mat I got from Crystal Caste would be big enough.

Art

• The Complete Elmore Artbook.
• A print of the 1983 AD&D Dungeon Master Guide cover.
• A print of the DCC RPG Limited Edition cover.
• A print "showing the corruption involved in the pursuit of magic over a lifetime" as Doug Kovacs says about it on his website.
• A map drawn by Doug on my mighty wallet. I need to write and adventure for this one!
• Original art of the Metal Gods of Ur-Hadad zine issue #2 back cover by Wayne Snyder. 

Books

• Goodman Games GenCon 2014 Program Guide.
• +Harley Stroh's Peril on the Purple Planet. I didn't participated on its Kickstarter, but after playing with Harley in The Seven Pits of Sezrekan tournament, how could I not have it?
• DCC RPG rules. This was my pledge for the DCC World Tour 2014 Kickstarter and had it mailed to Adam Muszkiewicz address.
• +Joseph Bloch's Castle of the Mad Archmage. I'm a sucker for megadungeons and also had this  one mailed to Adam's.
• Judges Guild Heroes and Villains, an adventure for DragonQuest RPG.  I was with Adam at the Goodman Games booth when Bob Bledsaw, Jr. handed each of us a copy of this one.
• Issues #1 and #2 of the Metal Gods of Ur-Hadad zine. 
• Wayne Snyder's Dark Ruins II. I'm missing Dark Ruins I!
• +Tim Callahan's Demon Drums, a 12-page DCC compatible adventure. 
• These old modules in real good conditions and I couldn't let the opportunity pass: WG6 Isle of the Ape, I7 Baltron's Beacon and T1 The Village of Hommlet.

Miscellaneous

• Wayne Syder's GenCon badge.
• Pathfinder's pin and goblin mask.
• My GenCon badge.
• Grimtooth’s Ultimate Traps Collection/Judges Guild Collector’s Edition sticker.
• Dice bag.
• Purple d30, red and green d20 from Crystal Caste.
• Escape from Catastrophe Island stuff: three 0-level character sheets, game flyer, ghost rules, two game cards and four pins.
• DCC RPG dice bag and Shana’s Weird Dice
• DCC, sword, wizard and d11 pins. 
• The Seven Pits of Sezrekan tournament yellow character sheets and Hugh/Skull cards.
• Q1 Queen of the Demonweb Pits character sheet, name tag and Chessex dice.
• DCC swag! Character sheets, notes,bookmarks, pencils, stickers and tattoos.
• The Seven Pits of Sezrekan flyer, Sezrekan  pin and OSR pin.
• Crawljammer game character sheet.

* All the small pins were made by Kathryn Muszkiewicz.

The long postponed GenCon post

More than two weeks have passed from GenCon now, and I'm just finding the time to write about this awesome experience. Catching up with family and work prevented me from doing it, but I also feared that the moment I started writing about it, would be the moment the spell would end. But, guess what? It didn´t. The magic's still there and always will be. Forever.

The people

I believe that going to GenCon it's something a role player should do at least once in a lifetime. It's like a pilgrimage to the source. Never thought I would do such a thing, until I met the +Metal Gods of Ur-Hadad guys and became part of the group. After some of them came back from GenCon 2013, they encouraged me to be there next year. And so I did and met my friends +Adam Muszkiewicz and his wonderful wife +Kathryn Muszkiewicz, +Edgar Johnson, +Wayne Snyder, +James MacGeorge and +Doug Kovacs.

Yes, they're more than gaming buddies, they're my friends. Because for almost 3 years, every week, they were on the big screen in the living room. We played weekly every Thursday, we talked about gaming, about life, they met my wife and saw my son grow up (he's 3 and a half years old by now). The little man wouldn't go to bed without saying hi to the guys on the Google+ Hangout. :)

I had the chance to meet some wonderful people too (forgive me if I miss someone): +Diogo Nogueira (fellow Brazilian gamer and blogger with whom we shared many games), +Tim Callahan (fellow laser wizard fish co-conspirator in the Escape from Catastrophe Island game, who kindly gave me a copy of Demon Drums and ran an awesome Crawljammer game), +James DeYonke (thanks a lot for those tickets for Q1 - Queen of the Demonweb Pits!), +Nathan Panke (you know you punched that dude, haha!), +Steven Bean (nice talking to you man), +Bob Brinkman, +Jen Brinkman, +Rick Hull (can't believe you asked me to sign your DCC chair), +Donn Stroud, +James Smith, +Marc Bruner, +Robert Leopold, +Jim Wampler, +Alex Mayo, +Jürgen Mayer, +David Baity, +Michael Bolam, +Aaron Koelman, +Roy Snyder, +Mark Donkers, +Nathan Bethell and, last but not least, the guys from the DCC crew who kindly autographed my DCC rules and Dungeon Alphabet: +Joseph Goodman, +Michael Curtis, +Harley Stroh (awesome deaths at the Seven Pits of Sezrekan tournament!) and +Dieter Zimmerman. 

I rolled for corruption and got the horns!

Still can't believe I met my all time favourite D&D artist +Larry Elmore. I grew up with his black & white art from the Basic Set and then the Dragonlance artwork. So there I was, getting The Complete Elmore art book dedicated and autographed. When I told him where I came from and asked for a photograph with him, he invited me into the booth. "You came a long way, so let's do it properly. Come around!", he said.

Another of my favourite artists, Jeff Easley from whom I got an autographed print of the 1983 Dungeon Master's Guide cover.

Legends like +Tim Kask, who we found with Diogo at the Exhibitors Hall,...

...and +Frank Mentzer, who sat next to our table at the Circle City Bar & Grill. He was kind enough to interrupt his breakfast with Tim Kask, to talk and take some photographs. "Drop by my Facebook page and say hi!", he said.

Meeting +Erik Mona was fun. On the first day when the gates of the Exhibition Hall opened, the Pathfinder booth was the first one I saw. Several people in blue shirts were giving away pins and goblin masks which I took. "That guy who gave me the goblin mask looks like Erik Mona.", I told Diogo. "Who?", he said. I went back and told the guy, "Hey, you look just like Erik Mona." and he replied with a smile "I am Erik Mona!". He autographed my goblin mask, and we talked a bit about Greyhawk, and the old Dungeon and Dragon magazines.

The last day at the DCC booth, I met Bob Bledsaw, Jr. from Judges Guild, who kindly gave me an issue of a DragonQuest adventure. It's s good to see old JG material reprinted by Goodman Games.

Thank you all for a wonderful time!

The games

I think I've got a gaming OD. But that's the idea rigth? :)

Since the games I have signed up for got cancelled before GenCon, I only got generic tickets. I spent almost all of them in Harley Stroh's Seven Pits of Sezrekan tournament. The most number of encounters I managed to survive was three, always dying horribly every time.

Once we were in complete darkness walking single file on a 3 ft. wide ledge and chased by some beast-men. Leading the way I managed to secure a rope and everyone climbed down safely, but one of the last guys slipped and fell... on top of me. In the other two, the life of my characters was sucked by the use of a magic item: once a magic spear wiped the whole table and the other a magic crown killed some of us.

Harley's the man.

Every day after GenCon at 8pm in the Embassy Suites, there was DougCon in which we played Escape from Catastrophe Island, a DCC game simultaneously ran by Doug Kovacs, Adam Muszkiewicz, and Wayne Snyder. I think also James McGeorge and Marc Bruner ran the game a couple of times too. You started with a 0-level and if it survived at the end of the night, it leveled up for the next day.

Getting ready to rock & role!

The best part was to die and roll in the Wheel of Doom. You also became a ghost and could possess other creatures or help/harass the other characters.

Doug Kovac's Wheel of Doom

On Saturday morning I got the chance to play old 1st. edition classic module Q1 - Queen of the Demonweb Pits along with other nine players. We went through the portal into a maze of interweaving passages in which we fought giant spiders, until we found a door that led to a series of trapped rooms, that led to a huge room full of zombies with three priestesses of Llolth atop three pyramids and two male magic users. The DM, Richard Meeks, said that in all the years he's been running this module at conventions, he never got the chance to run this battle. We wiped the zombies, but the priestesses and magic users gave us a hell of a hard time and finally, after 4 hours of battling the drow, we realized there was no chance we could win. A lot of fun though!

The final battle.

Later that afternoon before DougCon, Tim Callahan set up Crawljammer game: Lizards crashed on a planet. Fought their way through robots and monster bugs. Found an artifact and released its power. It was a blast!

Crawljamming

All in all it was a great experience being for the first time in the USA and in my first GenCon. I hope I can be back some day, this time with the whole family, maybe to another GenCon or maybe GaryCon or even North Texas RPG Con.

I've got a nice haul from GenCon (books, modules, dices, pins, t-shirts, etc) but that's material for another post.