I'm still alive...

And that's a good thing. Although I did zilch towards my supposed October project, and nothing since so that's a bad thing.

Anyhoo, that all said I am back to writing gaming stuff for my table and that's the best thing to be doing. With our 3.5 game at the midpoint and my mind looking towards 'what next' I've settled on Gamma World, and maybe doing the Dungeon Delve run of level 1-30 for the fun of it.

Just some simple, light hearted gaming guffaws amid orc guts and dead hoops.

Because my next actual project is going to take a hell of a lot of my time to get done, and I need to focus on it without having my gaming suffer. See, I find that as much as I love to improvise, and as good as my games are when I'm running by the seat of my pants, there is always something lacking.

It's that my games are just plain better when I actually write an adventure, plan a campaign and put some actual damn effort in. Since my players are fairly reactive rather than proactive, that suits them too.

So I'm going to go ahead and take it to the next step, and actually write my own adventure path style full campaign. Something with Pathfinder just in case I get arrogant enough to decide on trying to publish the thing when it's done. Which would be nice.

And there it is. Pete's writing a proper thing, which might be good. Should be a fun ride either way. And I'll ramble about it here to all none of my regular fans. Heh.

A few quick thoughts on PC races...

PHB Races:

The player races presented in the D&D 4e Player's Handbook are the first ones I want to tackle for the setting, and honestly the easiest to work with given the familiarity everyone has with them. Backwoods elves, Dragonborn privateers and emo Tieflings are all appealing to me right now, and I think they'll be a lot of fun to play with.

Human- The most common folk in the world are humans, found everywhere and tending to be easily cowed by powerful entities, many claim they were formed by the Gods to serve the needs of their betters. A claim often violently refuted by humans themselves.

Dwarf- The closest allies to humans, the dwarf race are powerfully built and tend to be gruff of manner. At one time they lived in the mountains, but many years of war with giant-kin have seen the majority migrate to the lowlands.

Elf- Long lived, beautiful of body and naturally drawn to the woodlands, elves also have a tendency to bear grudges and answer insults with violence, even as they feel free to speak their minds to any and all without answer.

Eladrin- The ancestral rulers of elvenkind, the eladrin hail from the ‘Far Isles’ across the sea. Their ability to warp space is but an outward sign of their alien nature, these immortals are inscrutable to many and their manipulative games have doomed entire nations.

Half-Elf- Outcasts from the woods, half-elves find themselves as homeless wanderers or destitute street dwellers in the cities of the coast. Despised by elves, pitied by men, few of them aspire to anything more than a simple life.

Halfling- Found wherever humans and dwarves dwell, common lore holds that they are a halfbreed race of folk, though the halflings have their own legends in which they are gifted to the world by the goddess Avandra. Wily, nimble and courageous to a fault, many halflings make a living as couriers and messengers between villages in the wilds.

Dragonborn- Scions of the Dragons who rule over the southern desert kingdoms, the dragonborn are seneschals, courtiers and favoured servants of those powerful and ancient beasts. They are the public face of dragonkind, whether walking the streets clad in their finery, or sailing as privateers against the infernal church led city states of the northern coast.

Tiefling- Born servants, natural rebels, the tieflings are a living sign of mortal corruption by the Nine Hells. The result of pacts between the Archdevils and mortal men, they are mistrusted and feared in the north, seen as dangerous criminals in the south and rarely given the chance to prove their individual worth before being judged for their very nature.

Wow, so much for my big spooktober idea eh? On the upside I got my job situation sorted, made headway on diploma stuff and now have a couple of solid campaigns running again.

So to make up for the lack of updates for my imaginary readers, I'm going to be doing some new campaign setting stuff.

I like 4e a lot, and don't much care for what I've seen of Next. So I'm going to do a new setting for 4e, riffing on the implied setting, the assumptions of 4e play and my own love of monsters. Because monsters are frickin' awesome.

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Basically, I'm thinking about taking the story of Grendel and applying it as the norm across the lands of men and dwarves. There isn't a village or town without a local monster claiming dominion over the territory, whether that's as mindless predator or the rare cunning tyrant such as Giants, Dragons or even the occasional Demon or Elemental.

The coast cities are free of monster borne tyranny, but only because the king sold his soul (and firstborn) into infernal bondage. The people are beholden to the church of Asmodeus and the Nine, drafted into the border watch for their endless war on the Orc hordes of the highlands and elven rebels of the Aelderwood. And still the waters of the sea are plagued by Dragonborn pirates, the Kraken and ancient shark gods of the depths.

The southern cities are ruled by ancient Dragon lords and the Tiefling nobles who chafe under their greedy rule. Dragonborn agents of the lords do battle constantly with cults, infernal warlocks and shadowy cabals seeking to end the rule of the Dragons.

So the frontier and wilderness is claimed by giant monsters, civilised lands are either falling into corruption or ruled by tyrant Dragons, and things are bad all over. Cue the heroes...

 

Pesky real life...

And it's damnable intrusions! Well, all over now and it's time to get back to doing something properly productive.

And with October on the horizon, that something is going to take the form of a personal Halloween build up. I've always enjoyed the horror genre, whether it be in games, movies or the printed page and I'm going to make October 2013 my own little celebration of the creepy and macabre.

Each and every day of October I'll post up something horror themed and RPG related that maybe someone can get a kick out of.

Jason Voorhees as a Pathfinder villain?
The church of the nightmare god Kruger in Heroes Unlimited?
Zombies, aliens, mutants and maybe a killer robot or two?

Sounds good to me, and it'll be good to blow off the cobwebs and get back to being somewhat productive.

It's not yet November but...

I still went ahead and signed up to national novel writing month over at nanowrimo. I'm one of those guys who's always meant to write that book or this short story, but aside from a few bits and pieces I always let myself get distracted.

And by distracted I mean never made the effort because I was scared of a) failing and b) people laughing at me.

Well now I'm old enough, ugly enough and more than relaxed enough to know that a) won't happen until I try, and b) doesn't matter worth a crap. The positive feedback I've been getting on some minor projects helped a lot in that regard, knowing that I'm backed up by friends and family who won't coddle me is always nice.

So yeah, nanowrimo 2013. It's on. I've got a story to tell, a setting to tell it in and no excuses this time.

Let's go tell a story folks.

Ye Olde World had the best campaign maps

Don't you agree? It's not hard to see at least a dozen ideas at first glance, in what might be the ultimate sandbox.

One of these days I'll print off a big copy of this bad boy and drop it on the table. Then let a party of 1st level delvers loose to go poke things and see what happens.

So, who's up for a game?

Shameless self promotion time.

Because I'm really enjoying recounting the antics of my boys in our new D&D campaign, as they tromp round the Dales and beat up dungeon dwellers in a nice meeting of old school mentality with 3.5 rules.

So I'm just gonna link to the actual play thread for the campaign over on RPGnet for any readers out there who might have an interest.

Here we go, enjoy gentle reader.