Giving 5e D&D a try

The day is here (one of them, at least), the hour almost upon us (or way past if you're not reading this immediately after I post it).  The online, free, basic Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition has arrived!

It's HERE!!!

Even though I've been or mirrored a mix of emotions about this latest iteration, I'm still excited to see, run, and tinker around with it.  The following is my 5e schedule so far...

• On July 17th, I'll be running two back-to-back demos at the Madison Central Public Library using the Starter Set intro adventure.
• On July 26th, I'm running 5e for my home game group (which I haven't seen much of, let alone gamed with in months).  Not sure if I'll use Lost Mine of Phandelver or something else... probably something else since I've got a ton of unused modules and it would be cool to see how she flies using an OSR scenario.
• Sometime in September, I'll be starting my weekly home game up again.  Not sure what system will be the core of this campaign but 5e will surely play a part.  If there are empty seats at the table, well, there's no better way of finding players than to run D&D.
• There's a new (this will be their 2nd year) tabletop gaming convention in my home town, Madison, WI - Game Hole Con.  November 7th - 9th.  I ran a bunch of Liberation of the Demon Slayer games last year and this year I'll be doing a single session of The Islands of Purple-Haunted Putrescence, Saturday at noon for six hours!  Originally, I had posted the event using Swords & Wizardry, but since D&D 5e can be scaled down to an old school flavor, I reckoned D&D would be more inviting.  And this time I'll take pictures, damn it!

During all those D&D games, I'll do what I do with every roleplaying game I Game Master - experiment!  I'll try out new and very familiar house rules, swamp one game mechanic out for another, modify little bits here and there, and just see what happens, improvising as best I can.  The library demos will probably be the purest form of "basic" 5e because each session is only 2 hours; it will be a true test of the new system both for myself and all the casual RPG or 5e noobs who signed up to play.

There's no doubt I'll incorporate my critical hit table from Purple, dark secrets from Liberation, several awesome innovations from 13th Age, perhaps something from Dungeon World (amazon doesn't know where the fuck it is at the moment!), spells from Space-Age Sorcery, and that idea I had about outside-the-box combat stunts.  Probably lots more in varying degrees...

That's how I game.  As soon as the world and characters take shape, they change from what's written down in some book or on some character sheet.  It's purely subjective, moments of another reality.  Just as real as our everyday experiences... occasionally more so.

VS

p.s.  Probably goes without saying, but I'll be blogging about my experience after every 5e session listed above.  Stay tuned!

Gary Con

There are quite a few reasons why I like conventions - the chance to meet new gamers, play new games or old games in new ways, and cool stuff to buy (i'll show off my awesome new dragon dice holder in another blog post).  But there are also reasons why I dislike conventions.  Besides travel hassles and potential marital strife, it can be very distracting.  Noise, people walking by, interruptions for one reason or another, etc.  Just the sheer openness.  God help you if you're the least bit agoraphobic, claustrophobic, or misanthropic.

The first game I signed up for was Mazes & Minotaurs.  By the way, I was about 24 hours late signing up for games online, so a lot of the popular and/or much anticipated games were already taken.  Shortly after dealing with hotel registration problems, I sat down early at the M&M table.  It was in a big room.  Lots of people.  Fairly loud.  I imagined what 3.5 hours of that would be like and shuddered.

The GM seemed like a nice guy but he admitted within the first couple minutes that he had some kind of bug - maybe it was food poisoning, a migraine, or a virus.  He wasn't sure, but he may need to leave for the bathroom and puke.  I was sitting right next to him as there were only 3 players.  I'm not an extreme case, but I'll admit that I'm a bit of a germ-phobe or whatever you want to call it.  After 10 minutes, I made my excuses and left the game.  I talked to some of the M&M players later in the day and the game broke up shortly after I left.  No one said it was my fault, but blamed it on the sick GM.

I'll pin this one on the GM's frail condition, but that 10 minute session started out pretty weak.  We got to pick from a handful of characters.  Not familiar with the system, we got to see the class and a couple skills, equipment list, and various numbers which meant little to us noobs.  Then we were supposed to buy equipment before this journey which we've already started on or were about to arrive at our destination.  Nothing specific, nothing definite... it began with a whimper and who knows, it might have jumped in with swords clanking and sandals covered in gorgon blood, but I doubt it.

I vowed that when it was my turn, I would be authoritative, interesting, and quick to get to the good stuff.

Back to the hotel reservation.  I won't bore you with the details.  In a nutshell, I got bumped to their sister hotel a couple miles up the road.  Fine.  Checking in, it was a private, fancy, golf course kind of community.  I only saw a couple people the whole time I was on the grounds - and those were in the registration office.  There was a spacious, swanky common area to lounge around in.  Leather couch and sofa, TV, fireplace, and a large round table with 8 tall-back leather chairs.

Hmm, I thought.  What a great place to game.  Long story short, I decided to run my game right there.  Wasn't hard to set up.  Got permission.  Told the main hotel I needed a shuttle van to bring the group to where I was staying.  Told the gamers waiting at my designated table that I had a surprise in store for them.

The game itself?  Well, I had been working on The Islands of Purple-Haunted Putrescence for months.  It was taking shape.  I playtested it a number of times with my home group, but needed something more.  I needed to run the near-final version for a group of strangers, ideally in a convention type setting.  Gary Con was my chance, and I think it went swimmingly.  Which is not to say it went perfect.  There were flaws, shortcomings, things I hadn't thought of.  Some I ad-libbed on the spot, others I just used what was written on the page knowing revisions were a-coming.

Even though some of it was shaky, that campaign world lived for just under 4 hours.  The purple islands breathed.  We had breathed life into it, and the party's experiences changed it forever.  For that, I'm extremely grateful.  So, thanks again Tracy Jo Barnwell, Jason Warchol, Amy Horton, Adam Thornton, Mark Malone, David Bresson, and especially Guy Fullerton who took a couple pics during the session and furnished me with those names.  Somehow, I forgot to collect them myself in the soft violet afterglow of that crazy session.  And why the hell didn't I take any pictures?!?

Strictly speaking, it wasn't your typical "con game".  No, it was the first session of a wilderness hex crawl campaign using Swords & Wizardry.  For those expecting a clear, concise beginning, middle, and end with lots of closure... sorry, folks.  That's not what happened.

Those intrepid adventurers will always remember the hot dog rotisserie, the cleric's throat being chewed off by an insane clown (just like in last night's Walking Dead episode!!!), the coincidental dark secret / Devil's bargain / cleric resurrection ruse, and of course the Purple Putrescence itself which was accurately described as "a force of nature."  While I got a little feedback post-game, I'd love to have some notes on what worked well, really well, and not at all.  Since Saturday afternoon, I've written a couple pages of changes.  But the evolution will take time, as well as, other perspectives.

Oh yeah, I got to play Hollow Earth Expedition.  An adventure called Frozen Terror.  It was a lot of fun and the GM did a good job.  John Carpenter's The Thing meets At the Mountains of Madness with a dash of Return of the Living Dead.  It was fairly scripted and would have been a perfect game for a convention, except for the fact that it was a two-parter and we never got past the first.  Oh well.  One of the four players claimed (twice!) that a lady explorer with a jet pack who punched and threw out a Nazi flying a plane, then got in and landed it herself was the single coolest thing that had ever happened in any roleplaying game ever.  Which was nice.


VS

The Cover Purple

There's not much to say, except here's the new cover of The Islands of Purple-Haunted Putrescence.  Faustie did a great job, as usual.  He might do a few more little tweaks between now and then, but basically this is it.  Notice the subtle homage to Taarna from Heavy Metal.


VS


p.s.  I'm still excepting pre-orders!  Send me an email.