Dungeons and Dragons, "Writing is a Skill"

Standard Introduction

            I have been writing about Dungeons and Dragons semi-regularly this year and in the course of writing those I found a 30-day blog challenge.  As I have done those a couple times before it seemed remiss not to jump on this one.

            If you want here is a link to my 30-day challenge on Disney Movies, here is a link to my 30-day challenge on Video Games, and here is a comically out of date 30-day challenge on Movies (it is old and the writing is rubbish).

Day 31- The Challenge

            Why do I bother with these 30-day challenges?  A few years back I set out to write 1,000,000 words to follow the adage, “The first million words are practice”.  I hoped to improve my writing thru practice.  More importantly it could not just be practice that only I would read or would only appeal to my own whims, you do not improve by writing something down and letting it mold in the basement, unless you are Emily Dickinson.

            To improve as a writer (or for anyone to improve as a writer) it is important to be able to respond to prompts, produce lots of content in a short period of time, and be willing to put one’s work out into the world for people to scowl at.  I managed to write more than 34,000 words in July, that is not bad for a hobbyist.

            I also set a goal to have a blog entry for every calendar day, 30-day blog challenges provide me with an excuse to sew up a month that previously had a lot of days with no entries (October is now the one with the most holes) so that I can bang out material and have a blog entry to post for everyday of the year allowing me to psychically stroke myself with a repost each time Facebook says, “Here are your memories”.

            Filling in the calendar is a pointless goal, but one that encouraged me to keep blogging and keep driving toward my goal of a million words.

We didn't start the fire.

30 days of Dungeons and Dragons

            Why “Dungeons and Dragons”?  Because it is a hobby I have been doing for more than 15 years, I was already writing about it every week or so, and there actually aren’t too many writing prompts in the 30-day challenge format.  I was kind of shocked by that.  Once you get past the big ones of “Movies” and “Video Games” things get real niche.

            I had to heavily workshop my Disney Challenge which had too many asinine prompts, and even this blog challenge had a lot of “What?”  Who gives a shit about “Favorite Energy Type”?  And what value is there in discussing my “Favorite Non-Magic Item”?  Those are just meaningless.

            “I like Fire!”

            “I like Chairs!”

            “How about we do the best of both worlds?”

            “What an intriguing idea.  What do we do?”

            “We just have to light some chairs on fire!”

            “YEAH!”

This is the original list of blog prompts that contains a lot of what I would consider junk.
Nothing to be ashamed of, it is hard to come up with topics, especially 30 of them.
Below is the list of titles as they ultimately became.
My altered list is what I would recommend using if you plan to write your own blog series.

Some Context, Days 1-4

“How I Got Started”

“My Favorite Edition”

“My Favorite Setting”

“My Favorite Deity”

Favorite Character Stuff, Days 5-11

“My Favorite Fantasy Races”

“My Favorite Classes”

“My Favorite Player Character”

“My Favorite Group of Characters” (“Favorite Character You Haven’t Played”)

“My Worst Player Character”

“Some Ideas for Player Characters” (“A Character You Want to Play in the Future”)

“My Favorite NPC”

Favorite Monsters, Days 12-21

“My Favorite Aberrations”

“My Favorite Animals” (“Favorite Animals/Vermin”)

“My Favorite Fiends” (“Favorite Evil Outsiders”)

“Celestials” (“Favorite Good Outsider”)

“Best Evil Fantasy Races” (“Favorite Humanoids/Giants”)

“Dragons” (“Favorite Dragon”)

“Creatures of Nature” (“Favorite Fey/Elementals/Plants”)

“Legions of the Undead” (“Favorite Undead”)

“The Worst Monster”

“My Favorite Monster” (also has "Favorite Dice" as bonus sub entry)

Best Miscellaneous, Days 22-26

“Locations and Dungeons” (Favorite)

“Puzzles and Traps” (Favorite)

“Cursed Items” (Favorite)

“Magic Items and Technology” (“Favorite Magic Item”)

“Some Talk of Spells” (“Favorite Spell”)

Best Experiences, Days 27-30

“Best 3e Adventure” (“Favorite Adventure”)

“Craziest Game Session”

“Random Poetry Interlude” (was supposed to be “Best Experience as a Player”)

“Best Game Running Experience” (was supposed to be “Best Experience as a GM”)

Coming in the Future

            While I did manage to write out a number of topics on DnD and close out many of my thoughts this stuff, there is always more to talk about with this hobby.  Like I said, I was writing an almost weekly blog about Dungeons and Dragons before this 30-day thing, and will probably continue with that.  Along with writing about other topics, I actually have some other stuff in mind related to several horrible things happening in the world right now.

            If you liked my stuff, please follow me on social media so that you can occasionally step in and read my ramblings.  I hope this was entertaining and gives some insight into why I write.  Please try to further your own writing by putting yourself out there more.  People will be harsh (there is lots of poor writing on the internet and people like to put it down), but hopefully some of that harshness comes from a place that is constructive and hopeful, a place that wants to critique in hopes of improving people’s work and not just scaring off newbies.

            Go on and have fun.

______________________________

            If you like or hate this please take the time to comment, +1, share on Twitter (click that link to follow me), Tumblr, or Facebook, and otherwise distribute my opinion to the world.  I would appreciate it.

Dungeons and Dragons, "Best Game Running Experience"

Standard Introduction

            I have been writing about Dungeons and Dragons semi-regularly this year and in the course of writing those I found a 30-day blog challenge.  As I have done those a couple times before it seemed remiss not to jump on this one.

            If you want here is a link to my 30-day challenge on Disney Movies, here is a link to my 30-day challenge on Video Games, and here is a comically out of date 30-day challenge on Movies (it is old and the writing is rubbish).

Day 30- Best Game Running Instance

            I talked about a group of players that managed to go the distance on an especially long campaign with me and there was ultimately a long and cohesive story that got weaved thru the game.  This allowed me to build up to 2 “Season Finale” episodes and 1 “Series Finale”.

            The season finales revolved around a cloaked figure that had gathered together forces of giant spiders, jackal men, yugoloths, gnolls, and mummies into a semi-workable (though multi-level challenging, and that is the important part) battle force.

            The first season finale involved the players rushing in with a cadre of mercenaries and managing to take down a gaggle of monsters.  The hooded figure managed to escape and killed the party’s monk on the way out (the monk got better).  The cloaked figure getting away with a mysterious item which it had just unearthed from a broken fountain.  This all took place in an abandoned castle in the middle of a haunted wood.  Because spooky.

I evoked some Hastur the Unspeakable imagery.

            The second season finale was the final defeat of the cloaked figure, the revelation of the item he had taken (along with several identical items the players had found), and it all took place in a gladiatorial arena and involved the players teaming up with a small Justice League of other heroes from around the continent who had shown up to compete in a massive fighting tournament “Street Fighter” style.  The monk by this point had gained the ability to channel positive energy and the cloaked figure was pulverized into undead mash rather quickly.

The Series Finale

            The Series Finale is the one I especially liked.  Because that dealt with what the cloaked figure had been scared of and was gathering power to try and oppose.  An alien invasion.  This had been set up, with strange lights in the sky being reported (scouts), damage to various fields and forests (crop circles), and visions by PC allied spellcasters.  It was a big looming threat that the PC’s had time to prepare for, and they drew upon the considerable resources they had tapped during their adventures.

            During the length of the campaign the PC’s had found several things that they thought might be able to help solve an alien invasion.  Giant Pilotable Monsters.

BWAAAAAAH!

            First thing for battling aliens was a dead god of undersea monsters (C’Thulhu in all but name) whose brain they pulled out and replaced with a control room (they were friends with a mad scientist).  Finding the giant monster concluded a different quest chain that involved an archeological Easter egg hunt (I actually talked about it briefly in a different blog).  Acquiring this monster was a mid-season finale.

            Second, was the giant Clock Tower built by the campaign’s warforged to be a super computer, one able to figure out the meaning of life (a reference to Deep Thought from “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”) and was then modified with a stolen alien power core (called “Star Hearts”) to transform into a giant robot to serve as the new god of Warforged and gifting them all with souls.  This too had been set up, as the warforged leadership had asked the players to retrieve or protect some key components and texts they needed to write the robot’s “software”.

            Third, and lastly, a group of wizards led by the party’s Druid managed to fall into a pocket dimension that was the extradimensional prison turned tomb of Oberon, lord of all fey.  After centuries cut off from the natural world Oberon was now nothing more than a nature spirit, but he was still a conduit for the natural mana that flowed thru the world.  The group rescued his soul from the extradimensional prison.  So freed, Oberon became an Awesome Sized Elemental switching between Fire/Water/Earth/Air (I would have had giant Animal/Plant forms too but ran out of time before the game).  This was actually a call back to the PC’s first adventure, being trapped in a game left over from Oberon’s abandoned summer palace (this was also the Player’s first ever adventure which I used to introduce them to the game).

I can't draw, so enjoy this art from a variety of sources that kind of work for what I am talking about.
Source 1, Source 2, Source 3

            I wanted to tie in as many previous adventures together as I could so that the adventure could serve as a culmination rather than just a stopping point. Ultimately the event came, a dozen tripods landed with energy beams and the players each piloted one of the monsters.  The Ranger took the Dead God (Chaotic Neutral), the Druid merged with the Giant Elemental God (True Neutral), and the Monk channeled and controlled positive energy to pilot the Giant Robot God (Lawful Neutral).  It was a Kaiju versus Tripods Final battle for the fate of the planet.

            What was more, once the players won, it was revealed that all over the world the gods and higher being of the world had been pulling out weapons and kaiju to fight the invasion.  A two-headed star dragon helped the Monk’s giant Robot fly into orbit and take out the fleet of ground troops that was poised to begin landing.  The fact that the gods played out so many of their resources became a plot point in the sequel campaign.

            Also in the sequel campaign, the players new characters found an area in which the tripod landing was successful and had to help a resistance movement wake up the defeated kaiju that had previously failed to stop the invasion doing their best to hit the unshielded and resting aliens.

            My Games get pretty fucking weird sometimes.  But I feel that the weirdness is earned and enjoyed.

Coming Tomorrow

            Tomorrow I am going to talk about this 30-day blog challenge of which this is the last actual entry. I will show you the original prompts and list all of the entries so that if you want to do your own, you’ll be able to.

            I am definitely gonna need some time off writing DnD after this.

______________________________

            If you like or hate this please take the time to comment, +1, share on Twitter (click that link to follow me), Tumblr, or Facebook, and otherwise distribute my opinion to the world.  I would appreciate it.

Dungeons and Dragons, "Random Poetry Interlude"

Standard Introduction

            I have been writing about Dungeons and Dragons semi-regularly this year and in the course of writing those I found a 30-day blog challenge.  As I have done those a couple times before it seemed remiss not to jump on this one.

            If you want here is a link to my 30-day challenge on Disney Movies, here is a link to my 30-day challenge on Video Games, and here is a comically out of date 30-day challenge on Movies (it is old and the writing is rubbish).

Day 29- Best Player Experience

            Gotta be honest, I could not think of one.  I am not much of a player and I prefer being the guy running the game.  I am more about Puzzles, Monsters, and NPC’s then I am about PC’s.

Filler: A Poem

            I occasionally take poems off the Poetry Foundation and rewrite them.  I am a multi-dimensional nerd in that regard.  So here is a link to the original poem, “Evening Hawk” while below is my re-do of that poem.

            And yes, I am reworking the poetry of the United States’ first Poet Laureate.  Because I have an ego?  I guess?  Or maybe it is just that it popped up while I was researching poems about the end of the world.

Rising Owl

From plane of light to pane of glass,

Out of the peak’s black angularity of shadow,

Wings dipping thru geometries

Riding the last tumultuous avalanche of light

The light above pines and the guttural gorge

The gorge filled with orchids that the sun built

The Owl comes.

Its wings scythe down another day,

The motion that of the honed steel-edge,

Hear the crash less fall of stalks of Time.

Heavy with the gold of our error

Each stalk head falls.

Look!

Look!

It is climbing the last light

Who knows neither Time nor error,

Under whose eye, unforgiving,

The world, unforgiven,

Swings into shadow.

Long now,

The last thrush is still,

The last bat cruises now

In sharp hieroglyphics.

The star is glimmering and green,

Its wisdom is ancient and immense.

Over the mountain.

If there were no wind we might,

We think,

Hear the earth grind on its axis,

Or history,

Drip in darkness like broken flesh.

Coming Tomorrow

            Tomorrow I am going to talk about my best experience running a game.

            Tomorrow’s entry will actually be about Dungeons and Dragons rather than another random poetry interlude.  It will also be the last “real” entry in the 30-day challenge, day 31 is just a rundown of the whole thing.

______________________________

            If you like or hate this please take the time to comment, +1, share on Twitter (click that link to follow me), Tumblr, or Facebook, and otherwise distribute my opinion to the world.  I would appreciate it.

Dungeons and Dragons, "Craziest Game Session"

Standard Introduction

            I have been writing about Dungeons and Dragons semi-regularly this year and in the course of writing those I found a 30-day blog challenge.  As I have done those a couple times before it seemed remiss not to jump on this one.

            If you want here is a link to my 30-day challenge on Disney Movies, here is a link to my 30-day challenge on Video Games, and here is a comically out of date 30-day challenge on Movies (it is old and the writing is rubbish).

 

Florida Gulf Coast University

Day 28- Craziest thing to Happen Out of Game

            For my undergraduate degree in Political Science I attended the then new and tiny (10,000 students), Florida Gulf Coast University.

            One night back in 2005 there was a power outage.  I, being a tabletop gamer was able to just walk over to my group’s dorm room knock and we set up a game to keep us busy.

            We were rolling dice and chatting about how we could hear a ton of noise outside.  Lots of voices of the people deciding to go night swimming in the artificial lake to pass the time (at the time that fake lake looked like the world’s widest puddle, these days it looks a great deal more inviting).

            My group and I, being somewhat stuck up nerds were hmm-ing and hah-ing at the idea that people were getting so loud about a power outage, and kind of laughing at their expense because it was October, and even in Florida it would be too cold to swim.

            That is when we heard people yelling and we decided to gaze out the window to the “beach”.  A group of people had lit one of the tiki themed picnic tables on fire and it was going up completely.  Campus police pulled up, dozens of students scattered, and the power was back on shortly after (I think it was off for a total of about 90 minutes).  For the next few weeks there were charred remains of a moronic activity gone awry sitting down by the water.

            This did not have anything to do with me, but it is the craziest activity to happen proximate to a game that I was playing in.

 

Maybe it is wrong to point to these grass topped things and call them tiki themed picnic tables.
I don't know what to call them.  I also don't know when this pic was taken.

Coming Tomorrow

            Tomorrow I am going to talk about my best experience playing. 

______________________________

            If you like or hate this please take the time to comment, +1, share on Twitter (click that link to follow me), Tumblr, or Facebook, and otherwise distribute my opinion to the world.  I would appreciate it.

Dungeons and Dragons, "The Best 3e Adventure"

Standard Introduction

            I have been writing about Dungeons and Dragons semi-regularly this year and in the course of writing those I found a 30-day blog challenge.  As I have done those a couple times before it seemed remiss not to jump on this one.

            If you want here is a link to my 30-day challenge on Disney Movies, here is a link to my 30-day challenge on Video Games, and here is a comically out of date 30-day challenge on Movies (it is old and the writing is rubbish).

Day 27- Favorite Adventure

            This is going to be a short entry.

            I had a subscription to Dungeon magazine and enjoyed reading it and breaking up the individual encounters and maps, but I rarely if ever ran an entire mission as presented.  The adventures tended to be meat grinders.

            Published adventures always seem to be much harder than advertised, I guess when you write rules for a living you worry about not providing a meaty enough challenge, and then you decide to get super clever.  The problem with that, is that guys like me who only run a game once a week are less able to deal with “clever”.  Hence why I need to pull these things apart into more digestible chunks.

 

I wonder if this thing qualifies as iconic?
Do you recognize it without reading the next paragraph that tells you what it is?

            My favorite adventure in theory is “The Shackled City”.  This full 20 level campaign gives you a really interesting giant city around which all the action turns and a whole cadre of supervillains working toward an interesting goal.

            “The Shackled City” did so well that (I get the impression) it is regarded as the best thing Dungeon magazine produced for 3^rd edition, and it gave so many credibility points to the magazines publishers (Paizo) that they had the clout to release “The Age of Worms,” the other best adventure ever for 3^rd edition (though far less lauded).

            Those adventures doing so well (and Wizards of the Coast leaving Paizo holding the bag in regards to 3^rd edition ending and Dragon and Dungeon magazine being canceled) left Paizo in a position to create Pathfinder.  The Pathfinder books were a continuation of the 3^rd edition rules that were so well produced art and supplement wise, that they threw 4^th edition on the ash heap of history.  Pathfinder is still going, while 4e was replaced by 5e two years ago.

            That is right, “The Shackled City” was so good, it could be given some credit for 4^th edition being a failure.

Coming Tomorrow

            Tomorrow I am going to talk about The Craziest thing to happen outside of the Game.

______________________________

            If you like or hate this please take the time to comment, +1, share on Twitter (click that link to follow me), Tumblr, or Facebook, and otherwise distribute my opinion to the world.  I would appreciate it.

Dungeons and Dragons, "Some Talk of Spells"

Standard Introduction

            I have been writing about Dungeons and Dragons semi-regularly this year and in the course of writing those I found a 30-day blog challenge.  As I have done those a couple times before it seemed remiss not to jump on this one.

            If you want here is a link to my 30-day challenge on Disney Movies, here is a link to my 30-day challenge on Video Games, and here is a comically out of date 30-day challenge on Movies (it is old and the writing is rubbish).

Day 26- Favorite Spells

            There are certain spells that are demonstrably better than others.  There are also those that are more iconic due to internet meme-ing.  Unless I want to just pick the one everyone already knows… Magic Missile I guess I will just have to list a few of these.

            I am feeling pretty lazy though… No, I’ll do something.  I guess.

Boring but Practical

            There is a divide in the game between combat (which is a BIG part of the game) and non-combat (smaller than it should be).  An obstacle as simple as a heavy locked door can in many cases totally kill all progress because the players do not have access to the means to open it, that is where the spell “Knock” comes in.

"Dude, other people need to use the bathroom."

            “Knock” opens doors, and can open bigger and bigger doors if you are higher level (for some reason 3^rd edition saw the need to scale even this spell with level).  If there is an unfortunate side effect to the players having access to this spell is that if the DM was hoping to create a key-hunting dungeon the players can completely bypass all that with one low level spell.

Flashy but Impractical

            Here is a combat spell that was so complicated in the original 3^rd edition rules (not 3.5) that a single casting of it was an entire combat encounter, “Evard’s Black Tentacles”.

Okay, what are those emerging from?

            This spell, which was level 4 (hardly a game breaking level), could summon an entire cadre of attacking tentacles that would damage and stop cold anyone in the area of it being summoned.  It required a comical amount of tracking where the tentacles were, what they were attacking, and how much damage they were doing.  It required prep time to cast and compared to the rational amount of time other spells of a level could demand was impractical.

Flashy but Practical

            Generally speaking, this covers all of the classic elemental attack spells.  Ice Storm, Fireball, Lightning Bolt, or Flame Strike.  This also hits on all of the intentionally flashy spells like Color Spray or Prismatic Spray.

This is from the Deviant Art account of Clint Cearley, who does work on Magic the Gathering.
His stuff is lovely.

            The fun aspect of this has to do with it all being in your head.  Players have to describe how these things resolve and it gives some impact to role playing to say that your lightning bolt takes shape as a cursive spelling of your character’s name, or is a particular color.  These are spells that will be used a million times and they should be seen as something that can be used to make the game more magical in a fun way, otherwise they are just a boring exchange of numbers.

Boring but Impractical

            This has more to do with 3^rd edition (because 3^rd edition is what I have the most experience with and know what is most baffling).  3^rd edition was the one most dependent on magic items.  Ability scores increased with magic items, attack bonuses increased with magic items, armor class increased with magic items, and saves were all augmented by magical items.  Each player would have several items that would make their statistics higher in ways that were necessary for the game to function.  Without magic augmentation, a player would be turned into bloody mist.

            Each item (especially those affect basic statistics) would create ripples thru the rest of the character sheet.  One number gets altered and suddenly dozens of other numbers would be twisted.  This is why “Anti-Magic Field” was such a pain in the ass.

"As the song goes, 'Can't touch this'."
"You are such a nerd."

            Creating an area in which the innumerable items that a player had incorporated without annotation into their work meant a half hour of chasing numbers to make everything make sense for a combat encounter that would last maybe 20 minutes.  Imagine if you walked into work with an expense report and as you passed thru the door to the office every “7” got turned into a “3” and you had to go thru the whole report adjusting the math by hand, it is retarding to progress in the story.

            “Anti-Magic Field” is boring because it is taking magic, a key part of the game, out of the game.  It is like taking the molten core out of a volcano cake.

Coming Tomorrow

            Tomorrow I am going to talk about my favorite adventure.

______________________________

            If you like or hate this please take the time to comment, +1, share on Twitter (click that link to follow me), Tumblr, or Facebook, and otherwise distribute my opinion to the world.  I would appreciate it.

Dungeons and Dragons, "Magic Items and Technology"

Standard Introduction

            I have been writing about Dungeons and Dragons semi-regularly this year and in the course of writing those I found a 30-day blog challenge.  As I have done those a couple times before it seemed remiss not to jump on this one.

            If you want here is a link to my 30-day challenge on Disney Movies, here is a link to my 30-day challenge on Video Games, and here is a comically out of date 30-day challenge on Movies (it is old and the writing is rubbish).

Day 25- Magic as Technology

            Generally speaking, I like my magic to be goofy and unpredictable.  The idea that power is not only corrupting (look at yesterday’s entry on “Cursed Items” for that) but can also be hard to understand, hard to use, and just a source of chaos and disruption is (in theory) a good metaphor for knowledge in a culture.  This is basically anti-intellectual horseshit when you give it any real thought.  I regard knowledge as the cure to ills not the cause of them.

            Magic as a metaphor for technological advancement is a popular one, I think “Conan” is the perfect example of that.  Civilization is seen as an unnatural and corrupting force and magical powers are almost always the unnatural element holding such social orders together.  “The Tower of the Elephant” stands as a symbol of wealth and power because of the secret magical knowledge that rests within.

This is arguably the best of the original Robert E Howard "Conan" stories.
Especially as a source of inspiration for gaming groups.

            I also think that metaphor, that “magic = technology” is mostly wrong.  Technology is not mysterious, it can be complicated, but it exists as a consistent and ubiquitous way for normal people to harness the forces of nature and turn them toward producing something more.  To build and repair technology you do need information or training, but that knowledge is readily available in manuals, schools, or internet tutorials.  Magic is not like that by flavor or design.

            Magic is magic, it is not harnessing natural forces, it is manipulating and violating those forces.  It is not information that is readily available, it is arcane, mysterious, or lost to the mists of time.  Magic is not facilitating civilization, it is compelling it.  When a technological society collapses, the “magic items” left behind don’t work because the infrastructure that made the batteries or ammo for them to function no longer exist.  When a magic society collapses, the items left behind are the same stuff that is produced readily by nearly any blacksmith, except slightly better.

My Favorite Magic Item

            My favorite magic item is the Rod/Wand of Wonder.  It is a silly, damn near useless item that gives me the opportunity to roll percentile dice (which is pretty rare) and is just goofy.  I like that magic can be playful in a game, rather than a strictly calculated element with range, area, casting time, chance of failure, and any number of other subsections.

            I have a chart, I point the silly looking stick, and it might shoot butterflies or turn me purple.  I like it.

Coming Tomorrow

            Tomorrow I am going to talk about my favorite spell.

______________________________

            If you like or hate this please take the time to comment, +1, share on Twitter (click that link to follow me), Tumblr, or Facebook, and otherwise distribute my opinion to the world.  I would appreciate it.