My Shelf Needs Sorting

It really does.

An Odd Idea: Mechsuit O.D.D.

On top of working on A Random Encounter I have an on-again/off-again relationship with a hack of Into The Odd set in a semi-hard sci-fi setting at the edge of the solar system. Into The Oort, if it ever gets finished, will have spaceships, zero-gravity derring-do, exploration of ancient human megastructures and centaurs. (really)

Despite having only so many hours in the day and enough creative pursuits already, my brain keeps saying, "Nathan! Hey Nathan, think about this..." I blame Chris McDowall: he wrote a game with a very easily hacked set of mechanics. This post is the latest "odd idea" that I've had... It has some blanks and some spaces which are currently boxed out with [] square brackets because I haven't got that far yet. But I think I will, sooner or later...

Mech suit by flyingdebris

Vacant Ritual Assembly and Something Stinks in Stilton

Or: Nathan does quick reviews of two zines to remind you that he has a zine of his own coming out this month...

I think the idea to do something like a zine first came in to my head when I saw Vacant Ritual Assembly, the zine that Clint Krause produces under his Red Moon Medicine Show banner. I've picked up all five of the issues from this volume and loved them all. There's a good amount of playable material in every issue and the latest was no different. Combine that with short interviews with other creators, artwork, news and ideas about Clint's future releases - every issue is a great little package. And it's only $4 in print including postage! Go check it out. (issue 1 is PWYW on DriveThru)

Something Stinks in Stilton arrived through the letterbox yesterday. I've not bought The Undercroft by Daniel Sell before, but I'm going to pick up some of the back issues when I have a little spare cash. Stilton is kind of a special issue, and Oli Palmer's adventure is statted for LotFP, but it wouldn't take much to run in another system. Adventurers are asked to go and investigate mysterious circumstances, which will lead them to a horrific situation in the cheese-making town of Stilton. The adventure and description resonates with the themes and horror in so many of LotFP's official releases. It's creepy and unsettling - as is the cover, in a good way - a feature I particularly loved is the possible timeline of events: nothing binding or railroad-y, just super-useful to the DM. The art supports the text pretty well and it was interesting that the zine was printed full colour throughout: important adventure details are picked out in bold red text. The cover has a real tactile quality with slightly raised print, and it feels special. You can find it here.

For a prospective maker and publisher I haven't read many zines before: what others should I check out?

People in Oddpool

When I ran a game set in Oddpool, I was of course influenced by the people of the city. At the same time, the game city is supposed to be a ruin, filled with weird creatures, strange architecture and general bizarreness. The people who live in Oddpool do so in small groups/gangs, with their own customs, their own wants and needs, and their own ways of interacting with others. When I ran my game, I just slapped Redmen and Bluemen in, as substitutes for football supporters, but for the Pocketmod I wanted something better.

I've been heavily inspired by David McGrogan's inspiration tables over the years (I've shared a few of my own on this blog before), so it seemed like the most natural fit for the Pocketmod would be to provide a little inspiration tool for generating groups and gangs of Skalls: rolling gives a couple of details to then inspire the GM to create the rest of the group. I've used the table to generate the following, Skalls you may find on the streets of Oddpool.

A Gaming Podcast About Nothing

Dave, aka noisms, and I are doing a podcast. We've been talking about doing it for ages, and finally found the time. It was so much fun to record that we're going to make time to record more regularly (although not on an official schedule just yet).

A Gaming Podcast About Nothing is here! And we talk about lots of things related to role-playing games, our lives and nothing really. Listen to it, and tell us what you think.

Future Spending Spree

Some day soon, the stars will align. On that day I won't have to think about saving for house-moving, or be immediately wondering about how to fund some crazy work idea. On that day I will be free to go wild and buy games! And when I do, these are the ones at the top of my list...

Hot War (link)
This looks interesting. An alternate 1960s, the cold war has gone nuclear - and then things went bad... I love the vibe of the description, and the illustration and design in the preview. Something sinister in 1960s London gives me a hundred ideas all at once for setting and plot hooks.

3:16 (link)
The reviews at DriveThruRPG say it all really. After playing Diaspora a little, I would love to play a sci-fi game, and 3:16 looks like it would comfortably fit the bill. David W, one of the players in our group, has mentioned running something sci-fi, possibly Traveller. Maybe once we reach a suitable pause point with Somewhere North we will head for the stars...

Weird New World (link)
I've only read the description, but from that it sounds like this might give me some neat ideas for what lies beyond the mountains in Somewhere North. The hidden valley of the halflings is not simply going to be ten miles past the mountains. There are Drazils to be sure, but what else is there? Maybe Weird New World can help to fill in some of the blanks.

Tower of the Stargazer (link)
Several things attract me to this pdf; first there is the price, you can't go wrong for a couple of euros. Second is that it is more LotFP goodness, and I'm quite hooked on that at the moment. More importantly, there is the inclusion of the following phrase in the description: "Tower of the Stargazer is a specially designed introductory module with material specifically for beginning Referees, with notes detailing not only what is included in the adventure, but why." I'm really enjoying writing stuff at the moment for the campaign I'm running, but am also wondering if the stuff that I am writing is only usable by me (because I know my own shorthand, I know what I might do with a prompt - would someone else? etc). Seeing some discussion on that might be helpful - especially if I decide to do something with these materials later.

Death Frost Doom (link)
I've read lots of bits and pieces about this, and everything I've read about it leads me to think that it's near a small village, about fifty miles from the city of Zelman in Somewhere North, on the road between the Bridge and the city. I think that on the long road between the Bridge and the city the players might find cause to stop there and to wonder whether they have what it takes to go near the church in search of treasure...

Somewhere North: Shaggy Pigs

Shaggy Pigs are huge wild boar-like creatures that roam the northern winterlands. An adult can grow to seven feet in length, has great tusks and thick carpets of hair covering it. The most distinctive feature of the Shaggy Pig are the two sets of hind legs that it has, which allow it to run at quick speeds over icy and snowy terrain; it runs with an unusual gait and can keep a pace for many miles.

In the wild they run in packs and are omnivorous, instinctively burrowing for exotic, nourishing tubers and then chasing down wild deer – and whatever else they can find. Shaggy Pigs have been semi-domesticated by Pugs. They use them to pull their sleds, and are known to be used as battle-mounts by pairs of Pugs, who will ride with slings and short swords.

Shaggy Pig
AC as leather armour and shield, 4HD. They attack anything that looks tasty by running in and trying to gore it to death with long tusks (d8 damage). In the wild they run in packs of 4+d6 pigs; young swine are not normally found in the wild, as they are kept in a sty by the pack. Shaggy Pigs are fiercely territorial and belligerent.

If tracked to a regular feeding area, adventurers might be able to find some of the strange tubers that they dig for. Shaggy Pigs uproot them for sustenance, however they have a strange effect on non-pigs...

If eating a tuber found by a Shaggy Pig, roll 2d6:

2-3: Makes the eater appear two years younger (takes 5 minutes; permanent effect).	8: Eaten raw, mild poison; cooked CON +1.
4: As Cure Light Wounds. Mild poison if eaten more than three times (CON check or lose 2 CON for 2d8 days; if make check, 1 CON penalty for d4 days).	9: Nose grows an inch. Improved Bushcraft by 1.
5: Causes ESP effects for 8d6 hours. After a day, save vs magic every hour or collapse until effects wear off.	10: Skin emits a foul odour for d8 weeks. Soap and perfume won't cover it.
6: Resist Cold for a week.	11: Gives excellent nightvision.
7: Save vs poison. Fail and canine teeth grow d2 inches. (permanent)	12: The next time the eater sleeps they age 10 years (permanent effect).

Dogs Thoughts

As I mentioned last week, due to work commitments I've had to take a few weeks away from regular games nights and Dogs in the Vineyard. Dogs is the first campaign that I've run, and it's been really enjoyable. It is a system where there are so many different directions that a game can go in. Even with the simplest of backgrounds and a handful of NPCs rolled up you can get an intriguing game going.

I read the final section of the pdf a few days ago, and there were some neat thoughts that have helped steer my thinking a bit more as well. Vincent Baker describe it (paraphrased badly by me) as a noir investigation that happens to be set in an alternate West. And with several factions possibly at play, none of them exactly in the right - but one or more of them probably very much in the wrong, it gives the Dogs something to do.

In the first and second sessions the Dogs set up a town meeting, so that the guilty/sinful could confess in front of the whole town and hopefully get rid of any bad blood that existed. This worked really well, a solution that I didn't see coming at all. Quite a facilitated solution in fact, the Dogs didn't immediately pass judgement, but brought out into the light everything that was going wrong. And they were happy with how things ended up.

And yet in the last town they were deeply unhappy with the situation as they arrived in the town of Jewel: daily sundown services where people confess the wrong they have done so that the demons are kept at bay. Leaving aside the demons (whose existence wasn't proved until the last session), they did not like the Steward leading these public confessions. And then one of them said, "Is that different from what we did?" - which was a great realisation. It was in no way planned by me (the setting detail of the sundown service had been made before the start of the campaign), but was a neat thought. The Dogs do have a final say: I don't judge their choice of actions, and there is no higher authority in the game that says they can or can't do something, other than their own thoughts/beliefs.

If the Dogs start to doubt past actions perhaps that leads to something interesting - as I plan for possible future sessions - can I exploit their doubts somehow...? Present them with situations where they might really disagree? Can I devise a situation that's not "on-rails" but which is a kind of Kobayashi Maru? Not so that I can say "that was a bad decision" but so that THEY can't see a way out, but have to act all the same. And when they do act, how will they respond to the consequences?

(lots of half-formed questions there! Apologies)

Random Table: Street Performers

As you walk the streets of the city, through the markets and thorough-fares, you never know who is going to be blocking your way: trying to show you something entertaining, asking you for money, for help or just being a damn nuisance. But what do they really want? And what might they be hiding?

Roll three d10s for Performers (to see what they're doing), the Number (to see what to roll to see how many there are in the particular troupe) and Want (to see what their aim, as performers is - or possibly what they pretend to want). If the sum of the three d10s is even, then the group also have a Secret; roll another d10 for what else is going on with them.

	Performers	Number	Want	Secret
1	Jugglers	1+d2	Money	Know the location of something valuable
2	Mimes	1+d3	Food	One of them is on the run for a crime
3	Musicians	1+d4	Change	Runaways
4	Buskers	2+d4	Help	Part of a streetgang
5	Clowns	1+d6	Magic	Spies for a rival city/country
6	Actors	3+d3	Fame	The puppets of a wizard
7	Living Statues	2d4	Violence	Slavers trying to find people to kidnap
8	Poets	2+d3	Crime	Religious zealots looking to convert
9	Comedians	2d6	Nothing	Pickpockets who have settled on the players
10	Orators	3d4	Revolution	Undead/Monstrous

The Seven Hungers of Callista (Living Statues + 2d6 + Food + Part of a streetgang)
A group of seven women who stand suggestive in their stillness. Regular visitors to the market know to leave small parcels of food in the baskets at their feet, which stirs them into motion. They are the eyes and ears of the Black Ruins, a gang of muggers. They spot likely targets for their colleagues to rob.

Grimmers (Orators + 2+d3 + Help + Slavers trying to find people to kidnap)
Grimmers tell anyone and everyone that the world is going to hell in a hand basket. Taxes are too high, there is war and famine and evil magic and monsters. But you can help! Help them! Please...? If you do go with them and you seem like you might be of practical value, then you'll get coshed over the head and wake up in a wagon headed south...

Buddy and the Bass Lutes (Buskers + 1+d2 + Revolution)
Buddy and his two friends sing songs to inspire! They engage people with their marching pieces, Buddy on short fiddle, Gall on bass lute and Jero on bass lute. Their songs are based on centuries-old protest chants, and have no relevance in the current age. No one listens to them, no one likes them, and no one is going to join them.

Chuckles (Clowns + 3d4 + Violence + Know the location of something valuable)
In ragged threadbare outfits, half a dozen men stalk the streets daring you to laugh. They wear big red smiles, curly rainbow wigs and floppy shoes. Go ahead, laugh. They hear so much as a giggle and they'll go for your throat. They're lean, fast and strong and looking for any excuse to hurt someone. They love their freedom: if subdued, beaten down or if more than half are knocked out/killed then they will change tack and offer their store of treasures.

Dogs in the Vineyard, Session 5

Last night the Dogs assembled as "Three in Authority" and brought deliverance to the town of Jewel. Brother Paul arrived in town just as Sister Basemuth (Patrick) tried to hold the Steward back from killing a woman who was strongly suspected of being a witch; Brother Caleb (David) meanwhile was in hot pursuit of a man - the witch's brother - who had staggered away despite being tied up and shot in both legs.

After sessions of solving town squabbles and disagreements with local tribes, this was a full tilt into horror, action and exorcism. Brother Caleb tracked down the tongueless brother, Alex, and had to fill him full of lead as he transformed into an unspeakable monster, all triple-jointed fingers, razor teeth and deformed skull. The dice went with Caleb, but it showed up that when it comes to dealing with demons it really pays to have more than player acting against them. Demons/monsters can have a lot of dice in physical conflicts...

Random Table: The Great Bakerie

Being the first in an irregular series of random provocation tables for games of various types. In my mind when I started writing this one I just thought, "Hmmm, what kind of cakes would a magic baker sell?" It seemed silly at first, and is possibly over-written, but it's just designed to give some ideas. You fill in the blanks, and of course YMMV.

Merion is the son of a Sorceress and a Gourmet. Trained by both, he set off to find his own path in the world; after years of travel and practice he set up The Great Bakerie, a shop where he makes and sells confections that defy the natural order. There is usually a selection of cakes and pastries that have magical effects. Sometimes he has far rarer and more bizarre delights...

Games Night: Another Day in Asp

There's been a fair amount of rain in my part of the world over the last few days, which meant that one of the Dogs couldn't make it to continue sorting out the problems of the Hope Mission. Instead, Patrick volunteered to run a one-shot in the town of Asp for mine and David's characters using Lamentations of the Flame Princess.

I continued with two of my three LotFP characters that I used the last time Patrick ran a one-shot, and David had a character he had used previously. So the party was:

• Charley Shortbread: one-eyed Specialist, Level 2. Comes up with overly complicated plans that get shot down by everyone. He seems to be very much in favour of stabbing first and asking questions later. (me)
• Chastity Glean: first level Fighter. 19 years old, arms are full sleeves of tattoos and scars, short mohawk on top. Her stats are pretty much in the middle, except for STR 16 which gives her a distinct advantage in melee. 8HP don't hurt either. (me)
• Aleph: androgynous female Cleric of Namco. Level 4! David created a table during play to interpret the will of Namco (the God of Idle Pursuits).

In total we got about 150XP between us all night. And killed somewhere in the region of 20 men. We rolled high on a lot of early melee - it's easy to forget sometimes just how quickly combat runs. At one point Patrick had to remind us that we had killed six men in the span of about 18 seconds. We had taken a job of investigating a dungeon beneath an abandoned bakery for evidence of a conspiracy against the town.

We seemed to interpret this as: kill everything that moves. Patrick gives the option to describe what happens when we kill someone in combat. This lead to ever-increasing descriptions of gore and mayhem, that started with the first guy that we met in the dungeon. His beheading fountained us in blood, and the red that spilled from his comrades soon meant that we were three comrades at arms, running through the dungeon dripping blood everywhere we went.

Patrick: "7! OK, that's enough to kill him, what happens?"
Me: "I jump and force the blade down and right through his chest, skewering his heart!"
Patrick laughs.

Patrick: "6! He's a goner, what happens?"
Me: "I disembowel him, stabbing in and twisting the blade all the way across to the back his spine!"
Patrick laughs, uneasily.

Patrick: "So he hits you for 1, but simultaneously you hit him for 7, he's dead.....What happens?"
Me: "So, his morningstar glances off my armour... And then I move to slash him, but at the last second flick his morningstar up and it smacks him square in his face. It crushes his nose and embeds all the way back to his brain."
Patrick laughs, then stops. Then shakes his head.

We didn't find anything in terms of treasure - Patrick said it was there, XP all over the place in the form of treasure, but we were too busy running from one encounter to the next. We got eight silver pieces in total.

Namco only knows what will happen when I join him for his game with my nephew tomorrow...

Dogs in the Vineyard, Session 2

Last week we left things with Sister Basemuth (Patrick), Brother Caleb (David) and Brother Paul (Steve) at the farm; they've tracked down Newton's kidnappers, Cornelius and Nate, but they're too late - Newton has been strangled to death...

...or has he?! The slight trace of breath is in him, and so they perform ceremonies to call him back, to tell him that his time has not come - and it works. They save the boy.

Dogs in the Vineyard, Session 1

Last night was the first outing for Dogs in the Vineyard in our group, and I was GMing. It was the first time any of us had played it, but I think that despite a couple of head-scratching moments with the mechanics (more on those later) it was a good evening.

We started out with character gen; it took a little while because of thinking about potential with relation to the setting (it's late August, 1851), but after a bit of thinking we arrived at:

• Patrick, playing Sister Basemath Armstrong, a fearless and funny Dog with a Strong Community background. During her initiation she corresponded with a geologist and was able to satisfy both him and the public that dinosaur bones had been left behind in Noah's Flood.
• David, playing Brother Caleb Romney (a distant relation perhaps), a Well-Rounded Dog who is able to employ a coldly logical perspective, track people and he's also pretty handy with a gun. During his initiation time he unfortunately failed to capture a criminal, but this has now spurred him on.
• Steve, playing Brother Paul Usher, a Dog with a Complicated History - not raised in the Faith, but a part of it now. He's rugged, stubborn and has all the traits that you might expect from a western gunslinger. During his initiation he saved a child from a burning building.

After initiations and descriptions of their coats they were given their commission by Brother Emmanuel from the Dog's Temple: go out on a long journey to the southern-most valley where the Faithful live. It's a long time since Dogs have been through that part of the world; give the Stewards letters, help the communities as you see fit and do whatever you have to do to keep the Faith strong in the towns.

We join the Dogs as they come up to a farm outside of the town of King's Bridge.

Dogs and Dice and Decisions

It's Games Night! And tonight I start GMing a game of Dogs In The Vineyard, something which I'm really excited about. It's the first time I've played DitV and also the first time (assuming all goes well) that I'll be GMing something which isn't a oneshot. And we have at least one new player joining our merry band.

I think I have my head wrapped around the dice mechanics and the general principles of "Say yes or roll dice" and "Escalate, escalate, escalate!" Other than that, I'm just interested in playing something a bit different. DitV feels like a breath of fresh air. I thought that setting prep would be difficult, but so far it has been really straightforward. Why? Because they focus on people, what they need, what they want and how far they might go if others (or demons!) push them. And it is so much easier to focus on those fundamentals, the inclinations and breaking points. I have a little map (which I have to redraw to get rid of my notes) and I have notes of circumstances for a few towns and their inhabitants, as well as a paragraph each for those I've not fleshed out yet - I want to see what direction my players take things...

I'll be writing a lot about this over the next few weeks. If I ever finish writing about other dice mechanics I've been interested by I might even get around to thinking about the simple but complex dice of DitV. I can't wait to see it in play.

Games Night: A New Man in Yoon-Suin

Last night was another journey in Yoon-Suin, and my new character didn't disappoint. noisms has given a good account of the session, but states early on that I rolled "a ridiculously lucky set of stats" which, I guess, is probably accurate.

noisms method for rolling stats was to roll in order for STR, DEX, INT, WIS, CON and CHA, and he would allow one switch after they were all rolled (i.e., no re-rolling, but if I wanted to WIS and CON scores I could). Thankfully, the dice were extremely well-behaved last night!

STR 16
DEX 13
INT 11
WIS 13
CON 13
CHA 6

Well, OK, except for Charisma... I decided that these were pretty good stats for a Fighter, and early on decided that the only way to play someone with a Charisma of 6 is to act as someone who thinks they are very charming, and can't understand why others seem to screw their face up at him or roll their eyes. Poor Manjeet.

I don't have a clear picture in my head yet of what Manjeet actually looks like; I'm thinking tall, shaved head but with a few days of stubble coming in around his chin. His family are artisans (again, the luck of a random roll; after my previous success with stats and maximum hit points everyone was rooting for my personal history to reveal I was a eunuch) so I guess he would be fairly well turned out.

When I first met Marich (David) and Anil (Patrick) in the forest they gave great short descriptions of themselves. Patrick said, "You see a short, squat, bald man." David: "You see Prince Harry in a wizard's robe."

A high point of the session for me was being the one to deliver the killing blow to Manesh, the Bandit Chief who we battled against last time. I think we were really well coordinated, and Patrick's idea to hire retainers and to kit them out properly worked well. Not only did they hold their own quite well in delaying large numbers of attackers, but because we bothered to armour them up they didn't just die as soon as an opponent looked at them.

noisms claims I was ridiculously lucky; a quick bit of calculation and it turns out he is probably right: there's approximately a 1 in 6.8 million chance of me being that "lucky". And that's before you factor in the max HP roll as well. I just see it as the dice rewarding me for the spectacular fails in the last session. I wonder if I will be so lucky next Tuesday. When you have a Charisma of 6 you really have to make your own luck I guess...

Human Again

Two weeks ago my slug-man magic user Eki Ulele was killed in our regular OD&D game. noisms has hinted a little that there may be ways to raise characters from the dead in Yoon-Suin but has given no actual hints about how that might be done. That means that tomorrow I will be statting up a new character, and I've decided that this time he's going to be human.

And he won't be a magic user: after five sessions of getting knocked out and several where I've had spells that were often not useful - possibly, this was down to me not finding a use for them - I've decided that it might be best to go down the Fighter route. Our party already has a Cleric and a Magic-User, so I've decided that someone a bit hands on, covered in armour might be good. Playing as a Thief is tempting, but I'm not sure what the benefits of being a thief are in OD&D.

So I think I will be a Human Fighter. And I might play with the George Costanza path to decision-making: whatever my first inclination is, I will do the opposite. A pacifist fighter... Hmm. Maybe not.

Games Night: Yoon-Suin Obituary

noisms has already pretty much covered exactly what happened last night in Yoon-Suin, although there are a few points that I want to clarify, before I get on to talk about Eki Ulele.

With Eki Ulele eventually recovered, they pressed on, and discovered the treasure of the Feathered Men: 800 gold pieces in metallic urns. These urns, coated with poison, nearly killed the foolhardy Eki Ulele...

I was far from foolhardy! noisms described the urns as being covered in a thick, clear gel or oil. I scraped some off with my knife, looked at it under the light. Sniffed it, dabbed a rag into it to see if it was corrosive in some way, I think I tried burning it to see if it was some intense flammable agent. Finally I very carefully dabbed the tip of my little finger into it.

"Roll a d20," says the DM.
"7."
"What's your save against poison?"
"...oh come on!!!"

At the end of the session, Eki Ulele's death mirrored his life: he wanted to be more than a magician or wizard, he wanted to be other than a slug-man, bound by his caste and his father/mother. Despite being high-born, he had a rage against the unhuman and the inhumane, the treacherous and the despicable. And yes, somewhere along the way he decided that the Jack Bauer approach to getting information from NPCs was 100% legit.

Eki knew Read Magic, Read Languages and Charm Person: only the latter ever really worked, and even then it was used to charm opponents to lie down on the floor while he stabbed them through the back of the neck. He liked to talk, and his strange relationship with the world meant that he would veer wildly from acts of cowardice to acts of courage. He was about three-quarters of the way towards levelling up, and was desperate for more hit points and an offensive spell.

His death, in a bizarre and random encounter after successfully giving his friends time to make their escape was exactly in keeping with his life: short, strange and utterly unpredictable.

Games Night: OD&D in Yoon-Suin

It was games night on Tuesday, and me, Patrick and the Whimsybomb-man met up with noisms at the Scythe to continue our adventures in a setting that noisms has been toiling away on for years. Yoon-Suin is a strange place, humans and demi-humans live side-by-side in the city of Silaish Vo, it seems corruption is everywhere and magic is loose and free.

Patrick and W's PCs are a human fighter and a human magic-user; I am a Slugman Magic-user (look here for noisms' pictures of slugmen) - in this setting that essentially gives me a caste-style bonus, as slugmen are more highborn than humans. This comes out in the way that I roleplay him a little as Hugh Laurie in Blackadder.

Yoon-Suin is very fresh as a setting. What do I mean? We don't know what the world is like. noisms has it all on paper and in his head. There are no orcs and goblins that are a bit Lords of the Rings-ish. So far we've fought humans, moths and been really careful around scorpions. The small creatures are really scary and deadly from what we've seen. We captured an immortal man-beast, the Old King aka the Mad Eunuch, and took him to the Guild of Sages. We found a man made of clay, and ran away as quickly as possible when we got the distinct feeling that the DM was telling us we were extremely outclassed.

The Eastern feel to the setting is also really great. Silaish Vo in description reminds me of a mix of Mos Eisley, Hong Kong, perpetual street markets, and bizarrely it makes me think of William Gibson's work, but I can't put my finger on why...

This is the first campaign I've played using OD&D too. Great so far, reall enjoying it. At first it was mildly frustrating that as a magic-user the only weapons I am allowed are daggers and staffs. Now I'm starting to think more tactically - in fact, while this might be my character's first adventure, he has probably had to deal with miscreants and adventurous incidents in the past in order to get to Level 1. So he must have come up against this, being in a position where he has a spell and a knife and that's it. And he survived.

Maybe thinking about that I can figure out how to continue to keep him alive...

Next Games Night: more Yoon-Suin!

Work Work Work

Gets in the way of everything. But hopefully means that sooner or later I can have a break. Next weekend I'm having the guys around so that we can play games. It might be Carcassonne, might be Munchkin, it might even be noisms' DMing his Yoon-Suin setting.

Something to look forward to after another busy week of work.