Awesomeness All Over the Place

So I'm doing a lot of cool stuff right now. My gaming schedule has shifted pretty substantially in the last month and instead of predominantly running games, I'm actually a player quite a bit.

We took a month off of our regular D&D game that I play in (run by Humorous Endeavors) and have been trying other RPGs. We tried out World of Darkness (which was creepy), Mouseguard (which was AWESOME and a really stark juxtaposition to the dark world concept of the previous game), and this week I ran a one shot of Old School Hack and ran through a pared down version of "The Ghost Tower of Inverness" from early D&D lore. There is something cool about taking a break from your usual game and trying something new that gives you an appreciation for the original game and a new approach to thinking about the game in the first place. We start up our regular 4E game next week and I'm honestly really excited about it.

I'm playing in the WeeklyGrind4E series that MilwaukeeJoe is running (the room we are currently on is the first that he wrote himself and it's absolutely devastating right now, especially since the last room killed over half of our party). Having time to think about how my actions unfold (which you don't get to do quite as much in a live game) has been really cool and has let me think about just what it looks like when my character takes particular actions. A really fun exercise in description and tactical combat without the visual cues and table talk of a regular table top game. This blog taught me how to do play-by-post and it has proved absolutely invaluable for the other thing that is taking up my time right now.

CStevenRoss is doing some great stuff and started running a PvP game using 4E and I'm on a team (playing, I know how silly!) and it's SO INTENSE. I'm literally refreshing my browser to keep an eye on just how many hit points I have left and whether I'm in danger or not. The decision-making process and balancing the potential dangers all over the map embrace exactly what Fourthcore represents.

Speaking about Fourthcore, this past week marked the release of the Fourthcore Alphabet by Sersa V which is essentially a book filled with awesome charts filled with incredibly innovative and descriptive dungeon and monster design ideas. Just flipping through the tables, I got all kinds of ideas on how to better describe and inhabit any dark and spooky place that an adventuring party could explore. The tables are really game system neutral so you could use it to create all kinds of interesting locations for any game. All the charts work as random tables if you want to let chance decide the fate of your dungeoneers, but just reading through the charts is a great way to find cool ideas and really develop a stronger dungeon vocabulary. D&D is a game of  heroes wandering into dark places, hopefully to come back out and this resource can help a gamemaster make that darkness seem especially dark. It's seriously awesome and really worth the $5.99 to pick it up.

My actual game (the one I run) has been slow lately. We've had a lot of random breaks that slowed us down and that has made it more difficult to keep momentum. Especially at Epic tier. Big exciting things take so long to unfold that having these big breaks has really hindered our ability to keep our energy and excitement high. We had a pretty awesome session last time (week and a half ago) involving an elder worm (note that it's not a wyrm) summoned by the blood of Mephistopheles in a gladiatorial arena in Hell. They then traveled from Hell to Letherna and met the Raven Queen in her palace. And since the session wasn't epic enough at this point, they ended up on the shores of Hestavar in the Astral Sea with a squadron of angels and silver dragon-knights flying down on them. I love big cliffhangers. :) It's go time in just a few days and boy do I miss running our normal game.

So that is what I have been up to lately. Sometime soon I'm going to post a write up of my worm arena combat because I sculpted the worm and painted it up myself and it turned out pretty cool. So until next time...