This session the table is made up by the following characters: Aurora Sylvan , helf-elf ranger Carsten Birch , human cleric Caverick Strawton , human druid Edgarial Grandsword , elf wizard-artificer Xaerv , human fighter Managing the chaos is the incomparable, DM Emily . Having followed the wide avenue into the heart of the ancient ruined city of the giants, we found an enormous amphitheater backed up against the rising wall of the ravine. Nesting comfortably within this once grandiose ruin we found a great feathered beast of a dinosaur, and I think rightfully decided this must be the King of Feathers we'd been warned about. The great beast was asleep as we stumbled upon it and we quickly retreated up into the stands to decide on our plan and leave us room for evasive action should the thing awaken before we were suitably prepared for the coming battle. Higher up in the stands we came upon a fellow explorer who was also deciding on a course of action. Aurora Sylvan, this half-elven...

The journey of the Deepnight Revelation continues...  Today the crew for this session of Brett's ongoing Traveller game consists of the following: Jeff "Mega" Credit in the role of XO, as played by Mike Will "Danger" Robinson engineer extraordinaire, as played by Brent Daryen "Lucky" Gavic the vagabond drifter and space rogue, as played by me (Ronn) Prime Directives? We don't have any such thing--go find the fungus and eliminate the threat it poses--that's our directive. Also, maybe, see what else is out there in the unexplored places in the universe... bring back the cool shit. Welcome to the Near Side of Yonder, maybe we'll find something cool... or at least a gas giant we can use to refuel the ship. We're so far outside charted space every jump is a surprise. The surprise this time being an arm of the Great Rift stretching across our planned course. Going around it will add years to our trip, so everybody is scrambling to find a c...

There seems to be some uncertainty surrounding the actual release date for the original Dungeons & Dragons boxed set by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, but based on my limited research of others work who have done considerably more research, it would seem the game was released in late-January 1974. Several of my sources have decided upon the 26th as the day to mark the anniversary and I have no contest with that date. And having prefaced this with all that, today is the 50th Anniversary of the Dungeons & Dragons game. Long live the king. The game has gone through many rule changes, variations, and editions in those 50 years, but it continues to thrive as both a game and an idea.  There had never been anything like it before and it continues to be a fount of inspiration and entertainment for those of us who love the game, the hobby, and dare I say, the lifestyle.  Dungeons & Dragons is my favorite game, it is my primary hobby, and it is the thing that probably most def...

Slaying the Dragon: A Secret History of Dungeons and Dragons by Ben Riggs and read by Sean Patrick. Hopkins is available on Hoopla  and has a runtime of 10h 28m.  I thought I had a pretty good idea of the story Ben Riggs was going to tell when I started this audiobook. Afterall, I lived through the fall of TSR, I subscribed to Dragon magazine, and I've listened to Game Wizards by Jon Peterson, but this was not what I expected. This was that same story, but the story wasn't the same. Or rather, the retelling of the story was different than what I expected. And it went on well past the ousting of Gary Gygax. It changed my opinion of Lorraine Williams, explained a lot of the untold bits, and made me better understand the utter mess that TSR had gotten itself into.  Slaying the Dragon tells the untold story of how TSR, the company that created Dungeons & Dragons, was driven to the brink of disaster, saved, then driven into ruin by disastrous management decisions a second ...

Hey Chummer, there's a new crew on the streets of Night City, running the edge, sporting the look, and making everything more personal. Cyberpunk RED is about to get redefined, the rules are made to be broken and these Edgerunners are just lookin' for a chance to slammit on. Brett is our Gamemaster as we give the Cyberpunk RED system a try. The crew consists of three of the baddest Streetrats ever to run the edge. Bob is playing Mel the Nomad , a transport expert, ultimate road warrior, pirate, and smuggler working to keep the world connected. Weirdly, he has no gun, but that's just a sign of how off the rails this dude is. Mike is playing Grant M Phillips  the Medtech fixing what's broken, stabbed, or shot in the gang. He's not a sanctioned doctor or cyberware medic, but he's a steady hand at patching up meat and metal alike. I'm playing as Drago , a Solo assassin, bodyguard, killer, and soldier-for-hire in this lawless new world. We started off working fo...

 I blame the wife for this purchase and any other purchases that result from her showing me how much "D&D stuff" is on Temu . Mostly it's dice, but there are a few other things of interest. I needed some dice for Brett's Cyberpunk RED game so I ordered two sets of these, which leaves me extra, but they've got the right color scheme to feel apropos. These are Two sets because I wanted 5d6 and 2d10 with the single digits and even with it being an 11 piece dice set, I still won't get what I want from one. The brand name of these is LHSQIOQIO, but I don't know if that's the store name or the manufacturer. Just because the price was dirt cheap, I bought this 5 set of dice. They're just the usual 7 piece dice sets, but I paid less for them than I did for the single set I bought at the hobby store last time. I like the look of these, the color mix is nice, they're very legible, and they all look good with the gold lettering. The website says Allri...

Typically there are six of us on this bi-Wednesday game night, but a combination of factors left all but two of us unable to attend. Aviv and I were talking about what we wanted to do when a walk-in joined the table and made the nights adventure more viable. Aviv had his new MCDM Flee Mortals! book and wanted to discover if running straight out of the book was as easy as we've heard. So, Sharai and I spent a few minutes modifying our characters down to 3rd level. Actually, she leveled her character down to three and I put the finishing touches on a 3rd level fighter I'd worked up for the Early Sunday D&D game. Once we were done and Aviv had put the finishing touches on the nights scenario we jumped into the action. Aviv ran the game, Sharai played Aurora Sylvan, a half-elf ranger, and I played Solaris Marcel Grescian, a half-elf fighter. We drew the Judgement card from the Decuma deck and determined that our group had revealed the truth that the mayor of Lastlight was in al...

Today we were going to forgo our usual Traveller campaign and give the latest version of the Cyberpunk rpg a try. But that was cancelled by a winter storm barreling through the region. I bought the Cyberpunk RED rulebook a few weeks back, but haven't had the opportunity to dig into it. I mentioned this to Brett, the GM, and he suggested that we both read up on the system and then, together, we should be able to figure it out for this one shot. That didn't happen. Good thing I have another week to read the book, because all I did this past week is watch a bunch of videos and skim through the book. I've run previous versions of the game. How much could it have changed? Right! Damn, this book is so poorly organized it stresses me out to go through it. I want to play, but this is rough. Maybe I'll just watch more videos.  I did find the Cyberpunk RED Easy Mode pdf on drivethrurpg. It's free, maybe, if you're interested, you should check it out. Here is the link: Cyb...

All the social media hype about the Dungeons & Dragons product hitting the discount outlets was mostly not something I was interested in. The stuff they were offering was either product I didn't want or had never heard of, but I was next door to Ollie's today and figured I'd just take a little look see at was on offer. They had some D&D stuff like action figures, the campaign packs, and a board game. Nothing I wasn't expecting. No surprises. I couldn't bring myself to buy the Dragonlance Warriors of Krynn game for $9.99, but at $2.99 each buying both of the Campaign Cases seemed like a fair trade. I'll show you a picture of the contents, but I'm not going to waste much digital ink describing them or their content. You can see what comes in the boxes in the pictures above. The boxes are cool looking and hold all the stuff that comes in them. Handy. You get a bunch of bases/tokens in the creature box and some dry/wet erase boards in the terrain box, bu...

Game Wizards by Jon Peterson and narrated by Chris Andrew Ciulla is an audiobook that I have listened to once before, but I couldn't remember if I had. I realized pretty early on that I was engaged in a relisten, but kept going. As stated on the cover, this is the tale of the creation and battle for control of the Dungeons & Dragons game. Chronicling the games creation and release in 1974 and following the growth and conflicts that arose from it's unlikely success. It's interesting stuff, if like me, you started playing the game when Gary Gygax was still the voice of the hobby and AD&D was stirring up waves amongst the fanbase. If that's not where you're coming from, well, you may not get near as much out of this book. It's an interesting story of two game designers and the people that helped bring their game to market, and eventually, how they both lost control of that game, but I don't know how relevant it is to the modern game some 3-4 revisions o...

I just canceled my Loot Studios  fantasy subscription, again, for the third time. I love their stuff and have almost every fantasy bundle they've put out, but I haven't done any 3D printing in 10 months and I don't know when I'll next get the chance. It just seems like a waste to keep paying for monthly bundles of figures. Besides, I have a very large backlog of grey plastic as is. I have things to paint, is what I'm saying. I'm reallocating that $15 to something else gaming related. I'm playing in two campaigns that are being run at The Gamer's Wharf hobby store. I like that they let us use the space, they've got a great stock of things I like, and the folks there seem like good people. So I'm going to take the money I was giving to 3D prints and give it to the hobby store. They have a Patreon  and I feel good contributing to it. Ideally, the perks of being a patreon supporter would be paid out in drinks and snacks, but alas, that is not the ca...

 Aaron is in the house and ready to bring the new campaign world to life. Eric is back. Ben and Alison are missing, but not gone? So I'm told. A couple new faces are at the table, Nate and Joshua. Best of the news is that I found my notes for the last couple sessions, so I can add posts for the last three sessions.

Editor's Note: Apparently, I have missed a session of this Traveller campaign. Not sure how that happened, but it's a thing and the characters have launched the ship, taken off into the wild dark vastness of space, and I'm a bit behind the curve of the story. The Journey Continues... see the note above.  The crew for this session of Brett's ongoing Mongoose 2nd Edition Traveller game today consists of the following: Jeff "Mega" Credit in the role of XO, as played by Mike Will "Danger" Robinson engineer extraordinaire, as played by Brent Ichobod Hoke our security, protection, and peace of mind, as played by Josh Daryen "Lucky" Gavic  the vagabond drifter and space rogue, as played by me (Ronn) Waking up from a deep oblivion, Gavic, realized he was no longer planet side or even still at the space port, the Deepnight Revelation was in on the fringe of the Great Rift far from known sectors and familiar trade routes. His second realization,...

In the deep jungle interior of the Xen'drik our search for the Stone of Fate has brought our party to the edge of a great ravine. Some finger of the giants hand? It is uncertain, but distinctly a possibility, for the Traveler's Curse has reached out to touch us before and is almost certain to again. Below us stretches out a ruined city built to the scale of giants. Stone buildings of enormous size, imposing temples, and smaller ramshackle ghettos stretch out to fill the chasm below us. It is a site not soon forgotten. Edgariel summons forth his familiar, a hawk of some sort, and sends it soaring out over the ruins, surveying the city below and acting as our reconnaissance. Through the eyes of that spirit he discovers a courtyard of burned bodies which are certainly far more recent than the millennia old ruins we stand above. An investigation is in order. We descend into the ravine in fits and starts, the jungle encroaches everywhere and my companions have difficulty with the t...

 And so we say goodbye to 2023 and roll up a new year... May the dice be on your side.  If I could give you advantage on all the rolls this year, I would.  But alas, that's not how life rolls.  Wishing you all the best in the new year.