I am sitting at a table with Vanir, my good buddy Ryan, and several other friends getting a primer on the World of Warcraft TCG. They got heavily into this game after I moved to CO, and now they intend to suck me in as well.

I am biding my time watching and learning, preparing for Drunken D&D by doing a few nerd wind sprints and stretching my liver. I am told some Wizards folks may be there tonight so I have to be in good form.

It’s that wonderful time of year again: GenCon 2010 is upon us!

Wednesday, August 4

2:38pm – Arrive in Indy

Since this year the trend is to provide far more information than necessary, we are flying United. There is an unfortunately balding dork sitting directly in front of me and a very crabby old man in a Cosby-sweater style tshirt behind me. To repay him for his ill temper, I am attempting to fart a video game chiptune to entertain him. It is not working.

8pm – Drunken D&D

This now annual tradition has us meeting up with the guys from Critical Hits (including our very own Vanir, who contributes over there now) to inbibe in strange potions of an adult nature. Usually this game is pretty crazy, so a good time is eagerly anticipated.

Thursday, August 5

8am – RPGA: Mourning of Ravens

Stupid Ranger and I are participating in the RPGA events this year. I have recreated a 4e version of my irrationally violent Maxwell Edison character (a fighter, weilding a maul naturally) to grace Forgotten Realms with. Stupid Ranger is bringing her hybrid Avenger/Evoker deva named Atora to the game, so it should be a pretty good time.

Maxwell made his debut at a Living Forgotten Realms event last weekend and he was just as much of a riot to play as he used to be, so I am looking forward to playing him again.

1pm – Photo Quest check-in

Stupid Ranger decided to participate in the Photo Quest this year, so we have to check in for that. Not much clever to say about this one.

3pm – Chainmaille Dicebag

Why? Because we freaking wanted chainmaille dicebags. That’s why!

7pm – Roleplaying Therapy for the Severely Disturbed

This is our annual event, where we are joined by the Critical Hits guys, Micah from Obsidian Portal, Graham from Critical Ankle Bites, and e from GeeksDreamGirl.com for two hours of the zaniest roleplay you will be likely to encounter.

The premise of this year’s incarnation is that the players are flawed in some way, and have sought the counsel of Dr. Dante to solve their issues. I don’t want to give it away, but Vanir is bringing two of his most insane creations to the table and the rest of the characters participating will give him a run for his money.

Because of some boneheads preparing the materials, this event has changed names several times in recent months. If you’re in the Westin Caucus, you’re in the right place.

9pm – Graham’s Bachelor Party

Our longtime buddy Graham is getting married soon, so we’re giving him a nerdy farewell to bachelorhood and (hopefully) his sobriety all at once! This will be the first bachelor party that I know of that will feature D&D and kobold strippers, so I am looking forward to it!

Friday, August 6

11am – Wil Wheaton’s seminar

I am eagerly anticipating the chance to get to meet one Wil Wheaton, Pope of the Internet. He’s having a big seminar where they aren’t even taking tickets, so we blocked our whole morning to queue up so we get a chance to attend.

Noon to 4 pm – Sales Floor!

This time slot is allocated for wandering around the vast nerdy expanse that is the sales floor. With any measure of luck we will get a chance to meet Wil Wheaton, Felicia Day, and the rest of the folks from The Guild during this time.

4pm – 21 Days to a Novel

This seminar is something that Stupid Ranger and I both wanted to do. I have been toying with the idea of doing National Novel Writing Month this year so I thought it would be a good idea to train this skill a bit. Stupid Ranger has wanted to write a book for a long time, hopefully she will be spurred on by this event.

More tomorrow!

Since this is getting long, I am going to continue the scheduled events tomorrow along with reports from the convention floor!

As many of you know, Stupid Ranger and I are participating in D&D Encounters which is currently taking place in the Dark Sun Campaign Setting of Athas.  Many of those participating in our encounters group remarked that the Dark Sun setting is bleak, less fun, and doesn’t “feel” like D&D and I must say I agreed with them until getting my hands on the Dark Sun Campaign Setting book.

Face it, the world of Athas does not seem fun.

Metal is scarce, the landscape resembles Tatooine in July, all that fun magic that you’re used to using actually makes the landscape WORSE and they’ll kill you if they catch you using it, and there are terrible monsters behind every sand dune.  That nice elf that you met actually just stole the 10 meager ceramic coins you were able to collect and to make matters worse the Gods all got overcome by primordials so even they won’t be able to help you out much.

D&D Encounters focuses primarily on… well… encounters, so you only get a sense of the brutal landscape when it constantly degrades your ability to fight by throwing a sandstorm in your face, baking you in the sun, and then making you fight terrible sand creatures at a frantic pace until you all drop over from exhaustion.  For this reason, I think the gaming group gets treated to what is essentially the worst that this setting has to offer.

Character Themes make all the difference

After reading through the books, I must say that I didn’t give Athas enough of a fair shake.  The plot and setting is made FAR more interesting by details surrounding the races, character themes, and backgrounds presented.  The more I read, the more I saw Athas portrayed as a place of inequitable castes full of interesting political and geographic intrigue.  The races, while considerably more savage than other incarnations of D&D, are very interesting and provide a discordant counterpoint to their equivalents in other fantasy realms.  Most races are painted as slaves, nomads, or outcast magic users.  There are traders, gladiators, and nobles as character themes and paragon paths.

As an aside, I am a sucker for gladiatorial combat.  I love that it is such an intrinsic part of the world of Athas and the classes presented around this theme are fleshed out very well.  These classes and the notion of gladiatorial combat contrasted with some political intrigue would likely be one of my first stops if I were running a Dark Sun game.  I also found the prominence of psions and psionic power to be an interesting avenue for adventure-creation.  I am currently playing Jarvix (a psion) in D&D Encounters and I am enjoying him greatly.

Give Athas a chance

If you’re at all like me, you may come away from the initial preview chapters of the Dark Sun Campaign Setting a bit discouraged.  I strongly encourage spending some time reading through the character themes and some of the plot hook ideas presented a bit further in the book, they are truly what took me from thinking “wow, how could this possibly be fun” to “wow, this could really be fun”!

To me, I would plan to treat the unforgiving world of Athas like you were creating a scenario akin to “Planet of the Apes” or a Conan the Barbarian movie.  Instead of focusing on the bleak, brutal environment you should use this as a savage canvas and use character interactions to make a three-dimensional story supported by (and not defined by) the landscape.

The authors do a great job of giving you the resources necessary to paint a truly enthralling picture with the characters and themes provided.  If you choose to make a game where your players all starve to death and die of Sun Sickness before the end of session one, you’re focusing on the wrong things!

Out of the Box Roleplaying – Gencon 2009 (Panel from left to right: Dante, Vanir, Bartoneus, Yax, Dave the Game, e and Chgowiz)

As if Gencon weren’t crazy enough, we’re adding our own special brand of insanity to the mix. Returning for its third year, but with a sparkly new name, we will be showcasing unconventional roleplaying at its finest.

Game ID: SEM1013931

Title: Roleplaying Therapy For The Severely Disturbed with StupidRanger.com

Description: Can the RPG bloggers beat the DM’s dungeon? Will they try and make the DM’s head explode in the process? Will there be EL Fudge? Come find out the answers to these questions and more at this live play session, with plenty of audience participation and prizes awarded.

This year’s panel of guests (TBA later this month) will be entertaining you with their demonstration of a rules-light-roleplay-heavy game where absolutely ANYTHING can happen! That said, please be aware that this is not really a family-friendly event; language and content may not be suitable for all audiences. It will be fun, it will be crazy, and there will be audience prizes!

Last year’s session, recorded by the fine folks at Pulp Gamer, is available for review here.  And if you want to see more pictures, you can view my Gencon 2009 Flickr set here.

We’re looking forward to seeing you there!

We recently reached 11th level in our campaign, marking our transition to paragon.  This was a tricky moment for me with my wizard, Eaerenel.  She has always focused on fire spells, but there was not a paragon path before her that fit her fiery nature.  So, working with some existing paragon paths and with the blessing of the DM, I developed my own paragon path.

Achieving Balance

I wanted to make sure that my paragon path was balanced, and I considered altering an existing paragon path to ensure I had that balance.  At the same time, I wasn’t satisfied with just taking an ice path and changing the keywords; some elements don’t transfer from ice to fire well.  So I selected two different ice paths (Spellstorm Mage from PHB and Bralani Wintersoul from Dragon 384) and blended elements from each.

Introducing: Flamespark Mage

After cherry-picking and adjusting the elements from the previous two ice-y paragon paths, I developed the Flamespark Mage paragon path.  I reviewed it with Dante prior to calling it complete, and we did make a few minor adjustments.  In the end, I have exactly the paragon path that I want: fiery and balanced, with interesting spells to look forward to learning.

This is a mostly spoiler-free review/recap of our experiences.  If you don’t want to know anything about the third session, don’t click the link below.

Dante & I have been playing the new D&D Encounters season: Fury of the Wastewalker.  Last week, we finished our third session (see photo).  I’m playing Barcan, the sorcerer, while Dante is playing Jarvix, the psion.  Both of us are new to Dark Sun, so this has been a unique experience for us.

Session Recaps — Without Giving Anything Away

Traveling through the wastelands, we find our caravan attacked.  We few adventurers survive and strive to escape to civilization.  It’s not an easy life, traveling the desert, especially with random attacks threatening our lives.  But we have to keep moving, or the victory our enemies fail to achieve will be accomplished by the harsh environment.

My Thoughts So Far

I opted for the sorcerer, Barcan.  I wanted to play a class with which I had some familiarity, but there were still several elements I didn’t know.  It’s tough to walk into a character not knowing anything about them, but I thought my experience with my wizard would be enough to help me figure my way through the unfamiliar powers.

My biggest problem was getting used to the abbreviated character sheet.  I miss having all the details, especially the skills.  With all the miscellaneous skill checks, it would have been nice to have all the skills and modifiers listed, instead of just the trained skills.  The spells are fairly well defined, but I miss little things like the keywords.  For me, it’s more about what I don’t see on my little character card, though the omissions are minor in nature.

Dark Sun is a unique experience for me.  I’m having fun so far, but I’m not sure how much I would enjoy the difficulties of surviving the environment in a long-term campaign.  So I’m reserving judgment until I’ve play a bit more. 😉

The Player’s Strategy Guide came out a couple of weeks ago, and while it may not be for everyone, I think the Strategy Guide is a great reference, especially for new players.

For New Players

If you haven’t had much — or any — roleplaying experience, the guide is a great reference for getting your feet wet. There is a lot of great advice on roleplaying topics, from deciding what character to play to getting into character to deciding when to heal. What I like about this from the new player perspective is that things are explained simply, without a lot of the jargon that can be a little intimidating to new players.

For Experienced Players

The guide may feel as if it’s geared toward new players, but there are still valuable tips for experienced players who may be switching to 4E. Because 4E has so many different elements from previous editions, some of the character development techniques can be useful for those who are switching editions. What I really like from the experienced player perspective are the character quizzes. There are quizzes to help you pin-point which class and which race you might like to play. This would have been immensely helpful for our paladin, who switched classes after 10 levels because the warlord just wasn’t suiting her style of play.

Continuing in the thread of “Vanir and I pick topics for one another”, he asked me to write an article on how to make classes not all feel like they are different varieties of Wizards in 4e.  So here it goes.

Focus on the roleplay

From our interview with Andy Collins and Bill Slavicsek at GenCon last year, this conclusion was clear to me: the mechanics are just mechanics, and you should be focusing on the roleplay.  Nerds latch on to rules and limitations, and often excel and enjoy min/maxing or using the mechanics to ends that they probably weren’t intended for.  What 4e provides for you is a way to have entry-level abilities and skills and have them FEEL impressive.  They even give you special racial abilities that help deepen your character from a two-dimensional cookie cutter into a honed, interesting, dynamic badass that is fun to play.

But I digress.  The criticism that 4e characters all feel like spellcasters, casting with their implements/weapons/rages/etc instead of having actual fighting tactics are ridiculously unfounded IMHO.  What has happened is that 4e characters have some very cool and dynamic abilities that allow them to participate in combat in a more meaningful way.

In our last session, our Avenger used on of his abilities to switch places with a bad guy, forcing said baddie into a situation that they had to struggle to get out of.  Our player actually remarked that that was one excellent battle tactic and that was an important distinction: the abilities read in a standard way, and its easy to attribute them all to a spell block since that’s what we’re used to from previous editions.  In reality, the non-magical character abilities are intended to be battle tactics, or primal abilities… something exceptionally physical to shape the battle in their favor.

So in short: view your character through the proper lens that the class outlines, and pay no mind to the fact that the ability card looks like the 3e spell block.  They’re just trying to simplify the presentation, and that’s it.

“Even the mighty Bat Loaf needs a hand now and then.” said Niann, in a way that totally did not summarize the beginning of the story. “You need an assistant.”

Bat thought for a moment. Usually Niann, his beautiful wife, was at his side and she could help him keep a handle on things. Attendance at the Academy of Rock Justice was booming, and there was a great deal to do. However, certain events happened atop the legendary Tarrasque that were complicating matters greatly for the two of them – namely, the birth of Tarrasque Loaf. He was a wonderful little boy, but due to the blessing of Nathaniel, the newly-crowned God of Pain, he was inhumanly strong and was manifesting powers most toddlers did not possess. An epic-level parent, or at the very least a party of a dozen of his senior staff, was necessary to make sure the destruction was kept to a minimum. As it turned out, Leomund’s Secure Shelter worked as well protecting the outside world from its contents as it did protecting its contents from the outside world. But you can’t just keep the little fellow in a cage all day, Niann decided to spend the majority of her days as a stay at home rock-n’-roll mom for the time being.

It was pretty clear to Bat, especially after that completely unrelated quote at the beginning of the story, that he needed an assistant. But who? It wasn’t as if he could just hire a pencil-pusher to make sure all the GP wound up in the right place. Bat’s work was that of Rock Justice, and on a bad week his personal assistant would wind up burnt to a crisp or possessed by a demon who was seriously into genital self-mutilation. He needed someone who could back him up in a fight, and Niann’s shoes were very large and very sexy, and it would be difficult to fill them in a way that wasn’t lame or gross or involved the career-foot equivalent of a muffin-top. Plus, Bat had grown accustomed to having certain needs addressed in the field, especially on longer trips, and not having Niann there complicated things somewhat. Sure, there were always those wands that cast pornographic illusion spells, but he found them somewhat beneath him. He preferred other things beneath him, namely Niann and sometimes a succubus or three.

So it was that Bat Loaf, like so many other times before in his career, unwittingly looked through time and space to discover the best way of deciding anything: a giant 1980’s style tournament. Surely this would produce the best candidate for the job. It was a foolproof plan, and nothing strange or unpleasant would ever result from it. OR WOULD IT?

I am pleased to report that our good friend Vanir is visiting StupidRanger West for a few days, and today he and I have selected a blog topic for one another.  He demanded that I put on my gold lame’ interior design shorts and talk about how matters of dungeon decor.  Luckily, I have been wearing them all along!  You can read the topic I selected for him (or whatever fell out of his brain as a result) over at his Dire Flailings column on Critical Hits.

WARNING: This post may contain some details about the Kincep Mansion module, but I will try to keep it spoiler-free.  You’ve been warned.

Always coordinate with healthy natural plant life

Our D&D crew has recently began exploring Kincep Mansion, a lovely example of Victorian era fantasy architectures that has fallen into sad disrepair.  Unfortunately, the Kincep mansion has been beset by some less than desirable feng-shui in recent years, best seen to be believed.  They did get one thing right: cultivating a healthy and extensive garden.

During our last session, Stupid Ranger’s character was exploring the grounds and smartly taking the circuitous path to survey the property.  Upon reaching the back of the mansion, I described the garden as described in the module and then she started asking questions.  “Is it a kitchen garden?” she asked.  My first thought (and statement): “WTF is a kitchen garden?”

It seems that this fairly obvious detail was overlooked on the Kincep Mansion fact sheet, so I had to stammer around a bit and decide what type of plants actually comprised the overgrown garden.  Everyone also had a good laugh at my lack of skill at herbology.  The main takeaway here: read through the module and ask yourself “what possible follow-up questions can the players have in this situation?” and make up some stock answers.

An informed interior designer is a happy interior designer

Once again, Stupid Ranger’s character was my downfall.  This time they were cautiously edging closer to the stable area of the map.  They didn’t like the looks of the run-down architecture and overgrown surroundings (always hire a gardener before you want to sell a property!) so Stupid Ranger’s bard wanted to know if she’d heard any stories that would tell about the interior of the mansion and whether or not the stables connected to the main house.  This was not apparent from the outside of the building, so it was a long-shot and by this point in the session I was rather exasperated at the strange details that I had to make up on the fly.

Of course, Stupid Ranger rolled a natural 20.

That meant I had to make up a story about Euphegenia Kincep, the impetuous daughter of the mansion’s owners who enraged her conservative father by sneaking out the Main Hall via the east entrance to the stables with her beau.  A ruined chastity belt later and the story is the stuff of local legends.  Of course, the group wanted to know if they ended up in the stall or the hayloft and a variety of other questions best left for impolite company.

The moral of this story: let your characters use their skills, and be prepared to pull some impromptu tales of lore out of your hindquarters.  This particular situation was stressful for me as the GM, but the result not only fit well into the plot but the group LOVED it.

Be prepared to dive deep into the interior design of your dungeon because you will end up with a richer experience as a result.  Let’s hear some stories of dungeon detailing from you, gentle reader!  Until next time!