Thotham's Journal #14 -- Continuing my Wednesday D&D Game

Every Wednesday I meet up with a group at a local game store and play a couple hours of D&D. I'll be reposting this over on my D&D character blog, but when I do I'll also be adding an AI generated story board that coincides with the text. I made a comic book out of the first three months of play, and I'm considering doing the same with this next three months' worth of play.

Anyway, since I need to put something up for Blaugust, I thought I'd just post my character journal up here as well!

When you play at this game store, it's gonna be a weird mix of pogs, minis, and lego heroes.

~~

Thotham's Journal #14 

The party pushed on into the next room, finding several cultists in the midst of a ritual. They were not pleased with our appearance and battle began immediately!

In the back of the room, the cultist leader was covered in a strong protective barrier. Toward the middle were his two attendants, also covered in a similar but less impressive barrier. In the front were five cultists wearing amulets that seemed to be feeding energy into the attendants.

Inrah was the first to attack, throwing an orb of lightning that lit up the darkened room, ending in a burst of electric death for the cultist it hit. I moved my telekinetic hand holding a torch into the center of the room, took steady aim, and threw a psi-knife into the skull of another cultist, breaking his mind and felling his body. Shadow slipped inside and downed yet another two cultists with a flurry of blows.

Zax strode forward challenging one of the attendants, but much to their surprise, a massive attack that seemed to connect had no effect whatsoever! Yuna, seeing the attendants couldn't be harmed, called down a sacred flame from the heavens and extinguished the foul soul of the final front-line cultist.

When this happened, the barrier protecting the attendants shattered as the amulets worn by the front-line fell to the floor with their now lifeless hosts. The leader in the back, continued muttering more strange, incomprehensible ritualistic language as his eyes glowed brighter. The attendants struck back, injuring Shadow.

We coordinated our attacks on the attendants and struck them down without many problems, except for Shadow managing to get his blade arms stuck in a wall. I've never seen our warforged look so confused!

When the cultists' high priest finished his ritual, his own barrier shattered as he screamed wickedly into our souls. He had been building a powerful soul crushing spell that Inrah and I took the full brunt of. The rest of the group felt it as well but had an easier time shrugging it off. Unfortunately for Inrah, the evil priest also targeted her with black tentacles that erupted from the ground and grappled her, tossing her back and forth, squeezing not only her body, but her mind as well.

To make matters worse, the Priest fragmented into four images that blinked in and out of existence randomly. While Shadow, Zax, and I focused on attacking these images, Yuna had her hands full casting a healing word on Inrah over and over. From my vantage point in the shadows, it was quite the sight! Yuna would heal Inrah. Inrah would be strangled and knocked unconscious by the tentacles. Yuna would again heal Inrah. Inrah would again be knocked unconscious. This happened several times until Zax finally was able to rush over to Inrah, grab her out of death's grip, and drag her to safety.

Eventually we shattered the images and took another agonizing death scream from the priest. (I can still hear his evil piercing my mind.) Cornered and outnumbered with his fragmenting spell broken, we ended his corrupt sermon -- my psi-blades, Shadow's blade arms, and Zax's holy smite. We had overcome the cultists in the sunken cave and found a treasure chest filled with gold for our troubles. 

There's nothing quite like 3,000 gold pieces and some patching up from Yuna to make you feel better . . . at least I hope that's the case for Inrah. She was near death more times in the span of a minute than most should ever experience in a lifetime.

~~ 

Fun fight!  

Happy Dueling!

I made a comic book for my D&D Group

I briefly mentioned this at the beginning of last month, but as I was cataloging my new D&D group's journeys, I started to get the idea that I could produce a kind of comic book. The goal wasn't to mass distribute it and sell it on shelves, but rather I just wanted to hand them out to these new friends I had made.

It all started with a blog that I called Thotham's Journal. As most know, keeping notes and writing about your D&D character's adventures isn't anything new. I (and countless others) have done it a bunch before, and in fact my old DM encouraged it by handing out Heroic Inspiration for anyone willing to write about their journey. Because of that, it became almost second nature -- of course I'm going to write about my adventures!

I was also using AI to produce pictures to go along with the blog posts. (I've already discussed my struggles with AI art at length.) I didn't really need help with the writing department, but what I did use AI for was to stop me from being so long winded. It was not uncommon for me to throw down 750 to 1,000 words to describe a play session, and honestly, once I started looking at making a comic book, that just wasn't going to work. So I also asked AI to condense my posts down to about 350 to 400 words so they would still be readable and fit on one page.

When I first had the idea, I actually tried to make a standard comic book out of our adventures because one play session really could have been stretched out into one entire comic, but explaining word bubble orientation, keeping character details straight, and directing character positioning is actually pretty hard to do with AI. It's like I'd describe a small change I'd want done to an otherwise great looking comic page spread, and it would just bungle and change a handful of other things in the process. 

So I went back to my original thought, which was . . . hey, current AI may not do great making comic page spreads, but it is actually pretty good at making simple storyboard panels! It reminded me of the old Prince Valiant comics in the newspaper from when I was a kid. They worked kind of similarly in that there weren't really word bubbles, instead it was a lot of text with storyboard pictures. THAT, AI could pull off.

Once I had all my storyboards made and words condensed down to 350-400 words per page, I could have a page of text on the left and a storyboard picture on the right as you thumbed through the comic book. The inside cover was a tribute to the players of the game, the game store for hosting, and the GM for making the adventure. The first page was my character as a level one Rogue. The back inside cover was my character now as a level 4 soul knife rogue. 

When I was at a local bookstore I had seen a number of local comics for sale and on the back of several of them was a company called Ka-blam. When I was searching for a printer, Ka-blam was in fact one of the top results and looked to be a great company to work with. I love that they will cut some of your costs by letting you put their ad on the back page of your comic book. 

To be honest, they were amazing to work with. I had used AI once again to try and produce my full pdf, and as per usual, AI had bungled a lot of the finer details like continuity between pages and keeping enough safe space between art and edges per the template that Ka-blam had provided. They contacted me before printing and raised some concerns about the art being too close to the edge.

At that point I took all the artwork to Microsoft PowerPoint and placed the pages by hand because I had had enough of messing around with AI to try and get the last bit done. After exporting the .pdf, I sent it back to Ka-blam, and a few days later they had printed out 12 high-gloss copies of my comic book and shipped it to me for around $55.

Honestly, I'm incredibly happy with how it turned out, and being able to hand these out to the other players and the DM as a gift to commemorate our adventures felt really satisfying. I guess more than anything, I'm happy I learned so much about the process of just printing and preparing a comic along the way. Perhaps if I had $1,000 to pay a really good artist on Fiverr to make a comic book for me, I'd do it, but this was good for what it was: a fun commemorative item and a learning experience.

Happy Dueling!

A dose of real life: Chemo, Xeriscape, Poetry, Birthdays, and D&D!

Well, dang, it's been a hot minute hasn't it? It feels like a good time to update you all on what's going down in the life of Tom. Let's get to it.

First up, the cancer . . . I'm doing chemo again, and I'm back in a regular three-week cycle:

- Week1: Get infusion on a Friday, Feel like garbage from that Saturday through Tuesday. Bounce back Wednesday through the first Friday.

- Week 2: Avoid people while I'm immune compromised. I'm working from home, and I stay in my little bubble.

- Week 3: Life is good! Kick in those steroids on Thursday and brace myself for "the suck" of week 1 all over again.

Bring it Chemo x 2!

As for other trial prospects, my oncologist and I decided to skip the BiPave trial I was looking at in case insurance didn't come through. Currently I'm hinging secondary bets on Daraxonrasib getting wider approval. It's got some funky possible side effects, including bleeding from the pores of your face, but it targets my particularly difficult kind of KRAS cancer mutation. If worse comes to worse, there's always that!

Next up, I gotta talk about my front non-lawn, y'all. I've been having EXTREME stress about my front lawn ever since we moved into the new house and I realized that it was a bark chip nightmare full of weeds and old grass that was never fully dealt with. 

Knowing that it was a huge point of stress for me, my wife turned to my father-in-law, and he hooked us up with a family-loan so we could get it redone in xeriscape. 

It turned this:

So stressful to look at for me

. . . into this:

Night and day

One less thing to worry about is good for my soul. I couldn't be happier about it.

Thirdly, my apologies to my acquaintances who hate AI -- sincerely -- but I discovered that I could use it to build a mobile game I pitched to my old company. I talk all about my internal conflicts about it in my last post. 

I'm now on my sixth prototype build of the game with a roadmap to launch on Android and possibly PC. It's been something I've been able to work on after hours and during my chemo recovery. I wish I had the money to pay and artist and a programmer to help me tag team this game, but ChatGPT it is for the time being. It's been incredibly enlightening. 

Poetry Slammers is becoming real!

Fourthly, I can't believe my youngest turned 17. Remember when I announced his birth all the way back when? Crazy. Such a good kid. Going to watch him play the mellophone in the local 4th of July parade tomorrow.

I like how I appear taller than him in this picture . . . I'm not.

Finally, I've been playing a lot of ye old dungeons and dragons. We finished up our first three-month long campaign and now we've shifted tables to a new DM. They gave us the option of rolling up new level five characters, but I've decided to just stick with good ol' Thotham my soul knife. 

To those ends, I've printed up a comic book of his adventures (again, with the help of AI), and a short run of 12 copies will soon be delivered to me so I can pass them out to the people I played the game with and have a couple copies for myself. So fun to give them all some kind of memorabilia of our time around the table.

Yup, pretty AI looking. Fun to make though!

So there's all the news that's fit to print about me. I'm now two years into my journey here back in Utah, and it's been a weird ride so far. Thanks for reading and as always . . .

Happy Dueling!

D&D TV -- It's real and how to make it better?

 The other day I stumbled upon the most fascinating live TV channel. It's the Dungeons and Dragons Adventures Channel on Plex. 

I like free . . . I like good free even better.

What?! What is this world?! What have I stumbled upon?! An actual Duneons and Dragons TV channel that isn't on demand and that isn't some random video on YouTube?  You mean, I can just leave this channel on in the background to torment everyone in earshot with my nonsense? My family might not agree with me, but this is the best!

Always with the crackling fire in the background

At least that's what I thought for the first few days of letting this run in the background at our house, but the reality is a bit like this:

• It's the same 4 programs that run over and over on a schedule
• There aren't enough advertisers to fill the commercial breaks
• I always seem to miss big chunks of information from the programs that are playing.

And that's ok . . . That's what makes it feel like an awesome version of old-school TV, but let's talk more about this starting with what IS available on this channel:

~~

The Old 80's Dungeons and Dragons Cartoon

I had all of these recorded on VCR tape from a kid . . . complete with commercials from the 80's and everything. It was awful quality, and unfortunately, you can see that even in high definition it's awful quality. Not to mention that you could just watch all these old episodes already on YouTube since they're already uploaded, including the fantastic fan-made final episode, which I doubt you'd see on Plex's Dungeons and Dragons Adventures Channel.

Still . . . just flipping on the TV and a random Dungeons and Dragons cartoon being played from my childhood is pretty great. Love it.

Pour one out for The OGs and their unicorn pet.

Heroes' Feast

Anyone that's walked into a game store over the past year or two has seen the Heroes' Feast book. It's a recipe book that features D&D themed food.  Well, they've gone and made a cooking show from it, and you can watch the heck out of it on the Dungeons and Dragons Adventures Channel. They do it up right, and you can be assured your TV chef is a legit D&D player.

Cooking with Dungeons and Dragons.

Faster, Purple Worm! Kill! Kill!

This is a D&D comedy show akin to Whose Line Is It Anyway with actual dice rolling.  The basic premise of this show is that four level-one characters with intricate and funny backgrounds are presented in depth and given a situation. You are endeared to these characters and their players for over half an hour and then, in the last bit of the show they encounter a MEGA-feared CR monster (Like a purple worm, like the Tarrasque, like a Lich) and ultimately die, every time. It's mildly entertaining -- moreso depending on who is sitting at the table/

Yes, that is Matthew Lillard as a final boss.

Encounter Party

This is a full-blown campaign adventure featuring a DM and six adventurers, ala Critical Roll. My main problem is that I keep tuning in at the wrong time, I've seen them at level four, I've seen them at level three, and I still don't know really what's going on here.  I like everyone's characters though for sure! Much to my surprise Khary Payton from Walking Dead fame was sitting at the table and the show got 100 percent more awesome.

Can I have a game table like this for my house, please?!

 And that's it . . . those four programs play endlessly over and over.

~~

Now let's talk about commercial breaks. Some commercials do play, but unfortunately, these ads aren't really relatable. Even worse, at certain points during the show, they just throw up a splash screen that says "We'll be right back after this break" and the VOLUME OF THE BACKGROUND MUSIC GETS REALLY LOUD! Presumably, this is because they don't have enough advertisers to fill the time allotted to commercial breaks. 

This image is actually painful on my ears

Every time the commercial breaks background music pops on my wife yells WILL YOU TURN THAT DOWN and gets super irritated with me. LOL. It's pretty funny, but also not very funny at all. Did they really have to crank it for a non-commercial commercial break?

~~

Now let's talk about what would make this channel 100 percent more awesome!

1- The Easy fix. Show the D&D movies. I know they didn't age well, but so didn't the D&D cartoons. Show 'em.  Show all three of the old movies and the latest movie as well.  Just put them on once in a while. 

• Dungeons and Dragons
• Dungeons and Dragons Wrath of the Dragon God
• Dungeons and Dragons 3 The Book of Vile Darkness 
• Dungeons and Dragons Honor Among Thieves

LOL. So bad it's good.

2- Break away from official D&D content and dip into adjacent Anime. I've been watching a lot of Delicious in Dungeon and let me tell you, it's Heroes Feast the cartoon. Really, just adding this anime to your lineup would be a fantastic addition. And then there are other options. Just imagine watching these as your Saturday morning cartoons on Dungeons and Dragons Adventures:

• Delicious in Dungeon
• Goblin Slayer
• Record of Lodoss War
• That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime
• Made in Abyss
• The Slayers

I love watching Delicious in Dungeon with my oldest

3- Go hard with the documentaries. One of the best D&D documentaries I've watched in recent days was Eye of the Beholder: The Art of Dungeons and Dragons. I wrote about it on Mutant Reviewers. Now, I know that it takes a bit of a critical look at Hasbro, and probably for that it makes it a hard sell, but really having honest conversations about our past is healthy!  Another D&D adjacent documentary I wrote about on Mutant Reviewers was Monster Camp. A Larping documentary on Dungeons and Dragons Adventures would be amazing.

• Eye of the Beholder: The Art of Dungeons and Dragons
• Monster Camp
• Dungeon Life: A Dungeons and Dragons Documentary
• The Dungeon Masters
• The Dwarvenaut

Artists talking about D&D -- I love it.

4- Gaming convention coverage. When a gaming convention happens, cover it like a news program with a constant stream from a booth. Just think of tuning in to watch the crowds at big conventions like these:

• GenCon
• Origins Game Fair
• PAX Unplugged
• Dice Tower East
• Essen Game Fair

Just give me a cam and a few interviews from GenCon, and I'm good.

5- Embrace Adult Content . . . nah this probably wouldn't work. Sigh, but it would be such an easy win by adding Vox Machina, Critical Role, Adventure Zone . . . heck, just run more adult-language programming from 1am to 4am. I'm sure Hasbro would have some beef with this though.

6- Make a funny late-night program. Again, this probably wouldn't work. You'd have to actually produce a live show and commit to it, but having a Stephen-Colbert-type digesting the news with a Dungeon Master's mind behind it would be fantastic. Again, Hasbro would shy from politics, but MAN I want this now. Guess you could just watch Stephen Colbert when he talks about Lord of the Rings, but I want a half hour to an hour of that every day.

7- Make advertising affordable and easy for nerds and nerd products. Think of all the gaming convention booths, the Kickstarter projects, the local conventions, the renfaires, and all of it that could be advertised, but aren't. I'd rather watch one of those than a Pella Windows advertisement. 

I mean, how expensive would it be to advertise on the Dungeons and Dragons Adventures Channel anyway? They should make it way more easy than running through all this bidding nonsense. Make it easy, please!

I need some Scented Realms advertisements, stat!

8- More D&D Lore-based shows. YouTube has a plethora of fantastic shows that talk about the Lore behind D&D. I'd love to see a heavy lean into Lore with the writers of the game. Every book I buy for D&D seems to have a section where it expands on the background of a race -- I'd love to see this shown in a more cinematic and artistic style. Imagine seeing a program about the fascinating background of the Illithid society. 

Just a half-hour show on Mind Flayers, please. Thank you!

So tell me, fellow nerds, what would you do to make this channel a hit? A reality dating show that happens with a one-shot dungeon? DM Tips and Tricks videos? Whatcha got?!

Happy Dueling!

Baldur's Gate 3 -- doing wrong things the right way

When last we left our heroes, they were doing things completely out of order and not following the main quest line ... because why would we ever do things the right way?!

Maybe book burnings ain't such a bad thing after all...

Basically we had jumped all the way to the Underdark just out of random exploration rather than being overly concerned with having parasites in our brains. In fact, we wandered around a mage tower in the underdark for an hour or so before Moonstar (Dylan in real life) turned to his real life son and asked what we had missed here in this tower, and he noted that there was a little jumping puzzle down through some mushrooms on the far side of the tower where we hadn't even looked. Whoops. 

But really I don't think much of that mattered anyway since, after exploring the whole gosh darn tower we virtually turned to each other and said . . . maybe we should just follow the main quest first and figure out why we're supposed to be here?

Druid magic is always so chloro-filled

So back we went to the overworld and started trying to pull out parasites from our heads even though we already had some advance knowledge that we really didn't want to pull out the parasites from our heads yet. In other words, the story got a bit wonky for us, and we just played along.

The hat is everything.

And then I found the most glorious cowboy hat and thus began my Sheriff Avantador story arc, which was much more enjoyable simply because every time my dragonborn came on screen, we couldn't help ourselves but laugh at the ridiculousness of a cowboy dragonborn. 

After a couple restarts, we had freed our druid friend from the underdark and had a better direction, which was, let's explore this whole world before we move on to the next chapter. We found Asterion, who we had completely missed.  We even destroyed a bunch of gnolls and found ye' old rolling ball trap from Indiana Jones. Let's just say, it wasn't a proud moment where we broke out our best ability checks. *cough*

The whole crew and our hats too

Eventually we all gained ridiculous headwear and moved on to the next act, where we promptly ran into a town being protected by a cleric's spell.  Then she got attacked and died. Then the whole town turned undead and jumped us. Then we hid on the second floor of the inn and cheesed a fight with ranged attacks and killed the whole said town.

Um, sorry this all happened to you all. Whoops

So much for being heroes, but MAN, that was stellar loot . . . now if we just had an NPC left to sell it to . . .

Seriously though, that battle was incredibly epic. I was ready to restart, but Moonstar wanted to see it through. Avantador spent most of the fight on his back with one foot in the grave, but he was happy to be revived and level up to sixth level ... bring on the fireball spell!

So there you have it. We're level 6 in Act 2 and 24 hours in. It's a great game and we're still having fun with it!

Happy Dueling!

Finally . . . a Baldur's Gate 3 post . . .

Look. I get it. Y'all were playing Baldur's Gate 3 like 11 months ago, but this thing just went on sale on Steam for 20% off and my buddy, Dylan (heretofore known as Moonstar), was like . . . Tom, let's freaking play Baldur's Gate 3! 

Ahh, Avantador!  It's good to finally see you in 3D!

The first thing I needed to do was recreate my Dragonborn Bard, Avantador . . . to this day he's one of my favorite characters I've ever made in D&D. I used to write about him a lot on my little D&D side blog. It's super wholesome . . . unlike the next thing you're about to see.

I feel dirty . . . make the images go away

Because the second thing I needed to do, was a Gith Skanky. Yes, BG3 is a mature-rated game. You've been warned.

I'll never fully recover from this . . .

Now that I've got those two things out of the way, I can play some D&D!

Moonstar and Avantador have been tearing things up and making a lot of bad choices over the past 14 hours of playtime. We almost TPK'd in a goblin village by trying to free a gnome tied to a windmill, but through the magic of zoning, free rez scrolls, and some kiting, we managed to pull through. Whew. We must have wasted 2 to 3 hours just figuring out how we were going to survive that.

After figuring out the magic of "saving often," we then somehow stumbled our way into the Underdark, and after a scary encounter with a Bullete, we jogged into a group of myconids that were ready to bestow upon us all the honorary titles we wanted as long as we were murdering all their enemies along the way.

Dance Myconids, Dance!

Yesterday we struggled and barely pulled out from an encounter with a particularly nefarious Drow named Nere. Some gnomes had to be sacrificed, we had to feign allying with him for a time, and then ultimately we just let the poor sap be the tank for us and die at the hands of the Druegar. Pretty much everyone died but us, and we were limping along with all our resources expended.  It took us 4 maybe 5 tries to get it to play out correctly. We probably should have come back later when we were at the appropriate level? It was super intense.

Handing over the head to the king

Anyway, one of the great things about waiting 11 months to write about a popular game is that I feel guilt-free about writing spoilers. Everyone who's played it knows the main plot by now. It's a campaign world adventure.  You probably won't run it exactly the same every time you play through it, but the fact remains that you have a mind flayer worm in your head and you need to get it out no matter how many times you're going to play it. I'm ok with that, it's just not an epic MMO adventure with several starting points that differ. 

On the other hand, everyone's journey will differ. It's a huge sprawling campaign setting that so far has been a lot of fun journeying through. It's basically D&D 5e with small twists here and there. Moonstar and I are certainly having fun with it!

Happy Dueling!

Neverwinter, The Tomb of Annihilation, and Grief

Back before the pandemic, I was running a D&D campaign for my family and Jeff Toney and his daughter. The ragtag group called themselves "The Saviors," and I had them on a ship headed toward the peninsula of Chult (as I blogged about it here in 2019). 

Unfortunately we all got busy for a few months . . . and then the pandemic hit, so we never actually got a chance to undertake the quest to reach the Tomb of Annihilation. Now, look, I'm not the best DM in the world, and taking on an epic sandbox adventure such as the Tomb of Annihilation is a bit daunting to be honest. I remember feeling that pressure and went to an old MMO named Neverwinter (you remember this game, yes?) to get some inspiration.

The colorful town of Port Nyanzaru

Back in the day, I absolutely loved Neverwinter, and especially the foundry system (RIP). Even on my last venture there back in 2019, I was vibe-ing with the game even though the foundry system was gone. Anyway, in Neverwinter, you can visit Chult and run around Port Nyanzaru and the surrounding jungles of The Tomb of Annihilation as part of a campaign. It's great this exists!

You know, I guess I've had a bit of a fascination with the Tomb since in 2021, I even played the turn-based Steam Game. What can I say? I LIKE ME SOME DINOSAURS AND LICHES!

I really did have fun playing this game.

Fast forward to last Monday, the family and I finally took a couple hours over the holiday to once again play the Dungeons and the Dragons together. In fact, everyone in the family thought it was finally time for my youngest to join in our nerd-dom and roll up his first character, and they all agreed that dad needed to step up and be the DM again. Well, since I never got a chance to run Tomb of Annihilation, guess what adventure we started playing? Yup, it's all happening!

The first session went well, they formed their party in Baldur's Gate, met the quest-giving wizard Syndra Silvane, and teleported over to Chult after a considerable amount of roleplay and laughter. It was a good time. My son's Goliath Paladin named Gungaga is amazing. I think they're going to have a lot of fun playing together.

I love the book art for Tomb of Annihilation

Now (insert nervous laugh) once again, I'm feeling the pressure of taking on this epic sandbox adventure known as the Tomb of Annihilation.  Because of this, I logged on Neverwinter again and got fascinated all over with what I found there. This time I even went as far as reassigning my skills, cleaning out some of my overstuffed inventory, and ran out the doorway to kill a heard of raptors.

It took me a second to catch up to speed and then I realized . . . everything had changed once again in this game.  What?! I was now level 20, which seemed like a downgrade to where I was back when you could level to 70. The gear ratings on my gear were unfamiliar. I was in that back-to-an-old-game lost state.

A little research on MassivelyOP turned up some information about a game update back in 2021 where all the levels got squashed down to 20 to match the pen and paper RPG. 

I then took to YouTube to find a guide for returning players, and instead stumbled upon the Josh Strife Hayes Worst MMO Ever series where he talks about his ruined love for Neverwinter. I couldn't make it through the whole thing, but man . . . it's full of sadness (especially at the end of the video). This was the MMO that got him into MMOs, and you could tell there was a lot of love mixed with a lot of loss there. Long story short, the aggressive monetization practices of the game made him mourn the game he loves to play.

You know, most of the problems he cites won't affect me as an extremely casual player of the game, but I couldn't help but sympathize and understand where he's coming from. It was weird because his emotional stress made it even more difficult for me to want to log on and run around where I was already having trouble reacquainting myself with the game. 

In the end, I don't know if I'll ever really return to Neverwinter as an MMO of choice, but I am happy there are some resources there I can draw from for my game. I'll most likely queue up the Chult music on our TV during the next game. That alone will help set the mood for our game. 

 

I'm sorry that money ruins the online worlds we love, but at the same time I am happy the money that funds these games allow for art like this to exist. It's truly a bittersweet feeling.

Happy Dueling

Leslie the Druid in The Tomb of the Serpent

I joined in a side game of Dungeons and Dragons on Saturday and started playing up a new level 1 character for the adventure. This time I was playing as Leslie the Druid. For some reason the first thing that popped into my head for a character voice was somewhere between a very helpful receptionist and an extremely toned-down version of Kiirsten Wig's Penelope character.  

Leslie the druid is amazing. The DM (again, Mr. Jeff Toney) kept forgetting my character's name, so it allowed me the opportunity to continually repeat, "Oh, you know, my name's Leslie . . . Leslie the druid . . .you can call me Les or Leslie, either is fine, so..."

The soul of Leslie the Druid

As per normal, you can earn 50 extra experience points for writing a story summation of what happened during the session from the point of view of your character, thus . . .

~~From the Personal Journal of Leslie the Druid~~

Our journey began and everyone introduced themselves to the group. I believe we had an assassin, a fighter, a halfling, a ranger, and myself? To be honest, I was a bit distracted with last minute preparations for the road to sufficiently give my full attention. I probably spent too much money on a tent, and I definitely spent too much on the local hirelings. We're bringing along a torchbearer and two more fighters who are willing to trade their lives for gold.

We started our journey and if I could roll my eyes more at the fighter hobbling along in plate mail, I would. Knowing we were headed to a snake temple, I was hoping that I could charm a giant snake into being a friend, but instead I asked the ranger to track us down a mule. No way was I going to let this journey take us 8 days to get to our destination because of old iron legs over there. 

The ranger did his job very well and quickly found a mule; although, I think if he had his way he would have eaten the poor beast. I used my patented animal calming technique and began casting Animal Friendship, asking Silvanus to allow us to take this creature along with us. Silvanus blessed my request and soon the Fighter had his worthy mount, which the group quickly named Burrito. It must be some strange local word that I don't quite grasp yet. 

An accurate drawing of Burrito thanks to the magic of clip art.

We had to hurry a bit after finding Burrito when a local farmer started chasing after us yelling something or another about the mule. How silly. One can't just own Burrito. Burrito is following his heart, and he is obviously in love with me and can't take his eyes off me, so... 

At the end of a long day of journey, which involved some unfortunate rain, we set up camp and found a fresh water source. Night fell and I went promptly to sleep. Early in the morning, we were woken up by a roving band of Barbarians. I was incredibly excited! I tried to convince them to take me along to party with them, but they didn't seem interested in me as much as they were the halfling. The halfling gave us all the slip and well that was it for talks about partying with Barbarians. The ranger traded some caltrops with them in exchange for information about the Tomb of the Serpent and a few mud packs for removing snake poison.  I took down the ingredients, but they didn't give me the recipe. Barbarians are great for partying, but horrible at giving useful information.

On the second day we trekked off the beaten path and made it into the northern hills. Everything seemed uneventful until, again, in the early morning, orcs happened. There was a war pack of them, fortunately most moved on, but three of the more foul orcs rushed our camp. I lit one up with a green Faerie  Fire glow and gave another a glancing spear blow, and the party responded with surprisingly quick action. So much so, I think we may be more suited to cleansing the world of orcs than delving deep into snake tombs.

No one hides in the dark with Faerie Fire upon them.

On the third day we made it through the mountains and arrived at the tomb of the serpent, only pausing slightly to sit out what appeared to be an illusionary storm. A company from our guild, The Butchers of Helix, had already ventured into the lower level of the Tomb of the Serpent, so we were fully briefed on the dangers inside . . . to a point.  Inside, we stashed Burrito in an empty room and eventually made it to the lower levels and an octagonal room with six doors. The previous company found a magic ring in this room and fought off a cadre of magical animated zombie hands, but this was also the point they called off their journey and headed back to town.

Our company's map to the Tomb of the Serpent

It was time for me to call upon Silvanus again and cast Detect Danger, which allowed me to use half an hour to fully detail the aspects of three of the six doorways. The first door looked primitive, but Silvanus scented the area with cinnamon to indicate its safety. The second door looked ornate and pictured snakes descending on humans, and this door also was scented with cinnamon. The third door was common looking, and also was scented with cinnamon.  Then a miracle happened! Silvanus was pleased with our adventure, and I felt refreshed to the point that I could once again cast Detect Danger and finish inspecting the other three doors! As fate would have it, the fourth door smelled of skunk and a sign of potential danger was given to me by Silvanus. The other two doors, however, all smelled of cinnamon.

While I was busy with my spells, my companions were all either standing guard or inspecting the other doors. One of our companions even began opening the doors that smelled of cinnamon. One opened to an unfinished hallway. One opened to a simple room. One opened to a hallway that led to a room. All entries seemed safe as foretold by Silvanus.

Possibly the most interesting door is one that looked common, smelled of cinnamon, yet behind it was a slow heavy thud sound that repeated every 10 minutes or so. My companions heard it as well. What dread lurks in this place . . . I fear we will soon find out.

Oohhyeah Punchman and the Butchers of Helix in The Caverns of Archia

Every Wednesday night, Jeff Toney runs a private game of Dungeons and Dragons with yours truly in the mix. It's an Old School Essentials version of D&D, so things are a bit different with this game. In essence, old school essentials answers the question, what would D&D be like if you re-wrote the first edition of D&D for a modern audience?

For example, my character's statistics are AWFUL. Literal trash, BUT . . . in the OSE version of D&D, that isn't as punishing as it would be in modern D&D.  Despite my bad rolls for statistics, I still qualified to create an illusionist. While I was originally creating the character, I cautioned Jeff that I would most likely always being coming in at least 30 minutes late to the game, and he was fine with that.  In fact, we made the joke that I'd always be crashing in late like the Kool Aid man.  Thus, Ohhyeah Punchman the illusionist was born!

My photoshop skills were on point to express this lovely character's attire

Experience gain has been slow going, but consistent.  As long as you show up, you'll receive a bit of exp, and if there's one thing Ohhyeah has going for him, it seems to be consistency. After all these months, Ohhyeah is finally at 2,450 of the 2,500 experience he needs to move on to level 2.

Come to find out, Jeff will also allow you to earn an extra 50 experience if you write up a small "session notes" blurb from your character's perspective, and as I simply need an extra 50 experience to level . . . guess what paragraphs come next?

~~From the personal journal of Ohhyeah Punchman~~

Again we find ourselves plunged in darkness as we search the ruins of Archaia. I'm becoming used to the smell of burning tar from the torch. These days I find myself holding this light more often for the group. I'm not fond of this responsibility as it typically means I'm the first one that the creatures of the crypt focus in on, but I figure at least it helps me control when the group flees and when the group stays.

Archia itself is a large canyon dotted with crypt entrances from a more ancient time. Some of these areas are silent, but as we're discovering, most are crawling with new inhabitants.

The canyon sides of Archia

Earlier we spent a strange, yet adventurous morning in one of these Caves of Archia. We fought off blood-sucking stirges, rummaged through a mushroom patch (where incidentally I found a beautiful spell book off of a poor unfortunate mage's decaying body) and ran away from an angry troll who we taunted into charging at us. Obviously I was the first to run . . . that thing was twice our size and none to happy with the stirge wrapped magic mushroom we threw to him! Luckily we outran the ugly beast, and he lost interest as we ducked into the sunlight. 

This brings us to this evening's adventures. We decided to explore another crypt entrance that was a bit less natural looking. Indeed the entrance led down deep below the mountain, two flights of stairs, into a questionable crypt that is destined to collapse in on itself over time. The mountain keeps rumbling and it is surely a bad omen.

The northern half of the crypt was mostly barren, but as to be expected, someone or "some things" had been here before us. Come to find out, a small band of Kobolds had been roaming the halls and tried to set a crossbow trap in one of the rooms. It didn't work. Eventually we found them lost in the southern most part of the dungeon and our fighter slayed one without hesitation, which led to their surrender, and eventually their help! As it turns out, kobolds will do just about anything for food, including lifting a heavy portcullis and fetching rocks to hold it open.

Subject: Kobold. Name: Tartuccio

I must make a side note here about the kobolds.  Their presence makes me nervous.  Most of them fled, but one has joined our adventures. Our fighter named him "Tartuccio," supposedly after a bard song about a kobold (incidentally, what a horrible kobold name! Leave it to a bard to come up with something completely unrealistic. He looks more like a "Gurk" or "Zok" to me. I think I'll call him "shoe'y" for short). Shoe'y spoke of a winged beast that was mighty and could make the kobolds powerful. I think I heard tale once that where you find kobolds, you will also find dragons.

The western part of the dungeon was full of old death. Beyond the portcullis was a pile of old bones that, despite our attempts at separating the skulls, immediately animated when our barbarian grabbed an ancient, silver goblet from a skeletal grasp. The group again made the smart choice and knocked out the portcullis supports while the skeletons were reanimating and trapped them back in their tomb. (This also was the point where most of the kobolds fled in panic.)

Also in the west we found a room full of motionless zombies of all humanoid races. Sure enough they also animated the moment I threw a torch at one of them and hastily shut the door on them. One thing about the undead: they're none-to-bright and don't know how to use door handles. Fortuned favored us again as a room next door to the zombies had a large desk that our unusually strong thief was able to pull in front of their door to block them. Also fortunate, I managed to dig up an ancient tube of Papyrus from a hidden drawer! It's not of magical nature, but I bet you either Murrion the Magician or Retep back in town will pay us at least 250 gold for this artifact.

A map to the "zombie" crypt of Archia

As I write this note, the last of our evening's torchlight is about to fade. I discovered a secret room here on the Eastern side of the crypt and it will provide perfect shelter. I doubt kobolds or undead will be able to figure out the hidden lever system that was used to disguise the door.  We're safe here, and I'm on first watch as our warriors take a long night's rest to heal from their battle wounds. 

In the morning I'll be using Read Magic to take a closer look at this spell book we found in the Troll Cave. Perhaps something in its pages will spark inspiration in me to write a spell of my own!  I've been having visions of a human that looks something like a pitcher of red liquid with arms and legs, splashing through enemies and making them glow!  Of course, to craft such a spell would take intense research and approximately 100 platinum to devise. Maybe someday my fame and fortune will grow, but for now . . . I'll hold the torch and let my vestments do the smiling.

How does Dungeons and Dragons Work?

 A cool follower of mine on Twitter, named Guardian Eatos, asked me if I could explain how Dungeons and Dragons works.  I can do that!  

Ok, so . . . a little bit of background to D&D. As I said on my blog back in 2009 when Dave Arneson died, 

"So Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax are the fellas who came up with the Dungeons and Dragons game back in the 1970's, and I'd have to say, really, all RPGs in general owe something to D&D for their origins. All of you young wizards out there, thrusting yourselves into dungeons and using such things as 'hit points' or 'health,' have no idea that Wizard101 and all RPGs owe a lot to the roots laid down by these two fellas. You want high health on your character? Well, Gygax and Arneson invented the concept of health on your character!"

Since the 1970's there have been several different versions of the game released. The latest release is D&D Fifth Edition.  Fifth edition has been pretty great ever since it came out in 2014. The real question here is when will the 6th edition be released?  There haven't been any recent announcements that I know of, so you should be fine investing in 5th edition materials. It's going to happen sometime, and when it does, you can be sure we'll all be buying new stuff. Typically old versions don't mix well.

Don't be like me and buy the old edition the week before they publish the new edition.

So, the first thing I'd recommend doing for any new player is to head over to D&D Beyond. This website is great! The New Player guide they have is great. Here you can make an account and even roll up your first characters from the comfort of your own computer.

The second recommendation is that you decide how you want to play this game . . . do you want to play virtually or in-person?  In-person has been a little rough lately because of quarantine, but may I just say that in-person D&D games are about 1,000 times better than virtual games.

Option A -- So, if you're playing in person, I'd head to a local game store that sells D&D supplies and purchase a standard set of dice.  They come in a little box or bag usually and have a 20-sided dice, a 12-sided dice, a 10-sided dice, an 8-sided dice, a 6-sided dice, and a 4-sided dice.  You'll want to have all these for your first game.  

Be sure to get a set that's easy to read!

The next part involves asking around. If it's a good game shop where you bought your dice, I'd ask the guy at the counter if they ever host games for new players.  If yes, the guy at the counter will give you a time and a date to show up and maybe even a flyer if you're lucky.

If not, that's when you'll need to recruit some friends to play and one of you is going to have to be the dungeon master . . . and that's when you start laying down money for books.  As a player, you really only need the Player's Handbook.  As a Dungeon Master (DM), you'll need the DM guide, a Monster Manual, and a Player's Handbook. So, we're talking a good amount of money for all those books just so you know. (You can also find free pirated versions of the books online, but you risk getting a virus and out of date information.)

Option B -- If you're playing virtually, I'd go make an account on Roll20.net. Be sure to read through the Getting Started page there so you know what you're getting into. 

Again, I'd probably try to convince a friend of mine to go into a game with me so I have a buddy. It always feels better to have a buddy with you when you do something for the first time like this.

Next, find the perfect game for you by using the search function to see what's out there. Be sure to click on the Advanced options and select that you want to play "D&D 5E" and fill out all the options you'd like to find in your game, and hit search!

Tons of options to narrow down the game you're looking for

Hopefully the game will be a lot of fun and be a good introduction to D&D! 

There are a lot of strange controls on Roll20. Hopefully the DM will talk you through them all or you've read all the introduction materials to familiarize yourself with them.  People are generally chill.

~~

As for how the game works . . . Basically a DM runs the game and sets the frame for a story where you and the other players are the heroes of the story.  If it's a good game, it'll last several days over several weeks, you'll make great friends and have fantastic stories of clutch moments where you saved the day.  It doesn't always work that way, but that's when you know it went well. :)

My wife recorded a little bit of the last adventure I ever DM'd before quarantine hit, and I got some really fun emotions out of my players when their favorite NPC fell overboard in the middle of a storm on a ship.  Good times.

If you give D&D a try, let me know how it goes! I miss playing on the regular.

Happy Dueling