"Black Dougal gasps 'Poison!' and falls to the floor. He looks dead."

Wednesday, July 8, 2009

The Summer Slowdown

- Summer time... gaming and posting has seemed to slow down. Maybe things will pick up again as we get nearer to Gencon. Not that I am going but blog traffic seems to pick up and more things happen.

- I have an advanced case of gamer ADD. It only seems to go into remission when I play which has been rare the last while. I have spent far more time buying and reading stuff. The problem (besides the impact to my wallet) is that I come up with all sorts of campaign and one-shot ideas. It is difficult enough to schedule sessions for the Northern Marches and the Dark Sun / Castles & Crusades micro-campaign much less to add anything new.

- I was reading through the comments to James Maliszewski's recent post regarding Save or Die. James does a wonderful job of posting his thoughts and ideas in a well thought out and easily understood manner but I am always amazed how the comments to his posts can very quickly veer off into us versus them. I don't know if it is because his posting is so well thought out that his blog attracts such diverse readers. I do sometimes wish people would stay a bit more on subject though. I was going to make a comment there but I decided that it would not benefit anyone but myself so decided against it. I have no problem with others enjoying their games. Hell, I like all sorts of games myself. But don't talk down to me or others because of the style of games we like. Table top roleplaying is a wonderful hobby that has done a lot of good things for me and many, many others. How can any game where people get to sit down with friends and spend hours talking together be a bad thing no matter what style you prefer?

- I have been reading the Gazetteer for Paizo's Golarion setting and the regional source book for their Darkmoon Vale. I think that the Darkmoon Vale would be a great little sandbox. Of course I would have to convert it to something far more rules-lite than 3.5E like B/X or Castles & Crusades but that wouldn't tough.

- I am pretty much done writing the next session of the Dark Sun micro-campaign. The only things I have to do now are come up with some of the props and find a hole in everyone's schedules. I figure that the campaign will cover about 5 sessions. This micro campaign is nothing like my Northern Marches campaign. The Northern Marches is a exploration based sandbox while the Dark Sun game is a more story-focused game. I do not know the entire story but I do have a general sense of the direction of the game. I make up my notes for each session based on what has happened in previous sessions. It is interesting running two very different games.

- This week is Stampede in Calgary. This is the first time I have really missed working since I left my job in January. Downtown Calgary is a lot of fun this week.

4 comments:

  1. How are the Paizo gazetteers in general? I have been a little curious about their Pathfinder world, but I really don't need any more super detailed fantasy world or Forgotten Realms knock offs.

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  2. The original Golarion gazetteer is actually pretty good. The book itself is pretty rules free. It is actually fairly reminiscent of the World of Greyhawk folio - not surprising given Eric Mona's involvement.

    The Darkmoon Vale book is also pretty good. Reading it with an eye for using a different ruleset I still found it quite interesting.

    Of course, with Paizo's publishing schedule they will quickly describe every square inch of the world in detail - ala what happened to the Forgotten Realms.

    JamesM has a review of the gazetteer at:
    http://grognardia.blogspot.com/2008/07/review-pathfinder-chronicles-gazetteer.html

    and for the fuller campaign book at:
    http://grognardia.blogspot.com/2008/12/review-pathfinder-chronicles-campaign.html

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  3. Rules free is good!

    I knew I had read reviews of those somewhere. Time to check those out. Thanks!

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