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

Monday, November 2, 2009

My Current RPG Landscape

My 2nd edition AD&D campaign has been a lot of fun so far. I have to say that the new group made up of a couple of players from my old group and a few new players appears to be lots of fun. But, of course, I can never seem to get enough RPGs. A few other things I am thinking about right now:

1. Getting the B/X Online game going again. There seems to be enough interest so it is just a matter of getting schedules lined up. Based on my previous experience I am putting bigger limitations on it this time. My plan is to stick closely to the B/X paradigm of dungeon exploration for levels 1-3, wilderness exploration for levels 4-8, and establishing strongholds after that. Also, not withstanding my recent post on magic items, I am planning on sticking to the rulebooks for treasure and magic items except for new magic items in any published adventures I use.

2. The previously mentioned 2nd edition game is set in Paizo's Golarion. It is a pretty standard D&D-esque setting with all of the usual fantasy tropes. While I really like Golarion, using a standard fantasy setting has made me ponder using other settings for other games. The B/X Online game is set in the Wilderlands. I have also been thinking about using either B/X, T&T, or OD&D for two very different campaign settings.

I have had a sweet spot for the weird fantasy of Scott Driver's old blogs about his World of Thool (which I have archived and his wiki is still available) and his OD&D WIlderlands blog (which I wish I had archived). I would love to play a campaign inspired by Thool, Athanor, Carcosa , Under the Dying Sun, and the writings of Brackett, Dunsany, Hodgson, Merritt, Shaver and Wells.

The second is Middle Earth. Not the Middle Earth of the Lord of the Rings but instead the Wilderlands of the Hobbit. Gandalf is actually Bladorthin and is just some magic-user not some godly-spirit. The Necromancer is just that - an evil wizard with a tower in the forest. Who knows - Blackmoor might be to the north of the Grey Mountains and the Great Kingdom to the south of Mirkwood or maybe to the west of the Edge of the Wild line.

3. I have also been toying with starting a play-by-post game. I have had limited exposure to this type of gaming and only as a player. We will see if I do anything about this one.

9 comments:

  1. I loved "World of Thool". It was the blog I compulsively checked several times a day.

    But didn't archive in time. Any chance I could get it?

    ReplyDelete
  2. I am honestly not too sure how to get it to you. "Archive" is actually an incorrect term. I was a "Follower" and if I go into my Dashboard it still appears up in my list of followed blogs. If I view it in Google Reader I can get all of the posts but none of the comments. Without a straight copy & paste (which is too much work) I'm not too sure how to get it into a transferable format.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Scott's stuff was all cool. His abortive, more medieval setting included. I never could figure out why he just dumped everything.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Yeah, it was all cool. I have done everything I can think of to try to find his OD&D Wilderlands stuff but to no avail.

    I really enjoyed all of the communication I had with Scott - either through his blogs, my blog or his Thool T&T PbP game. I have a feeling though that he can be a little off at times.

    I should really pick away at copying his Thool stuff though in case it vanishes from my blog list.

    ReplyDelete
  5. It's not available on Wayback or anything as far as I know.

    I really liked his experiment of using the Fiend Folio as the core Monster Manual.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I haven't been able to find it on any internet archives.

    How is the Under a Dark Sun recruiting going?

    ReplyDelete
  7. Play by post sounds interesting. Never done it myself - if you get that ball rolling, I'd be interested to see how it goes.

    ReplyDelete
  8. "A little off at times" is probably as accurate a characterization as one could make these days. :)

    ReplyDelete