D&D 30 Day Challenge: Day 30

A bit late, but here is anyway my last 30-Day-Challenge post.

The best DM I’ve ever had is my friend Cristiano. We played together (and with our pal Didi) a lot when we were in our late teens, and though each one of us had his good share of DMing, Cristiano had a peculiar style, quite different from our (mine and Didi’s) rather classical one. He always managed to be at the same time iconoclastic and traditional, and his adventures were both amusing and unpredictable.

I haven’t played with Cristiano (or Didi) for many, many years, and sometimes I wonder how it would feel, being together after so much time, rolling dice and living the fantastic adventures of our youth, like we used to do.

D&D 30 Day Challenge: Day 29

“What is the number you always seem to roll on a d20?”

21.

It’s good to be the Dungeon Master!

D&D 30 Day Challenge: Day 28

“A character you will never play ever again”.

Actually, I don’t know. I am aware that I’ll never get to play again any of my past characters (maybe with the exception of Aaron, the cleric), since almost all the adventures/campaigns I took part in are well over.

Being usually the DM I’ve never had many characters, anyway...

D&D 30 Day Challenge: Day 27

Actually, I don’t plan to take part in any campaign or adventure as a player: I like DMing, and that is what I hope to do in the future.

In the unlikely event of having to create a character, I’d go for the paladin. I know, it is a difficult character, who due to his restrictions and moral standards binds the whole group, and before playing a paladin I’d feel obliged to ask my fellow players for their approval.

RPGs are for me a wonderful gate to adventure and heroic deeds. And paladins are heroes in their purest form!

D&D 30 Day Challenge: Day 26

“Favorite nonmagic item”.

The torch. I recently played with my friends an adventure of my own, thought to be finished in about four sessions. All the characters started as convicted who had been given the chance to commute their sentence to death with the imprisonment in a subterranean gaol; whoever managed to leave the gaol was a free man. Every character had only some water, some food and single torch, and the group received just one tinderbox. It was soon evident to the players that the main danger was the lack of light rather than the hostile inhabitants of the dungeon.

I really enjoyed their struggles to find a way out (and some of them even managed to exit the prison!), and learned never to underestimate the importance of having a source of light when you are surrounded by total darkness...

D&D 30 Day Challenge: Day 25

Double post again today.

Here we go.

I like intelligent swords. They are not an easy item to find, but magical, intelligent swords may be very interesting (and amusing) NPC by themselves. Daystra was the intelligent broadsword of a PC ranger in our AD&D campaign. I don’t remember her powers (we decided Daystra was a “she”), but I remember that she had a deep loathing towards ogres, and when the ranger had to battle the big brutes, Daystra always tried to find an excuse for not taking part in the fight, sometimes suggesting that her master would better show his prowess just wielding a dagger!

We had a lot of fun with Daystra and her continual, but good-humored, bickering with her master. The sword was lost after a terrible fight during which almost the entire group was killed or taken prisoner: Daystra was taken from her unconscious master (whose defeat was principally caused by the intelligent weapon, which took over the wounded and weakened  ranger and bravely, but foolishly, forced him to stay and fight instead of retreating), and our adventures came to an end before the precious sword had ever been recovered.

What a shame!

D&D 30 Day Challenge: Day 24

“Favorite energy type”.

Uh... fire?

A bit uninspired, this one.

D&D 30 Day Challenge: Day 23

Boring and bad-tempered...

Dinosaurs!

Dinosaurs are undoubtedly my least favourite monsters. I find them boring and dull (at least inside a fantasy setting; the ones in Crichton’s books are simply terrifying).

So boring, actually, that I get bored just writing about them!

D&D 30 Day Challenge: Day 22

Was Smaug a red one?
Well, the Professor seems
to imply so...

“Favorite monster overall”.

Here are my candidates:

·         Skeletons (undead)

·         Rust monsters (aberration)

·         Spiders (vermin)

·         Demons, maybe (outsider)

·         Violet fungi (plant)

·         Humans (humanoids)

·         Red dragons (dragons)

Though I like low-level creatures, my monster of choice is a very powerful one. The winner is: RED DRAGON!

D&D 30 Day Challenge: Day 21

Perhaps the most well-known dragon illustration
 in RPG history: Elmore's Basic Set cover.
And of course it's a red one...

I like dragons, I really do.

I like them to be powerful and terrible opponents with “human” weaknesses; this last characteristic is the reason why I find them superior to all other monsters. I played with delight the first seven or eight modules of the Dragonlance campaign, and every time I read The Hobbit I’m awed by Smaug and overjoyed at living again the wonderful adventures of Bilbo and his bearded companions.

Good dragons are obviously an interesting element (I still find that part of Dragonlance a good one), but the REAL dragon must be evil. And it must be red.

Ok: acid-spitting, lightning-spewing, gas-blowing dragons of different colours can be fun too, but no one of them beats the fiery breath of a red dragon, the incarnation of ruin, destruction and devastation. And maybe of vanity too!

D&D 30 Day Challenge: Day 20

Who's more human
than Fleetwood,
the warrior?

My favourite humanoids are... well, humans.

Humans are usually exempt from the stereotypes that plague almost every other humanoid race, and I far prefer human NPCs and enemies for my campaigns.

There is a danger, though, or at least I perceive it as such, while others could consider it a positive feature: too many humans could mean a dearth of fantastic elements, a lowering of the fantasy rating and a shift toward a more “historical” setting. In the past years I was a committed supporter of low fantasy worlds, but since my discovery of OSR I have been enjoying more and more the richness and the diversity of a “classical” fantasy setting.

Humans remain my “favourite” humanoids, but they are by no means alone in the world...

D&D 30 Day Challenge: Day 19

Elemental/plant?

Are fungi plants? I think so.

Then my answer is: violet fungi!

Yet I admit that the yellow musk creeper is a close runner-up...

D&D 30 Day Challenge: Day 18

Late again...

I need to catch up...

Favorite monster (immortal/outsider).

I really don’t like much outsiders and extraplanar entities, but I have used sometimes devils and demons, and I remember a 3rd edition campaign where a mighty demon had possessed the crown prince of a powerful kingdom. The final showdown between the characters and the fiend took place on the roof of the royal palace, and as far as I remember it was a really good battle.

D&D 30 Day Challenge: Day 17

Favorite monster (animal/vermin).

That’s easy. Spiders!

They range from the tiny wall-crawler to the huge and malicious Shelob-class brute, and they are all lethal!

There’s no better way to give the creeps to your players than describing the room they are about to enter as “festooned with web and stinking of death, the floor strewn with bones and sorry remains of unlucky creatures”.

Brrr...

D&D 30 Day Challenge: Day 16

Aberration?

I don’t have my 3.5 manuals any longer (and so I can't check the monsters classification), but I think mind flayers could be a good example of scaring aberrations. I like the illithid concept and I find that they can make wonderful opponents for a high level group, but my aberration of choice is quite less powerful.

No creature, in my opinion, combines weirdness, humor, old school inspiration and the ability to terrify a fully armoured fighter like the good old rust monster!

D&D 30 Day Challenge: Day 15

I like undead monsters, and use them a lot in my campaigns. There is of course the terrible lich, who makes for a perfect opponent and plotter of evil schemes, but my favourite is the lowly skeleton.

Why?

If you ask, you’ve never watched Army of Darkness...

D&D 30 Day Challenge: Day 14

I have no doubt about my favourite NPC: it’s Kilje Daskov.

Kilje was a dwarf and a friend of the characters’ group. When I created him I was looking for a kind of ambassador, and I thought that the best class for diplomats was the bard; dwarves, however, can’t become bards in AD&D, and so I decided for a multiclass fighter/thief. I remember that Kilje wore a cocked hat and played a lot of instruments, but what I really liked about him was his being a very uncommon dwarf, witty and impudent rather than grim and brooding (as many dwarves happen to be).

During a dangerous adventure that took the characters deep into a drow city, the group was attacked by a beholder. I don’t remember if I rolled for it or simply chose (maybe in order to protect the PCs; I was shamefully soft-hearted at that time), but Kilje got targeted by the monster’s disintegration ray. We all held our breath when I rolled Kilje’s save, and we all exulted when the dwarf’s toughness proved to be stronger than the foul magic!

Kilje became part of the group, and shared almost every major adventure and quest until the end of our AD&D gaming days.

D&D 30 Day Challenge: Day 13

Just a curtain?
Are you sure?

Late again!

Triple post today!

In the depths of the Temple of Elemental Evil there is the Greater Temple. My friends got there with their characters after long months of adventuring (and many dead adventurers); at that time we had a monk in the group: his name was Ged.

When the characters eventually got inside the Greater Temple they were overjoyed and immediately started looking for treasure. Ged choose to inspect the area behind an innocent-looking curtain, and discovered the access to the inner chamber; he didn’t notice anything unusual, and so he joined his companions who were still plundering the temple.

After a while, their thirst for riches temporarily satisfied, the characters decided to proceed beyond the curtain, but as soon as the first of them touched it, he was forced to make multiple saves against poison to prevent his arm from rotting! The curtain was entirely composed of violet fungi! And the monk hadn’t noticed because he was immune to disease!

Both Enrico (Ged’s player) and I howled with laughter, but our friends were far from happy...

D&D 30 Day Challenge: Day 12

“Favorite dungeon type/location”.

I like megadungeons, and I like “intelligent” ones. No funhouse dungeons for me: though I can enjoy them for a short while, I eventually find them boring and dull. I prefer “themed” dungeons, with a strong internal consistency, as long as they are not overly “logical” and by consequence unimaginative.

I like sandboxes too, preferably with a sprawling megadungeon inside, and I really find this indoors/outdoors mixture the best one for my campaigns.

D&D 30 Day Challenge: Day 11

I’m no enemy of published adventures and campaigns, but I usually mine them for ideas rather than running them as written. There are however four notable exceptions, two of which pertain to other game system than D&D&family: The Great Pendragon Campaign (Pendragon), The Enemy Within (WFRP), Dragonlance and The Temple of Elemental Evil.

I ran all these campaigns during the past 20+ years, but for many reasons I managed to finish only one of them. The Great Pendragon Campaign is still open, and I get to play it almost once a year (not much, but better than nothing); The Enemy Within was never completed; Dragonlance was abandoned after the 10th or 11th module; only The Temple of Elemental Evil was ever concluded (many, many years ago).

When I think about TToEE I still remember the long hours spent with my friends while their characters unraveled  its secrets and battled its inhabitants. It was fun of the best sort, and if I had the chance to run again the whole campaign, I’d jump at it with no hesitation whatsoever!