The other day I was browsing around EN World as I so often love to do and I noted an interesting bit on the news page. It seemed that OSRIC 2.0 had recently been released. For those not in the know, the OSRIC (Old School Reference & Index Compilation) is essentially a re-publishing of 1st edition AD&D mechanics (not considered under copyright) without the fluffy bits of artistic design (which are considered under copyright). Being the huge 1st edition fan that I am, this fan-supported project had interested me from the beginning. It promised to clean up and organize information better than the original AD&D manuals on which it is based as well as simplifying the rules in some places. On all levels, this sounded intriguing to me.

Up until recently, the OSRIC had only been a curiosity however. I had read it cover to cover, and while I admitted it was cleaner and tighter than 1st edition, it felt somehow lacking. Well, no longer do I feel that way. Perhaps it is the old school art. Maybe it is the improved editing. Either way, version 2.0 is a stellar achievement, especially for a fan-based project. And I felt compelled to run it. So it was with great excitement that I brought along a full print copy of the rules with me to last night's game along with a copy of the Temple of Elemental Evil (being mostly compatible with the OSRIC) to run for my group.

As I pulled out the huge binder and extra character sheets for OSRIC, there was so much trepidation in the air, I could have cut it with a knife. We were already knee deep into the Expedition to Castle Greyhawk and most of my players were fairly happy playing 8th-level characters. To go back to playing 1st-level with a system unfamiliar to some of them was not exactly welcome. However, I convinced them that this was merely an experiment that I wanted them to try out. I wanted them to do it for me if nothing else. Thankfully, they agreed.

So what were the results? Well for starters, we usually end our game around 1:00 am; last night I didn't pack up until 3:00 am so apparently we were enjoying ourselves. We managed to fit in seven combat encounters whereas under 3.5 we normally fit in two to four. We also managed to do some roleplaying and they learned a little bit about the history of Hommlet and the Temple of Elemental Evil, classic fixtures in the Greyhawk setting. By the end of the night the players had a fairly good grasp of the combat rules, which were much simpler than 3.5 (and didn't require a battlemap!). Most importantly, it seemed like everyone was having a very good time. No one ever asked me "Can we get back to the Castle Greyhawk campaign already?" which I consider a good sign.

So will I be running OSRIC for my group again? I hope so. I've told them next session we will be going back to Castle Greyhawk, but I'll be bringing along the Temple of Elemental Evil and OSRIC in case anyone wants to do a little old school dungeon exploration while waiting for the rest of the group to arrive.

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At this point, I should hope you have already figured out that this is a campaign blog about a published adventure. As such, it contains spoilers about the adventure. You have been warned.

When we last left our intrepid heroes, they had rescued Ricard Damaris, famed swordsman and proprietor of the Green Dragon Inn, a locale haunt in the City of Greyhawk for all manner of folk, especially the adventuring kind. Ricard had been ambushed while traveling with a trade caravan from Dyvers by orcs who were led by a fearsome half-orc who was "almost as good a swordsmen" as he. Ricard claimed he would have bested the half-orc had his wyvern-riding lieutenant not swooped in, stinging him with the tail of the wyvern. Wyvern poison coursing through his veins, he collapsed.

Our heroes had come upon this grim scene by Zagig's Bridge shortly after these unfortunate events had occured. A few orcs remained behind to pillage the homesteads built up around the bridge. The illustrious adventurers knew injustice when they saw it, and they strode forth hastily to aid the commoners being accosted by orcs. The half-orc lieutenant had remained behind to oversee the pillaging and began to cast defensive spells on himself and his wyvern. In the end, the heroes saved the day. The orcs were slain one by one and the lieutenant brought down by a fireball spell from the warmage Sephanie over the Selintan River. Though they never recovered his corspe, it seemed clear there was no way he could have survived the plummet. As the adventurers surveyed the wreckage, the elf known as Jan noted that it was unusual that these orcs appeared to be not from the nearby Pomarj, but of the Jebli tribe, which would mean they would have to have traveled from far to the north through a number of civilized lands, a proposition that made little sense at all.

Ricard was found amid some wreckage of a wagon belonging to the Able Carter Coaching Company, a trading firm based in Greyhawk. He was slowly dying from the wyvern wound, but the Rhenee priest of the Wanderer, Timogen, staunched the flow of blood and removed enough of the poison that he the wound would no longer be fatal. After rescuing Ricard and hearing his story, they spoke with another survivor, a priest of Boccob, the Archmage of the Gods, a man named Abner. Like Ricard, Abner had been traveling to Greyhawk, but for a different reason. Abner was a pilgrim coming to Greyhawk to celebrate a hero of the faith, Patriarch Riggby, renowned for his opposition to the evil demigod Iuz. Many years past, Riggby and others had attempted to destroy the Old One after releasing him from the archmage Zagig's god-trap. They were unsuccessful, however, and the Old One swore vengeance upon those who sought to obliterate him. That Riggby had escaped his revenge through a natural death from old age was seen as a cause for celebration, not only within the Boccobite faith, but also among those who followed the way of the Cudgel and St. Cuthbert.

The heroes escorted Ricard and Abner to the Free City where Ricard was generous enough to offer the party of adventurers a free place to stay for the next month in exchange for saving his life. It was at the Lord's Table (as Ricard called it) the next night that Ricard told the heroes the story of the ruins of Castle Greyhawk. Once the abode of mad archmage and former mayor of Greyhawk, Zagig, the castle sported three towers, one to house Zagig's army, another to house his apprentices, and a third for his own private arcane experiments. It was said that all kinds of wondrous things were to be found in all three towers, but a couple centuries ago, Zagig simply disappeared with no sign. The occassional edict still surfaced from the Tower of Zagig regarding the governance of Greyhawk, but eventually, the city moved on and elected a new Lord Mayor. Zagig was not heard from again. It was not long before the castle began to fall into disrepair and many began to wonder what had happened to the mad archmage and what sort of things might lie beneath the towers in the numerous dungeon levels that were rumored to exist. There was only one way to find out.

A few explorers began to delve below the ruins to seek their fortunes. Many never returned, but those who did often came back with unfathomable wealth and incredible magic. Such successes spurred a generation of expeditions, the most famous of which were done by the archmage Mordenkainen and the Citadel of Eight. The Citadel was an adventuring company Mordenkainen had organized, including such famous personas as Bigby the archmage, Robilar the fighter, and his orcish cohort Quij, and their exploits in the dungeons of Greyhawk were still talked of today with much enthusiasm in the Green Dragon, Ricard explained. Beneath the ruins they discovered portals to demiplanes, artifacts of immense magical power, and magic the likes of which does not exist anywhere else on Oerth.

Ricard spoke of perhaps their most famous adventure, in which they attempted to kill a demigod. Several members of the Citadel of the Eight are said to have breached the lowest levels beneath the Tower of Zagig and discovered a magical artifact crafted by the archmage Zagig known as the god-trap, a strange device Zagig used to imprison nine demigods that he might ascend to godhood himself. Within the god-trap they discovered Iuz the Old, and, seeking glory, released him that they might defeat him in battle permanently. However, they underestimated the demigod's power. Even having been trapped for so long and in a weakened state, he managed to escape their grasp. Soon, the Lord of Pain made to rebuild his evil empire in the north and the Citadel quickly regretted their decision. Still, the deed was done and there was no going back. The Citadel disbanded soon after, but many of the former members remained influential to this day, Ricard stated.

To make matters more interesting, Ricard noted that he had done a little poking around and learned that the orcs who attacked him and the caravan he had traveled with had been seen coming from north of Zagig's Bridge. The interesting part about that information was that the road north of Zagig's Bridge was a dead end that led only one place: the ruins of Castle Greyhawk.

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So it turns out Big Brent has some family issues that have to be taken care of. Illness in the family and he is needed. We will miss him for the time being, but that left us at an impasse next week. The fact that Jarrett so easily stepped aside told me that he wasn't that married to his Mystara campaign. However, Big Brent had opened a can of worms by allowing everyone to create super-ultra-mega characters (the idea of triple gestalt characters was bandied about for a while--no seriously, it was actually considered) at a much higher level than our group is usually used to playing.

Now let me explain a few things about our group before getting too far into this. David and Tenar (a married couple) have only recently started playing 3rd edition so they really don't know the rules too well. Tenar at least has played nothing but rogues so far so she is starting to get the hang of the rogue shtick. However, David likes trying something new all the time, and he doesn't seem to take much time outside the game to read up on the rules, meaning he spends all his time during the game looking things up. Travis and Donna (another married couple) have more experience with 3rd edition, but they aren't exactly good at optimizing their characters. Little Brent is just happy to be playing. Then there is Jarrett, who is quite knowledgeable of the rules and capable of building well-optimized characters. There is a huge disparity in skill level.

One of the biggest challenges a DM can face is making sure everyone in the group feels like they are contributing something. When you have a group like this, that challenge becomes even greater. For that reason, I strongly prefer beginning all new characters at 1st level. It gives new players a chance to learn their powers from the ground up while reducing the advantage veteran players have in character building. By the time they reach 5th-level, the novice players at least know how to play their character and the veterans have already learned much of what the novices now know.

But as I said, the cat was out of the bag and there was no getting that feisty feline back inside. Having seen the glory of "high-level" characters, the players in my group (not all of them, but enough to cause concern) were salivating at the thoughts of casting 3rd level spells more than once per day and having hit points nearing triple digits. To make matters worse, both Jarrett and Big Brent had been allowing us to use ability score arrays that were worth somewhere in the area of a 45-60 point buy.

I had asked Jarrett if he would mind if, instead of continuing Mystara, he let me take the DM chair again. He wasn't opposed. So at that we began discussing what it would take to make everyone happy. At this point I realized I was going to have to compromise. My preference would have been to have them start at 1st level with a new campaign (or pick up the Shackled City campaign again, which received lukewarm reception at best) but let them have slightly higher ability scores and some nifty equipment while using some house rules (like soft critical hits) to ease the difficulty. Our group has been vocal about the fact that they don't like games that are too challenging; they want to feel like heroes with awesome power who always win. I can accept that. Jarrett managed to convince me that in order to actually feel powerful however, the PCs would need to be killing more than bugbears and orcs. They want to slay dragons and powerful wizards and reap the rewards of great treasures.

So I decided to let the PCs pick the campaign. Since I don't have time to write a campaign myself right now, I grabbed several of my published adventures and allowed my players to pick one. I have some 10+ level adventures, but I left those at home, because as much as my players would probably like being that high level, they just aren't ready for it. I selected Eyes of the Lich Queen, The Red Hand of Doom, Expedition to Castle Ravenloft, Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil, and Expedition to Castle Greyhawk. I gave my players each a small description of what kinds of encounters each would entail as well as the relative difficulty of the campaigns (having read them all already). I put Castle Greyhawk in the middle difficulty-wise and told them it was a mix of urban adventuring and dungeon-crawling. It was a split decision between that and Eyes of the Lich Queen, but eventually Jarrett decided to vote instead of staying neutral and Greyhawk it was.

So they created characters. I let them have any masterwork equipment they wanted and choose magic items for them (otherwise we would have been there all night). I also restricted feat and spell selection to the core rules, although I allowed them to select base classes from other books if they desired. In addition, they will be able to research new spells later if they wish, and they can take advantage of retraining rules from the PH2 if they gain the ability to learn new feats (which I plan to allow them to do if they join certain affiliations).And so it is that the adventure has begun. Tonight we kick out the first session after the prelude and my PCs get to explore the Free City of Greyhawk, many of them for the first time. It shall be interesting to see what adventures they have in the weeks to come. And just to give you a heads up, future updates on my campaign will contain spoilers for the adventure, so you might want to turn a blind eye if you are playing in the campaign.

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I moved to San Antonio a little over a year ago and I didn't know a soul. My wife and I had never lived here, nor did we know anyone in the city. We didn't even have family nearby, as most members of our family live in North Texas. So when we moved here, that also meant I was without a gaming group, a situation I have not been in since I was 15. I'll admit it; I was a little panicky.

For a few weeks, things seemed ok. I had just finished running a two-year long Age of Worms campaign in College Station before moving here so I was actually looking forward to a short break. But I had no idea how long I would be content without at least one weekly roleplaying session. Nor did I have any idea how to find gamers in San Antonio. In high school, my buddies and I had sort of accidentally discovered roleplaying games and when I went away to Texas A&M University, there was already a huge community of gamers that were connected by the student gaming club. This was a completely new challenge.

I began rather simply by keeping my eyes peeled for gaming stores as I drove around town. I discovered one fairly close to my house, but was disheartened to learn it had closed. Later I would learn they had only moved to a different location, but was only after I expanded by search to the world wide web. It was on the internet that I found a Meetup group that had some interested players. Around this time, I also tracked down the location of the new gaming store and agreed to meet there with some people I had never met in real life before to see if we could get a campaign going.

It was slow at first. I had two players, David and Tenar, a married couple who, like myself, had just moved to town and knew no one. Over the next few weeks we slowly expanded our group to add Jarrett and a couple of others who didn't hang around for long. After several months of running the War of the Burning Sky campaign, which unfortunately was not going well, I decided to switch gears. Jarrett, who had lived in San Antonio all his life, knew of some other people who were wanting to get back into gaming and would be willing to join the group. David also knew a guy from his job who would be interested in joining. Eventually we added Donna, Travis, and George to the mix which usually meant we would have enough people for a decent game each weekend even if one or two people couldn't make it. With this group, I began running Paizo's Shackled City campaign.

After running this campaign for four or five months, my life started getting busy. In addition to my job, I had gone back to school and was finding less time to keep a game going. Jarrett, who had been feeling the DM itch volunteered to take my place; many of the players, it turns out, were having a difficult time with the Shackled City campaign anyway. And so Jarrett's Mystara campaign began, though he limited us to using the core rulebooks only. I was actually quite happy with this, although other players lamented the relative lack of options.

As Jarrett took the helm as DM, he invited a couple of other friends to join the game, Little Brent and Big Brent; suffice it to say the names are descriptive. Little Brent's casual attitude towards gaming meant he was rarely there, but as it turns out Big Brent had been bitten by the DM bug as well. So it was that last night I showed up at our game to learn that we would not be pursuing the evil undead army that was amassing north of Penhaligon, but that we would instead be venturing into the City of Waterdeep with Big Brent as our stately Dungeon Master, the pages of splatbooks once again wide open for our use.

So it is that in the span of a year, I have been involved in four D&D campaigns. This is not the first time I have seen so many campaigns in one year. But I was hoping for a little more stability soon. Last Saturday we did little more than talk about characters. Next week we shall begin our adventures in the Realms in earnest. Here's to hoping it lasts longer than the last three!

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