Here is the teaser I'm using for my next online Campaign.

The last Age ended as the world burned in a storm of corrupt magic, other-worldly invasion and human pride.

The last Age ended with the fall of the Thousand Cities, the Empire of Man, the Empire of Folly.

The last Age ended as dweomercrafted battlebarges fell from the sky and abominations called forth by cults of horrific gods ravaged the cities of the Old Kingdoms. A few, unfortunate humans escaped the cataclysm and found sanctuary in the young, Imperial colonies across the Sunset Sea.

The last Age ended as the Eladrin withdrew to their sanctuaries beyond the Veil and the dwarves shut their gates, laying runes of warding and hallways full of traps, and hid in their underground fortresses.

You are the descendants of the survivors of the Final War of the Empire of Man.

In the dying days of the last Age, Lady Helja, matriarch of the Bronzesinger clan, offered sanctuary to any and all who would dwell in peace within Deepwell holdfast. For hundreds of years, Dwarf, Human, Halfling, Elf and Eladrin lived together under the rule of the Dwarf Jarls. Born and raised in Deepwell, you are eager to make a name for yourself in this new Age.

The Jarl, Nilgar Ebergun, ruling lord of the Bronzesinger clan, calls upon the intrepid and the enterprising folk of the holdfast to:
* clear the route to the upper gates, unravel the seals of protection, explore the surface world, establish trade routes for Deepwell's ore and goods and learn of the changes since the last Age
* reclaim the abandoned mines and dwarf halls to provide ore for the forges and living space for the rapidly growing population
* explore forgotten passageways or sail beyond the dim horizon of the underground lake and re-establish contact with the other dwarven holdfasts and underworld settlements

Gold and Glory await!

Northern Guard

I took MapTool for a shakedown cruise last night. I (mercifully) survived my first time GMing Savage Worlds! Call me a 'believer' - MapTool is a great virtual gaming table. Add in the other RPTools then you've got a truly kick-ass set of tools for an online RPG game. InitTool came in handy for managing combat and has built in support for Savage Worlds and D&D (there were one or two more though I can't remember the other ones at the moment). Using TokenTool was a breeze and enabled me to whip up some custom tokens for a PC and some NPCs in less than a minute each.

However, I wouldn't say that MapTools is "very easy" to use. You will spend some time and effort trying to understand the interface and spend even more time to make full use of the application's capabilities. While that may not sound like a ringing endorsement, I found the energy and time very well-spent especially if one is determined to run a game online. There are also screen-cast tutorials out to help you along the learning curve.

I played in a few OpenRPG games a while back and that experience was OK. Over the past few years, I made several attempts to re-install the latest version(s) of OpenRPG and see if I could make a go of it but I always found the UI, the tools and all the XML stuff a bit daunting.

I was also encouraged to find an active and VERY supportive community on RPTools.net. One of the players, a veteran Savage Worlds DM and an RPTools regular, set up the campaign properties (e.g. stat block) and some basic scripts to help with the trait and skill rolls.

I found that I had to do a good amount of prep work setting up the tokens, embedding the stats and making maps. I spent a lot of time making maps but that's really not a necessity as there are a lot of good maps out there. I chose to make some custom maps and also re-scale some existing maps to the grid I was using. All this work saved a lot of effort and time during showtime. The players and I were able to focus on what was going on with the characters and their adventures rather than mucking around with the software.

MapTool does not support voice chat and I only used the MapTool's native chat last night. The chat interface saw us through the game just fine, if not a bit slowly. This is obviously a detriment especially if you or one of your players type slowly. If I were to run the game online again I would use voice chat (Skype conference call or Ventrillo, probably Skype since it's free).

For those interested in MapTool or other Virtual Gaming Table (VGT) software, check out this chart to see how each application stacks up against the others.

Does anyone have any experiences with MapTool or any other VGT software? It doesn't matter whether they are similar or contrary to my experience but I would like to hear your war stories.

# # # Cross-posted from brown-ant.livejournal.com # # #

Northern Guard

The highlight of my Geek Week was having my son ask me to play D&D miniatures with him. This past week, I also:
* played in the twice-a-month Keep on the Shadowfell campaign. The DM really doesn't like the standard Skill Challenge system (even with the errata) and we tried the Stalker0's Obsidian alternate skill challenge system that can be found in the Enworld forums.
* finished Act I of Diablo 2. Yes, I am late to the party.
* started reading Jack Vance’s Dying Earth (which I got through BookMooch).

My son, let's call him Spider-boy, got some book store gift cards for his birthday and the family trooped out to the store earlier in the week. He chose a few books and used his gift cards while I picked up the D&D Miniatures Start Set (using my own money, of course)

We got home and we tore into the package playing with the quick start rules (a one-on-one battle between a Human Fighter and a Yuan-Ti) and then played a few more rounds with the figures in the set.

For last night's game we're used some additional rules over and above the quick play rules but we kept things pretty simple. Spider-boy noted that the miniatures battle game was like Pokemon battles (where you get to assemble your team of critters, send them into battle and pick which powers to use, there are stuns, paralyzes etc). I responded by saying that that was a very sharp observation though Pokemon is more like D&D. That got him thinking.

Before each game, my son picked a battle map and we selected our forces. I had also picked up a few boosters during the week to expand our selection.

For our first game last night, Spider-boy picked the temple ruins in the jungle (or was it a dense forest?). I sent my Hooked Horror against my son's motley team: a Dan Elven Archer and a Grick. Though I promptly dispatched his Grick, my Horror was no match for my son's Battlemaster.

Having felt the thrill of success, Spider-Boy wanted to take on another challenge. This time, in the caverns surrounding a Dwarf Outpost, Spider-boy's Angel of Valor, Dwarf Battlemaster and Elf Warlock took down my bad-guy war band composed of a Drow Spiderguard, a Deathjump Spider and a Tiefling Warlock. My son was keen to use the Angel of Valor's Lightning Strike ability - which electrified and stunned the Drow and Spider. I managed to take down the Angel of Valor but by then it was too late for little band of baddies.

My son even made sound effects and gestured to describe what was going on. Most Excellent!

And you can't put a price on the expression on his face when I labelled the box of minis: Dad's and Spiderboy's D&D Minis.

Northern Guard

The past Geek Week saw me joining another face-to-face 4E D&D game, writing up some GM material for a online, one-shot Savage Worlds game of supernatural pulp action, hacking and slashing my way through minions and boss-monsters on Diablo II and devouring a couple issues of the Dresden Files comics.

More on my retro-ventures on Diablo II below. I'll be talking about the other items of Geekery in more detail over the next few days.


A little while ago Blizzard announced that they were working on Diablo III (D3). As much as I admire Blizzard’s commitment to quality, a release date of "When it's ready" just won't do to satisfy my click-and-slash computer RPG cravings.

I've been poking around some forums to see what people thought that best Diablo-like game was. There was also a brief period when I considered Rogue-like games but that phase passed rather quickly. At the end of the day, I decided that there was no substitute for the genuine article. I found a copy of the Diablo II Battlechest and installed the original game on my PC. With my strong sorceress I am now hacking and blazing my way through minions and monsters on the solo campaign. I haven't summoned up the courage to go multiplayer yet.

Not having played Diablo II before I was surprised to see how low-level World of Warcraft borrowed a lot from Diablo II. I also see a familial resemblance between Diablo II and Guild Wars (IIRC some random nerd on the internet mentioned that more than a few Diablo II dev team veterans worked on Guild Wars, then again who knows the truth behind forum thread #8,122,187,9421.

I created a Sorceress since I felt like slinging spells. My other choice would have been Assassin (mmmm, gotta love the high damage output!) but that class is only available on the Expansion pack. I'm determined to play though Diablo II before installing the Expansion pack and trying the other classes and game features.

I got some pretty sweet loot (in my very inexpert, noobish, lowbie opinion) within the first half-hour of playing: a socketed short sword and a gem that adds lightning damage to a weapon. But wait, my Sorceress doesn't have the strength to wield a short sword… so I add some character points into Strength. (I think my character's name is Seraphiel. Good Lord, this game is so hack and slash that I don't even remember my own character's name!) Now packing the muscle she needs to swing a short sword around, my Sorceress started to hack her way through the mob leaving a trail of lightning-blasted corpses in her wake all the while pummeling monsters at range with her fire spell.

A cold stone sits at the bottom of my stomach as I sink precious character points into Strength. That's probably not the optimal choice for a Sorceress but hey isn't Diablo II a ROLEplaying game? I'm just playing the cards I'm dealt the way I see my character. For now, I'm still kicking butt though I may regret this later on in the game when I need every ounce of energy to keep pumping out magic badassery. Casting a few fire spells for good measure, put up a trusty shield spell to keep the baddies off my hide and throw in a good melee attack or two. Hmmm, come think of it the character is rather like very Harry Dresden.

I played a little bit of Diablo on the PS1 but the control scheme was horrible IIRC so that didn't really go anywhere. My sister had Diablo II installed on her PC and I started a character while I was visiting her but I guess I wasn't into the clickety-click action RPG games at the time.

I had a copy of Dungeon Lords around the house which I got dirt-cheap one time (a couple of dollars at most). I installed it, banged my head against the wall trying to iron out some graphics kinks, created a character, took a few steps into the world and immediately de-installed the game. Let's never speak of Dungeon Lords ever again. Back to a more pleasant topic…

I'm glad to discover a PC gaming gem in Diablo II and I'm even happier playing the game. The plot is serviceable but the voice acting is superb. If my ears are right, the Diablo II voice actors have gone on to lend their talents to other great (and not so great) PC games. Diablo II's graphics are, of course, dated but the game's longetivity lies in the compelling gameplay. It is no miracle that Blizzard has made such a success off of World of Warcraft after learning the ropes and honing their craft on the Diablo series of games.

Northern Guard

By the mighty lords of Kobol, that Irontooth was one tough son of a goblin. Our party of adventurers tore into Irontooth and his cronies. Still, Irontooth packed a whallop and knocked out my character (a Human Warlord) and the other healer (a Dwarven Cleric).

Today was the second session of the 4E D&D game I'm playing in. I enjoyed myself. The gaming group got into a rhythm and were more familiar with the combat rules this time around so we whipped through a minor RP encounter and three combat encounters during the course of the afternoon. The only thing that sucked (aside from getting struck down by a goblin axe till I nearly bled to death) was that the encounters netted only a handful of XP since there were seven PCs. Oh well...

Playing this campaign every other week seems to be ok but I'm starting to hunger for other games. I've tried looking at playing other games online (via OpenRPG or Fantasy Grounds) but I haven't seen any games that fit my schedule or are set in gameworlds that I'm interested in. Another 4E game would be nice but I would also consider other games such as Savage Worlds, Star Wars Saga or Spirit of the Century. I'm also entertaining the idea of DMing but that prospect still scares me... I don't know the rules as well as I would like

Northern Guard

After a long drought, I found a face-to-face table top rpg game. It was a 4th Edition D&D game that was organised on a forum for local gamers. The first (last week's) game was hosted at local gaming store. 4th Edition was surprisingly popular as twenty-two people showed up! That's two or three times the number that people had expected. Once the dice started rolling, there were three separate groups. The store's manager was also a player and locked up the place so we could game in store after-hours. In any case, I was very happy to get gaming again and meet new people.

The DM was capable, the players were of a decent mold and there was plenty of laughter. I played a Human Warlord in a party of seven(!). We didn't have a paladin but we had one of each of the base classes: Human(?) Wizard, Dwarf Cleric, Human Warlord, Half-Elf Warlock, Halfling Rogue, Dwarf Fighter and Elf Ranger. Maybe it was my hunger for a game made it a self-fulfilling wish but at the end of the day, I had a good time.


On the homebrew front, I am looking to post some game setting material I've written up over the past month or so.


I have also completed an heroic fantasy short story that I've considered sending out for submission. I haven't been spending as much time re-writing and editing the draft short story I completed last week. According to my original plan, I've got another week to bang that piece into shape and submit it to the publication. Time for me to get back in the saddle.

Northern Guard