[imager]http://www.enworld.org/newsimages/em.jpg[/imager]Erik Mona's second column for EN World has arrived! This article is entitled "New Beginnings" and deals with that age-old campaign starter, the tavern.
There’s something to be said for taverns.
No, I don’t mean the aging, borderline run-down beer-and-burger joints in the side alleys of most American cities, though I’ve a soft spot in my clogged arteries and beer belly for those, too. I mean the bog-standard cliché-ridden hives of scum and villainy that lie at the heart (or at least the opening session) of nearly every fantasy campaign in the universe.
Although I play in a bi-weekly Pathfinder RPG campaign in the spacious and exciting new Paizo offices, I’ve considered myself a GM first and player second ever since I first picked up the funny dice back in the early 1980s. By that token, despite the fact that my barbarian Ostog the Unslain ravages the stunty humanoids of the world of Golarion every fortnight, I still consider myself “between campaigns” at the moment.
My last true game petered out about two years ago. It began as the official playtest of my first adventure for Dungeon Magazine’s Age of Worms Adventure Path, which I conceived and edited with my co-worker James Jacobs. The game started at a crazy time for Paizo, and since it consisted entirely of colleagues who also worked at the office during this crazy time, the game suffered more cancellations that any I’ve ever been a part of. Over time it became maddeningly difficult to rally the eight (!) players together for an evening of play, and somewhere around the middle of the Adventure Path enough employees had moved on that even polishing it off with a final mega-session became an unrealistic expectation.
Click here to continue reading!
There’s something to be said for taverns.
No, I don’t mean the aging, borderline run-down beer-and-burger joints in the side alleys of most American cities, though I’ve a soft spot in my clogged arteries and beer belly for those, too. I mean the bog-standard cliché-ridden hives of scum and villainy that lie at the heart (or at least the opening session) of nearly every fantasy campaign in the universe.
Although I play in a bi-weekly Pathfinder RPG campaign in the spacious and exciting new Paizo offices, I’ve considered myself a GM first and player second ever since I first picked up the funny dice back in the early 1980s. By that token, despite the fact that my barbarian Ostog the Unslain ravages the stunty humanoids of the world of Golarion every fortnight, I still consider myself “between campaigns” at the moment.
My last true game petered out about two years ago. It began as the official playtest of my first adventure for Dungeon Magazine’s Age of Worms Adventure Path, which I conceived and edited with my co-worker James Jacobs. The game started at a crazy time for Paizo, and since it consisted entirely of colleagues who also worked at the office during this crazy time, the game suffered more cancellations that any I’ve ever been a part of. Over time it became maddeningly difficult to rally the eight (!) players together for an evening of play, and somewhere around the middle of the Adventure Path enough employees had moved on that even polishing it off with a final mega-session became an unrealistic expectation.
Click here to continue reading!
