Graph Paper Games

The notorious bear makes an appearance! Yesterday's session featured a pretty small party for my gaming group (four) and a fairly low-muscle group (warlock, sorcerer, druid, monk) with the highest AC being 15.  With the group feeling a little fragile they decided to avoid heading to either the temple of Orcus (where the previous group had whacked the high priest and everyone would be on high alert), or the monolith level (which is the climax of the dungeon).  Instead they decided to explore some of the upper levels that had been, to date, ignored by the group. This meant they ended up facing fairly easy opposition: ankhegs, phase spiders, and carrion crawlers.  Actually carrion crawlers are really broken, but the group got lucky on their saving throws.  They also discovered both a heretofore undiscovered level, another sublevel, and a major quest waypoint in the dungeon.  While the XP load might not be that high in terms of monsters, the group definitely ...

We are back to having small(er) groups instead of all gaming at once.  After having thrashed their way through the Temple of the Frog, the group has divided up.  One group (last Friday's) went after the temple of Orcus on the fourth level of the Tomb of Abysthor. Now, I have to be honest here.  The mega-dungeon format of Tomb of Abysthor has been a bit of a learning experience.  After having read about mega-dungeons for years on OSR blogs, actually having a group clonk around one for eight of nine sessions has been wearing a little thin.  There are roleplaying encounters available in the adventure, but they are often buried in obscure places, or require a ridiculous amount of effort to get to them.  As a result, much of the group's time in the dungeon has been of the kick-open-the-door-and-kill-everything variety. Which is why I was delighted when Sign's player started trying to bluff her way through the temple of Orcus posing as fellow devotees of ...

Made with Hirst Arts bricks I had not realized it had been over a year since I had built anything for my modular dungeon, but after making countless configurations I realized I really needed some doorways to help keep things easy to understand.  I also had a few long walls laying about, so I decided to put everything together and paint them. Gnolls everywhere! Here's a look at what I can do with me current pieces.  Not a huge area, but still interesting looking.  I am thinking that I want to do some more of the flat tiles, and then add to the decor.

The charge of the light frog-men brigade It's been really busy lately, but now is a good time to get caught up on some blogging. First of all, I will not be doing the April A-to-Z Challenge .  With Easter in April and a lot of things going on, I didn't feel like making another commitment, even a hobby-related one, was a good idea.  Besides, I couldn't come up with a topic. In this post I want to share with you a few of the lessons I learned running D&D 5E with eleven players at once.  Before the session began, I laid down a few ground rules. No disruptive behavior.  This was primarily targeted at the four youth in my gaming group who were present.  If they started to clown around, start singing songs or talking loudly off topic, I would ask them to step away from the table for five minutes during which they could have no impact on the game (basically the same as being "boggled" in Toon ) Transparent initiative order.  Usually I keep the ...