Underdark Without Darkvision #4

Out of the Abyss #4Spoiler Warning! Underdark Without Darkvision is a based on my experiences on playing Out of the Abyss campaign and will include a host of spoilers. Thread carefully!

Thanks WotC for ruining my perfect blogging title. After the third session I reached the 3rd level. I was going to choose hunter for my ranger as an Archtype but Mikko brought to my attention that Wizards had published an Unearthed Arcana that included a new Archtype for rangers – Deep Stalker.

In essence this means that I got darkvision and the whole concept of my character was about to change. I even joked about not choosing this path but while thinking about my character it seemed like to natural way to go.

Continue reading

Underdark Without Nightvision #3

Spoiler Warning! Underdark Without Darkvision is a based on my experiences on playing Out of the Abyss campaign and will include a host of spoilers. Thread carefully!

After the second session I was not that sure if I liked where things were going. I really do not have a lot of free time for gaming anymore and I usually like to spend it on games that are interesting and entertaining. And lets face it – random encounters are not high on my list of “interesting and entertaining”.

I was a bit hesitant about the third session but Sami (DM) had been telling me that he had been planing the upcoming session and was prepared to enhance the story aspects of the game. And since the undertone of Out of the Abyss is quite excellent I (luckily) came to my senses and took part to this third session.

Continue reading

Underdark Without Nightvision #2

Spoiler Warning! Underdark Without Darkvision is a based on my experiences on playing Out of the Abyss campaign and will include a host of spoilers. Thread carefully!

IMG_2840Second session for my human ranger on his way Out of the Abyss was a bit different from the first session. Or for any other session I have played since high school for that matter. It was a series of random encounters of which only one dealt with something else than fighting the horrible monsters of the Underdark.

As there is not that much to tell about the session itself I think that this time I could discuss the nuances of the game. Which pretty much sum up into “Underdark without nightivision”.

Continue reading

Underdark Without Darkvision #1

Spoiler Warning! Underdark Without Darkvision is a based on my experiences on playing Out of the Abyss campaign and will include a host of spoilers. Thread carefully!

D_D5E-RageOfDemons-OutOfTheAbyss_1024x1024This week we started yet another campaign and in this one I get to take the seat of a player for a change. The game in question will be the Out of the Abyss campaign for Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition.

Sami will be the DM for the campaign (he ran the famous Duck Tales game as well as the Sailor at the Starless Sea last year). He introduced this campaign to me as a “horror game set into the Underdark” and I was immediately sold. We are trying to play this biweekly and hopefully get to finish this (not a given fact considering our past success with campaigns…).

In this series “Underdark Without Darkvision” I will discuss the game as it progresses. I will be playing a human ranger without darkvision (hence the name).

Continue reading

Endgame

As our current campaign is drawing closer to the end I feel I could share some thoughts about the endgame of roleplaying campaigns.

Last year Aki wrote a lengthy post about the story arch of his character in the “last season” of this ongoing megabeast. And he got quite deep into the difficulty of ending one of these seasons as I like to call them. Continue reading

Return to Bretonnia, or Rekindling Old Flames?

IMG_1229Last Wednesday we started a campaign that I would have never dreamed that would actually happen – we’ll return to the world of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying game. Once upon a time at 2006 we started a campaign using the second edition of the said rpg and from that gaming group grew our current community of almost 50 active members.

The GM for this new campaign will be one of the players of that original group; Santtu has been planing for this campaign for almost all of this time and I’ve been eagerly waiting for it. I think that the character I created last week might actually be third one created for this particular game. Not to hex it or anything but we are supposed to get the game going on this Friday.

Why should this all be of any interest to others? As it turns out getting together with “old love” might be as problematic in roleplaying games than in real life.

Continue reading

[Door of Shadows] Timey Wimey Off-Road

11011000_1017491551614136_8276613320657869187_nAs discussed earlier I have granted the players a lot of narrative power in our current the Door of Shadows-campaign. One of the more surprising twists that I certainly wasn’t prepared for was that the characters decided to take part on an expedition to Egypt.

Though this post will be mostly about describing the events of an actual gaming session(s) it includes a couple of (more) interesting points about GMing – even if you are not into reading about other peoples sessions. I must also add that this post is a bit lengthy.

Continue reading

[Dungeon World] Changing of Plans

use-with-dw-OnLightSome time ago I wrote about my ideas of creating the fronts for Dungeon World. Since then we have managed to squeeze in only one gaming session but still it inspired me to talk more about the fronts. As the game went on I knew that I had to get creative of how I interpret my plans. So this time I’m going to share my ideas about how to let the Fronts live with the game.

Continue reading

[Dungeon World] Creating Fronts

use-with-dw-OnLightAs Tonpa asked it we deliver it. This time I’m going to discuss about creating fronts for Dungeon World (and at the same time tackle a bit the question about building on the first session). I may need to add that while I have been running AWengine games for a year I have not ran Dungeon World as a campaign previously. So what follows is strictly my personal feelings and experiences of how it can be done. I think I must also add that while I talk about our current campaign I make only vague references to actual game play as we have had only three sessions thus far. And I know that at least Aki might be reading this and I really do not want to give him any hard pointers.

Continue reading