WWdN: In Exile

for those who want to whack kobolds with acquisitions, incorporated ...

Well, you can't exactly play with Acquisitions, Incorporated, but you can go on one of our adventures, because Wizards has put Storm Tower, the adventure that Chris Perkins wrote for the D&D/Penny Arcade/PvP/me podcast online.

I can't wait to read this, find out about the stuff we missed, and see how the adventure was designed.

NB: You have to be a D&D Insider subscriber to get this, and speaking as someone who is a DDI subscriber, I can tell you that I think the membership is entirely worth having.

beware the mad hermit of the northlands

So you've listened to the D&D podcasts I did with Scott Kurtz, Gabe, and Tycho...

You've read my series of posts about playing 4E with my son and his friends...

You've read my post about being a Dungeon Master...

You've read my other posts about gaming, especially how much I love D&D, how surprised I was to actually like 4E, and the backstory for my Avenger...

You have an appetite for gaming, and the only thing standing between you and actually giving 4E a try is the not-insignificant investment in core books and stuff....

Well you're going to dig this news quite a bit, I think: Wizards of the Coast is making D&D 4E's quickstart rules and its first adventure, The Keep on the Shadowfell, available as a completely free download. They've also thrown in the free version of their 4E Character Builder, because that's just how they roll (up new characters, yo.)

Still not interested in 4E? No problem. This is also a good time to point out that my friends at Green Ronin have had the True20 Quickstart Rules and Death in Freeport online as free downloads for a million years, and my friends at Steve Jackson Games do the same thing with GURPS Lite.

Now go forth, my friends, and hurl many polyhedrons.

there is said to be a demi-lich who still wards his final haunt

Edits on Memories of the Future are coming along quite nicely. It's always a good sign when I'm having fun and enjoying myself, instead of gnashing my teeth and pacing around my office listing all the reasons I suck and should never pick up a pen again in my life. (It happens more frequently than I'd like.) I'm under a lot of pressure to get this and another incredibly overdue essay finished, but it's a good pressure that feels more like excitement than dread.

Anyway, before I dive back into those projects, I wanted to share something I came across on Reddit earlier this week: The classic D&D module The Tomb of Horrors, updated to 3.5.

If you don't instantly know what the Tomb of Horrors is, this probably won't mean anything to you, but I'm going to try: it's one of the hardest, most devilish, brutal, evil, nasty, deadly, TPK delivering modules ever designed.

It's also a hell of a lot of fun.

A very brief history of the Tomb of Horrors, from Wikipedia:

Tomb of Horrors is a 1978 adventure module for the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game, written by Gary Gygax. It was originally written for and used at the 1975 Origins 1 convention. Numbered "S1," the module was the first in the "S" (for "special series") series of modules.

The module's plot revolves around the tomb of the demi-lich Acererak. The players' characters must battle their way past a variety of monsters and traps, with the ultimate goal of destroying Acererak. Tomb of Horrors is considered one of the greatest Dungeons & Dragons modules of all time, as well as one of the most difficult.

I wouldn't read beyond that if you're planning to play it, because there are spoilers. Oh, and if you are planning on playing it, I'd suggest having a nice long talk with your character, making sure that you guys are okay with each other, and that there isn't anything left unsaid or unresolved, because there's a very good chance you won't be seeing each other again.

This is probably old news to a lot of you, because it was released in 2005, but it's new to me, and I thought I'd share with one final caveat. Someone jokingly suggested that I use Tomb of Horrors to introduce a new player to D&D, and I responded with something like: "Ha. Ha. Ha. The idea is to leave him wanting to play D&D again. Starting a new player out with Tomb of Horrors is like introducing someone to Rock Band with Green Grass and High Tides."

Also: Have I ever linked to the incredible Top 10 D&D Modules I Found in Storage This Weekend at Geekdad? Well, if I haven't, I just did. (There are several posts in that series. You can find them all right here.)

Geek in Review: As a Matter of Fact, I Have Played Atari Today

As promised yesterday, this month's Geek in Review stands entirely on its own, but also goes well (if I do say so myself) with this week's LA Daily.

As a matter of fact, I have played Atari today

"You're the undisputed master of Combat," I told my son. "As your reward, you get to watch me play Adventure."

I flipped switches on the Flashback II, and was soon on my way to collect the various items required to complete my quest.

"What's that?"

"Oh, that's my sword," I said, pushing my little box against an arrow-shaped icon.

"What do you use it for?"

"Slaying Dragons!" I said, as I entered a once-simple maze of passages that the passage of time had made as vexing as it was when I was eight.

"You realize you've gone into that dead end five times, right?"

"Quiet you. This is how we did it back in the 80s."

"You ran into the same dead end over and over again?"

"Yes, it was part of Reganomics."

I finally found my way out of the maze, and approached a castle, anxious to impress Nolan by grabbing the chalice within. That's when the dragon showed up.

"What the hell is that?"

"It's a dragon, of course," I said, holding the joystick out in front of me like I always did, convinced that if I moved it around, it would help me escape faster. That's when the dragon ate me.

"This is really what you guys did for fun?"

"Well, there was this, and we'd occasionally fend off Indian attacks when we weren't Dinosaurizing our caves, yeah."

I say this every time I link to my Geek in Review, but I know the one time I don't, someone's going to lose their shit at me: my column and the newswire are Safe For Work. The rest of the site is delightfully NOT SAFE FOR WORK. If you just stay at the news page, you don't have to worry about encountering anything naughty, but the logs aren't going to know that, and you may have a hard time convincing your IT guys that you were just reading it for the articles.

LA Daily: have you played atari today?

This week's LA Daily is alive ... IT'S ALIVE!

"This is how we started playing video games at home when we were kids," I told them.

"Yeah, your uncle and I got this for Christmas in 1977," Anne said.

"Boy, you guys are so old," Nolan - who was 5 at the time - said.

"We are totally old," I said, not knowing that, ten years later, he and I would have to stop playing Frisbee in front of our house because I had "hurt my Old," when I tripped over the curb trying to catch up with one of his more powerful throws.

We looked at it together: Once-shiny silver switches jutted from the top of a sleek black body that was wrapped in faux woodgrain. Black rubber cords snaked around it, ending in the iconic joystick controllers that are woven tightly into the fabric of my youth. A cardboard box, its edges revealing the passage of time as clearly as its contents, sat on the floor beside it. Inside it, 20 game cartridges waited, keys to a time machine waited: Combat, Pitfall, Yars' Revenge, Space Invaders, Centipede, Missile Command, and Cosmic Ark among them.

I pulled Combat out of the box and gently pressed it into the appropriate slot, just like I had hundreds (if not thousands) of times between 1979 and 1985. I felt a surge of excitement well up inside me as I turned on the television, and slid a tiny black switch from TV to GAME.

I get a lot of positive feedback from my fellow Gen-Xers when I write posts about the stuff we did in our childhood, like playing Atari, so I thought I'd do something unique this week: I wrote two different columns about playing Atari, loosely related them to each other, and sent one to the LA Weekly, and the other to Suicide Girls for this month's Geek in Review.

I thought it was cool that, because of the way these columns are published and written, I could write two columns that stand on their own, but also work well together, and publish them about 24 hours apart. So if you liked this week's LA Daily, I bet you'll also enjoy this month's Geek in Review, which goes up tomorrow.

his. name. is. AEOFEL!

It is with great sadness and a heavy heart that I announce the release of the final D&D podcast in season two:

"Here we go, folks – the final episode in our second series of podcasts with Acquisitions Inc. How will it end? The necromancer has the party on the ropes… can they hold him off? Or will they simply surrender in ignominy?"

After you've listened to the podcast, take a look at this. I believe it will amuse you as much as it amused me.

The number one FAQ about the D&D podcasts is some variation of, "Will you do more of these?" I don't have the authority to give a definitive answer, but I think it's pretty safe to say that all parties concerned are amenable to the idea.

a message for you rudy (the undead hound)

Episode sixseven of the D&D podcast is online, and it's my favorite one, so far.

It starts with a scream. It continues with a battle standard being planted (augmented with another scream). And it ends with archers perforating Binwin… and Jim Darkmagic struggling to regain consciousness.

In this episode, Acquisitions Inc. learns the benefit of pushing undead things off ledges. And we, the audience, hear the sound of a dwarf standing up.

Does playing more D&D increase your skill with rolling dice? Does 19 work for you? Do you remember Rudy the Undead Hound? Let's find out….

A lot of people have asked me where this adventure came from. It was designed by Chris Perkins, and I understand that it will eventually be released, probably in Dungeon.

Edited to add: You need to see the Witchalok. For the love of Rudy, you need to see the Witchalok.

roll d20 and save versus retcon

The latest episode of the D&D Penny Arcade/PvP/Me podcast went up yesterday. I listened to it while I was driving to and from this awesome job I was explicitly prohibited from describing in detail, and I loved it.

This party is on fire! Literally… and as if that weren't bad enough, Binwin is drawn into an iron maiden. (Remember: just because you can double-move doesn't mean you always want to.)

Combat ends… but that just means it's time for some serious healing -- and for a new map to hit the table. Two great sets of iron doors seal off the next area, but once opened, they reveal a room filled with an iron cauldron and great piles of colored skulls. What do they portend? And is the DM your ally… or merely a trickster and purveyor of lies?

Listen and decide!

The artwork is, once again, sensational. And I'm not just saying that because it features Aeofel and a bubbling cauldron.

this isn't a book; it's a time machine

This is where it all began for me: the D&D Basic Rules Set. When I opened this book in 1983, I had no idea that it would change my life. Back then, if you told 11 year-old me that I'd be 36 and wiping tears from my face because reading it brought back so many joyful memories, he would have called you one of the names the cool kids called him for playing it. (Don't judge him too harshly; he's only 11.)

My original D&D Basic set was a garage sale casualty, but the book in this picture is a first printing that I bought at a game store about ten years ago. It's perfect in every way, except for a missing character sheet in the middle, which I printed from the PDF copy I bought from Paizo last year.

The Keep on the Borderlands module beneath it belonged to someone named Randy Richards, who wrote his name and phone number (as we so often did in those days) on the cover. I don't know who Randy Richards is, if he cares, or if he'll even read this, but if he does, I want him to know: your book is in very good hands, Randy, and its current owner loves it as much as anyone could.

I've been on a real D&D kick lately (blame the Penny Arcade podcast, and how much I love 4e) but I hadn't actually gone back to the beginning and read the Basic Rules for a very, very long time. So late last night, after my family went to sleep, instead of watching TV or reading blogs, I went to my bookshelf and grabbed the Player's Manual you see in this picture. I read it cover-to-cover for the first time in over 20 years, and played the solo adventure, which was the very first dungeon I ever visited. I named my fighter Thorin, just like I did when I was a kid. I made a map on graph paper, rolled dice on the floor, and felt pure joy wash over me. I scared off a Giant Rat and killed the remaining two before I failed – like I did when I was 11 – to solve the riddle of O-T-T-F-F-S-S, losing all my treasure. I tried to talk to the Goblins ... before I killed them and took their treasure: 100 sp and 50 gp. I battled the Rust Monster, who was just as tough and unreasonable an opponent for a first level fighter as I remember. Thorin eventually managed to defeat it with some ... creative ... trips back to town to replace his armor and weapons, just like he did a quarter century ago. Luckily for him, the Rust Monster didn't heal between battles ... just like the last time he faced it. I decided to leave the skeletons for another time, and walked back to town with my 650 gp and 100 sp. When I calculated my XP, I had earned 1084 ... not too shabby. I closed up my book, and went to sleep happy.

When I was a kid, the D&D Basic Rules Set was never just a game to me; it was my portal into a magical, wonderful world that I still love. Now that I'm an adult, it isn't just a couple of books to me; it's a time machine.

The world I live in is filled with uncertainty and occasionally-overwhelming responsibility, but for an hour or so last night, I was 11 years-old again, and I went back to a world where the biggest problem I faced was trying to save up for a Millennium Falcon. When I read "You decide to attack the goblins before they can get help..." I could hear my Aunt Val tell me “That’s a game that I hear lots of kids like to play, Willow. It’s dragons and wizards and those things you liked from The Hobbit. The back says you use your imagination, and I know what a great imagination you have.” I could feel the weight of my Red Box, which I carried with me pretty much everywhere I went, and how huge the thing felt in my tiny arms. I could feel it get heavier as I added modules and characters, and my own dungeons, drawn on graph paper. I could hear the snap of the thick green rubber band I eventually had to wrap around it, and I could see the yellowing scotch tape I added to the corners.

I enjoyed it so much, I'm going to reread the Dungeon Master's Rulebook next, and run the Group Game adventure it contains, "for use by a beginning Dungeon Master." Then, it's time to go back to the Keep on the Borderlands, using just the Basic Rules, where Magic-users can't wear armor, Fighters have 8 HP, Dwarf and Elf are classes, and everyone dies at least once before finally taking a character to second level, because that's where it all started for me, and sometimes you just have to go back to your roots.

Geek in Review: The Birth of an Avenger

This month's Geek in Review is about creating Aeofel Elhromanë, the Eladrin Avenger I played for the most recent Penny Arcade D&D podcast.

While all D&D characters begin as a collection of numbers (on paper, my Eladrin Avenger is 14,12,14,14,16,12) those numbers don’t mean anything without a story to bring them to life. Maybe it’s because I’m a writer, maybe it’s because I have an imagination that I’ve always had to actively keep under control, but as long as I’ve been gaming, creating backstories for my characters has been as much fun – in some cases, more fun – than actually plunging them into a dungeon.

Though Wizards provides a spiffy character creation tool for 4E players, the Avenger class comes from the unreleased Player's Handbook 2, so those tools weren't available to me when I was bringing him to life. Undeterred, I designed and created Aeofel the way I've been doing it since I opened up my red box basic D&D set in 1983: I sat on the floor with some dice, some notebook paper, a bunch of open books, and – most important of all – my imagination.

I could have simply minmaxed my character, but that's just not how I roll. I wanted Aeofel to be more than a collection of numbers on a sheet of paper. Even though I knew we were playing a dungeon crawl with minimal roleplaying, I wanted him to be an actual person, because, as the first line of the basic set (my introduction to D&D) says, "This is a game that is fun. It helps you imagine."

I let my imagination run wild, and as I got to know Aeofel, he told me a story that was much longer than the one of two paragraphs I'd intended to write...

Two days’ journey from Mithrendain, beneath a thick canopy of leaves in the Forest of Astranz, there is a school, where, for countless human centuries, Eladrin have lived and trained, under Melora’s watchful eye.

Aeofel Elhromanë lived in this school for his entire life, devoting each of his 142 years to the service of Melora. He trained beside monks and clerics, and though he never saw battle firsthand, many of his instructors were veterans of the war with the Drow. He never knew his parents, but his fellow students were his House.

Eight nights ago, during the Court of Stars, the school was attacked by Goblin and Kobold raiders, lead by a human warlord. The school’s alarm, which had been silent for a generation, shook Aeofel and his brothers from their daily trance, and they ran from their quarters, ready for battle.

Aeofel dashed across the training grounds, ready to push the invaders back, but all he found was a trail of bodies –– attacker and defender alike –– from the school’s entrance to its shrine. Near the gate, a few warlords skirmished with kobolds, and wild magic crackled in the field beyond, but the attackers had fled the grounds.

His master, the great Avenger Immafen, stood beside the shrine’s entrance. His sword was slick with Goblin’s blood, and he breathed heavily.

“Master,” Aeofel said, “what has happened? Why were we attacked?”

If you're interested, you can read the rest of the story, as well as some more insight into Aeofel's design, in The Birth of an Avenger at the SG Newswire.

Please note that, while the content of my column is SFW, the rest of the site is NSFW, so you should access it accordingly, and don't bitch me out if you get in trouble.