Tuesday, February 4, 2014

Here There Be . . .

Welcome to the D&D 40th Anniversary Blog Hop Challenge!

Day 4: First dragon your character slew (or some other powerful monster.)

I DMed through most of my early D&D days, and of those characters I played back then, I don't recall ever slaying a dragon. In fact, the first dragon I slew wasn't until WOTC was bringing out the Essentials line, i.e. D&D 4.5.

The Boy and I were playing pre-gens for some sort of demo WOTC was doing. I remember I played the magic user who had the newly revamped magic missiles that auto-hit. And so, our first level PCs went up against a baby dragon.

Okay, now that I think about it, my pre-gen died in a burst of dragon breath. The whole party did, actually, now that I remember it.

So, um, I never did slay a dragon. Dammit.

- Ark

Monday, February 3, 2014

The Tower of Zenopus

Tower of Zenopus with the Stone Mountain in the background.

Welcome to the D&D 40th Anniversary Blog Hop Challenge!

Day 3: First dungeon you explored as a player-character or ran as a DM. 

The first time I ever player D&D, I DMed - as explained in my previous entry.  I just turned to the back of the blue book and began running my friend through the Tower of Zenopus.  I don't actually recall reading the adventure beforehand - and for years after, I couldn't figure out why there was a giant skull at the top of the tower, and an ancient domed city down below.

There was a lot of confusion about the rules - but we pushed through.  I seem to recall the most horrible monsters were the Green Slime and a randomly rolled Gelatinous Cube.  There was a lot of pc death.  We didn't realize that the party should contain more than one adventurer.  But it was tons of fun.

It's funny how a simple little game could grab my attention and never let go - even after all of these years.

- Ark

Sunday, February 2, 2014

Horror Noir Bayeux Tapestry in the Works

Our gaming group is continuing to play GURPS.  The players seem to like it - it's simple enough to not get in the way of a good story, but complicated enough to handle all of the really weird ideas we come up with.  Oddly, we are still running with the game that I only set up as an experimental venue - that of Horror Noir.

The characters are agents of the Directorate of Esoteric Affairs, a British agency founded to fight and contain weirdness of all shapes and forms.  They've fought zombies in London's Chinatown, undead ghost babies and evil cultists in Scotland, and protected an ancient Egyptian Mummy from a Parisian Gargoyle over the skies of France inside of the Hindenburg.

The party is made up of a tough-as-nails British police investigator, a kung-fu master from China, and a wiley South Afican monster huntress.  Also included in the mix as a Brazilian Mati Hari who was turned into a succubus after interrupting a demon summoning spell, a black-and-white horror film starlet who got waay too intimate with an actual, real life vampire on set, and an American gumshoe who tussled with a werewolf a bit too closely one night.  So, yeah, half the monster hunters have turned into actual, real life monsters over the years.

This time out, five DEA agents vanished on the way to Transylvania, and our intrepid heroes have been sent to Romania to find out what happened.  Below are the visual notes from one of the players.  She plays the South African monster huntress, and has done a great job.  I am fully expecting a complete Bayeux Tapestry workup of all of their adventures soon. :)




Awesome, eh?

- Ark

Fezzes are Cool

Merlin never looked so suave.
Welcome to the D&D 40th Anniversary Blog Hop Challenge!

Day 2: First person who you introduced to D&D.  Which edition?  Their first character?

So from the last post, my introduction to D&D wasn't incredibly informative.  But I was in love with the idea of what Dungeons and Dragons might be, so I acquired the Blue Box from the book store in the mall and dove in.

I guess you could more accurately say that Doctor John Eric Holmes introduced me to D&D.  It was his words that flowed into my brain, telling me finally, really, exactly what D&D was.

After perusing the blue box rules, I decided the game was definitely something I should be doing.  I arranged a sleepover with my friend Chris, determined that we could figure the whole thing out.

Hats.  We were sure hats were an important part of the D&D experience.  After all - every hero in the blue book was in a hat, right?  So he both made wizard hats out of construction paper and tape. You have to have your priorities straight - right?  Then we sat on the floor in his room.

Chris rolled up a character, and I began to DM - and play D&D - for the very first time.

Honestly, I have no recollection of what his first character was.  There were a lot of them.  And a lot of death.  Glorious, limb rending, flesh melting death.

Can life be any more enjoyable than that?  I think not.

- Ark

Saturday, February 1, 2014

First One's Free

Dude Whose Name I Can't Remember
Welcome to my first entry in the D&D 40th Anniversary Blog Hop Challenge!

So here is the first topic:

Day 1 : First person who introduced you to D&D.  Which Edition?  Your first character?

I don't remember the name of the guy who introduced me to D&D.  It was back in 5th grade, and he came into class clutching a freshly minted copy of Deities and Demigods.  Yeah, the version with Elric and Fafhrd and the whole gang.

My best friend Chris was in the same class, and we kind of knew the guy, but he was a self-important ass.  He was very much the Major Charles Emerson Winchester the Third to our Hawkeye and B.J. Hunnicutt.  However, I was absoluelty facinated by the book and convinced him to let me take it home to read.

I had no real idea what D&D was - and the book certainly had no explanation as how to play.  But here were gods and goddesses and mythical beasts all transcribed into some sort of classfication system that enabled combat between them.  Wow.

That night I sat down and began writing a game around what I thought the book was about.  I figured the game was something like chess, and each character had different moves on a chess board and dice were used to determine which piece won a battle.  I refer to that game now as 'God Chess.'

Eventually I learned more about D&D, but this was my murky and confused introduction.  :)

Oh, my first character?  Zeus, of course.

- Ark

Friday, January 31, 2014

Twinkie Doodle


We went to the animal shelter recently and came back with two rescue cats.  One stayed still long enough for me to draw her.  The Boy named her Twinkie because she is the color of a Twinkie.  But she also goes by Twinker Bell, Stinker Belle, and Hey You Damn Cat.

The other cat, Heidi, hides a lot.  She was pretty feral when they picked her up and is just now learning to play.  String is a big favorite of hers.

So this marks the end of the first month of the A-Doodle-A-Day project.  I'm sure that many of you are tired of being spammed by crappy pictures in your blog-rolls.  I originally set the goal to post a doodle ever day for a year.  It's harder than I had originally thought.  A big pain in the ass.  And the hand.  And exhausting.  So, with that in mind, I've decided to . . . oh hell.  I'll keep on doing it.  I enjoy drawing too much.  In fact, I'm going to make it even more difficult for myself.

How? you may ask.

Well, lemme tell you . . .

I recently noticed that d20 Dark Ages is holding the D&D 40th Anniversary Blog Hop Challenge in February.  It's one of those write a blog post ever day for a month about something kinda things that I've avoided my entire blogging career.  I'm enjoying my own, self-inflicted year-long challenge with the doodles, but I've been worried it's been a bit . . . random . . . in subject matter.  

So, in my ultimate wisdom I decided to participate in the Blog Hop, AND to do a doodle along the same subject as that day's particular blog topic.

What could go wrong????

- Ark

;)