Sunday, February 9, 2014

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

Day 9: First campaign setting (published or homebrew) you played in.

That one is easy.  I bought The World of Greyhawk folio early on, and everything, by default, happened there until I got around to making my own worlds.

- Ark

Saturday, February 8, 2014

Hardcore Wax Play

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

Day 8: First set of polyhedral dice you owned.  Do you still use them?

They were in my box, of course.  With a crayon!  We were hardcore back then - rubbing our little no-brand crayons against polyhedral shapes until we got blisters.  I've got some of those dice still - but no, they are too chewed up to use.

- Ark

Friday, February 7, 2014

The Box

Maybe Some Things Shouldn't Be Drawn
Welcome to the D&D 40th Anniversary Blog Hop Challenge!

Day 7: First D&D product you ever bought.  Do you still have it?

It was the nifty Holmesian box with rulebook, dice, and, the B2 module.  I chucked the box pretty soon after buying it.  It was just in the way and the sides had split with me carrying it around everywhere.  I still have some of the dice, but as for the rest of the contents - well - they are lost to time.

- Ark

Thursday, February 6, 2014

Death Cubed

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

Day 6: First character death.  How did you handle it?

I just rolled up another one.  Dime a dozen and all that.

:)

- Ark

Wednesday, February 5, 2014

Urlik Banork

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

Day 5: First character to go from 1st level to the highest level possible in a given edition.  (Or, what's the highest level character you've ever ran?)

My first character of note, after a slew of hopeless cannon fodder, was a wizard named Urlik Banork.  He was modeled after Gandalf - and I started him as a gray-bearded old man, not some young punk whippersnapper.

He got amazingly high in levels - not from my skill, or even luck, mind you.  Urlik was in multiple campaigns, had multiple DMs, was a Mary Sue NPC sometimes, and sometimes us kids would just narrate adventures with no DM and assign our favorite characters levels on a whim.  Not that, in the early days, we really understood - or cared to understand - all that AD&D had to offer.  We were playing for fun, and all of our characters ended up being '50th level' - whatever that meant.

Urlik was adamant about being Lawful Good and really hated Orcs - so much so that he got his buddies together, raised and army, and wiped the Bone March clean of evil.  At that point, we were only playing with those characters as narration, but still, it was fun to redraw the maps of Greyhawk.

As far as an actual character I leveled up to the tippy-top of the level limit?  Um - never, I'd guess.  At least not the honest way. :)  I was too busy DMing.

- Ark

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