Our First Campaign

The Avengers opens this weekend (I already have my ticket for the midnight showing on Thursday night!), so my posts this week are going to have a bit of a superhero theme. I'll start by saying a few words about the first-ever Front Porch campaign, a superhero game that used the excellent Champions system.

Earth Commanders, which debuted in 1988 and ran for more than two years, was the story of an international superhero team (no doubt inspired by DC's Justice League) headquartered in a centuries-old cathedral in Montreal. The main non-player character was a powerful but psychologically unstable telepath called Jester. He was joined by a large cast of player characters -- I estimate about ten in all, but we typically had between three and five show up on my parents' front porch for any given adventure. The two most active player characters were Scott's Nightstalker (a stealthy slicer-and-dicer) and Jeremy's Panther (a burly bruiser). Together they cut a swath of destruction across the superpowered criminal underworld.

Next time we'll take a look at those early Porch adventures and see just how primitive they were...

So Cerdyn Got Eaten Yesterday...

The current Druid Cycle adventure involves a party of heroes -- including legendary champions Stalker (Scott), Senchan (Kevin), and Cathbad (Tim W) -- locked in pitched battle against two of the horrific, godlike Old Ones. In the first round of combat, Cerdyn the Bard, an epic-tier NPC who has been part of the Druid Cycle world since 1993, was devoured in a single bite. Sometimes, the dice just don't go your way...

Good News, Bad News

I have some good news and bad news about D&D Next (Fifth Edition).

First, the bad news. The game's lead designer, Monte Cook, has resigned his position at Wizards of the Coast for reasons that he has declined to reveal. Long-time D&D players may remember Monte as one of the architects of Third Edition. I've been a fan of Monte's work for a long time, so I can't see this development as anything but a negative for the future of 5e.

The good news, at least, is that the open playtest of 5e begins on May 24. That's right, we're less than a month away from seeing the first public draft of Fifth Edition! I hope some Front Porch folks will be able to help me give the rules a test drive.

For more on both of these stories, see the official Wizards release from D&D head honcho, Mike Mearls.

MC Frontalot: Critical Hit

Not one of his best songs, but I love the D&D imagery, AND Brian Poshen makes a cameo!

Sunday Comics

http://www.gocomics.com/foxtrot/2010/02/07/

The Book of Vile Darkness (The Movie!)

The Book of Vile Darkness is a somewhat controversial D&D product that was originally released in 2002 but has since been "re-imagined" for 4e. This supplement provides game mechanics (new spells, feats, etc.) for evil-themed campaigns. Within the game world, The Book of Vile Darkness is actually an artifact that corrupts whoever possesses it.

Later this year, a new D&D movie will be released (for those keeping score, this will be the third) and it will focus on this book. Click the link for more details...

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1733125/

60 Minutes and D&D?

Apparently just about the time many of us became interested in D&D, 60 Minutes did an expose on how terrible it was for our young, impressionable minds. 


I think that makes John my "pusher"...

An Introduction to The Druid Cycle

This post is for folks who are new to the Front Porch Gaming Guild (FPGG) and want to learn more about The Druid Cycle, our "flagship" campaign. The Druid Cycle is late-medieval (roughly equivalent to the mid-fifteenth century) high fantasy set in a world whose major cultures and countries are derived from the legendary and literary traditions of our own world.

The roots of The Druid Cycle go all the way back to the summer of 1993, when I started up a fantasy campaign on Sugar Mountain, a computer bulletin board sytem (BBS) based in nearby Elmira, New York. For those too young to remember this archaic online experience, a BBS was like a mini-internet hosted by a person on his or her own computer. Your computer would call up their computer and then you'd interact with the features of their BBS -- email, games, downloadable files, or whatever.

This early campaign, titled Fate of the Grand Duchy, established a few key components of the "modern" Druid Cycle world, most notably the geography of the world's main continent, known as First Home, and its principal human nation, Teyrnas. (Interesting side-note: One of the players in Fate was Timothy, whose character Lwcus is still going strong, more than twenty years later.)

By late 1993, Fate of the Grand Duchy was history, having been relegated to the graveyard of failed campaigns. One afternoon I got a request from my good friends and fellow Porch players Scott and Jason (joined shortly thereafter by Tony, an occasional Porch player) to start up a new D&D campaign, so I resurrected the world from Fate and moved the timeline ahead by five hundred years.

Thus was born The Druid Cycle, named for the original team of heroes. The main non-player character (NPC) was a stern druid named Cyfrinach, and the players were heroes whom he had recruited to conduct clandestine missions on behalf of his organization, the Druid Council. With Scott and Jason as the primary players -- joined here and there by other Porch players and guests -- The Druid Cycle roared ahead with year after year of sustained success. Our imaginations ran wild, and we began to delve into weighty issues such as race, social class, gender roles, religious intolerance, political corruption, and many more.

It was all too good to keep to ourselves. In early 1998, we expanded this campaign by inviting all-star Porch players Timothy and Kevin to join the team. With a new band of heroes, the focus shifted toward character-driven storylines that were centered on the widely divergent motivations, objectives, and allegiances of the player characters (PCs). Each of the four main PCs carved out his own narrative space in the game world, enriching the campaign immeasurably.

The timing, however, could not have been worse. By the spring of 1999, several of us (myself included) were graduating from college and moving on to graduate school and the working world. Our opportunities for paper-and-pencil gaming, for gathering around a table together and sharing pizza and laughs along with our roleplaying, were coming to an abrupt end.

The Druid Cycle then went online, like Fate nearly a decade earlier. Between 1999 and 2004, we had a series of email games (in which the players exchanged emails to move the story forward) and chat-based games (in which the players gathered at the same time in a private internet chat room) involving a large cast of Front Porch veterans, including Timothy, Kevin, Tim B, Chris, and Matt, to name but a few. These games featured new PCs and, for the most part, were set in regions other than the continent of First Home. Concurrently, I was running a rollicking Druid Cycle campaign for some of my fellow University of Rochester graduate students, although it was set in an alternate version of the world.

Since 2004, we've had a renewed focus on First Home and those "classic" characters from the '90s. They're in a much different place in their lives than they were ten or fifteen years ago. No longer a rag-tag band of adventurers, they are now the leaders of cities and global organizations. They are also the parents of what may be the next generation of champions. Moreover, we've been fortunate enough to add some new players along the way. My wife Amy started playing 2005, Timothy's wife April started in 2009, and Timothy's friend Alex started just last year, in 2011. 

As we look forward to 2013 (marking twenty-five years of the FPGG and twenty years of The Druid Cycle), we'd love to add even more new folks into the mix. We've learned over the years that the secret ingredient to a successful campaign is a core group of players who feel invested in their characters. Druid Cycle players tend to play their PCs for years, or even decades. Together we create an immersive world where -- although it may be fantasy -- the stakes feel real.

The heroes of The Druid Cycle have come a long way since the early '90s, and I hope that there is still a long way for them to go. I surely do not look forward to the day when I will have no cause to intone that most famous FPGG phrase: "When last we left our intrepid heroes..."

Habit Abatement Campaign

Health tip of the day: You can use D&D to quit smoking!


One of my favorite aritsts is a rapper named MC Frontalot. He's what "they" call a nerdcore rapper, and I happen to really enjoy his music. I mean, I AM a nerd after all, and there are copious amounts of Dr. Who references, so what's not to like? Follow the link to his "dorknote" see how he used D&D to quit smoking!


Not that any of us (that I know of!) have the nasty habit of smoking, but if we did, I think this is an AWESOME way of quitting!

Gamer-in-Chief?

Anybody catch the latest SNL? The cold opening featured Jason Sudeikis doing his Mitt Romney impression.

http://www.hulu.com/watch/348496/saturday-night-live-cold-opening-mitt-romney-campaign

Watch the clip to see how D&D has always been a part of Mitt's life. Somehow, I'm not so sure...

This is what happens if Dear Abby were a nerd...

I stumbled across this really cool link to an advice column that used to run in Dragon Magazine. I've never read the thing as it wouldn't be to my tastes, but some of the questions in the archives (over 30 years worth!) are pretty funny.


Some of my favorites:

And (seems like someone one of us would ask...)

Why...what else could we use to touch someone? Hmm...

PAX East

PAX East (http://east.paxsite.com/) is this weekend, and attendees get to playtest D&D Next (or 5e, or whatever they're calling it). I'll be scrounging the interwebs for any scraps of info!

And what's wrong with the Gelatinous Cube??

Those damn fools over at Cracked.com seem to have it in for one of my favorite D&D baddies...

Enter Ekhis

A major new villain made a rather quiet debut in The Druid Cycle yesterday. For the past few months, I've been planning out the story arc for a shadowy figure known as Ekhis (not his real name), the leader of a clandestine organization whose plans will be revealed as we approach our big twenty-fifth anniversary in 2013 -- a year that also marks the twentieth anniversary of the original  Druid Cycle campaign.

Stay tuned...

Too little, too late.

Sadly lads, it looks like we can no longer order this extra special brew for our game nights...

They include:

• Potion of Healing• Sneak Attack• Bigby's Crushing Thirst Destroyer• Dwarven Draught• Eldritch Blast• Illithid Brain Juice

Goals and Polls

My goal for this blog is to have new content for you guys to read on a daily basis (minus weekends, holidays, and, of course, days where I just don't feel like writing anything...). I'm hoping that you'll add this blog to your regular reading routine.

To keep readers coming back, we (i.e., Timothy, myself, and any other folks who write for this blog) need to ensure we're providing content that people actually want to read. That's why I've created some polls (including two new ones that I just added today) at the bottom of the page. If you haven't already, please be sure to cast your votes. You're also welcome to email me directly.

D&D Next Playtest

I had considered doing an April Fools post indicating that the playtest rules for D&D Next (Fifth Edition) were now available, but EN World (http://www.enworld.org/) beat me to the punch.

At any rate, we're all still in limbo regarding the playtest rules. I haven't seen any date (other than the vague promise of "spring") for the release, but I will let you all know as soon as I receive my playtest packet. I'll set up a playtest session for anyone who'd like to help me test-drive the rules. (Note, however, that anyone who participates in the playtest will have to sign a non-disclosure agreement.)

Sunday Comics

Welcome to the Sunday Comics section of our little blog. I enjoy reading comics, be they in the actual paper, or online. Every so often I'll come across a reference to RPG/D&D, and I'm going to share those with everyone as a regular feature on Sundays. A little levity for everyone! 

(Expert tip: click to enlarge!)

Get Fuzzy

http://joshreads.com/images/0502/i050204getfuzzy.jpg