Author: Gary

Adventure: Snapshank Canyon

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So this was an adventure I put together just after the release of the 5th Edition of Dungeons and Dragons. I usually document adventures like this on a personal wiki my group keeps and I thought it may be good to share with other people that fancy a quick, combat heavy adventure site to play, especially since the D&D 5th OGL has just gone live.

Snapshank Canyon

Snapshank Canyon is a small adventure site for first level characters. By the end they should either be 3rd level, or very close.

When they reach the canyon read the following description.

You have reached Snapshank Canyon. The gully entrance is fenced off by a high palisade and about the craggy hillside you can see several buildings that have been constructed, each connected by bridges. The entrance to the gully is watched over by a guard tower.

The players can approach this in many ways. The guard atop the tower has good visibility on anyone trying to enter. However, like many bandits he has a vice for ale and on an evening is often drunk, making it easier to sneak in. If he detects intruders he will sound the alarm, attracting the attention of people in area 1.

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Concerning Conan

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I find myself drawn ever back to the murky, monster filled jungles and deserts of Robert E. Howard’s Hyborian Age. A few years ago I got my hands on a collection of all the Conan Tales and read them from back to front. At the time I was an undergraduate and my interest for the vile sorceries of Conan’s world grew so passionate I largely based my undergraduate dissertation on it (along with several other pulp stories). I find I constantly want it to be considered literature, and often wonder why it isn’t by most people. I imagine it’s partly to do with the low brow nature of it; it’s escapist, easy fun about a strong warrior who saves countless damsels from the clutches of gibbering demons and mad wizards. I find another part of Howard’s rejection from scholarly discussion, when compared to similar writers of the time like H.P Lovecraft, is partly to do with the reinvention of the Continue reading “Concerning Conan” →

Concerning Dune

On By GaryIn Concerning3 Comments

Dune, the novel, was originally published in two volumes over the years of 1963-1965 and has helped define some of the most core aspects of hard science fiction ever since.

Written by Frank Herbert, Dune follows the story of a young boy named Paul Atreides, the son of Leto Atreides, a powerful planetary duke who has had his planetary fief changed, by order of the Padishah Emperor  of Humanity to the arid, hostile planet of Arrakis, also known as Dune. 

Herbert does an almost ludicrously good job of detailing the ecology of the planet as well as the behaviours of the indigenous fremen, a mysterious group of humans who inhabit the planet.

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Concerning Painted Miniatures

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When it comes to painting miniatures I’ve always found that the world is divided. Some people like prepaints, I’m assuming that’s why Heroclix does so well, and some people like to paint them themselves.

Ever since historical wargaming people have collected miniatures and painted them, and with the surge in the popularity in games in the 70’s when Dungeons and Dragons was first released the beginning of the MegaCorp Games Workshop  began humbly selling small pewter miniatures for use with D&D, Traveller, and of course, HeroQuest.

GW eventually released Warhammer, and sequentially Warhammer 40,000; the biggest most popular miniature wargame. I’ll admit that the prospect of painting hundreds of plastic miniatures seems daunting, but I can never seem to be able to break away from the hobby, not just because of the gaming, but because of the collecting and painting.  One of the main appeals of the hobby is painting, because you are putting your thoughts and desires into the miniature and at the heart of it all, you want your army to stand out and not just be Ork army number 837, at least that’s what it is for me.

But at the same time, I’ll admit that painting is the scourge of the hobby; it’s repetitive and games that come with prepaints seem like a such a better idea, but time and time again it’s proven that the standard of the paint work done on prepaints is far below the standard you could do yourself. I remember my adolescent self and a several friends laughing our heads of at the mustache of prepainted D&D mini, because it instead looked like a sad face rather than a mustache.

Tannhauser, the boardgame comes with prepaints and on this sort of level it always seemed ok because you are only using a few miniatures and if I’m perfectly honest, despise the fact that I feel I should paint my unpainted Super Dungeon Explore and Talisman figures simply because they’re unpainted.

I find that unpainted miniatures for a boardgame is fine; nobody cares, but as soon as someone turns up to the table with an unpainted Cygnar force, people begin to take note. There is no reason for that. Game on. Paint or no paint.Image

Concerning Roleplaying games

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Well, we’ve all heard of Dungeons and Dragons, as well as many other games. Off the top of my head I could name a few, Traveller, GURPS, MERP, Call of Cthulhu, the list goes on, but the question is why? Why do we find these games so alluring? Well that is a question that I don’t think I could ever fully answer, but would like to explore none the less.

Gary Gygax wrote and published the very first version of Dungeons and Dragons with Dave Arneson, and with it, they tempered many of the concepts that we now have come to expect from modern fantasy media. The thing that made us play though was not the setting, but the imagination involved. The group stroy telling aspect is what brings these games alive, we like to explore a world with our friends in way that lets us be the heroes, villains and everything in between, we like slaying alien scum, rescuing the princess and facing down legions of orcs and gnolls because its fun. Akin the lego when we were children, the best part was not the model straight out of the box, but when you took it apart and rebuilt it in a way that you liked, you could build castles and cars and space ships, all from designs propogated within your mind, and your friends’ minds.

What old pen and paper roleplaying games, I always believe, have over electronic rpgs is the realism and intelligence. By that I mean, in a game of Pathfinder if the heroes wish to find the goblin lair and kill the chieftain, they must make enquiries in the world, talk to the npcs, which themselves are made my up by the GM. Look at maps and decide how much food will be required to get them their and how many days travel are involved. No map markers, no free rides.

I feel that older electronic rpgs were more this way. Looking at Morrowind as an example, if you were sent into a mine from the local mages guild, the npc’s involved would give you directions, you may have to make a few notes or keep checking the journal to find your way there, looking for landmarks that have been mentioned to you. However in newer games in the TES line of games, such as Skyrim, there is a dramatic increase in the amount of handholding. What I mean to say is that in Skyrim you are given a map marker that can be viewed at anytime that leads immediatly to your destination, no thought needed. This pulls away from the roleplaying aspect somewhat, and discourages exploration.

Overall, I’m not saying that electronic roleplaying games are bad, or worse the pen and paper ones, I have had many hours of fun playing both. I just feel that they are different ball parks and appeal to the mind in different ways.

Introductions from the Dungeon

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Well, it appears I’ve finally submitted to the pressure and started a blog. Something I’ve been meaning to do for a while, but have been forever unable to find time and/or interesting things to say about. So anyways this is the blog, a blog about all things that may be considered geeky (and probably many other things), from well known video games, to musings on geeky literature (I’m a sucker for the Cthulhu mythos) to dice & battlegrid games like Dungeons and Dragons and my rambling thoughts on them. 

I like to think that there’s a game out there for everyone and that it’s just a case of finding it for them. I’ve enjoyed the chance to play a huge throng of boardgames, video games, wargames and rpgs and I’m very enthusiastic about them.

I will probably try and cover a vast array of these things and probably post dungeon maps, adventure hooks and all that good stuff for anyone interested as well as views on books I’ve read and TV shows I’ve seen, and no doubt a great deal more but until then feel free to keep button mashing and dice rolling.