First time running a game on roll20

Hey everyone! I've been very busy with work!  Which is good, as I've been enjoying it so very much. Unfortunately I haven't really been able to blog much.  My day off is Wednesdays, and for the last few weeks I've honestly been a fog trying to figure out what to do.  Finally decided I"ll try my hand at running an afternoon game on roll20.  I originally I thought about running a few of the Thunderrift modules.  However the first one I picked wasn't quite up to snuff, writing wise (no offence), it just felt like it needed a bit of a rewrite and was way too much prep for me.

I decided to make a change, and run an adventure in Mystara.  Specifically "the eye of traladar", which is super cool (albeit railroadey).  This morning I"m doing a re-read and getting a few things prepped.  As is typical I over prep.  We are going to play for about 2 hours, and I'm sure I have more than enough game to run for that. 

In other news I received a nice package with a TON of AD&D stuff.  I've got so much gaming material now!  I haven't quite decided if I'm going to create a homebrew world or just start incorporating all these cool bits and pieces.  I suppose time will tell.  In the meantime I'm going to delve deeply into Mystara.  It's funny how when you read a little thing and your like "wow okay, that is a great backstory for this, or that".  It gets the wheels turning!

Another fun fact, yesterday was Moldvay's birthday, and I think its appropriate that I'm running his rules today!  I was originally going to run 2e on roll20, but got very annoyed with the 2 character sheet options provided.  Neither was basic enough, and there was bits and pieces of skills & powers included in the sheets (of which I'm not going to run).  Long story short I realized that running b/x is the easiest thing for roll20.  The sheets are great, I have some backstories setup.  As well the sheets do all the math for rolls for yah, so it makes it easy for players who don't quite get "roll under" and descending armour class.  I even setup a basic monster sheet for myself that will allow me not to have to worry about the math (although its pretty easy). 

Anyways, this is going to be fun!  Thankfully I have some ice in the fridge for the scotch I'm going to pour myself. 

Take me down to ramble city, where the dice roll 20s and the...... GAMER ADD POST

My new job is going so well. It's a lot of fun. The other day was a Monday and it didn't feel like a typical Monday. Sold a guitar to a kid, and he skipped out of the store super happy.

As soon as I learn the job better I'll probably try and get back to gaming. I am hoping to get back into the isle of dread sessions.  I intend on setting up a game for hopefully next week sometime.  Although I'm having the "Maybe I should run this adventure or system" A.D.D. thing that I typically get.  Trying to run a long term campaign is not easy!  Mostly because some new shiny thing shows up and I'm like "YAAS!!!!"

Looks like I'll be getting Wednesdays off for the foreseeable future.  Which is going to be writing day for me.  I have a crimhuck adventure I want to finish, and an old one that I need to layout (and do a wholesale rewrite).  As well I have to finish my layout work on "Mythical Journey's", which is going to be pretty cool!

I just created a Mewe group for people looking for games.  It came about for a few reasons.

There used to be a great group on facebook called "OSG - One Shot Group", where lots of people would post games and get them going.

In the regular OSR group on mewe, there's so much promo that a lot of things like "wanting to run a game posts" get lost.

There's a lot of cats out there that want to game, but can't find players for their specific time zones.  I am hoping that people can meet new people and play games!

As for me and my schedule, I am really hoping to try and get something going on a Wednesday if possible.  Maybe the afternoon, if some peoples are up for it.  I know that's a total shot in the dark.  Currently I'm playing in Tim's monday night game (sounds like we are going to be kicking ass and taking names next week).  Unfortunately I really can only set aside nights once a week for games, other than the ones that my wife isn't home.  With the new job/schedule time is at a premium.  That and I have band practice on thursdays, so that eats up a bunch of the week. 

I suppose I'm trying to do too many things at once.  But hey you only live once right!

After receiving an awesome package from Steve in the mail, I'm devling back into 2nd edition and loving it! He sent me the "city of greyhawk" boxed set and Legends and lore.  So as usual I'm so friggin torn! 

Here's the silliness that has pervaded my head in the last few months:

Mystara campaign with b/x, lots of Basic fantasy adventures.  Starting in the small town of Luln.

Greyhawk with 2nd Ed, in the duchy of geoff and the vale of the mage (or whatever it's called). 

Now a campaign set in the city of Greyhawk.

Despite the fact that I'm not a Forgotten Realms fan, I started looking at the 2nd Ed FR campaign setting, and fell in love with the adventure and the Dales again.  Ugh. 

Alternatively I've been considering fleshing out my 10 Monster Setting and running a game there.

oh and a whole bunch of other random ideas.

GAMER ADD!

I think I should just write a random table, and then roll on it and that'll be the campaign I'll run.  It might just be easier!

So obviously I'm leaning towards second ed and some Epic fantasy.

Part of the problem is there's always something new that catches my eye.  I question how some people can just stick with one thing and go.  I remember when I was a kid looking at the 2nd Ed books and I started building this world (because of course I didn't have any actual campaign book and no one to bounce ideas off of).  I hate to say I long for those days, but sometimes..... hahah.

Part of the problem is I want to have fun creating and I want to make sure the players are always having fun.  If that means jumping ship from a scenario to another one, so be it. 

So many ideas, and so little time. 

GREYHAWK! MYSTARA! BLACK MARSH! IRON FALCON! AFF! - a.d.d. gamer confession

I admit it.  I'm an A.D.D. Gamer. 
What does that mean?
Well what it means is OOOOH SHINY!

I get a great idea for a campaign, and I start working on it.  Then I get a great idea for a new campaign, and I start working on it, THEN I get another great idea for a campaign, and I start working on it.

I've been slowly working on a AFF adventure set in and around Darkwood forest.

THEN I listened to this:
https://anchor.fm/gothridgemanor/episodes/Working-on-the-Campaign-e3ck6l

And right around the time I was listening to Tim's podcast, I was also talking with Chris Gonnerman about Iron Falcon.  BTW there's a new iron falcon group on mewe, check it out.

Not to mention the ever entertaining google hangouts thread that I'm a part of with Matt and the crew.

So more inspiration has struck me.

I've toyed with running mystara, greyhawk (recently) and a pile of other campaigns in the last few years.

Here's the problem.  Well 1.  I have a.d.d.  2.  (the most important) I'm not currently running any games.  So instead of focusing on my current game, I keep thinking of new and fun ideas to try.

The latest thing that's on my mind is to finally run Black Marsh.  I even have a starting point.  And of course I'm thinking using iron falcon would be fun.  Even though I've stated often that Whitebox would be handy especially when running a game online.

So I'm off to write a players campaign notes for black marsh.

Maybe I'll get my shit together and run a one shot soon.

That's my friday thoughts!

Mystara as my campaign setting

I think from now on I'm just going to use Mystara as my campaign setting.  If the players do something it affects the world moving forward.  If I play an old school campaign or a fifth edition campaign, doesn't matter.  A few things have crossed my mind latetly:

Old School Campaign: 

After reading the back of The grand duchy of karameikos gazetteer, There's lots of little adventure ideas.  My first thought would be for the players to start in Luln, and investigate the old castle (which would be the sample dungeon from basic).  From there they can get hired by Gnomish caravan to bring goods to Specularum.  During the trip a major rain storm will hit, causing the caravan to get stuck in the mud, falling over, spilling out the contents of one of the wagons.  There the PCs will uncover the map & letter regarding Isle Of Dread.  Once in Specularum I think a perfect adventure would be "Veiled Society".  After that the PCs will hopefully have enough money to make the trip to the Isle of Dread.  (And be of decent level).  Since Specularum isn't that detailed in the gazeetteer, I think using specific bits & pieces of Blacksand should do the trick.  There's a lot of good information for sections of a city in the book.  Should be easy to use that.  At some point maybe "A nights dark terror" or "castle amber" might make an appearance. 

Fifth Edition Campaign: 

I've been reading a pile of Al-Qadim stuff latetly.  The land of fate is a really good book.  In Mystara I could pretty much set everything in the Emirate of Ylaruam, in the city of Tel Akbir.  I really dug "Golden Voyages" and a "Dozen and one adventures".  I think they would be relatively easy to convert to fifth edition.  At least bullet points, rather than the adventures (In the case of a dozen and one adventures).  There are a lot more combat opportunities in the 2nd edition adventures, and because combat in fifth takes for friggin ever I'd probably trim it down a bit. 

With Golden Voyages I think I would redraw the ocean map near the coast of Tel Akbir.  For the most part I think I'm going to sit down and do a bit of detailing for the city of Tel Akbir & Dozen and one adventures.  If I can get 2 or 3 adventures re-written & converted for Fifth that should give me enough ammo if I ever have to run a one shot campaign.  I guess I'll create a wiki for the players.

Oh and the gods are going to be the immortals. Until the players reach 20th level, then they can replace em.

That's enough rambling for me this morning, cheers!

Isle Of Dread Musings & Beyond

We just finished up a really fun session of "Curse Of Strahd" on the weekend.  I plan to write about that in the next day or so (my notes are at home, including a funny title for the post).

Last night I sat and really digested Isle Of Dread, its a great module. It's open ended.  Of course everyone already knows this.  I'm thinking that we should be wrapping up Strahd soon.  Well possibly (I'll get into that in the session report).

I'd like to run Isle of Dread, with Dwellers of the forbidden city on one of the other islands close to Tanora (or however you spell it).  As well on the northern side of the island I am going to pop B4 in there somewhere (the lost city). Another module I've been kicking around is N1 Against the reptile god, as it works well with the theme.

Since our old school group is just starting to get into mutant future, and the 5e group might be wrapping up, I think I'm going to start working on ideas for a 5e version of all of the above.  A few things are coming to mind however.

Isle of dread is for levels 3 & up, so I might have to figure out a way to run B4 or N1 first.  That might prove interesting.  Alternatively I think that Isle of dread & Dwellers has more than enough things to do to keep us busy for a bit.

Our 5e players are interested in storylines, both of these modules while awesome are more hex crawl open ended type adventures.  (which I like).  So I'm going to have to add some story into the whole thing.  Reading thru some of the entries in Isle of Dread, I started thinking about the certain factions on the island.  Example, the Rakastas.  Isn't doesn't really say a helluva a lot in the book about them. They are camped in the hex, they raid people.  I plan to turn to the 5e DMG npc/bad guy tables and start whipping up personalities and backgrounds for the leader of the rakasta's and maybe his/her second in command.

Of course I'll also have to figure out stats for some of the monsters that never made it to 5e (plantons come to mind... I figure halfing stats would work out). The Aracnea I'm guessing could be a combo of giant spiders and drow, maybe driders that can cast spells perhaps?

I intend to use Mystara as the world, and the races of Mystara.  Which will strip down useable races from 5e.  (no dragonborn, tieflings, yadda).  I'm unsure on the classes thing.  And there is no real gods in Mystara, rather there are the Immortals.  So I might port gods from Greyhawk, or Dragonlance (I kinda like that idea actually).

Anyways, as usual, I'm just riffing on ideas here.