Hero Image
The D&D 30 Day Challenge - Day 17 – Favorite Animal/Insect/Arachnid

Driders…. Always driders. I love and hate those bastards. Yeah, I know, they’re not an animal or insect or technically an arachnid, but close enough for me. Though, when we ran through City of the Spider Queen we did run into a massive spider or two that made for some fun combats. Still, though… driders…

Wednesday, November 1, 2017 | 1 minute Read
Hero Image
The D&D 30 Day Challenge - Day 16 – Favorite Ooze/Aberrant Creature

Oh, another tough one. It’s a toss-up between beholders and illithid. They are both a lot of fun from a game stand point. And by fun I mean “AH! AH! AH! AH! RUN! RUN! RUN! RUN!”. Seriously though, one of the most fun adventures we have run was the Illithiad modules. Although, the party did have a pet mimic for a while in Shackled City. He was fun. Guarded our house for us while we were out adventuring. Although, eventually we were gone too long and he got hungry and left. As I recall, the city guard had to put him down. Very sad….

Tuesday, October 31, 2017 | 1 minute Read
Hero Image
The D&D 30 Day Challenge - Day 15 – Favorite Undead

Bodaks. When one of my characters died by a bodak’s gaze and then turned into a PC bodak for a time, it was a lot of fun. Short lived, but fun. Unfortunately, as an undead, there was no way for the party to heal my wounds and eventually the damage accrued to the point of my destruction.

Monday, October 30, 2017 | 1 minute Read
Hero Image
The D&D 30 Day Challenge - Day 14 – Favorite NPC

As a player, I think my favorite NPCs would be a tossup between Lord Soth from Ravenloft and all the various beings who believed they were Keraptis in White Plume Mountain. As a DM, my two favorite NPCs were Gharaleth Axom from The Speaker in Dreams and Halaster the Mad from Expedition to Undermountain. Yeah, I know, Halaster dies at the beginning of the module. Well, not Halaster exactly, but his clone. The way I tied it into Expedition to the Ruins of Greyhawk it worked really well. They way I did it was that Halaster’s clone and Iggwylv’s clone fell in love and, tired of being slaves to their masters, plotted to trap Iuz, Iggwylv and Halaster in the God Trap to drain enough of their energy to become real beings. Their attempt to trap Halaster failed because at that moment the real Iuz and Iggwylv tried to open a portal from Greyhawk to Undermountain, causing Halaster to die and triggering the start of Expedition to Undermountain module with Halaster’s Call.

Sunday, October 29, 2017 | 2 minutes Read
Hero Image
The D&D 30 Day Challenge - Day 13 – Favorite Trap/Puzzle

What’s the best way to put this? I HATE TRAPS AND PUZZLES! There, I said it and I won’t take it back. There is not one single, solitary trap or puzzle I’ve enjoyed or liked as a player. None, whatsoever. Whenever I encounter a trap or puzzle as a PC, I let the other PCs take care of it if possible and will only involve myself if I have to. Even when I play a rogue, I’ll let the others deal with puzzles and I’ll take traps.

Saturday, October 28, 2017 | 1 minute Read
Hero Image
The D&D 30 Day Challenge - Day 12 – Favorite Dungeon Type/Location

My favorite dungeon types are old school dungeon crawls. Just a place underground with a bunch of levels and a bunch of halls and rooms on each level. First adventure I played was The Keep on the Borderlands. That style has always been my favorite. Castles, citadels, towers, cities, sewers, forests and whatever else take second place to the old school dungeon crawl.

Friday, October 27, 2017 | 1 minute Read
Hero Image
The D&D 30 Day Challenge - Day 11 – Favorite Adventure You Ran

As a DM, the one I’ve enjoyed the most was running Return to Undermountain and Expedition to the Ruins of Greyhawk back to back as one story arc. It was a blast and I had a lot of fun as the DM in that arc. My second favorite DM track was running the Speaker in Dreams module. I loved the illithid behind the plot, Gharaleth Axom. As a player, my favorites so far have been Return to White Plume Mountain, Shackled City and facing off against Lord Soth in Ravenloft (I think the module was When Black Roses Bloom, but it was a long, long time ago). The last was a blast as my wizard Delban used a whisper/message spell to speak torturous words into the ears of the slumbering Lord Soth in trying to wake him from his trance and save his dying realm of Sithicus. It was also in Lord Soth’s castle where Delban ran afoul of a banshee, which had the effect of turning him all Raistlin-ish (white hair and gold, glittering eyes – no hourglass pupils thankfully) and probably started him down his path to evil. Blame it all on Ravenloft. It tends to have that effect on people.

Thursday, October 26, 2017 | 1 minute Read
Hero Image
The D&D 30 Day Challenge - Day 10 – Craziest in-game experience

There have been so many, it’s really hard to pick. Here are a few highlights, both as player and as DM: The endless jokes about being a one-armed paladin, including jokes that my mount should be a three-legged horse The time I was DM and a barmaid lured the fighter Jhon Tsaran to the barn for a “roll in the hay”. She was a medusa wearing a hat of disguise and the party had to haul his statue back to the keep. That led to a fun one-off session entitled “Bring me the head of Jhon Tsaran” The time our warrior got on the back of Lord Soth’s nightmare steed and it took to flight to the top of the castle The time Delban got stabbed with a spear and the following exchange took place: Farid: “I pull out the spear…No! Wait! I push it through!” DM: “You push it through?!? It’s an 8 foot long spear! It only went in 4 inches!” The time my thief was killed by a bodak and returned as a bodak player character for a while

Wednesday, October 25, 2017 | 1 minute Read
Hero Image
The D&D 30 Day Challenge - Day 9 – Favorite PC you’d like to play

This is a question that is kind of vague. If it’s talking about pre-defined characters such as Drizzt or Bigby or Tanis Half-Elven or whatever, I don’t really consider them PCs. Even when I was involved in groups running the original Dragonlance modules, I didn’t really consider them PCs. They were NPCs that we’d temporarily stepped into playing. I’ll interpret it, rather, as the favorite type of PC that I like to create and run. First, I like to have some sort of tie in to a previous PC or NPC. It’s never something big or something that really affects the gameplay aspect of the character. I just like to believe that all the great “heroes” have some thread that ties them all together. For example: my good then evil then neutral-ish mage Endeleban Losteast and my one-armed paladin of Helm, Terun Eastmore, are actually brothers. They are the middle two out of four sons of a Purple Dragon general. Delban was disowned for not following in the footsteps of his three brothers and joining the Dragons. He always preferred arcane studies to that of a warrior. Terun eventually found his way into the order of Helm through other events.

Tuesday, October 24, 2017 | 3 minutes Read
Hero Image
The D&D 30 Day Challenge - Day 8 – Favorite PC Of Your Own

It’s a tossup between three of them. First, is Endeleban Losteast (Delban). He’s a wizard and former Aes Saidarr of Cormyr. He was the second character I played with the Wyrmfang Chronicles as we adventured through the dream realm of Ravenloft. It was there he made a mortal enemy of the death knight Soth and gained a Tome of Evil that he made use of later in a quest for power. After turning to evil, he entered the state of NPC-dom, making 3 or 4 appearances over the years before eventually returning to a PC status for a jaunt though the Underdark in the City of the Spider Queen trek. It was during this trek that he cast off the powers of evil that he gained for more neutral status and a future unknown.

Monday, October 23, 2017 | 2 minutes Read
Hero Image
The D&D 30 Day Challenge - Day 7 – Favorite Edition

There’s a lot to love about all of them (except the edition after 3.5e and before 5e that shall not be named nor acknowledged), but I prefer the Pathfinder rule set. They fixed much of what was wrong with 3.5e and added a few new twists that restore a lot of the joy of playing that had been diminished for a while. Yes, Pathfinder is a bit math heavy at times, especially when trying to figure out if bonuses stack, but I think it rarely causes the game to get bogged down and it adds a lot to the playability over 3/3.5e.

Sunday, October 22, 2017 | 1 minute Read
Hero Image
The D&D 30 Day Challenge - Day 6 – Favorite Deity

Well, as with most things game related this has a complex answer. While we have played in a mostly Forgotten Realms world, it is a home-brew version where pretty much any deity was acceptable. As such, of the divine based characters I have played, 2 were clerics of Pelor, a Greyhawk deity, 1 was a paladin of Helm, a Forgotten Realms deity, 1 was a cleric of Heironeous, another deity of Greyhawk, and one was a cleric of Occipitus, not a deity at all really, but a plane of existence that kind of sits on the Abyssal range. However, it was formed from a fallen part of the Celestial planes, so it’s kind of lost in between. Now that we are playing in Golarion, my current cleric is of Ra, an ancient god of Osirion.

Saturday, October 21, 2017 | 2 minutes Read