Writeups

Man, I keep getting behind. Gotta keep up! Next scheduled LFR is maybe Thursday, and if not then on Sunday, so I will try to post in a more timely fashion once I’ve played. Anyway, last Sunday (see?) Susan and I went down to Glen Burnie again to play Scepter Tower of Spellgard (original) with Mark B. Jason B. and Hudson were the other two players. It seems that Mark and Tom were stuck at the beginning of part 2, so if we played a catchup game we’d be able to slide into their adventure, Jason would slide over to GMing, and everything would be good. Since three lazy afternoons of Spellgard equals level 5, that seemed like a good deal, and now the project is underway. ...

Mark B. ran his My Realms, The Gentle Giant, down at Games & Stuff so Susan and I came down to play in it on Thursday. It was quite the B. family affair: Jason and Tom were two of the other players. Evil Tony filled out the table. The setup was an inn in Akanul which was having spellplague problems. It was kind of a haunted house dealybopper, with lots of running around in the inn and isolation and so on. I enjoyed it a bunch, even though we ran out of time – a Games & Stuff failing, that. Also Mark prepared a poster for the local bardic festival, featuring Susan’s bard Faral, which was utterly cool and pleasing.

I wanted to get in another H1 adventure with Cine before embarking on Scepter Tower of Spellgard, just to get him to level 2 and make him a bit more likely to survive and so on. I missed my first attempt at an online game, but managed to make Darksydex’s Elder Wisdom (original) run on 6/2. Kazordan, Trident, Logopolis, EWInsight, and GC1CEO were my fellow players. I would have to characterize it as a perfectly acceptable early H1 LFR adventure. It’s a bit disjointed without a ton of storyline, but there are a surprising number of hooks for the RP-inclined player. They just don’t necessarily have a ton to do with each other. It sort of makes sense given that the setup is all about scouting some ruins. ...

[gallery] Mark B’s My Realms begins.

We finished up the day with The Worst of All Snares, run by Susan, which left Amanda, Jimmy, Mark, Hudson and me to play. The location was convenient – coming off a successful struggle against undead horrors, we just had to move over a few neighborhoods and fight a street gang or two. There was also a nice thematic link to some previous villains, which was a pleasing coincidence. As an earlier module, this sucker was definitely less challenging than Twilight Ambitions. This is good, since we were all pooped. We had a hard enough time dealing with the fact that one of WotC’s bear miniatures has a distressingly suggestive tuft between his legs. Tonight we are all fourteen years old! ...

Our second game of the day was Twilight Ambitions, which only just came out. We had a couple of people who were eager to play it for the sake of a major quest, so the timing was good. Hudson DMed; Susan, Amanda, Jimmy, Mark and I played. I found it an interesting module, not entirely in a good way, although I think I enjoyed it a bit more than the others. The first fight was quite cool, and the skill challenge was reasonably entertaining. The second fight was OK – really mostly filler. The third fight was a serious bear of a battle that kind of turned into a grind. ...

We had another game day at our house on Memorial Day weekend; tons of fun. It gave me and Susan a chance to play with Amanda and Jimmy, which was also cool. The first game was Incident at the Gorge of Gauros (original), with Amanda running. Mark and Hudson joined Jimmy, Susan and me as players. Susan and I had played this one before with Reed and Faral, who did the entire Szass Tam questline, but I never mind a bit of repeat. Also this puts Collin on the road to finishing that quest himself, which is cool. ...

[gallery] Flaming Sphere and Wall of Fire do a number on a couple of dracoliches, and maybe hold back the lich. Go go AGLA 1-7!

[gallery] Killin’ undead in the Gorge of Gauros!

Hella belated, I know. I played 7 games and DMed 4 games in April, which continues to be a pretty happy ratio for me. In a stunning upset, Xalcairn and I played together more than anyone else, thanks to a bunch of H2 games online for Collin. Both he and Susan played with me three times, but I DMed for him twice. Go figure. Meanwhile, Matt J. ran 3 games for me. ...