Mini Mail Call

Lookie, lookie what came in the mail.  I got these three for a very good deal.  First off the Pathfinder decks.  I already have the Critical Hit deck and the Plot Twist Cards, Flashbacks so I needed to get these to complete the set.  While we don't play Pathfinder we use the two critical decks and used their chase card deck one.  That was fun.  Unexpected and fun. 

Fear itself is a GUMSHOE addition to Esoterrorists.  I am really enjoying reading through this and it has been inspiring me to try out a different genre and system.  So I have some reading to do for the holiday weekend. 

I guess tomorrow the Starter Set is out.  Amazon won't send mine out until the 15th.  If I happen upon in a store I'll probably buy it then.  If not, I'll wait.  Either way I am hoping I like it. 

The Manor, Now With Less Corners

Thanks to +matt jackson I found a new toy to play with.  I stood in the scrap-booking isle trying to figure out which one I want.  There was an older lady there and she seemed amused that this 6'+ tall guy with a shaved head was looking through the decorative cutters.  She asked if I scrap-booked.  I didn't know that was a verb.  I told her no, but I needed it for a zine. 

Bet you can't guess what she asked.

I told her a zine was a small magazine that is focused on specialized topic.  And usually its done for fun and not for money.

"Do you use stickers?"

Nope.  Never used stickers.

"You should.  People like stickers."

....good to know.  I nearly forgot what the hell I was looking for because now I was thinking of stickers.  She was right, I like stickers. 

I found my corner cutter (see above), but no stickers.

The Session Where My Head Gets Swallowed

...I know, it sounds bad, but let me explain.

Last night the Monday Night group continued their exploration of Monteport.  We were down one member of the party, Luven the Liquid.  His power, to pee at anytime and on anything.  Without our fourth we descended 21 miles into the ground.  Yes, 21 miles.  We made a joke that wouldn't it suck if it was just the longest dead end ever. 

We found a chasm that seemed to have no bottom.  Or top that we could see.  The gnome, Duncan, levitated and in a Canadian national sport kind of way, we 'curled' him to the other side while he held one end of a rope.  Surprisingly it worked.  And more surprisingly we all made it across the chasm.

The room had a purple icky pool in the middle and three not very secret doors made of flesh and had an eyeball.  We needed to make a sacrifice.  Adzeer took out his mace to smash the fleshy door and was knocked back with a bad shock.  Okay, plan B.  Someone threw a mug in and one of the doors opened.... 

We found an acrylic lair of madness.  The creatures (which we were about to meet one of their ilk) are from the plane of madness.  Although I was assuming someone was experimenting on them because they were in vats, preserved and everything was so neat and tidy.  In general the area was empty until we happened on a room with three creatures store in a vat of green liquid.

SMASH

As the liquid squirted out we were splashed by its greenness, but instead of getting grossed out we got a hit point total raised!  But the creature scrambled out of the vats with inhuman speed. 

COMBAT

We attacked damaging it badly in the first round.  Adzeer unleashed four magic missiles because he was newly dubbed 7th level at the beginning of the session.  It did not last.  The creature attacked me....

HE SWALLOWED MY HEAD

What the hell.  But again, something weird happened.  I gained a point in intelligence and 2 in wisdom.  Adzeer was now sporting a 20 wisdom, but the cost...I was level drained!  While the creature was still attached to my head the other killed the creature.  When I was able to free myself, Adzeer was now sporting a new knob in the middle of his forehead. 

After twenty minutes of giggling and various jokes about giving head, knob polishing (you get the idea) we decided not to smash open another vat.  No one else wanted to earn a knob.  Their loss.

We explored the area more.  Found a room with four strange chests that contained four different types of magical keys.  Then we found a room with larger creatures and larger vats.  One of the magical keys we possessed would have unlocked the vats, but no one felt the need to fight a larger version of the knob givers. 

We ended the night the camping near the chasm.  There are two more secret doors to explore.  We didn't find any 'treasure', but Adzeer is thinking this is the true heart of Monteport.  And why it exists at all. 

Our GM Ken, stellar as ever, did an excellent job.  He was able to take the sterile atmosphere and gave it a very creepy feel.  Monteport continues to surprise even after 18 months.  

Micro-Adventure #4: The Pierced Children

Here is my latest addition, Micro-Adventure #4: The Pierced Children.  You can go on over to Patreon and download it for free like all my other offerings.  If you like it, maybe throw a quarter into the till.  Either way, please download it and give it a read. 

This micro-adventure kept wanting to creep into full adventure mode.  One of the things I enjoy about writing these is keeping it concise and cutting away all the frivolous additions.

To conserve space for this entry, since many of the opponents were the same I just used a generic stat block at the end and if there were any variations I added them into the text of the encounter.  

+Thaumiel Nerub wrote a review about MA #1: Norman's Gone Missing.  He estimates it took him 1-2 minutes to read and that included prepping time and it takes 15 - 30 minutes of game time.

+Erik Tenkar also wrote a quick post about MA #3: The Pig and The Ogre.  He's itching to get a grease pencil and mark it up.  Great idea!

For those who are members of my Patreon offerings I'll be sending out laminated copies of the micro-adventures every so often and other surprises I am cooking up.

+Christian Walker took the time to post a few words about my laminated version of MA#3: The Pig and The Ogre.

There seems to be a lot of cats with my maps.  Maybe I should start selling these things at the pet stores. 

And to those who are already supporting my Micro-Adventures, a huge thanks.  It is appreciated and I hope to make it worth your while.

Friday is All Right for Fighting

Elton John had the wrong night.

+Erik Tenkar took the B Group....we need to come up with a better name.  That one sucks.

+Erik Tenkar GMed our group made up of the technical grappling guru +Douglas Cole (he's got a t-shirt to prove it), erotic dungeon fantasy author +Peter V. Dell'Orto and a guy I don't know well enough to give him a smartass moniker, +Chris Maler.  The fourth guy in our small group is sorta like a Spinal Tap drummer. 

My guy, Minister, a cleric/mage, leveled up to 3rd in each class.  And something magical happened...roll d20 got a quantum flux dice roll generator.  Apparently it is the latest quantum you can legally possess.  This was to assist Minister from continuing his long string of 1's.  It did that.  Instead, Minister is now rolling a long string of mediocre misses.

Our group returned to the 3rd level, because like all adventurers believe, the deeper you go the better the loot is. We now had a dwarf, he helped us detect all those five degree angle slopes, but he immediately failed to notice the 10' pit.  At least he missed the spikes.

Erik worked magic with his fog of war so not to give too much away.  But we were looking for doors and rooms with numbers.  It took us a little while to find a room with some loot.  We encountered a Donkey Kong trap.  I loved it.  Flaming barrels rolled towards you and the great thing was, it reset itself so the next poor shmuck would have to leap of those flaming bastards.

We fought a series of low level critters.  I think the camel spiders (without toes) and a quad of skeletons were the badasses of the night.  We ran in another mage with two fighter 'companions'.  The mage vanished and I slept the two manly men.  Erik said they were wearing plate mail, but then took it back when we looted them and said they only had chain mail.  In a previous room we'd inadvertently taken the mage's spellbook he hid.  And here's a very important lesson boys and girls, come closer because I want you to hear this.  When you're invisible, don't shout 'fuck'.  That kind of potty mouth behavior will get you killed.  And that's just what happens boys and girls, that mage died as a dagger was slowing pushed into his eye socket.

Peter got tubro-rot from putting on a mummy's boots.  Or at least he said he got the rots from the mummy.  I saw how he was flirting with the one-eyed potion girl.  Peter thinks she's winking at him.  I didn't have the heart to tell him otherwise.

Last night was fun and needed.  It sounded like almost everyone in the group had a long ass week.  I needed to blow off some steam by goofing around and having some fun tromping through a dungeon. 

I had a great time.  My contribution was minimal.  But it was a needed diversion and a fantastic way to begin the weekend.

Oh, and to get a more accurate and serious version of the session, Peter has his take and a few opinions.  And Doug is able to write his report the instant we are done.  He's such a kiss ass.  But it's the most accurate at what happened and his Google-fu is top notched when finding the appropriate clipart to highlight events. 

But the kicker is, I wrote this post, so Tenkar gives folks 10% bonus for writing a post about the game.  That 10% bonus allows me to level up in to a 4th level cleric and mage. 

Sneak Peek at the Next Micro-Adventure & Wounded Warrior Project

Here's the map for #4 Micro-Adventure.  This one is called the Pierced Children.  It consists of a mountain edge, some woods and a rough silver mine.  Those blue spots are supposed to be more 'silvery'.  They look a little too much like water.  I thought if I added white it would make it less water looking.  I miscalculated.  The white makes it look like ripples sort of.  While I don't have the artistic ability many of these map dudes do, but I can at least make what's on the map clear. 

I've been creating these for my Patreon page.  So far I've got 9 patrons, hit my first goal, and learning the interesting things about Patreon.  Some of them glitches.  But I offer them to everyone for free.  You can copy them off the page here or go to Patreon and DL it there. But, next month the focus will be on something else.

Next month +matt jackson has gathered a bunch of mapmakers, some of the best, to donate maps and he hopes to collect enough donations to give the Wounded Warrior Project $1000.  Matt is active military and one of my best friends has been in the Marines for 28yrs, I jumped at the chance to participate in this.  In July, all money I get from Patreon is being donated to Matt's project.  Matt has his own Patreon page.  This is where all the action will be if you wish to contribute.  Just join up and you can donate as much or as little as you want and withdraw at anytime.  No risk to you.  It's a cool set up and I've enjoyed the short time I'v had with Patreon. 

For more information about the upcoming Wounded Warrior Project please head over to Matt's page.  He's got more information of what's going on.  And seriously, hook up with Matt on Patreon, even for a quarter a map, it helps.

Navigating in a Land of Fog and Rain

This subject is appropriate for the weather here today.  We've got down pours and flooding.  It makes a mundane trip/landscape more challenging.  I avoid the word interesting, because while I like my fantasy exciting and interesting.  I like my real life less so.  Especially when it comes to traveling. 

Take a normal travel route in your game and add weather.  That ogre encounter you planned can take on a different level of difficult by adding rain, fog, snow or a fricking tornado!  I've never had a tornado in my game.  I may need to do that.  When I do add an environmental element to an encounter I usually add some modifiers to make it relevant.

Say the group is headed north on a road they've travel hundreds of times, but the day is rainy and patchy fog hangs in the air.  When Mr. Ogre Grumpy Pants bursts through the fog and rumbles towards the party, wielding a barn door as a club what happens now? 

• Everyone with a one handed weapon is at -1 to hit and to damage.  
• Two handed weapons are -2 to hit and to damage.  When you can't find good footing then it's more difficult to drive a strike home.  
• A miss requires a Dex roll.  A failure could means they get twisted up and fall.  Could mean the pommel of the weapon is wet and slips out their hand.  Requiring a round to get up or get retrieve a weapon.

Some may say this is too fiddly.  I say BAH.  I don't think I've ever said BAH.  It adds a interesting element to a typically encounter.  In more extreme weather the penalties would be worse.  But for now, I'm just writing about typical weather. 

I wrote the rain away.  The rain stopped here.  I must be magic.

Adventure Unbalance

Adventure balance is one of the terms that makes my teeth hurt.  Not a fan.  I understand the concept, but for my games, I don't like it in practice.  Most of my players know I don't like to pull punches and not every situation they are going will be in their favor.  I will add most of the time it's my players who jump into the deep end of  the crap pool.

When I make adventures there are encounters that are going to be easier or very difficult for the players.  In Knowledge Illuminates, a 1st level adventure, there is an encounter with an Ankheg that could be party killer.  If the party tries to go toe-to-toe it won't end well.  But if they choose to go after it, they'll need to come up with a plan.  That's where the fun is.  Also, in the same adventure, there is a very bad, bad magic item that could do bad,bad thing to the players.  But at no time is anyone telling them they have to use it.  There is a group that will tell them not to use it and there are enough hints that using it will be a bad, bad idea.  

While I don't like to go out of my way to see that encounters are balanced for the party.  I do playtest my adventures.  I try to run them at least twice and if I can get some one else to run the adventure once.  I want to see if I inadvertently created a death trap.   While I am not into balancing encounters I also won't create unavoidable, mindless death traps.  It's frustrating to the players and boring to me.  When I playtest an adventure I can see where the problem are. 

A good GM can also adjust the difficulty level of an adventure fairly easy.  I can build an adventure for 1st thru 3rd level dudes.  My parties usually consists of four guys.  So that's what I write for.  If your group has six to eight guys the encounter might be to easy.  So while an adventure may have a suggestion of levels, it depends on size of the party.  Some of them bring hirelings in tow.  At this point the GM could increase the number of the enemies or increase the hit points or hit dice of the creatures.  Or whatever way you chose to create.

I've had dragon or giants or liches in 1st level adventures.  Usually they played an peripheral role, but if the PC wanted to challenge, suck up to, or, as one player wanted, to pee on the sleeping giant than rewards are given out for stupidity, cleverness or the distance of the urine stream.  Most PCs are smart enough to avoid, or watch.  But once in awhile a player is going to want to make a power play at a low level.  If they can pull it off, bravo.  If they don't, more likely they'll be rolling up a new guy.

In my experience, these unbalanced events/encounters are what my players find memorable.  They can be built into an adventure arc the players are working through.  Think of Conan and his parents and friend slaughtered by Thulsa Doom's men.  It set up the first stage of an epic.

Delayed Mail Call

I've been lax in showing off my latest acquisitions.  I've got a very cool backlog of stuff.

Zines have been pouring into the Manor lately.  Also there must have been a big sale on yellow card stock I missed.  +Richard LeBlanc's zines are an odd-size and full of his crazy good stuff.  Metal Gods is very cool.  I really enjoyed +Edgar Johnson's piece about the street kids.  That piece alone is worth the price of admission.  And Crawl Jammer brought to you by +Tim Callahan  comes in at 32 pages.  I think he's just trying to show off.  Making us look bad.  I haven't had a chance to read through it yet.  But I am getting ready to do some space micro-adventures and his zine is going to be a huge help.

+Joseph Bloch's fantastic Bestiary.  I've only thumbed through this bad boy, but holy shit on a Sunday...it's good.  Of course my timing was off and I bought it the weekend before his 30% sale.  Damn my piss poor timing!

This picture went wonky.  It's sideways.  Anyway.  Two very cool things here.  First off is a letter from +Christian Walker.  It's always good to get something from Christian.  I was laughing before I even opened the letter.  Above is +matt jackson's project, a hand written and drawn single page zine.  I dig the concept and I will definitely find a use for it.

Alright this photo thing is annoying.  Grrr.  Anyway, +Joey Lindsey had some items for sale on Google+ and I snagged a couple of oldies.  Good price and they filled a couple holes I had in my collection.

Okay, off to the bookstore.  I need to get some writing done.  I have the next micro-adventure written, but need to do a map.  And I need to get cracking on issue 7 of the Manor. 

Why I Didn't Participate in Free RPG Day

I've been a huge fan of Free RPG Day since 2009.  I thought it was a great idea, and it was one of the things that drew me back into playing d20 games.  I looked forward to every year.  Last year I think I finally had had enough.

In previous years I'd done well with getting freebies and scoring some loot on top of it.  But, it seemed every year I had problems with the shop owners.  For me there is no F in FLGS.  There are two in my area that generally participate.  Neither is a favorite of mine.  The primary store I go to, the staff are all super friendly except the guy who is in charge of the gaming section.  For some reason he must live by the philosophy that if he is arrogant enough people will believe all the crap that spews out of his mouth.  I just don't like the dude.  In previous years I was willing to chance him being there (ironically he was rarely there on Free RPG Day), but not this year.

The second store I rarely visit because the owner latches onto me and he feels the need to show me every bit of stock he has in store, hoping I'll buy half of it.  Last year I dropped nearly $100 in his till on Free RPG Day.  I scored a lot of good stuff, but he got mad at me when I declined to run a game.  "You got all that free stuff, the least you could do is run a game."  Yeah, I did get free stuff, but I'd also purchased a few pricey items I could have gotten a fuck load cheaper on-line.  I had plans with the wife to go out of town and enjoy the day.  Sitting in a room with him for 4 hours was not in any of my plans in any of the multi-universes I may exist. 

So this year I read about Free RPG Day and thought about going.  Looked at the page, targeted a few pieces I'd like to score, but the day came and went and I didn't go.  Here's the reason I didn't go.  All of the above that I've written and the fact I think I only visited each store once during the past year.  I didn't want to have to deal with either of them.  Wasn't worth it.

I'm sorry I missed out on it.  Really I am, cause I do enjoy the day.  Next year I'm going to have to just take a road trip to a gaming store I've never been to before.  Grab some free stuff and see what kind of gaming books they have on the shelves.  That's not too bad of a thing.

Plus, a lot of independent publishers are jumping on the bandwagon and produced free items for the day also.  I got quite a bit from what was offered on-line.

I'm going to throw this out there, particularly in +Erik Tenkar direction because he's a sucker to do this kind of thing.  Have an OSR Day.  Have folks offer up samples of their wares just like Free RPG Day, but it focuses on our neck of the woods.  I don't know if it's a good idea or me finding another reason not to go mow the lawn.

Another Micro Adventure Completed

Here's the 3rd adventure in my line of micro adventure.  You can go over to my Gothridge Patreon page and download the PDF.  Those who are patrons of mine will receive a 4" x 6" laminated version of the adventure.

Membership has its privileges. 

The Trailer for the Next Micro-Adventure...

The Pig and the Ogre
I know, it sounds like a love story, but there is nothing like that in here.  It's a gripping drama where a giant humanoid struggles against his environment while facing his biggest challenge, a giant and elusive incarnation of everything he loves best in this world.  Bacon.

Friday Question: Reoccuring NPCs

I was reading through my some of my new gaming acquisitions, I've gotten another batch since Origins.  When I read through books I'm usually imagining how I can use this or that in my campaign world.  This morning I was thinking of NPCs I would use in certain places.  And it got me to thinking of reoccurring NPCs in my campaign.  I have a handful of them.  While their setting my change their personality and name remain the same.

Opulus
Personality: This little angry guy always pops up in my campaigns.  He's an elderly man with bird like features.  He's a fundamentalist in one of the religions and has no tolerance for those who fail to meet his standards.  Especially those among his own faith.  He calls for extreme measures to be taken.

Setting: I've put him in a temple in the large cities, but I've also put him in small villages were he is the sole provider of religious guidance.

How I Play Him: Opulus is a wonderful foil to the party.  He is a non-combatant, but he is verbally aggressive and he gets people riled up.  His misguides his flock into indulgence when he is preaching about purifying by fire.  His motives are self-serving.  But his anger and conviction with which he speaks convinces others he is acting for the greater good.  The party often finds them on the opposite sides of his rants.


Max
Personality: Max is a large man who is always a bartender.   He is laid back, doesn't get too riled up except if the bar is threatened.  A good brawl, he's okay with.  Draw weapons or if any fire start jumping around he'll pin you to the wall with his knight killer crossbow he always has under the bar.  Keep him on your good side, tip him well and you may find bits of information to your ear.

Setting: Always a tavern.  Max is always behind some bar in one of my campaigns.  He's my go to bartender.  The tavern is usually an adventurer's tavern with lots of eclectic folks milling about.

How I Play Him: Max doesn't talk too much to those folks he doesn't know.  He's polite, but doesn't engage.  After a few sessions with the players have hung out there, shared a story or two and have tipped him and his staff (he is very protective of his staff) well, he'll share information about what he's heard and he has an extensive adventuring background.  He is a great resource when the players need an important piece of information. 

Vander Gothridge

Personality:  Vander is arrogant and powerful.  He is usually outside the authority to nobility.  He is an entity they often fear to anger.  So he does as he pleases to who he pleases and very little can be done.  But he never does anything extreme or horrible.  He believes himself to be above everyone and they are nothing, but ignorant children.

Setting: Vander can be found nearly anywhere.  I often plop him in the main city of the campaign.  But he's been out adventuring also.  He usually travels alone.  Or he'll have a retinue of slaves.

How I Play Him: If you hadn't guessed this blog was named after this character from many years ago.  I don't play him all powerful, but he is a major force to be considered in my campaign.  Arrogant would be the first word I would describe him as.  But as the players might learn to hate him he is also known to save a village from a small horde of undead.  Not so much because he was saving the villagers, but because he hates undead.  Most leave him alone because some of his acts to benefit them greatly.  In one campaign he was a border lord with one castle in a mountain pass.  He and his men held back the tide of the great orc nation beyond the mountains.  And even though he was a giant pain in the ass, no one touched him.

So this is a short list of my go-to NPCs for my campaigns.  So Friday Question back at you, Do you have any go to NPCs that you've used in multiple campaigns?

Origins: D&D Next Session

The final activity of Origins was our D&D Next session.  When I glanced at the games D&D Next was offering it was interesting to see all the old time adventures they were using to demonstrate the ruleset.  Tomb of Horrors, Keep on the Borderlands and some 3.5 stuff from the Forgotten Realms.  It seems WotC is making a concentrated effort to get back some of the fan base it lost.

One thing I should note is we were not playing the final version of D&D Next.  We were playing the final playtest rules.  The referee made it clear that some of the things have changed.  So this is really just a playtest of the final ruleset.  But I was going in to see or feel which direction they were going in.  While they were using old adventures, that didn't mean they were going old school again.

I could go through the playtest, but Rob already did a good job of covering the details here.  What I can add is it felt like playing a combination of AD&D through 3.5.  Bits of this edition here and bits of another here.  Also the adoption of ascending AC was a good choice in my opinion.  The skill resolutions were easy.  They used a simple scale of 10, 15, 20 and 25 to determine the difficulty of a task.  A side note, I was listening to a podcast where the players were playing 3.5 and through the podcast they would ask for a skill roll.  Often the players would roll in the 30s and be disappointed!  To me, the system is broken and out of balance at that point.  If D&D Next sticks to what it did in the final playtest rules than I think that flaw could be fixed.

The referee was competent , but like Rob said, relied way too much on reading the script from the adventure verbatim.  Maybe he had to do that because it was a playtest setting for the adventure.  The adventure itself was bland, but I think had some interesting nuances for longer play.  This adventure had several optional quests the players could have explored.  For some reason it reminded me a lot of the Pathfinder Adventure Paths.  

I've already ordered the Starter Set on Amazon.  I think it is $13.  I'd like to see what the final version is going to look like.  From what I've seen and experienced it'll be a system I can work with.  Probably won't be my main system, but it'll find space on my shelf. 

So WotC is trying to attract some of the old school/Pathfinder folks back into the fold.  Let's see how they treat 3rd party publishers this time around.  I hope they can figure out they can attract more folks with and open hand than a clenched fist.

Origins Report

Origins was a mixed bag this year.  The bad part was all on me though.  I had a very long week at work and I get maxed out on people.  Shocking I know.  Then on Saturday I threw myself into the con without any 'recovery' time.  Little things were pissing me off.

• Standing at the Chessex booth and having a kid step in front of me as I'm looking.  I move down.  He did it again, only this time he's standing on my foot and not moving.  After asking him to move twice, I moved him.  Not really a huge deal, but I was already in a bad mood.  
• Then a girl with some sort of weird wings kept turning and poking me with the end of her wings.  Those little fuckers were sharp.  Most of this I wouldn't bother thinking about it, but...
• Coughing on me.  This pisses me off even in my best moods.  Someone is looking at you or near enough that when they cough they spray you.  Grrr.  Cover your fucking mouth man.  
•   And the last thing, and this was something I was trying to avoid, staying late.  We were trying to get into a 4 o'clock game for D&D Next.  All filled up.  The only slot open was at 8pm, so that means we would get out at12am and would get home until 4am.  We left for the con at 5am.  I had a bad feeling that my companions would be the ones sleeping while I drove home.  Pretty much happened and I didn't get home until 5am.  

But there was some very good stuff that went on.  Origins exhibitor hall was fantastic as usual.  The only disappointment was the Troll and Toad booth.  They brought zero gaming stuff.  All Magic the Gathering cards and some other card game stuff.  No interest.  I wanted to dig through their bins and buy some old modules I am wanting to finish my collections.  There were a lot of interesting demos going on.  Although, the guys at the Steve Jackson games booth must drink energy drinks by the case.  Those dudes are loud and talk very fast.  I asked the one guy to go away.  I was trying to look at books and he kept talking about something.  Sorta like he had a conversation going with someone else then continued it on with me except I had no idea what the hell he was talking about.  And he's one of those dudes who coughed on me.  Grrr.

I did get to play in a D&D Next session.  I'll write a separate post about it.  This post is apparently about me being pissy and the shit I bought.  A lot of cool shit.  With a flourish of my hand, I present to you my Origins '14 loot.

I spent a good amount of time in the author area.  I picked up this Halfling cookbook for Ivy.  hey had a Dwarven one also.  They explained they were actually recipes from medieval times.  The Halfling book was English recipes and the Dwarven book was German recipes.  Thought it would be fun for her.  Then, of course, I got her a cool little Wonder Woman drawing.  I was surprised they didn't have more WW stuff.  Then for me, I got a d30, I needed to get a new one because with +Richard LeBlanc putting out all that golden d30 tables I nearly wore out my other one.  And a new set of dice.  Smoke.  Just because they were dice and I wanted a set.

Another thing I got Ivy (and myself) is the Martial Bliss game.  It's looks like a very cool game.  It's got two types of decks.  One is the Task deck.  The married folk draw five or some number of cards.  The other person is not supposed to see them.  Each card has a task to complete, usually some mushy task that sucks up to the other person, and all tasks are assigned a point value.  At the end of the week you tally up the points of completed tasks.  Whoever has the most gets to draw from the Reward deck.  And that could be something movie night and you get to chose the movie.  Some of you may be disappointed because its not a sex deck, but I got card stock and a sharpie.  I can make my own 'task' cards.

The other two books I bought were just to get some new fiction into my head.  Greg Wilson was cool to talk to.  He's a gamer and runs a game on d20.  He was sucking up to me pretty good because he saw my Steeler hat and made football talk.  Yeah, I'm easy.  But he was interesting to talk to, even had his doctorate dissertation for sale.  I should have bought that to.

+Pelgrane Press Ltd was the big winner this year during my shopping spree.  These are two games I've been wondering about for a while.  I got a decent deal on them.  I bought four books and got one of them free.  And the lady told me why the Hillfolk book was a weird size.  But I can't say.

Here are the other two book I bought.  And while I've been wanting to get The 13th Age and Hillfolk for a while, Esoterrorists and Trail of Cthulhu interest me more.  Both use the GUMSHOE system.  I was introduced to the system when +trey causey was running his Weird Adventures wold.  I liked how it worked.  This is a 2nd edition of that and just reading over the rules has my mind going a 100mph thinking of adventure ideas.  I might try an adventure or two with them.

I hit the Harn booth.  Got the map they gave away on Free RPGDay.  That map is fricking gorgeous.  It really is a piece of art.  Then I got two adventures...both featuring trolls...hehe...Harn folks will get that one.  I got them for a very good price.  +Rob Conley had a very interesting conversation with Grant Dalgliesh.  Then went over to Game Science Dice and picked up some old time Hex Sheets.

Tomorrow I'll post my thoughts on the D&D Next session.