This weekend I became a Patron of the next Open Design project: Halls of the Mountain King. The book will be either OGL/3rd Edition or 4th Edition. Naturally, I supported the 4E option. I hope this comes out soon enough so I can use it for my MapTool D&D game.

Tonight, I'm running session #2 of my online D&D 4th Edition campaign dubbed 'Age of Might'. Here is the teaser for the game:

The Age of Might

The last Age ended as the world burned in a storm of corrupt magic, other-worldly invasion and human pride.

The last Age ended with the fall of the Thousand Cities, the Empire of Man, the Empire of Folly.

The last Age ended as dweomercrafted battlebarges fell from the sky and abominations called forth by cults of horrific gods ravaged the cities of the Old Kingdoms. A few, unfortunate humans escaped the cataclysm and found sanctuary in the young, Imperial colonies across the Sunset Sea.

The last Age ended as the Eladrin withdrew to their sanctuaries beyond the Veil and the dwarves shut their gates, laying runes of warding and hallways full of traps, and hid in their underground fortresses.

You are the descendants of the survivors of the Last War of the Empire of Man.

---

Deepwell

In the dying days of the last Age, Lady Helja, matriarch of the Bronzesinger clan, offered sanctuary to any and all who would dwell in peace within Deepwell holdfast. Dwarf, Human, Halfling, Elf and Eladrin lived together under the rule of the Dwarf Jarls. Born and raised in a Deepwell you are eager to make a name for yourself in this new Age.

The Jarl (ruling lord of the house Bronzesinger), Nilgar Ebergun, calls upon the intrepid and the enterprising folk of the holdfast to:

• clear the route to the upper gates, unravel the seals of protection, explore the surface world, establish trade routes for Deepwell's ore and goods and learn of the changes since the last Age
• reclaim the abandoned mines and dwarf halls to provide ore for the forges and living space for the rapidly growing population
• explore forgotten passageways or sail beyond the dim horizon of the underground lake and re-establish contact with the other dwarven holdfasts and underworld settlements

Gold and Glory Await!

Encouraged by the success of my first attempt at online Gamemastering. I'm thinking of running a mini-series: a story arc running from three to six sessions. Not a full-blown campaign yet but if there is any interest beyond the mini-series I would give a campaign some serious thought.
I wrote up some blurbrbs To give people a better flavour of types of games I would like to run.

D&D 4th Edition, Homebrew
1A. Heroes of Myth & Legend: Will you be the one to raise the shield wall against the invaders? Or will you carve out nations with the edge of your axe? Or will venture out to the Feywild, seeking out the Courts of the Eladrin? Will you forge bonds of fellowship with the Fae or will you bend them to your service? Will you stop your people's steady decline into decadence and infernal corruption? In time, perhaps? Or perhaps, you are just content to test your steel and spells against the might and magic of this new world?

The main influence for this mini-series is Dawnforge the Age of Legend . There are others but that is the main one that comes to mind.

1B. Urban Setting & Mega-Dungeon: The Great City was built on the corpses of many great Empires. Underneath the cobblestones lies warrens, catacombs and chambers filled with jewels and treasury of merchant princes and miserly kings, not to mention lost artefacts of untold power. The City is not a place for the soft-hearted nor the merciful as the gangs who rule the streets 'in the name of Law' will just as mug you than protect you from the riffraf.

This will also be a homegrown setting though I would take a page or three from Monte Cook's Ptolus. There are also shades of Fafhrd & Grey Mouser and Thieves World.

Come to think of it, I may add a dash of
Perdido Street Station, Gangs of New York and Eberron into this mix.

2. Star Wars Saga: Knights of the Old Republic: I don't have any specific, fleshed out ideas on this yet. I could go with either Heroes of the Republic or something along Privateers & Merchants.

3. Savage Worlds: We can continue with the Modern Day Monster mash as that's one of my favourite genres. Another game that really has me fired up is:
Starlords of Hadrapur! This will be a Sword and Planet mini-series in the tradition of John Carter of Mars (who doesn't want a little Barsoom in their Savage Worlds?), Flash Gordon and WizKid's Rocketmen.

In the midst of the Great Interstellar War, you and the rest of the crew, prisoners, refugees and other survivors of the Galactic Fleet Rocketship Garuda find yourself stranded on a strange world. You will fight tyrannical Star Lords, explore exotic locations, liberate the oppressed, swing on chandeliers, rescuing princes and princesses all the while searching for a way home. The first session will deal with how our heroes ended up on Hadrapur.

I stumbled upon hackslash.net and found a couple of gems:
* A random dungeon generator (see the sample behind the cut)
* And some additional rules for Medieval Weapons for Savage Worlds

( Behold the Randomly Generated Dungeon! )

The highlight of my Geek Week was having my son ask me to play D&D miniatures with him. This week, I also:
* played in the twice-a-month Keep on the Shadowfell campaign. The DM didn't like the standard Skill Challenge system (even with the errata) so we tried out an alternate skill challenge system, Stalker0's Obsidian which can be found in the Enworld forums.
* completed Act I of Diablo 2. Yes, I know, I'm soooo late to the party.
 * started reading Jack Vance’s Dying Earth (which I got through BookMooch).

My son, let's call him Spider-boy, got some book store gift cards for his birthday and the family trooped out to the store earlier in the week. He chose a few books and used his gift cards while I picked up the D&D Miniatures Start Set (using my own money, of course)

We got home and we tore into the package playing with the quick start rules (a one-on-one battle between a Human Fighter and a Yuan-Ti) and then played a few more rounds with the figures in the set.

For last night's game we're used some additional rules over and above the quick play rules but we kept things pretty simple. Spider-boy noted that the miniatures battle game was like Pokemon battles (where you get to assemble your team of critters, send them into battle and pick which powers to use, there are stuns, paralyzes etc). I responded by saying that that was a very sharp observation though Pokemon is more like D&D. That got him thinking.

Before each game, my son picked a battle map and we selected our forces. I had also picked up a few boosters during the week to expand our selection.

For our first game last night, Spider-boy picked the temple ruins in the jungle (or was it a dense forest?). I sent my Hooked Horror against my son's motley team: a Dan Elven Archer and a Grick. Though I promptly dispatched his Grick, my Horror was no match for my son's Battlemaster.

Having felt the thrill of success, Spider-Boy wanted to take on another challenge. This time, in the caverns surrounding a Dwarf Outpost, Spider-boy's Angel of Valor, Dwarf Battlemaster and Elf Warlock took down my bad-guy war band composed of a Drow Spiderguard, a Deathjump Spider and a Tiefling Warlock. My son was keen to use the Angel of Valor's Lightning Strike ability - which electrified and stunned the Drow and Spider. I managed to take down the Angel of Valor but by then it was too late for little band of baddies.

My son even made sound effects and gestured to describe what was going on. Most Excellent! 

And you can't put a price on the expression on his face when I labelled the box of minis: Dad's and Spiderboy's D&D Minis.

By the mighty lords of Kobol, that Irontooth was one tough son of a goblin. Our party of adventurers tore into Irontooth and his cronies. Still, Irontooth packed a whallop and knocked out my character (a Human Warlord) and the other healer (a Dwarven Cleric).

Today was the second session of the 4E D&D game I'm playing in. I enjoyed myself. The gaming group got into a rhythm and were more familiar with the combat rules this time around so we whipped through a minor RP encounter and three combat encounters during the course of the afternoon. The only thing that sucked (aside from getting struck down by a goblin axe till I nearly bled to death) was that the encounters netted only a handful of XP since there were seven PCs. Oh well...

Playing this campaign every other week seems to be ok but I'm starting to hunger for other games. I've tried looking at playing other games online (via OpenRPG or Fantasy Grounds) but I haven't seen any games that fit my schedule or are set in gameworlds that I'm interested in. Another 4E game would be nice but I would also consider other games such as Savage Worlds, Star Wars Saga or Spirit of the Century. I'm also entertaining the idea of DMing but that prospect still scares me... I don't know the rules as well as I would like.