Lughnasa a Gaelic festival celebrated in modern times on the 1st of August. Lughnasa is an agrarian festival celebrating the early harvest. Lughnasa is celebrated with dancing, feats of prowess and sacrifices; it is sacred to the god Lugh, who is also known as Lleu or Lugos. A similar festival among the Gauls is known as Edrinios. Modern neo-pagans consider it to be a lucky time for hand-fasting. It is one of the four major annual festivals in my Garnia campaign setting.
L is for Liege Lords. I have wondered fairly often why so many D&D characters are free agents in a clearly feudal society. When I DM Oriental Adventures the PCs are usually all retainers of the same lord and undertake missions on his behalf. When we play "straight" D&D though, everyone is a cowboy; the character in the party most likely to have a tie of obligation to anyone else is actually the party Thief, with regard to the Thieves Guild. I really want to play a game of occidental styled D&D in an actual feudal setting some day. I fear that the best I'll ever get is to play Pendragon* or Chivalry and Sorcery**.
L is for Law. I know everyone reads into this the Moorcock version of Law vs Chaos. I never read it. I did read Zelazny's Amber Chronicles though and they have the Law vs. Chaos theme too.
L is for Lighting and Light sources. I have to say that as a DM I used to be a lot more of a bastard to my players about resource management particularly with regard to food and light. Over the years my game became much more wilderness oriented and the emphasis on managing party resources kind of fell by the wayside. I am trying to bring myself back up to speed on these things (and encumbrance) but I very often forget. I guess I should write myself a note and tape it to the inside of my DM screen "Remember to keep track of time, mark off food and light resources and make the party tally up encumbrance at least once every session". For what it's worth, I don't think my players have noticed and have been keeping track of these things pretty well themselves.
L is for LARP. I never played in a "real" LARP, but when I was a teen-ager we used to play "Live D&D" a lot. Mostly it was a chance for us to swing sticks at each other, but sometimes we would have a "DM" that set a scenario and we'd divide into teams. We were perhaps a little crazy as kids.
Today's been a pretty hectic day too, so sorry about the short post again. I will try to get some extra stuff up on Sunday.
*Pendragon is one of those games that everyone seems interested in, but then never wants to commit to, even just for a one-shot to learn the system. A shame really, I think it's an elegant system and I have liked it since it's first edition; but it isn't really the game I am talking about wanting to DM anyway.
**Chivalry and Sorcery I don't even have, that's almost a joke; the mere mention of the system sends some people running in fear. I'd like to take a look at it sometime, if only from an archaeological view.
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