Contest Update for April 1st

We have 15 days left to this contest. The Celtic theme, which seemed so popular in the poll, has apparently stymied the creativity of many of you, so I have loosened the restrictions and opened the contest up for any short, TSR era D&D edition Compatible adventures. Now adherence to the Celtic theme will grant bonus points for an entry, but is not required.

I am a little concerned that I have only received one entry thus far, but since there have been a myriad of questions concerning the contest, I remain hopeful that we will meet some minimum threshold for this to be considered an actual contest.

I have been told that we should avoid sending out physical prizes as long as the plague still stalks the land, so I will instead give DrivethruRPG gift certificates. I am thinking the prizes will be proportional to the number of entries received, the more entries, the greater the value of the prizes, and the number of prizes as well.

I don't think it makes sense to give more than a single prize for fewer than ten entries, and I don't think a single entry even constitutes an actual contest. So I am thinking a single small prize when we reach five contest entries.

I have heard from a few of you out there that you would write something for this contest, but you've never written an adventure before, or you've never written anything for other people to read. My advice is be bold, everyone starts somewhere, and most of us have this kind of anxiety over whether or not it's going to be “good enough”. The worst thing that happens is you fail, however you define failure, and failure is a great teacher.

Anyway, good luck, and I hope that you all receive some inspiration to write and adventure for the contest.

Just write Something

unrelated Erol Otus art

You know what? This corona virus related out of work time is pretty stressful, so I am going to open the contest up to any adventure, and just give bonus points for adherence to the Celtic theme. So if you all want to write any style or type of adventure, feel free. Any of you that voted for another theme as your preference, write an adventure in that theme, or no theme at all. 

All adventures are welcomed here. I am now thinking I will look towards gift certificates at DrivethruRPG as prizes, as I am told that parcels should start being kept to a minimum for the duration of the pandemic crisis.

In non-contest related news, I am going to be running my Stonehell Dungeon campaign on Roll20/Discord starting Thursday evening at 6:00PM (EST), let me know if you'd like to join.

Keep yourselves busy during this difficult time, but take care of yourselves.

Gaesatae Class for B/X (OSE)

Starting as far back through the mists of time as I can, I am creating a class for the Celtic Adventure Challenge Contest in hopes that it may inspire some more of you to enter. To be honest there isn't a whole lot known for sure about the Gaesatae. Polybius tells us the name means “mercenary”, but it literally means “armed with javelins/spears” in Gaulish, and is a cognate to the Irish Gaelic Gaiscedach “Champion”. You can learn that from wikipedia though, I just looked it up there as a refresher myself. I am making them an alternate take on the Fighter class, one that eschews armor other than a shield and helmet (maybe). They appear to have been a pan-Gaulish warrior movement, similar in nature to the Norse Jomsvikings, but with more evidence of their actual existence. It's partly a warrior society, partly a religious cult, so I'll be adding a few religious bits there too. These are the “naked” Celtic warriors that struck fear into the hearts of the Romans.

A few cultural bits might be useful going into playing this class, so, in no particular order of importance we have-

Head Hunters. The Celts are head-hunters, they take the heads of important or valiant enemies as trophies. They would preserve them and bring them to feasts and talk to them, there was also a trade in prestigious heads.

The Torc. A torc is a neck ring, and it has some religious significance to the Celts, they were known throughout the Celtic world and were important enough to a warrior that he would rather not go into battle without it, even non-Gaesatae warriors wore them, and it is said would put them on before armor or weapons in an emergency situation. They were generally made of as precious a metal as the warrior could afford, examples have been found in bronze, copper, silver and gold (although primarily bronze and gold); and as ornate as possible. It is also possible they were used as a form of currency. In any case, every Gaesatae should have one.

Fearlessness is somewhat religiously motivated. Celts were said to be fearless in battle because they were certain of their afterlife. An account I read spoke of warriors making deals to pay back debts to each other in the next life if they died in battle. Their fearlessness is such that they accidentally disrespected Alexander the Great when he asked them what it was such great warriors as themselves feared, expecting the answer to be some idle flattery like “you alone my lord”, instead they answered that “they feared only that the sky above might fall”, which is to say “nothing really”.

The head is the seat of “personhood”, this may be the motivation behind head hunting.

All right, the bullet points about the Celts and their culture done, I guess you can see why the Romans saw them as barbarians. We have inherited much more of the Roman attitude than the Celtic one about most things in our culture.

Completely untested, and no doubt with balance issues, I present the Gaesatae

EXP Table

Level                         XP                                       HD        Class Ability

1                                 0-2,250                               1d8              A

2                                 2,251-4,500                        2d8

3                                 4,501-10,000                      3d8              B

4                                 10,001-20,000                    4d8

5                                 20,001-40,000                    5d8              C

6                                 40,001-90,000                    6d8

7                                 90,001-150,000                  7d8              D

8                                 150,001-225,000                8d8

9                                 225,001-325,000                9d8              E

10                               325,001-650,000               10d8

11                               650,001-975,000               10d8+2

12                               975,001-1,300,000            10d8+4

Notes-

A – All Gaesatae have a base encounter movement rate of 45'/round when unencumbered. The Gaesatae has a natural unarmored AC of 8. The Gaesatae gets double the normal bonus to AC from DEX (13-15 +2, 16-17+4, 18+6). When the Gaesatae lands a killing blow on an opponent, they immediately get another attack on an opponent within their weapon range, up to as many opponents as the Gaesatae has hit dice.

B – Gaesatae base encounter move goes up to 50'/round unencumbered. When a Gaesatae defeats an opponent of equal or greater level/hit dice and takes a round to remove it's head as a trophy, they cause fear as per the 1^st level Cleric spell. This only applies to humanoid creatures with heads, creatures that are immune to fear will be unaffected. Natural AC increases to AC 7.

C – Natural AC increases to AC 6. Base encounter move increases to 55'/round unencumbered. 1d4 1^st level Gaesatae approach to become apprentice/followers, treat as retainers with a base morale of 10.

D – Natural AC increases to AC 5. Base encounter movement rate increases to 60'/round unencumbered. The Gaesatae now causes fear (as the 1^st Level Cleric Spell) in all opponents of 4HD or less within 120'.

E – Natural AC increases to AC 4. May establish a Stronghold and attract followers of appropriate classes (Fighters, Gaesatae, Druids, Bards).

Gaesatae must have a minimum STR 12, DEX 12 and CHA 9, they have no Prime Requisite and do not receive XP bonuses.

Gaesatae can use any weapon, but they eschew the use of armor other than a shield and helmet. They must be unclothed save for wearing a torc to use any class abilities. Gaesatae save as Dwarves of equivalent level.

I suggest using this generator for names here

I Am The Historical D&D Guy

I am the historical D&D guy. I realized that today after watching Jason Graham's FB Live video this morning, and I don't know why it hadn't occurred to me before. I went to college for history, it's always been a passion of mine. My living room is encased in book cases, most of which are filled with history books (most of the rest are RPGs). On some topics I have a better selection of works than the universities I attended.

My wife Mona used to say that my D&D campaigns come with homework, and it was only half a joke.

When I prep a new campaign I almost invariably read some kind of history, even if it's just a “daily life” kind of a thing. I create new equipment lists as a matter of course, keeping the gear to a specific time and place that fits my historical/cultural theme, and there is always a theme, whether I planned it or not.

Sometimes my stated goal was to immerse the players in a campaign setting modeled on a historical culture completely. I started doing that before the 2^nd edition AD&D HR series arrived on the scene, my first “Viking” campaign predating the Viking Campaign Sourcebook by maybe a year or so, I don't remember when it came out, but my Viking campaign started in September of 1990.

I can't stop myself from making pseudo historical settings. My longest running D&D setting “Garnia” (created circa 1982, long before I went to college and studied this sort of thing) was essentially a “what-if” you took groups of people from earth and planted them on a fantasy world. It started with ancient Celts, a pan-Celtic religious movement really, started in northeastern Gaul by a Druid Seer that saw the coming of the Romans and the destruction of their culture and way of life. In the late 1990's I ran a campaign set on earth during that time, the PCs were essentially early converts to the cause, being from the tribe where the Druid resided, the Boga-Treveri (who I made up as an offshoot of the historical Treveri tribe). They wandered Gaul attempting to unite the tribes into a single nation to avert disaster, as well as spread the word to the rest of the Celtic nations. I don't remember all of the characters now, and the campaign notes are long lost, but I do remember one of the PCs was a Druid that studied under the Druid Seer that had made the prophecy, another was a half German warrior bard.

I created Ostschild for a random group of D&D players I threw together, it was set in a mythical kingdom in central Europe, it's king was an elector in the Holy Roman Empire, the entire place colonized by Frankish warriors from the period of Charlemagne to hold back the hordes of the Elf-King who was invading from the Fairy realm in the east. There's more to it, but I did that for a campaign I started as “straight” D&D with B1.

I used to think I was the Oriental Adventures guy, but even there the hodgepodge of D&Dism, fantasy and east Asian culture needed refinement for me. I turned to history to make it happen, then Japanese samurai films, then their historical novels, manga and anime. OA has always been, more or less, feudal Japan for me, probably because of OA1 being such a good sandbox to run. OA1 “Swords of the Daimyo” is set in Kozakura, Kara-Tur's fantasy Sengoku Jidai era Japan analogue.

Most of my D&D games tend to be fairly low magic, more gritty-realistic than the high fantasy that we usually see in D&D. Most of my players avoid playing magic using characters too, I don't know if they are reading subtle signs I am sending out, or if old school D&D just has too great a reputation for being hard on Magic-Users. Like EGG, I assume that people are going to want to play the fighting man, the hero, you know? But I don't think I am projecting my bias onto the players.

Anyway, I am good with being the Historical D&D Guy.

Now, on the contest front- I have already received one submission, and it's pretty good. I do need to add an end date for submissions though, so I am going to say April 15^th, Tax day here in the US (and my late sister's birthday), so it's easy for me to remember. Midnight US Eastern Standard time April 15^th for submissions, just like taxes.

Poll is Closed – Celts Win!

Cool Todd Lockwood art I found on the internet to set the mood.

I closed the poll this morning and “Celts” was the clear winner among the proposed themes, with roughly 50% more votes than it's closest competitor “Norse”. The people have spoken, so the fairly broad theme of Celts shall be the theme of this short adventure design contest. Given that my long running “Garnia World” campaign has a Celtic theme, these adventures could prove quite useful to me personally, and I hope that they will be equally valuable to the rest of the community.

I am still working on prizes, but I am thinking the grand prize may well be a copy of the green cover AD&D 2^nd edition historical reference series “Celts Campaign Sourcebook”. I'll see what else I have here and update you all.

I am thinking I will make the submissions available, after the contest, for free on DrivethruRPG, unless those of you that submit entries specifically ask me not to. I had similar plans for earlier contests, but never got around to it, as I had not set up a publisher account there yet.

Adventures should be short, no more than 10 pages, including any maps or art. Adventures should be compatible with TSR era D&D or their retroclones.

Adventures should have a Celtic theme. I understand this covers a broad swath of history, so I should limit it to ancient or medieval, but I also think it might be pretty cool to see an adventure set in the Scottish highlands around the time of the Jacobite rebellions, maybe featuring Bonnie Prince Charlie as an NPC? So go where your muse takes you, head-hunting Celts vs. Romans in a darkly magical version of ancient Gaul, to King Arthur's knights of the round table, to the Easter Rising of 1916; and that's just historical fantasy, feel free to take us in other fantastic directions with the Sidhe or the Fomorians.

Send entries here. Before midnight on April 15th 2020.

New Campaign Idea

Here is my latest idea for a new D&D or AD&D campaign.

This campaign that Starts in England in 1066. I know what you are thinking here- another military style campaign with a different historical period. That is only half true, my 1066 campaign would be set during the conquest period, but not really be a part of it. Just straight D&D adventures, with dungeons and all the other stuff (within the context of the setting); my thought is that the PCs are NOT members of either the defeated Anglo-Saxon or Norman armies, but rather the type of rogues and scoundrel that follow any military undertaking, opportunists taking advantage of the chaos generated by the multiple invasions of 1066. Maybe your character is a Norwegian that got stranded in England, for whatever reason, or maybe he's a Lithuanian trader with a taste for high risk, high reward opportunities



William the Conqueror's England was not really all that stable, pretty much for the rest of his life. In 1066 England was invaded by two major north/west European powers, major battles were fought in the north and south of England. Additionally, the Scots, Welsh and Irish made major raids into England that year. The Anglo-Saxon nobility had fled to the Scottish court looking for help, Edward the Aetheling was the last surviving real heir to the English throne; his sister Margaret would eventually marry Malcolm Canmore, the Scottish king, thus cementing a weak claim to the English kingdom for the Scots. Edward would go on to join the Byzantine Emperor's elite Varangian guard, like so many other defeated English lords and warriors, which changed the ethnic make up of the Varangians to mostly English from nearly totally Scandinavian within a generation. Anyway, it was a really chaotic period of time to be in England for more than two decades.



Now you are thinking “But there are no monsters in England!”, au contraire mes amis, England has a rich tableaux of mythology, tradition and history to draw upon, from the ancient Celtic Britons to the Romans that conquered them to Arthurian myth and legend surrounding the post-Roman period in Britain and the Nordic type religion of the old Anglo-Saxons, as well as the actually Nordic mythology of the Norsemen themselves who invaded and settled England in the preceding centuries. All kinds of Christian stuff can be thrown in there too, check out some of the stories about English saints.



Add to that flavorful mix of northwestern European myth and legend the fact that this is a D&D campaign world we're designing, and you can throw in pretty much anything from the Monster Manual if you want. Humanoids? My take on this is that they are just men that have been tainted by the chaos and evil of the Norman Conquest period. Petty, tricky men might become Kobolds; brawny, bullying scavengers might be twisted into Gnolls. Dragons are all over the British isles in myth, St. George the Dragonslayer is the Patron Saint of England (although not yet, he has to wait until the 14^th century). Dungeons can be Roman ruins, or ancient Celtic sites, or simply a manifestation of the world reacting to the conquest itself. Then mix in the undead, plenty of reason for the unquiet dead to be poking their restless spirits around Conquest period England.



Plus, all of this stuff falls directly into the middle of my college major, History with an emphasis on the medieval period and my minor, Medieval Studies; so I think I can pull off the atmosphere of this campaign pretty well. Big Darryl always says that I majored in D&D at college and I don't think he's really wrong.



I might ditch some of the more anachronistic stuff, like plate mail, but maybe not, I can see an argument either way on that.

 See- They are wearing plate in this medieval depiction of the battle of Hastings :)

But not in this one :(



Lack of local players may necessitate  going a non-standard route to run this campaign, like PBEM or even Google+, despite my Luddite ways; anyone who is interested in going one of these routes should probably comment here with their preference or email me here. 

Even if you aren't interested in playing,I'd still like to see any commentary that might help me improve the experience for my prospective player, thanks!

Minor edit: I also wanted to mention that no one won the Celtic Halloween contest, because there were no entries. I noticed that as soon as I hit publish.

Oops...

So I was just checking my email and I saw the date, I am 20 days into my new contest and I don't have a single entry. I think to myself "I haven't posted on my blog since I announced the contest, maybe it's lack of visibility?"; then I look at my blog post announcing the contest and I see that I didn't tell anyone where to send their entries. I will rectify that now, send them here. I sincerely hope that this was the issue, and not just me being lazy about getting back to regular blogging.

I have been doing a lot of reading lately, I bought the new D&D- even though I said I wouldn't. Everyone blogging about it had such nice things to say. I haven't tried playing it yet though, so I am going to hold off on reviewing it until I have test driven it, so to speak.

I also have been prepping a pretty cool Carcosa campaign, it involves the Soviets using Tesla technology and Nazi occult secrets and their own ESP experiments. I set the whole thing in 1980, so it's kind of got a Twilight 2000/Carcosa crossover feel to it. KGB, Cosmonauts, Spetsnaz and Scientists on a wacky trans-planar adventure.

Now, enjoy this creepy banshee I found on the internet as inspiration for the adventures you all want to write!

A new contest

First, I'd like to say that falling out of the habit of regularly blogging blows; it's like taking a break from college, or quitting exercising for a while- it is so very hard to get back into the habit. Second, yet another apology to David, my wife has been driving around with your loot from my contests in the back of her minivan for something like a month now. Mea culpa, I should have taken care of it myself.

Art by Todd Lockwood.



Now, on to the contest, generously sponsored by Warlord Games (so far), I have a box of their Celtic Warriors, from their Hail Caesar line of products ready to send to the winner. I'll also throw in a copy of the AD&D 2nd edition "Celts Campaign Sourcebook" for 2nd place and, I guess, a pdf of same for 3rd place.

The contest, since it is October, is to get something Celtic and/or Horror themed (better if it's both), short adventure, long adventure, monster(s), anything that fits the theme and is OSR related, anything from B/X to AD&D to Call of Cthulu will be welcomed. Adventures will be judged by my small, elite group of players and myself, anything that can't really be classified as an adventure will be judged by the Council of Central NY Game Masters.

All entries should be received by midnight EST,October 31st and the winner(s) shall be announced sometime in early November. Authors retain the rights to their work, so feel free to publish it on drivethru RPG/RPG Now, I also make no claim to any art created for or used in your contest entries. Enter as many times as you want, at the end of the contest I'll put all the files together in a zip file and upload it to Dropbox or some other storage site.

Happy October!

What I have been doing lately...

Since last year, I've picked up a ton of OSR stuff in print- ranging from Expeditious Retreat Press' "Malevolent and Benign" to Lamentations of the Flame Princess' "Player Core Book: Rules and Magic", I also bought a whole lot of miniatures, mostly WWII and Ancient Romans and Gauls/Britons, for use with my B/X WWII game (still in early development) and 43 AD respectively. I also did something I expressly stated I wouldn't do, I bought the new Players Handbook (and the starter set, but even at 1/2 price I think it was a waste of money).  Oh, and I completed my 3rd edition Legend of the Five Rings RPG collection, and started on the 4th edition with the core rulebook.

Now, the new D&D surprised me, after Gen Con everyone was all raving about it, so curiosity got the better of me and I order it on Amazon, I haven't had a chance to look at really yet, because my lovely wife Mona has been reading through it.  Oh, and I also bought a ton of Pendragon stuff, from 1st edition through 5.1, I kind of felt like I had to when I found "The Great Pendragon Campaign" for a mere $60.00US in a game store in Germany, 1st (only?) printing, mint condition. I actually want to run some Pendragon now, but I haven't figured out how to go about it. I am considering PBEM because my gaming group has grown up and gone to college and moved out of the house. I only have my youngest, Ember, left here now and she'll be gone in a couple of years.

I suppose I should have seen it coming, this isn't the first time I've lost pretty much my whole gaming group because they grew up and moved away. The last time it was my brother Jon's friends, he's nine and a half years younger than me, so I was in my mid-to-late twenties when I ran AD&D (2nd edition, they were oddly reticent to play 1st edition) for those lads. Eventually I switched to 3rd edition, but they were mostly gone by then. I ran Hackmaster (4th edition)  for a while after I gave up on D&D, really it's the first retroclone though, right? Anyway, my oldest two children have moved on, although John is forced out of the dorm for holidays and between semesters, so I see him then. Ashli calls a couple of times a week usually.

 In theory I am still working on a super-hero genre RPG based on Joshua Guess' book Next (and it's impending sequels), but I haven't really been doing much of anything but playing "Civilization 5", "Mount and Blade" and the "Panzer General" clone "Panzer Corps", and by playing Civ5, I really mean working on a mod. "Mount and Blade" is great, because it's a sandbox RPG, but I became mightily peeved with it on Sunday when my saved game corrupted, why didn't I think to do alternating save slots? I tried starting over, but that kind of blows. I am accustomed now to being the most powerful lord in my Kingdom, who single-handedly  brought the other four Kingdoms (OK, one is a Khanate) of Calradia to their knees, commanding armies of 4-500 elite troops. I was an axe-wielding god of death, now bandits can beat my ass and take me prisoner.

"Panzer Corps" continues to please though, it has all of the good turn based strategy of "Panzer General"- even the maps look the same and the controls are identical, but the scenarios in the Grand Campaign are different enough from PG to be fresh and challenging.

Anyway, it's late here and I am rambling, so I'll just mention that I also got a couple of different flavors of "Swords and Wizardry" and bought everything available for the "Basic Fantasy" RPG. I am going to sign off for tonight and I'll try to start posting more again. Before I was blogging about gaming almost every day, but when you take year off the habit gets broken, now I have to reinstate it.

Contest Update

I don't know why I didn't think of this before, but I am going to add Roman Numeral dice to the top three winners. What gamer doesn't love dice? I also have a play report I am behind on, I DMed a party through a Roman themed adventure where all of the characters were members of the Praetorian Guard, but a secret elite unit that hunted supernatural threats to the empire. For fun I set it during the last year of the reign of Caligula. One of the players dubbed the game setting "Ancient Roman Ghost Busters", I can live with that, although I had both Cthulu Invictus and The Walking Dead in mind when I wrote the first adventure.

Anyway, happy holidays to all of you, whatever holidays you celebrate or just a day off from work, if that's your thing. My Saturnalia/Yule/Christmas has been exceptional this year- here are a sampling of the kick-ass miniatures and the game to go with them that I have gotten so far-

I have to say, I was skeptical of hard plastic miniatures, but Warlord has won me over and the rulebook is a work of art.

 

 The Fanatics groups are both metal miniature sets, and Warlord's metals have always been high quality. I look forward to a marathon painting session over the Christmas break session with the kids and my wife.

As Requested, My Curriculum Vitae-

Pictured - Mona and I at our big SCA wedding with the kids, Ash was had turned 12 then and Em had just turned 7 earlier in the month, John was still 9.

My name is William Dowie. I am a 43 year old white man from the rural northern edge of central New York state, on Lake Ontario. I am a giant history nerd, in college I majored in history with a focus on Classical Antiquity and the European Middle Ages, I minored in Medieval and Renaissance Studies. I also took a bunch of Anthropology courses, but not enough to count as a second major. I am 6'6" tall and I have worked as a substitute teacher, short order cook, bouncer, machinist and convenience store clerk, just to name a few. I speak French passably well, Spanish slightly less so, and can usually guess my way through written Italian or Latin. I have tried to teach myself Scots Gaelic, much less successfully, but can pick out a number of written words on sight and sometimes recognize words when I hear them. Oddly enough I can pick out Welsh words now just as easily when they are cognates to the Scots Gaelic words I know, I see patterns in language easily.

I am married to a wonderful woman named Mona and we have three children; Ashli (19), John (17) and Ember (14), who were literally left on our doorstep when they were 11, 9 and 6 respectively. We live on a small, mostly forested plot of land in New Haven, New York - which is north of Syracuse and east of Rochester, nearest to the smaller city of Oswego, NY - where I continue to scheme ways to homestead and get off the grid, mostly because I hate the high cost of electricity in a county with three nuclear power plants, and I want healthier food than I can buy from the store, with the bonus that it'll be cheaper too. I have been frustrated in my attempts to clear my land because it's a lot harder to do than you would think, I have a lot more respect for pioneers now, especially since they did it with no power tools at all. I also have some valuable lumber that I can't seem to get anyone to harvest because my lot is too small and the presence of my house and the power lines along the edge of the road make it too difficult to be worth it, so apparently I need the price of Cherry to rise back to the level it was before our economic collapse to attract loggers.

I have been playing board wargames and D&D since 1980, when my friend Chris introduced me to both the week that we went to see Excalibur together with my dad. We played SPI's Sorcerer that weekend, because he had brought it over to my house and played D&D with him DMing before the week was out using the Holmes Basic rules. I went out and bought a set as soon as I could save up the money, maybe a month later. For a long time after that pretty much all of my money went into my D&D habit in some way or another, books, modules, Dragon Magazine, "official" Grenadier miniatures.

I found the SCA while the local group was doing a demo at the Sterling Renaissance Festival in Sterling, NY back in 1983 when I was 14, I have drifted in and out of the SCA ever since. I am currently missing Pennsic for my 41st time in a row. Something always comes up. Not that it matters anymore, I have passed my fighting prime and I don't think it's coming back no matter how hard I try. I keep resolving to make it to fighter practice more often and get back into my "Crown Tourney" rhythm, but that just isn't going to happen at my age anymore. I don't heal quick enough to fight six days a week anymore. That and I can't afford the gas money for the hundreds of extra miles per week I'd be putting on my minivan to go to all of the extra fighter practices and events. Still, I have made a lot of good friends in the SCA over the years and some great memories, I am happy to have been there for what I did and I wish I could do more still.

1985 was the year of the release of the 1st edition AD&D Oriental Adventures book, it's one of those books that you either love despite it's warts or you hate because of them. I love that book and it's probably because it's the only AD&D book I ever pre-ordered at Twilight Book & Game Emporium in Syracuse, NY - a sadly long gone FLGS. Despite the fact that the glue cracked on the binding causing several pages to become loose literally the first time I opened it, I was determined to get my money's worth out of it. Before my friend Tim left for Basic training in the US army the next year I took over DMing duties from him, which I had only rarely done before, and we played an epic OA campaign. I have played in one pretty epic OA campaign, as a Steppe Barbarian named Chanar Ilkhan, and DMed a few more since. One of my current projects is rewriting the OA book as I think it should have been.

As a side note, I was really anti-Rokugan because they changed the default setting in the 3e version of the Oriental Adventures book to Rokugan from Kara-Tur, and that made me, by default, anti-Legend of the Five Rings. I had been strongly attracted to the setting through AEG's Clan War miniature battle game prior to that, but hadn't bought into it at the time because I could not find at least one other person that was willing to also jump on board with me and had been burned by miniature games that way in the past. Now I am happy to say I have come full circle because I started buying old Clan War miniatures on EBay for my OA campaign and ended up getting the rules, which made me interested in the setting, which made me interested in the RPG, which got me to buy the new board game, which led me to buy some CCG cards too. I have even read through some of the published fiction, and, until it was shut down recently, was playing in a Facebook app version of the RPG called Emerald Empire. I really hated the 3e version of Oriental Adventures.

I played (A)D&D, tried out some other RPGs and wargamed a lot through the 1980s and into the 1990s. Wargaming kind of died in the 1990s (except on the PC, it boomed there), and I concentrated on just RPGs, then just D&D. Sometime after 3rd edition D&D came out, after the novelty wore off for me, I realized I disliked DMing it rather intensely. I was a little late coming to the 3rd edition party, because my D&D group was happy with 2nd edition and we didn't switch over until that campaign died. At the time, I had grown bored with 2nd edition AD&D and welcomed the change, although several things bothered me from the beginning; the faster rate of rising in level was a big one and I missed real multi-classing. I took me a while though, and DMing for several different groups, to realize the worst part was that it neutered the DM. My original AD&D groups, who were familiar with my fast and loose, shoot from the hip DMing style were OK with me making rules calls on the fly when none of us had any idea how something was supposed to work in the new system; we'd keep the game moving and I could look it up later. We might even like my way better. The other groups had people who STUDIED the rules though; at first, every time I made a ruling I'd see disapproving looks, eventually they got brave enough to start offering suggestions as to the right way to handle the situation.

So I quit DMing and let one of them DM in each group. Neither group lasted much longer. One started a new campaign and it was just too railroad-ey, I actually started stress testing that campaign to see what would happen if my character deliberately did things that were contrary to the predestined storyline. My character got punished, he made minor alterations to his storyline, but nothing seriously bad could ever happen to us, so, eventually, as a group we got bored and quit. The other guy just took over my game where I left off and had me make a character that would take his place. He had been unlucky in my game and died several times, but I assume that was because he kept making wuss characters, Rogues and Bards. I made a Barbarian, it was fun while it lasted, we went from 8th to 11th level with him at the helm, then he TPKed the party.

I took a break for a while, despaired over playing D&D again, then picked up Hackmaster. I ran a pretty fun Hackmaster game for a while and that was what led me to realize that I should just go back to playing 1st edition AD&D. That was the year we got the kids though, so I wasn't done with 3rd edition - when they decided they were interested in learning to play D&D, they wanted to play the newest version, 3.5 at the time. I gritted my teeth and went with it, anything to get kids into gaming. I have been walking them back in home games for years now, and have only recently discovered the Moldvay Basic half of B/X myself. Back in the day I bought the Expert Boxed Set when it came out, but I never got the Moldvay Basic Set that matched it because I already had a Basic Set, the Holmes Basic Set. So we've been playing that a bit lately, but my home games are pretty much at a stand-still right now, almost everyone that doesn't live here is too busy to come over and play, and everyone that does live here doesn't want to play with just their mom and dad, brother and/or sister. John is still gaming this summer, he's in a regular 4th edition D&D game with some guys he goes to school with and I am playing Dawn Patrol semi-regularly with Darryl & his dad, John and Dalton. We also recently tried out the Legend of the Five Rings 1st edition RPG here at the house. I am trying to start a game of 43 AD and it's supplement Warband, but the start has been plagued by bad luck and poor coordination of schedules.

I have always run my D&D games in my own "World of Garnia" fantasy setting as a default. It's my Greyhawk, my buddy Darryl and I have been working on this on and off for decades, we're doing a serious reboot of the entire setting and discussing it on my other blog. The primary idea for the campaign is that a group of Celts fled the Roman onslaught to this new world, the world of the Sidhe (Elves) where magic works. The main campaign area is one where their culture has flourished. I designed it originally using the core 1st edition AD&D rules, so there are a lot of 1st edition AD&D assumptions in the setting, but I am trying to make the setting system neutral so that it can be played with any FRPG system. When we have finished the maps and gazetteers they'll be released for use. Currently we're working on the whole world, then we plan to "drill down" and do specific regions. I will also most likely release the adventures that I have written for the setting over the years, it's just finding and transcribing all of the stuff, then updating it to match the current standard is going to be a chore.

By now you are probably wondering where all this "Great Khan" stuff comes from, right? Well back in 1996 my buddy Darryl and I were living most of a continent apart and wanted to play some D&D together. He had played a lot of the SSI Gold Box D&D games starting with "Pool of Radiance" when it came out and we were both new to the internet and on AOL at the time where they had a game called "Neverwinter Nights" that ran using the same engine, but was multi-player, up to 300 I think it was. I guess that makes it the first MMORPG, it was great fun anyway. Darryl was more savvy than me and figured out the best way to advance in the game was through guild membership, so we duly joined a guild together. ERS, the Explorers of the Rising Sun, who made us create new Screen Names, because that was your character's name in the game, and everyone in the guild was named ERS something. I was ERS Garn, Darryl was ERS Frodal, we were named after deities I had created for my Garnia campaign world.

But then we realized, being ambitious adventurers, that ERS was there to help newbies find their bearings and, in general, be nice; and we wanted to move up the food chain in NWN. So we decided to create our own guild, which would, even though it was a gamble, make us guild leaders and let us take charge of our destinies and how we wanted to play the game. We needed a hook though, and that's where our collective history nerdity took over, we decided to play as Mongols, because we wanted to send out a strong challenge to the status quo in all of the guilds and it was unique in NWN to play a culturally oriented guild, unless that culture was a fantasy one. Mostly I think we chose the Mongols though because I was playing them at the time in Civilization. Partly I think we picked them because we both loved the NES game Genghis Khan*, Darryl and I used to spend weekends playing that game together. We also both liked the Mongol reputation for ass-kickery and conquest. Then we studied and studied some more, at this point I think that our kids could hold their own at a conference of Mongol Medieval History scholars.

Anyway, the Steppe Warriors were born. Technically, since NWN is in the Forgotten Realms, we were members of the, at the time, recently defeated Tuigan Horde that decided to march west rather than return east. Darryl was our first Khakhan with his character SW Ogotai, named after one of the sons of Genghis Khan, the reasoning was that he could afford to be online more often (remember this was when you paid/minute of use) because I was in school at the time, and he was a better recruiter. My character was named SW Jagatai, also after a son of Genghis Khan. Ultimately Darryl resigned the position of Khakhan and I was elected to fill it. We've had our highs and lows as a group, and we're pretty dormant now, but I have been Jagatai, Khakhan of the Steppe Warriors since 1997 on the internet, so when I named the blog and when I created my initial Blogger account, I just naturally went with the same motif. My Yahoo email address is still SWJagatai at yahoo dot com, created in the same era. Back when I was sure we were going to leap from AOL's NWN into the expanding universe of MMOs I registered three domain names, steppewarriors.com, steppewarriors.org and steppewarriors.net; I used to joke that they would soon be followed by steppewarriors.edu and steppewarriors.gov. Clearly things didn't turn out as well for the Steppe Warriors as I had anticipated in the late 1990s.

Ultimately, I am pretty pleased with my alternate persona. In doing the research to properly play a Mongol character I have learned a great many things about the Mongols and other steppe peoples. I have eaten a bunch of Mongol food, drank Kumiss, shot arrows from a composite bow (not while mounted though), been in a yurt and made friends with a bunch of people that I otherwise probably never would have met. When I think about how it could have gone another way, if I'd been playing a different Civilization that day when Darryl and I were talking on the phone, or if he and I hadn't played so much of Koei's Genghis Khan together and he hadn't been as receptive to the idea, or maybe it was the fact that he had played in one of my epic Oriental Adventures campaigns that made him cool with the idea. If Darryl hadn't signed on for Mongols, we might have been a Samurai guild or a Viking guild or a Celt guild, they were all infinitely more familiar to both of us at the time; or maybe we'd have gone with something lame like a Dark Elf Ranger guild, who knows?

At any given time I usually have more irons in the fire than is wise, so many of my projects get back-burnered until I get back around to them. Currently I have on hold an Oriental Adventures campaign that just kind of fizzled when it was starting to get good, I had converted the Temple of Elemental Evil for OA and made it the Black Temple from OA1. I have a B/X Viking campaign that stopped when two of my regular adult players got new jobs. I have a B/X conversion for WW II that I spent a lot of time working on last summer, but my regular group, which is mostly my wife and kids and family friends, was lukewarm about play-testing it. I'd say it's an early alpha level right now. I am working on a total rewrite of the 1st edition OA book, kind of recasting it in a form I find more desirable. I just started learning the L5R RPG, I am GMing and the party is about 1/2 way through the adventure in the back of the book, I still haven't found the fumble rule. I have announced several times, prematurely, the start of my 43 AD campaign, so while that should be starting soon, I am going to not say when just in case something happens again. Mostly though, right now, getting a lot of my time behind the scenes, is the reworking of my old Garnia campaign world. We've made some interesting progress on it. I also have a bunch of OSR stuff piling up on my to read list, making me wish I had bought hard copies rather than pdfs because I mostly hate reading off my monitor, but that's where my copies of "Lamentations of the Flame Princess", "Carcosa", "Vornheim", "Adventurer, Conqueror, King", and several other major releases are sitting waiting to be read.

*Out of all of Koei's strategy games for the NES, Genghis Khan had the best multi-player play, Nobunaga's Ambition and Romance of the Three Kingdoms were too slow, and Nobunaga's Ambition II had the annoying "siege mode" in battle.

A Wee Update for Today

I spent most of my day at doctors appointments for myself and Ashli, so not a whole lot got done here today. I got some cool stuff in the mail though.

This Crab Army Expansion, for instance, is pristine; the shrink wrap was taken off but the miniatures are still in their protective plastic wrapper, and the seller included an extra copy of the rulebook, which is nice.

Same seller, I already had one of these, but I figured if I got it on the minimum bid and saved on shipping it'd be worth it. I did and it is. Also in pristine condition, better than my other one.

These guys I am actually a little worried might be beyond my ability to put together. My hands are huge and manual dexterity is not one of my great strengths, great strength is. Fortunately, my lovely wife Mona has volunteered to do the job for me, although if it goes like her volunteering to paint my miniatures this may take a while.

I also got this from Amazon, I may be over-preparing for my 43 AD/Warband dual campaign. My busy appointment schedule this week means I'll have plenty of reading time while I am in waiting rooms though, so I guess that's a plus...

It's a good thing my Mail Carrier has a car.

To be fair, growing up in the country mail carriers always did, but for the years I lived in the city they had a car, but walked the block delivering the mail anyway, and I am pretty sure I'd have been left off the route today. Here's why-

OK, Greyhawk Adventures is post Gygax TSR, but it is still 1st edition and I didn't have a copy. I have read it before, back in the day, my buddy Darryl's dad used to buy him all the new books for birthdays and Christmas and stuff. My parents got religion though and cut me off, so I had to buy my own stuff, TSR quality dropped after Oriental Adventures (some might say before), so I spent my allowance money on stuff I could use; like Dragon Magazine and miniatures and new games.

I actually already owned a copy of this 2nd edition AD&D Celts book, but it was given to my by a friend who had bought it used and the douche-bag he bought it from kept the map and cut the monster section out of the book. Now I have a pristine copy, and I'll be passing this copy on to my buddy Darryl, who might use it as a resource for the Warband 1/2 of our dual 43 AD/Warband campaign.

OK, I know I swore off Legend of the Five Rings RPG stuff because no one else wants to play, but I already have the 2nd module in this series.

And these 2 books were $4.99 each.

These 2 came wrapped in a glittery cotton or polyester protective coat. I got the 1st edition book for Dalton, since I already have 3 and he was interested in the game maybe for his own group.

And this is a board/card game, so I can play it with my friends and family; it's only tangentially related to the RPG I want them to play with me. Plus, at 59.99 on the website, it's probably the most expensive game I own, via the MSRP. I got it for less than 1/2 that with free shipping!

Romans & Britons

For days, Romans and their invasion of Britannia have been foremost on my mind. I had, more or less, skimmed through the 43 AD rulebook when I bought it, as well as it's Warband supplement; but for the last few days I've been giving them a thorough read through; and, because of my somewhat perfectionist/obsessive personality, I've also been watching documentaries about the Romans in Britain, the Celts and some movies about the Romans and the Britons fighting it out. I have been prepping for this new campaign like a champ. I've even ordered new books from Amazon, some of which have begun to arrive, just to immerse myself in both the Roman and Celtic worlds. Here are a few that have already made it here, I've only just begun to read them.

"Art of the Celts" actually just arrived today. I may just be using this as an excuse to buy more books though, because it's not as though I don't already have significant library sections on both peoples; as in, they each have their own shelves. I took a course on ancient Rome in college, ancient Greece too, but I liked Rome better. I kept all the text books and bought all the recommended books for that course. The Celts I started studying on my own, just because of their connection to my own Scottish Highland heritage, but I am pretty sure I am at least as knowledgeable about the Celts as I am about the Romans. The Scottish Highlanders descended from the Gaelic branch of the Celtic tree too, but that's beside the point.

So today's mail was almost a system shock, it yanked me away from 43 AD and back to both the OSR and my Oriental Adventures project. Aside from the aforementioned "Art of the Celts", I got Tim Shorts' "The Manor" Issue #2, I read the 'Introduction' and 'Hugo's Healing Potions' all the way through, so far so good; but what really impressed me was the had written note on the envelope it came in. That's the sort of touch that makes you feel like you are really a member of a community instead of just someone typing words out into nothingness. Thanks for that.

I also got these miniatures from EBay. They are old Clan War miniatures, which I started collecting for my Oriental Adventures games, now I also hope one day to actually play some Clan War and some 1st or 2nd edition Legend of the Five Rings RPG, for which, of course, the miniatures are also eminently suited.

I got them at such a bargain, I thought there must be something I was missing in the sale, but, aside from the blister pack plastic being a little smushed in on the Crimson Legion, the miniatures are in fine shape. The Oni no Hida Yakamo was still shrink-wrapped and looks as fresh as the day it was manufactured. Then there was this 3e era module that I had never heard of-

Interestingly, it says it requires the use of the 3e D&D Player's Handbook, but makes no mention of the 3e Oriental Adventures book. It was printed in 2002 and 3e OA came out in 2001, so I don't really get what's going on there, given the obviously pseudo-Chinese setting of this module.

Some Productivity Today

My wife and I, OK, mostly her, have been more or less renovating our kitchen, that weeks long activity is nearing completion. Out of that I got a new set of shelves in my office area, which is pretty cool because I always need more shelf space. My wife may have other plans for these shelves, but I am claiming them in the name of the empire!

I also hashed out, with my chief co-conspirator Darryl, a bunch of little things that have been bugging me about my Garnia campaign world this morning; so there's a sense of achievement for you right there! The whole thing ends up changing from a more generically Celtic flavored medieval fantasy world to a really Iron Age/ Dark Ages Celts with Magic added kind of a thing; meaning that a lot of the work that I thought was finished has to be rewritten, but I think it makes for a more flavorful world.

Oh, and it's not just Celts, there are other Human cultures represented there too. Spread across one mega-continent, one small continent/very large island, and several island chains we have various ethnic groups that have been brought here to the Realm of the Sidhe for whatever reasons whichever court of Sidhe saw fit to bring their particular group over. I talk about it more on my other blog, and there's another multi-planar war aspect to the whole back story, but you get the gist of it from this.

I also got these miniatures in the mail today. I was surprised because the seller said he was going to be out of town and not shipping anything until the 7th. I must have made it in just under the wire before he left.

I had bid on these before I got the first Celtos miniature that I won. I might consider more monster types like the Fomorian, but the Humans are a wee bit too fantasy for my tastes. Which I guess begs the question, where do you go for Wizard and Priest types when you are using mostly historical ranges of miniatures? Monsters I can grab from anywhere, although I have my preferred companies. But if I have a player that wants to be a Female Cleric in the setting, pretty much any part of the setting? Finding any females in armor is difficult, but not impossible. Finding one with the limited Cleric weapon set, much tougher*. Female Wizards? They're pretty tough to find too, assuming I want the females in the party to match the males in how "fantasy" they look.

*Although I tend not to be a stickler for enforcement, I'd rather do damage by class than by weapon type. For the sake of argument, assume I am strictly enforcing D&D weapon bans.