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Showing posts from August, 2009

Dungeons and Dragons Flashback 2... James Dallas Egbert III

As I mentioned in a previous post , once upon a time there was a lot of controversy surrounding Dungeons and Dragons. James Dallas Egbert III was at the center of one such story about a young, brilliant teen lost in steam tunnels during a "real life" game of D&D (and yes, this was the inspiration for the novel and movie " Mazes and Monsters "). While I was a young boy at the time, I have no memories of when the disappearance of James Dallas Egbert III happened. Years later, before I started playing D&D, I read The Dungeon Master , a book about the incident from the private detective the family hired to investigate James' disappearance. This year marks the 30th anniversary of his disappearance. For the full story, check out this link from GeekSix.com

Blackwater Keep: Lair of the Jarak-Sinn (part 2)

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After leaving Blackwater Keep , the party journeyed into the Blackwater Swamp in search of Marzena and the soldiers kidnapped earlier by the jarak-sinn. artwork by scott2753 on deviantART In the swamp, the trails were hard to follow, but Hunter found enough tracks to keep the party moving in the general direction. The party sloshed through dirty water and damp high-ground for most of the day. As they looked for a camping location for the night, they came upon a stream. At first glance it appeared to be a safe place for rest and get fresh water, but looking around they noticed a bunch of small woodland creatures, all petrified into stone; they promptly found another place to camp. The night was damp, and as darkness descended, all manner of strange noise rose from the swamplands. Luckily for them, noise was the only thing they had to contend with. The next morning, the group continued their journey into the forest and arrived at the site of a huge cluster of inter-grown mangaroo trees

Dragonlance Comics (Issue 23) - Landfall! Continues

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Winging it! This issue starts off with Riva, Griffin, and Skrum arriving as prisoners in Kristophan, the capital city of the League of Minotaurs. On the outskirts of the city, Tyche, one of the minotaur soldiers loyal to the traitorous General Axantheas, kills a human soldier to frame the prisoners who Tyche intends to kill as "they were trying to escape". Riva reaches for the dead solders polearm and uses it to knock Tyche to the ground and allowing them to make a real escape. As they run down streets and through buildings, Skrum reveals that he still has the real dragonring, and what he had previously handed over to the soldiers was an old bracelet he had. Skrum uses the ring to summon a dragon. Unknown to Skrum, a red dragon appears attacking the chasing soldiers and allowing the three to escape. At first Riva hesitates, not wanting to ally herself with such an evil creature until league soldiers are right on her. As soon as the dragon takes flight, Riva forces Skrum to la

The Guild: The Music Video: "Do You Want to Date My Avatar"

I know I talked about The Guild a long time ago. In short, it's one of the funniest web shows out there featuring a bunch of W0W-like players playing their game and also some of their real life exploits. I highly recommend you go watch the first season while the new second season episodes are starting to appear on YouTube. Along with the new episodes, The Guild also released a song and music video. The song is called "Do You Wanna Date My Avatar" and video is equally funny. Check it out here and then go over to iTunes or Amazon and buy the song and/or video. Proceeds will help finance the third season.

GenCon: After the Fact

Ok, so GenCon 09 has come and gone, and once again I wasn't there (boo). My last convention was the year 3.0 came out, back when the convention was in Milwaukee, and the Safe House was still a restaurant to visit at least once during the trip. I've been following blog posts and tweets from various people and once again, it sounds like everyone had a good time this year (PS, if you're at a game convention and don't have a good time, you may want to rethink your choice of hobbies). By far the largest amount of posts were the various product announcements from WotC. Everyone went into the convention wanting to know what the new setting for 2010 would be, since no previous WotC communication went beyond announcing Forgotten Realms (2008) and Eberron (2009). Even though I am an ardent fan of the Dragonlance setting, I felt it was too soon to update that setting to 4e (and since the 3.5 update was handled by a 3rd party, Margaret Weis Productions, WotC doesn't see big rev

Advertising D&D

If you're TSR/WotC/Hasbro, how would you advertise your game to the world? Well, apparently back in the day, all you needed was a little commercial like this... For better quality, click this link to this version the commercial . PS. And we wonder where the D&D/geek stereotype started? I'm sure it wasn't this commercial, but it certainly didn't help

When D&D and LEGO Meet

As you can tell from a previous post showing off my LEGO centaur , I'm as much a fan of LEGO bricks as I am of D&D. There are many ways to use LEGO in your Dungeons and Dragons game. And thanks to a number of LEGO sites for AFOLs (Adult Fans Of LEGO, hey, they have their own lingo too!), it's not hard to find great ideas and get the pieces you need in an easy, cost effective manner. The top LEGO site out there is LUGNET.com . This site has an extensive forum broken down by theme (Pirates, Castle, Vikings, and many other) and topics. This can be a great site for getting advice on building large or small projects and seeing pictures of fan creations, (also known as MOCs or My Own Creations). Another great site is Brickshelf . This is kind of like Flickr for the LEGO crowd. Here you can find a massive amount of images featuring large and small projects on any subject AFOLs can think of, from Lord of the Rings custom figures and dioramas to actual wedding cake toppers made ou

D&D Advice from the Pros

One of the best article series in the old (print) edition of Dungeon magazine was the Dugeoncraft articles. At various times, different professionals in the RPG industry (including Monte Cook) wrote the column. While I haven't found many of these articles online, it seems all of Ray Winninger's columns have been collected. The series starts asking the most basic question "Should I be a DM?" and then going into all the details that anyone answering "Yes" to that first question should consider. Click here for the full list of articles: http://www.darkshire.net/jhkim/rpg/dnd/dungeoncraft/ Or click here for the zip file of all the articles: http://dnd.castellan.net/random_adventure/dungeoncraft.zip