30 Day Challenge - Day 12

Favorite dungeon type/location?

I am a big fan of the castle/small fortified village as a dungeon location. Probably dating back to the Moathouse from the Village of Hommlet. There is something about the combination of open area and small outbuildings and towers that appeals to me. 

Background - Jotun Tribelands

Far north of the Sea of Strife giants formed the earliest kingdoms. Giants don't make comfortable neighbors, even for other giants, and warfare among the various giant kindred was constant. During this long struggle sorcerors and shaman among the kindred began breeding new peoples by magically combining part of their own essence with that of various other creatures. Thus were born the beastmen, orcs, ogres, gnolls and the various goblin kin; servants of chaos all. These same breeding programs also gave rise to the Vargr, created to hunt the chaos beastmen, and the nearly human Jotun; both servants of law. 

All of the created people breed much faster than the giant-kin that created them and soon the skirmishes between chaotic giants and lawful giants were being almost entirely fought by their created servants. But the giants had made a mistake by including a portion of their own essence in the created people. As their numbers grew they began to chafe at the yoke of their giant masters. Their is no love to be found between the beastmen and the Jotun and Vargr; but a day came when their hatred of their masters burned hotter then their hatred for their longtime foes.

At the battle of Sigissmund's Fjord the servants people on both sides turned on the giant commanders. The subsequent rebellion was swift and bloody. Nearly all of the giant-kin were slain and of the various servant races perhaps one in five survived the destruction. The land was ravaged by the great magical forces unleashed by the giants in their desperate fight against their own creations. The remaining giant kin scattered to the mountains and remote places to hide and slowly regather their strength. 

The Jotun and Vargr moved south along the valley of the River Vol and eventually settled along the north east shores of the sea and along the Vol River, forming the Jotun Tribelands. The restrictive trade practices of the Sea Kings are hardly burdensome to a people long enslaved; and, so far, the various Jotun and Vargr Tribes live happily under the influence of the Sea Kings.

30 Day Challenge - Day 11

Favorite Adventure you have run?

I'm going to limit myself to published adventures for today's challenge to spare you all my gaming fiction if I tried to describe one of my own adventures.

I am a big fan of Gary Gygax's giant series of modules (G1 - G3) and my favorite of the three is the middle one, Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl. The module I have used the most often and in some form or another for pretty much every group I've ever DM'd for is Mike Carr's B-1 In Search of the Unknown. 

B-1 was an invaluable teaching tool for a new DM and has a very well designed map for classic dungeon exploration play. I also had the chance to play Fight in the Skies with Mike Carr at GaryCon V last March and Mike is just one hell of a nice guy and a great game designer. 

Background Cyrene Kingdoms

300 years ago in the far east beyond the headwaters of the Tiphrates River, the Dread Empress Cyrene forged a realm that reached the shores of the Sea of Strife. Her armies, inspired by equal measures of fear, love and lust for their Empress, held the lands in her name for 250 years. She was finally destroyed two generations ago by the greatest hero of his age, Rostam.

For some years following her death, the priests of her cult as Empress and Goddess were able to hold the empire together. Beset by dreams of power from the inside and the destabilizing influence of the Sea Kings, the once dread empire has dissolved into a patchwork of petty kingdoms and independent fiefdoms. The cult of Cyrene is still prevalent in the lands where she once ruled and the priests whisper into the ears of every kinglet and nobleman the dreams of reforging the empire and ruling it again in Cyrene's name.

Through trade, bribery and espionage the Sea Kings have been successful in keeping the various ambitious rulers at one another's throats. It is a risky game they play, the constant strife may create a ruler strong enough to subdue his neighbors and sweep across the region.

30 Day Challenge - Day 10

Craziest thing that happened that you saw?

So many funny, silly, over the top and awesome things have I seen. I think I will have to give this one to my friend Tom Kroupa. In a long running DragonQuest campaign Tom was playing Sarvik, a member of the College of Black Magics (Witch to you and me). Our party was on a mission to find an artifact, The Cloak of Command, that was believed to be capable of turning the tide of battle for our beleaguered home kingdom that was beset by a ruthless and stronger neighboring despot. We were beginning to get somewhat desperate in our quest has we had already been in search of the cloak for several months and were currently deep in the enemy kingdoms holdings.

We finally found our objective in a ruined temple deep in a swamp guarded by an insane, and insanely powerful, priest. The fight with the priest was long and difficult and nearly cost us several party members. While the party was catching its breath and healing our severely wounded comrades, Sarvik grabbed the cloak and put it on. The members of the party still on their feet reached for their weapons and ordered Sarvik to take of the cloak. That's when Sarvik showed us the power of the cloak. He ordered us to surrender. Compelled by the artifact level enchantment we threw our weapons at his feet and surrendered.

We quickly and loudly pointed out to him that our surrender wasn't getting him out of the swamp. 

Sarvik drew the cloak around himself and ordered us to "Serve me for the rest of your lives".  

Then Sarvik and the rest of us learned about the drawbacks of this particular artifact. A wearer of the cloak was allowed one and only one command. The party began to make gleeful plans for the horrible things we were going to do to Sarvik once we freed our selves from the magically induced surrender. 

That was when Tom played the card that turned the whole situation into crazy and awesome. He had learned a spell that had a very low chance of success, less than 10% cast chance in the current situation, and a better than 50/50 chance of backfiring and going horribly wrong for him. Knowing that he had nothing left to lose since he had squandered his one use of the cloak, Sarvik cast the spell. Tom rolled an 01 on percentile dice (a critical success in DragonQuest) and great shadowy bat wings unfurled from his back and he flew away from us at great speed never to be seen again.

Ordinarily, we would have taken Tom out back and hit him a few times for being a douchebag; but his exit was so awesome and the series of events were such an emotional rollercoaster that we had to congratulate him for his epic moment.  

30 Day Challenge - Day 8 and 9

These seem like related questions so I'm going to answer them in one post.

Favorite Character Played?

This is a tough one. I've played dozens of characters that I enjoyed but there are two that I just can't pick between. So you get not one but two descriptions of someone else's character. I'll try to be brief.

Jason of Dimart was a fighter that I played for nearly three years in an amazing campaign. In the course of his career he won many accolades and eagerly spent his loot on improving his social standing. When he was knighted for services to the crown he spent a fortune on new armor and regalia to fit his new station. When asked to help the crown against the actions of pirates, he bought and outfitted a war cruiser.

While on a diplomatic mission for his King he killed a man who impugned his wife's honor. He embraced the resulting outlawing and dual classed into Thief and eventually made the switch to Druid and became a 1ed. Bard. The only character I've ever played long enough to accomplish that feat.

Aemilie Medani d'Medani AKA Captain Bellamy was a 4ed Warlord modeled after the classic Pirate Queens of 18th century. For nearly a year of sessions everyone in her party was convinced that Bellamy was a male half-elf pirate who had lost his ship to a rival. The look on everyone's face when she was revealed as a female scion of the Eberron House Medani is a memory that still makes me smile to this day.

Favorite Character Not Played?

I'm going to have to depart from D&D for this one. The life-path based character generation system for classic Traveller was a really fun mini-game in own right. After having a couple of characters die during character generation, I finally had a character survive his career rolls and finish with a small free trader. Alas, the campaign itself was never played. I still regret not getting to actually play Traveller.

30 Day Challenge - Day 7

Favorite Edition?

This one seems to be an incitement to the kind of edition warring that led me to flee EnWorld. So let me preface my answer with a little background disclaimer. I have been playing D&D since 1978. In those 35 years I have played every edition ever printed and I have played all of them with pleasure for at least a couple of years each.

That said, my favorite edition is Gary's own Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. In a lot of ways I consider all of the OSR games that take the LBBs or Holmes or Moldvay/Cook or Mentzer editions and add something of their own to them as siblings of 1e AD&D. I love to pick and choose and grab the good stuff from any of them and in a lot of ways I really consider them all the same version. Not unlike the way we use to pick and choose what we were going to include in our campaigns from Unearthed Arcana or Judges Guild material or Arduin or Dragon articles.

These days I run Adventurer Conqueror King with a few bits pulled from AD&D.