Sunday, June 9, 2019

Deep Gaming Thoughts at the Jersey Shore

Some random thoughts as I relax next to the beach while Maja has a massive AAU basketball tournament at the Jersey Shore.

First off, I find it ironic that as I've transitioned from an hourly employee with supervisory roles to a full-out salaried manager, I suddenly don't mind the overtime .  I know, it's kind of strange.

Second, my regular online 5e game has been a wash the past few weeks, save a filler episode of the Canadian College Cthulhu game going to Spring Break... in Denver.  It may have received the killing blow this weekend when the beloved Nate had to drop out permanently.   Don't know how long our heroes will be stuck in a Tabaxi lair deep underneath a floating city.  I haven't told my wife yet, so I'm still claiming Monday nights locked away in the office to run/play something, Canadian Cthulhu, RISUS IOU, Traveler, d6 Star Wars, ANYTHING.

Third, Nate and company's weekends open up a little more, so I'm looking at taking up the 5e reins and running some Ghosts of Saltmarsh on my limited free weekends. I picked it up from Amazon after some unforeseen Trivia Night winnings, and I gotta admit, the update of the material is very good, although I despise the need the turn something like that into a hardcover. 

Fourth, I continue my labor of love, The Lost Dispatches of Feraso.  I'm trying to stay ahead five or six episodes as this thing goes between a odd recollection of my high school game, a gazetteer of some of the countries I've never really fleshed out, and an odd prose about Elsderth Greyhawk and the Order of Merit. 

Not a surprising spoiler, but at least Elsderth with make it back from The Weissmach and return to Verbobonc.  As this logical progression is more of an extended interlude, I've been forced to some additional research to flesh out the downtime in Verbobonc, and I'm surprised about the gaping holes in Greyhawk material for a setting that's been around for forty years. 

Unlike the over-documented Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk is usually a large template where GMs fills in his details how deems them fit, but Verbobonc doesn't get the love it deserves, even from the fan sites. 

One blog I discovered that had some of the nitty-gritty details I was looking for was Hall of the Mountain King.  It's an eclectic but focused collection of old school D&D at it's best, some personal asides, and a lot of random pictures of castles, witches, and other gaming fodder.

Of course, a day after discovering it, there's a disheartening post from the blogger about his his personal health and how he doesn't know how long his stuff will be up on the blog, so archive it now.   I'm not certain we're that close to the Matrix that blog material disappears immediately upon death, but like any blog I enjoy, I started from the early posts to mine for ideas.

Good Lord, there are a lot of castles pics... and even more at his picture repository, Vault of the Mountain King.

But more importantly, it reinvigorated my Lost Dispatches writing, and gaming in general.  His characters and details will be re-imagined and further developed so I can finish up the high school run of stories, and move on to the stories from the army, community college, and beyond. 

I've also just starting to plan out a Georic wiki.  Something out there in cyberspace might be more useful to myself and others than losing another pile of data to a bad hard drive.  To the future... and beyond!  

No comments:

Post a Comment