Old Guy Gaming

I have always found hirelings and henchmen to be extremely useful, both as a player and as a DM. Therefore, it has always baffled me that they are so often ignored. To help shine a light on their benefits, I have done what I could to show my players how useful henchmen and hirelings can be.

As a player, I love rolling dice. It is empowering and somehow makes me feel more in control of events. But as a DM, I realize that rolling dice can, in some situations, provide players with meta-information that may affect the choices that they make. For instance, a player’s reaction to being told she didn’t detect a secret door will be influenced by the knowledge that she rolled either a ‘1’ or a ’20’.

As many of you know, I was nearly finished with this project when my hard drive crashed. Sadly, when I went to restore everything from an external backup, all of my files were corrupted. Fortunately, I had another external backup, but it was prior to the commencement of this map. It would have been much worse had I lost my entire hard drive, but just losing this map was pretty bad. It has taken three years, but I am finally ready to take up this project once again.

The most convincing argument that time travel will never be possible is that certain events have transpired that time-travelers obviously would have wanted to prevent, if it were within their power. Since these events have not been prevented, it can be assumed that no one came back to prevent them because time travel isn’t possible. That can be a pretty convincing line of thought. But I have a different theory.

If you leave things to your players, their characters will live in a bubble. They’ll return to town with their loot, say they are buying this and that, and head back out to the dungeon. But that’s not how real life imaginary life works. Characters will interact with an awful lot of people, making friends with some and, invariably, making enemies of others.

With the popularity of MMO RPGs, it is increasingly difficult to find a good single-player game. But a number of years ago, I discovered this amazing exception. Produced by Almost Human Games, released in December 2012, LoG is a 3D grid-based dungeon crawler reminiscent of Dungeon Master and similar games from the 80s, but with exceptional, state of the art, graphics and sound.

Higgs Bozon particle, Enstein-Rozen bridge, Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, Halley’s comet… when a significant discovery is made, it is often named after the person or persons who made the discovery. Wouldn’t the development of a new spell be accompanied by the same honor?

The Player’s Handbook, from every edition of d&d, has contained a list of spells, both for wizards and clerics, as well as a complete listing of each of those spells. Naturally, I couldn’t leave well enough alone. For many years, I have used something a bit different.

The holidays are over. Relatives have gone home. Decorations are put away. Life has more or less returned to normal. Now it’s time to start thinking about monsters once again!

I have been away for some time, partly due to illness, partly due to real life obligations. But I am feeling better now and ready to return.

Once again, I’ve been away for a very long time. I may not quite be back yet, but I am on my way. Thank you to all those who have inquired as to my whereabouts, sent their kind words, as well as their donations, and those that have sent me messages and emails during my absence. I’m sorry that I have not responded, or posted, these past few months, but I appreciate your thoughtfulness. You have all lifted my spirits greatly during my convalescence.