Surprise, surprise. I was able to continue my campaign up until about 3 weekends ago, when a family tragedy finally pushed me to take a break on a number of things.I was able to pull the trigger on my take on time travel, and the Dark Future That Must Be Averted trope. Except that I seeded at least two (2) Dark Futures, and will seed a few more. One of those dark futures:(art taken from ..read more

Due to one of the inspirations for this campaign being Planetary ("Archeologists of the Impossible"), I planned for each adventure to have a bit of investigation and exploration. Naturally, for adventures like this, I looked to Gumshoe's many games for inspiration and plot ideas.MUTANT CITY BLUESThis was the most obvious choice, because it's already in the second edition, is closely associated ..read more

Continuing the storylines from the different timelines of the DC & Marvel Universes, here are a few more that I'm appropriating into my timeline for my combined One Earth universe.House of X / Powers of X (The Krakoan Nation)I found this storyline useful, because its core idea solved something for me with regards to mutants: there were so damn many of them intermingled within the fabric of ..read more

PART 02As mentioned before, I waited for the initial batch of characters from interested players before beginning to flesh out the campaign further from the general direction of the campaign. This is so I can take into consideration the characters and the directions the players want to take them.I got the following other character pitches (which slowly evolved in play):Agent Armstrong (Mister ..read more

PART 01Having learned from prior aborted campaigns, I waited first for the initial batch of characters from interested players. My weakness has been pre-plotting the direction of the campaign without taking into consideration the characters and the directions the players want to take them.I got the following character pitches (which slowly evolved in play):Agent 36 (The Kryptonian)One player ..read more

In the grand tradition of DC locations for super-hero teams, I've chosen to base the campaign in Not-The-San-Francisco-Bay-Area, Bayport MegaCity.Much like the TV show, Streets of San Francisco, players will investigate and adventure across the entire Bay Area (and adjacent locations thereabouts) as the campaign unfolds.Since my campaign is a mix between the investigation-structured Gumshoe game ..read more

Now that I've gotten a weekly rhythm going with my Champions: One Earth campaign, I wanted to share my initial document(s) in creating the campaign -- the ones that helped me define the starting point of the campaign and moved me past the hurdle of "enough world-building" to actually running games.BACKGROUNDOn this blog, I've been posting -- on and off over the years -- about a gaming universe ..read more

Art from the American Edition(Found at this website. Fair use.)Well, it took a couple of years, but my son has starting playing the Lone Wolf series of gamebooks!He was patient at the beginning, was a little put off when his first Lone Wolf foray died after being attacked by the invading forces of the Darklords of Helgedad, but was thrilled when his second attempt (a) resulted in a character that ..read more

I've posted other times about halflings on this blog.It should come as no surprise to longtime readers that -- for Karameikos and Mystara at large -- I'd rather ditch the somewhat roly-poly portrayal of this race and instead have a hardy, sometimes beefy, sometimes seriously cut, sometimes outrageously yoked individuals who are only about 3 feet high.They shouldn't cut into the look of the ..read more

A combination fighter / mage is what the B/X BECMI elf is, essentially. So what are the options for something like this in D&D 5E?First off, I'm not going to try to replicate super-faithfully the rules in the Cyclopedia -- If I did, I might as well be playing B/X or BECMI rules. What I'm after is something that approximates the flavor of the setting as implied by the rules.Option 01: Elf ..read more