Moving forward with Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition

After over three decades with AD&D 2nd edition I have finally decided to complete the switch to a new edition-sort of.

I announced yesterday to my friday night online gaming group that our current 2nd edition game has come to an end and on December 5th we will be converting to 5th Edition. With that announcement I finally end my relationship with 2nd edition. But were still friends, because frankly 2nd edition has yet to meet its match for sheer volume of settings.

the publishers of 5th edition have stated that they intend to avoid inundating their customer base with new books every month as they had in previous editions. Instead, it appears they are taking the "Mr. Coffee" approach to releasing new material- one slow drip at a time. Frankly , when it comes to my hobby, I love being inundated. 

Publish as much as you want. Of course, I'm not going to buy all of it, but I'm a big fan of choice.  And its because of that "slow-drip" approach that I will keep visiting my 2nd edition collections for late night hook ups. Al Qadim, Kara Tur, Ravenloft, Spelljammer, Planescape, Birthright, etc. they are still too sexy to just drop - especially when 5th edition is refusing to put out.

So next month I finally join the 21st century gaming scene, But, you never forget your first love.

Using Volo's guides from 2nd edition AD&D for 5th edition

I've read quite a few blogposts about folks using their 2nd edition AD&D Forgotten Realms material as a setting for the new 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons. It makes sense to me given how much old Realms material I have around here.    Many of the folks point to the 1st edition of the Forgotten Realms campaign setting and others advise using the second edition specific setting. Amongst my favorite resources are the Volo Guides.

The Volo guides are like a Fodor’s travel guide for the Forgotten Realms there are five Volo guides to various sections of Toril and one guide dealing “With all things Magical”. The guidebooks are packed full of real places that adventurers frequent in games- taverns, inns, brothels, shops, and places of interest (like haunted keeps and such).  Just about every entry has some kind of hook ripe for development into an adventure.  Before you know it your characters will have a list of favorite places to stay and shops to frequent in between dungeon crawls and tomb robbing.

Volo's guides are also a wonderful way to plan out down time for characters. for instance, if a character in your game needs a suit of plate armor, you can quote a price from the players book and be done with it or you could tell the player that the best plate armor in the sword coast can be found at a shop called The Halls of Hilmer on the street of bells in Waterdeep, thus a desire for plate armor leads the character on a journey to the most fabulous city in the Realms.

I find the information in them much more useful than stat-blocks for Uber-NPC's that I'll never use in my campaign These guidebooks have become the most referenced material I have on the Forgotten Realms. And speaking of stat-blocks, the guides have very little in the way of rules or stats, it's all about the flavor and feel of the establishment or locale, which makes it a smooth transition to 5th edition.

You can find almost all of them at RPGnow (it seems that the guides to the North and Baldur's Gate II have yet to be released).

Volo’s guide to Waterdeep

Volo’s guide to the Sword Coast

Volo’s guide to the Dalelands

Volo’s guide to Cormyr

Volo’s guide to all things Magical

Icewind Dale Enhanced Edition is coming soon!

I am a huge fan of the enhanced Edition Series of AD&D adventures that are being re-released by Beamdog. My sons and I have had many hours of enjoyment with these games. I'm happy to see Icewind Dale finally getting the "Enhanced" treatment. At the pre-order price of $19.99 you get a lot of game for your dollar.

Check it out at:
The Icewind Dale website

Pelinore

Greyhawk, Toril, Ravenloft, Krynn, and the rest, you thought you knew them all eh?   But how many of you have heard of Pelinore?  Chances are unless you’re either from the U.K. or a die-hard TSR fan you may not have heard of this tiny campaign world that appeared back in the 20^th century circa 1984.  It made its first appearance in a TSR U.K. magazine named Imagine, so I figure that makes it an official AD&D world (in my book anyway).  Luckily,a PDF recently made its way into my hands that collects a little over a years’ worth of articles on Pelinore, and now I make it available to you, using that most wonderful of services:  Dropbox.

The articles are as follows

July 84- a new world

August 84 – The city league

September 84-The Wynd

October 84 – Law and Order / North Docklands

November 84 – The city League/ Pablo Fanquays Fair

December 84 – The city league / The Arena

January 85 – The city league/ Gibbet street/ Guilds

February 85 – the big wide world

March 85 – The city league / the old bastion

April 85 – The cornucopia

May 85 – the Gods of Pelinore

June 85 – The county of Cerwyn: Burghalter

July 85 – the gods of the domains

August 85 – The city league/ monument square

September 85 – The city league / the Asylum

I'm looking to trade for the Grand Duchy of Karameikos

I want to graduate my minions into AD&D. The campaign I want to do it with is the "Known World" or "Mystara" campaign.

I have several of the Gazetteer but I want to start with the first one, GAZ 1 "The Grand Duchy of Karameikos". The problem is I dont want to pay $35+ for a copy on Ebay. I know they have a boxed set but  I'd rather have this one.


If anyone has a copy gathering dust and they would be willing to trade- I have a whole lot of gaming stuff that I would trade for it. 
Anyone interested in making a trade drop me a line at
Boojiesdad@gmail.com


If I cant find this one I might just start them out with Spelljammer, I've been thinking alot about that campaign anyway.


Thanks guys.

One of my guilty pleasures in Gaming - Spelljammer

I have to admit it I have always loved Spelljammer.  My Sweet Lord, D&D in space- how can you not love that?  Yes it had some real boner ideas. But the rest is just so cool. When my campaign world of Erisa was created it was a house rule that no Elves would be allowed. 


I used Spelljammer's Elven Imperial Fleet in the opening game of my campaign. A spelljamming Elven Fleet survey ship found the planet Erisa and sent a landing party down to investigate it. The party was almost entirely Elven, except for one Human. within hours the elves of the away team were dead from some unknown virus. The virus infected the survey ship and all Elven personnel perished.  In the end Erisa was classified by the Elven Fleet command as a hazardous planet and a cordon of fleet ships manned by non Elven personnel were stationed in the system on picket duty to make sure no one lands on Erisa or leaves it.


A later campaign involved the Scro and Neogi finding out about the virus on Erisa and trying to run the blockade and let the virus loose on the rest of the universe!


Fun times.

Hero Lab for Pathfinder – Two thumbs up!

I’ve been a fan  of character generator programs since I booted up my first PC. I love the crispness of a nicely formatted character sheet with all the nerdy goodies like a Character portrait, a character journal, a full inventory of equipment- all that stuff.


My absolute favorite was the AD&D 2nd Edition Core rules set. Core rules was wonderful. It was an editable character generator, A map maker, and had all the core books for AD&D available for instant access. It wasn't perfect but it was as near to perfect as one could find (and I still haven't found it equal).


But Hero lab comes close.


Hero lab was my Christmas present to myself this year.  I’m soon going to be playing in a Pathfinder campaign, and to be honest with you, I really hate number crunching. I love the fleshing out and development of a character, but I hate the math. So I invested $29.99 and picked up Hero lab for Pathfinder. And I can report that I’m very satisfied.  I have been playing around with it the last few days and I absolutely love it.


Not only is it a breeze to get up and running, but it guides you through character generation so smoothly you're done in no time at all. And it is customizable to official Pathfinder adventure books. This software has features I haven't even begun to crack yet, I’m just having a great time making characters. 


You know Legends of Steel for ZeFRS is coming out soon- this would be a really nice tool for that one day. 


As soon as I can budget it in I’ll be getting the add-on for Mutants and Masterminds and Savage Worlds!

In the meantime I did up a pair of my Legends of Steel characters as a quick example. here is Anteus the gladiator and his girlfriend Risa  the archer, done for Pathfinder.

So the bottom Line- Hero Lab for Pathfinder gets Two Thumbs Up from the Evil DM. If you pick up a copy, tell them I sent you.

Personally, I want a St. Cuthbert Jersey!

Okay, I'm usually not into Geek Chic. but this...this my friends is just too fricken cool! Holloway fans, Check it out!