The year 2012 saw four campaigns start and end, a record for our game group, whose first four years were made up of a pair of long running games.
The Temple of Elemental Evil with Pathfinder Beginner Box
The first game was a classic, the temple of elemental evil, using the brand new Pathfinder Beginner Box ruleset. the game only lasted a few months, but was a blast for many reasons. for me, revisiting the temple was a chance to game through some of my fondest roleplaying memories of my youth, while also offering me the opportunity to show others what a fun adventure it can be. another awesome thing about this campaign was the use of pathfinder products, which felt like a return to more traditional d&D than d&d itself, after playing fourth edition for so long. also, the gunslinger Calamity Jane, and her sister, even more Calamitous Joan, created by me but played to the hilt by my great friend Khar, was one of many truly sublime and memorable gaming moments that took place in this too-short campaign. we will be back to this, someday, oh yes.
Hunger Game miniatures make great first-years
After a short break, we were back at it with a strange campaign idea that I had of mashing the D&D universe with Harry Potter, and playing a game using a universal ruleset made up of all the editions of D&D mashed together in my mind. Needless to say, it was short lived, but was, for me personally, a chance to really get gonzo with the game, introducing Albert Einstein’s illegitimate son as the head of Hogwarts during world war two, about to get invaded by an army of evil dwarves. They even took a u-boat to the crash of the titanic to retrieve a lost mummy who happened to be Merlin’s eternal lover, and found them together, or would have, if the game had gone on another session. Too gonzo? Maybe, but damn was it fun.
And then a miracle happened. The publishers of dungeons and dragons decided to have an open playtest, and the public, such as we are, were allowed to sign up and download the still-in-development rules for the next edition of the games, still two years from publication. We dropped everything and began playing The Caves of Chaos from the original Keep on the Borderlands adventure, one of the earliest and greatest of adventures, penned by the master himself. Much hilarity ensued, including one of the most bizarre episodes of all time, in which the party burns babies in an atempt to escape from harm. sadly, due to excessive laziness of the author of this blog, many of the sessions went unrecoded, such as when the party fled from the all-powerful minotuar, to their successful assault on the dark priest enclave at the climactic conclusion of the adventure.
holiday cheer around the gaming table
Finally, for the fourth campaign of the year, in ealy autumn we rolled up new characters for a new campaign of exploration and colonization. This game went on for several months, until the last session of the year in fact, which became a somehwat anticlimactic finale, ending in the middle of a battle. However, it was a great game, like all of them, and could have continued on, like all of them previously, but for the flighty distracted mind of the dungeon master, who it seems is always looking for the next new shiny thing to try. hopefully he will get his act together for 2013, we shall see!
2012 Game session reports:
Game Night Jan 6 the Village of Hommlet – Welcome to the Welcome Wench, Wench
Game Night Friday Jan 13th – The Village of Hommlet and the Ruined Moathouse
Game Night Jan 20 – Hommlet and the Moathouse
Game Night Jan 27th – the cellars beneath the Moathouse
Game Night Feb 10 – A dead gunslinger under the Moathouse
Game Night Feb 17th – The Raging Gnolls of the Dark Priest Lareth
Game Night Friday Apr 13th – Auspiciously Begins the new Campaign
Game Night 4-20 – The Curse of Merlin’s Mummy
Game Night April 28 – Hogwarts trimester finals and borrowing the Uk-boat Mighty Punic
Game Night May 25th – D&D Next Playtest 1 Keep on the Borderlands
Game Night June 1 – D&D Next Playtest #2 Gnoll Pack Attack
Game night June 8th – D&D Next Playtest 3 (this time with more keep)
Game night June 15th – D&D Next Playtest 4 – Yes, they burn the babies
D&D Next Playtest Friday Aug 17th – Rolling up characters for a new campaign
D&D Next game night Aug 24 – Conquistadors sets sail
Game Night D&D Playtest Aug 31st – Lost and Found in Port Freedom
Game Night D&D Playtest Sept 7 – Chibitown and the Great Croc
Game Night D&D Next Playtest Sep 14 – Concluding the Colonial Voyage to Numenoria
Game Night D&D Playtest Sep 21 – Another Necromancer Tower
D&D playtest Oct 12 – Colony construction, Owlbear-zilla and a pick-axe of booty-looting
D&D Playtest Nov 2 – The Haunted Treasure and Farewell to a Friend
Game Night D&D Playtest Nov 18 – Ooga-chaka and Tanaroa
Game night dnd playtest – Thanksgiving 2012
D&D playtest game night 12-21-12 – End of the baktun edition
