I love making things. I feel I am my best self when I am creating something. Do you feel the same way? How interesting.
But if you used this blog to keep up with all the things I make, you would get the impression that I never make anything (and may in fact be dead). Let’s correct that. Let us, in the middle of 2024, do my 2021 Year in Review.
My 2020 Year in Review is here.
And my 2021 Year in Review is HERE.I have analyzed Location K84, the infamous Catacombs of Castle Ravenloft, in its several incarnations. It occurred to me that I would like to do a similar reading of the other parts of the castle. (Here that is.) But, as I started doing that, I started doing a similar reading of the whole adventure leading up to the castle. Which is probably not as exciting as the castle itself.
WHOOPS!In this post we will look at the crypts in Castle Ravenloft and see how they changed from edition to edition.
Here’s a different post about locations in Barovia outside the castle. Here’s a third post about the castle itself.
Perhaps you have heard somewhere the idea that all stories—sitcoms, epic poems, video games, This American Life vignettes—are fundamentally retellings of older stories. Perhaps you have even heard the idea itself multiple times. In some contexts, the proposition refers to deep underlying structures to which storytellers inevitably return. This is a rich subject for analysis—but the big money is in abandoning all but the merest pretense of originality and casting the same characters in the same conflicts in the same settings that the audience remembers from 30 or 10 years ago. And this might be a good subject for analysis too. I hope.
This practice of story-rehashing is especially salient in the stories of Dungeons & Dragons, many of which are embodied in physical locations with detailed maps. The most successful D&D settings and stories are reprinted decade after decade, edition after edition, so that new players can enjoy the same adventures so beloved by their forebears, and old players can whine about the things that got changed.
I believe the paradigm example of this is Castle Ravenloft, depicted in the modules I6 Ravenloft (1983), RM4 House of Strahd (1993), Expedition to Castle Ravenloft (2006), and Curse of Strahd (2016). All four of these books tell basically the same story: “Go to this spooky castle and kill this evil vampire.” The vampire is always menacing the same young women; the aged fortune-teller always helps you find the same artifacts that will help you slay him. And in all four books, the floor plan of Castle Ravenloft is presented in basically the same form. This is fascinating, but not surprising: Nerds, who are humans, naturally hate change. Also, the original dungeon is very good. Why would you change it? Why indeed.
Continue readingIt is not usually possible for our D&D group to play in person, because we all live in different places and one of us lives in Australia. But this weekend, the stars aligned, so to speak, and almost all of us were in the same place at the same time. I took the opportunity to run an adventure that had the same epic stakes as our epic meetup.
That’s me in the WINONA RYDER IN EDWARD SCISSOR-HANDS shirt.
Unfortunately, to tell you that story, I have to give you some background information.
This post is not interesting. Do not read this. Continue reading
In October, I ran a one-shot D&D game for a great big gang of internet people via Google Hangouts. We called it D&DLLOWEEN and it was a ton of fun.
Pretty soon I am going to run another one-shot D&D game for a great big gang of internet people via Google Hangouts, and it will be called THRILLING PIRACY.
living people are second-class citizens. Queen Noumenia the Infinite, an ancient lich, prefers for all her subjects to be undead. A spell cast over the entire ocean causes any who die within its borders to immediately revive as some sort of unholy zombie or ghost or suchlike.
Captain Jack Hock of the Expertly is an alive person, a swashbuckling force of outlaw justice on the Pythenic seas. His crew is on a quest to find a mysterious treasure that supposedly will weaken Noumenia’s dominion—but they are hounded at every turn by Captain Laphria of Her Majesty’s Navy, who seeks to claim the same treasure for the Queen. Captain Laphria is a skeleton.
There will be two sessions, on the evenings of April 1 and April 2, beginning at 8 PM Central.
you should email me. When the event gets a little closer, I’ll start figuring out who is playing when. After that’s straightened out, I’ll email you an extremely brief preparatory questionnaire and we’ll figure out the character you’re playing.
I’ve generated characters for all levels of D&D expertise. It’s very very helpful if you can at least check out the basic rules ahead of time, but the main principles are A) play along and B) when instructed, type “/roll d20+whatever” into the thingy.
On the other hand, if you are a 5th Edition expert, you may want to run one of the full caster—or even put together your own character, if you have an idea for a piratical PC.
“Bobo,” a rapier-wielding swashbuckler type with horns
“Coco,” a navigator who draws eldritch power from the stars
“Dodo,” a large parrot
“Fofo,” a kuo-toa cleric of Blibdoolpoolp
“Gogo,” who wields power over the weather
“Hoho,” a halfling with guns
“Jojo,” a half-orc who hits people with an anchor
“Koko,” a tattooed gnome barbarian
“Lolo,” a silent zen type
“Momo,” a dwarf with a harpoon
“Nono,” a giant crab
I have given the characters stupid names in order to encourage you to give your character a better name.
I can’t think of anything else at the moment.
When I act as Dungeon Master for my little D&D group, I’m always searching for puzzles to use in my campaign. I steal ideas shamelessly, as mandated by the DM Code, but my constant googling doesn’t always yield puzzle concepts I can use. I have very high standards. Plus, I play on Roll20.
Roll20 is great, obviously. If you want to play any tabletop RPG online, Roll20 has all you need. It is great. For a while, though, I thought Roll20 had no applications for puzzles whatsoever. After a while I changed my mind; I began to think that the only application it had was for jigsaw puzzles. The longer I used it, the more possibilities I saw. I feel a duty to share what I’ve done so far, so that other DMs can steal my ideas—also, I want to share what I’ve done so far, because I am proud of myself. Continue reading