Platonic Solid

If you've been around for a while you may have noticed that I've spiffed the place up a bit. I kept putting off theming Platonic Solid because I had to learn how Blogger did things and I already had tons of stuff like it on my plate. One day last week I woke up and the old look finally got to me. It had to go. So, I jumped in with my trackpad and keyboard in hand and voila! There's still some tinkering to be done but so far, so good.

I recently picked up Honor + Intrigue  which is based on the game engine found in Barbarians of Lemuria.  Instead of playing a barbarian who crushes those in his way to hear the lamentation of the women you play a character who hums a baroque tune that dances around the glissade of flashing steel. I'm a fan of Barbarians of Lemuria and even though it does sword and sorcery just about perfectly I don't run it often because I like combat systems that provide a bit more tactical oomph. Honor + Intrigue deftly provides that and more. It's got fencing schools and maneuvers that build on top of a tactical advantage system that really makes combat hum. We've only run a couple of test encounters but the game has gotten two thumbs up. It doesn't hurt that I met my wife on a fencing strip. Our real life experience helped us get up to speed rather quickly. Terminology never got in the way. In fact, it helped. The plan is to run a mini-campaign of 3-5 sessions. Where it g...

When playing Dungeon Crawl Classics it sure feels like it. Last night we sat down and did a test encounter with Gareth the woodsman turned 1st level warrior and a new character, Henrik a 1st level cleric. Both were played by my wife. I randomly determined the opposition force and it came up 5 dark creatures of chaos. The exact same composition as what killed three 0-level characters in a single round in the previous session. Uh oh. How would it go this time with just two 1st level characters? Turns out that Gareth's new warrior abilities are difference makers. The boost to initiative and the attack die, even though it is only 1d3, allowed him to take the fight to the enemy versus trying to manage the situation and hope for the best. You really appreciate that 1d3 because you didn't have anything like it before. We even had our first mighty deed of arms. One of the dark creatures was disarmed by Gareth with a stroke of his blade and left to totter till it was the last...

In a previous post I introduced the 0-level PCs who were part of the game; Thorek the dwarf, Gareth the woodsman, Saul the cobbler, and Mithra the alchemist. The second session was non-stop survival by the skin of their teeth. The 1 HP cobbler was the game changer who once again stepped up saving his party's bacon. It was amazing. At the end the entire party was low double digit XP away from hitting 1st level. It looked like all of them were going to make it. But then we played the third session. The mission of the third session was to make their way to a clerical order named The Haligesith. They're a growing power in the area and must be warned about the strange going-ons along the old forest road. After a night resting up in a roadside temple they set out fresh. The day starts out a little cool but sunny. Daylight passes virtually uneventful except for when they got twisted around on a side road. It all started to look the same. As the sun went down so did the t...