Sad news

Sadly, my cat died the other day from cancer.

Here is an excellent picture of him being absolutely livid because someone picked him up.

so.. monsters then

What would D&D be without monsters? Well it would be called "Dungeons and" for starters but anyway...

Which monster is the best: obviously it's the Owlbear.

But which is the worst? Well there's one in my Rules Cyclopedia called a Revener which looks like an undead but isn't, is hard to hit and takes load of damage and if it hits you... you lose one of your senses. Apparently, if elves (and only elves) lose their sense of touch they can no longer find secret doors.

However, there are many other terrible monsters, particularly in the Fiend Folio.

The Sea Bishop sadly not statted for D&D

So Basic D&D had some monsters that don't appear in other editions. I (like Bargle and the Hutaakans) am quite fond of Living Statues - a sort of cut-price golem with odd abilities. I'm not sure why we need Giant Ferrets and Giant Weasels (but also why we don't get Giant Stoats, Pine Martins or Polecats). So my plan is to convert some of these for 5e instead of just picking something similar.

I may even stat up a Sea Bishop.

Mystara musings (Part 1?)

So my introduction to Mystara, or The Known World as it was then know, was in 1986 when I got the Dark Blue Expert box Set for my 11th birthday.

Of course, the most exciting thing about that set is not the rule book but the supplied module - The Isle of Dread. This was the second version with the Orange cover and a picture of some guys in the sea fighting a flipping T-Rex! Which was obviously really cool if you are 11. Dragons? Pfff.

"Those T-Rex look so stupid with their tiny arms... There's one right behind me, isn't there?"

So back to the Expert Rule book, well there wasn't much about the Known world in there. A bit about The Grand Duchy of Karameikos and a bit more about the small town of Threshold and that was it.

There was more info about The Known World in The Isle of Dread - a very brief description of each country and that was it. The Known World was our oyster.

And so it stayed for the next couple of years - there was dribs and drabs of info in various adventure modules and a world map in the Master Set. I think there was more in the Immortal Set but I never owned that.

A then came the Gazetteers. 

But next up - I'm going to think about monsters. Possibly.

In the heat of the Night's Dark Terror

So I've decided to convert the old Basic/Expert adventure module Night's Dark Terror to 5e to run for my D&D group. In America this was known as B10 but for me it was B/X1.

A bit of history

Night's Dark Terror was, I think, the first D&D module I bought. I had bought the Basic Set earlier in the year (1986!) and been given an Expert Set and a solo module (Lion's Castle) for my birthday but I think this was the first module I actually paid for with my own money when I was on holiday in Weymouth.

And in an odd way that turned out to be a bit of a mistake.

Not because it was bad but actually because it was good - all the other D&D adventures I got as a kid were a bit disappointing in comparison. It's probably one of the reasons I'm still full of nostalgia for Basic D&D.

Well at first glance, it was bigger than other modules (48 pages!) and came with more maps and also a sheet of cardboard counters.

Reading through there is such a wide variety of good stuff in there - a wilderness full of ancient ruins and lairs to explore, an urban adventure, prisoners to rescue, villains to thwart, lost civilisations to discover and, of course, a siege to run with counters.

I don't think there were any other D&D adventures like it at the time - the closest thing to it was probably Death on the Reik for WFRP a few years later (which was of course co-written by two of the authors of Night's Dark Terror).

So why convert it?

I've been thinking about running this for a while and considering converting to all manner of system (Savage Worlds, Warhammer, Barbarians of Lemuria, Traveller...) Or running it with BECMI or BX or Swords and Wizardry or OSE etc.

However, my group weren't so keen on Labyrinth Lord and only seem to like Pathfinder or the 4th and 5th editions of D&D. 5th edition is the one I know best so I've picked that.

I intend to blog about the conversion process and changes I make as I go along. 

First decision, should I rename Misha's ferry to Masha's Ferry?

2023 and the Year Ahead

A somewhat late retrospective

2023 saw the continuation of our long-running Space 1889 campaign using the Hero rule system. Our plans continue to thwart the evil masters of Mars from invading Earth by… erm... invading Mars plus various shenanigans involving nuclear reactors in Africa. This campaign has been running since 2015 but moved online when COVID struck.

I also play Doctor Who with this group – the continuing adventures through the time streams of The Custodian, his Office, a cat and a bunch of motley companions.

For the first half of the year, I also played with another group online. We played though the The One Ring Starter set and some of The Children of Fear for Call of Cthulhu. Both are highly recommended by me.

Sadly, circumstances meant that I had to stop playing with that group but on the upside, I was able to rejoin another group where we play face-to-face.  So, I’m currently playing a monk in the Curse of Strahd.

Plans for the year ahead

Doctor Who and Space 1889 continue. That group is going o try playing D&D face-to-face as well (we are spread across the south coast now) but unfortunately, I won’t be able to join them for now.

Hopefully, we should deal with Strahd soon (or he’ll deal with us) so we will move onto something else. There was not much enthusiasm for anything too different, so I have offered to run a 5e campaign. However, I would be converting the old Basic/Expert adventure Night’s Dark Terror. I intend to post more about this. Alternatively, someone else has offered to run Pathfinder.

Welcome to my new Blog

 Well as it's space year 2024 I've decided to start a blog

The reason I've set this up is because I've decided to be a D&D Dungeon Master for the first time in 20 years and decided to record my thoughts and progress.

There may be posts on other subjects.