Welcome to Sandpoint - The Adventure Begins (11/16/2012)

Two weeks ago our new Friday night group met for the first time and had an introduction to Pathfinder and practice game night. This week we commenced the Rise of the Runelords adventure path. The players had prepared their characters using the free demo Herolab software, prepped for the adventure by reviewing the Rise of the Runelords Players Guide, and the DM had prepared several maps and put together a collection of character pawns and miniatures and was ready to introduce the world of Golarion to the new adventurers, so off we went.

More Pathfinder Prep Work

After our introduction to Pathfinder and to new friends this past Friday night I have received several instances of positive feedback from those involved. I was afraid that playing a game that we only had a basic level of familiarity with and doing so with people we were meeting for the first time might be a little rocky, but I thought things went well and was glad to hear the others did as well. We are still sorting out our schedule – we will not meet this week but will meet again next Friday (11/16), and we will figure out our end of year plans from there.

Pathfinder - Practice Night

Our new Friday night game group has decided to give Pathfinder a shot. Because some of us have not played DnD3.* or Pathfinder, plus some have not played in quite a while, it was decided that we would start this off by having the players work their way through the practice adventure that came with the Pathfinder Beginner Box. This gave everyone a chance to ramp up their familiarity with Pathfinder but also gave us as a group the opportunity to sit down and meet each other as well.

We Are Ready to Start (Project Plan - Part 2)

Our first Pathfinder game night will be this Friday. The players know when and where and I hope everyone is looking forward to this as much as I am. We will be walking through the sample adventure that came with the Beginner Box and will be using the pre-gen characters from the same Beginner Box. This will give each of us a chance to adjust to the non-DnD-4E rule set and to each other as well. The maps are made, the miniatures and pawns are gathered, we have a couple of Core Rulebooks at our disposal, I purchased a DM screen, and I think we're ready to go - so let's play.

Pathfinder - Project Plan (Part 1)

As I mentioned in my last post some of our Sunday Night crew is looking to start a Friday Night game as well and after some discussion we have decided to play Pathfinder instead of DnD 4E. None of us has played Pathfinder before, but we do have extensive DnD 2E experience plus one of the players has played DnD 3.5, and who are we kidding, Pathfinder is really just non-4E-DnD under a different name, so we will be fine. At least two of us have the Pathfinder Core Rulebook, I have the Pathfinder Beginner Box and a copy of Pathfinder Bestiary 1, plus we have enough miniatures and what not that we should be ready to go.

Back to the Anvil

It has been several months since my last post but my itch has returned so let's get back to it. The reasons are many - I've got a million excuses of course - but the most substantial of the excuses are a new job and both of the kids moving on with their lives and leaving my wife and I behind with an otherwise empty house. We love them both and wish nothing but the best for them - and eagerly wait to see them again.

Wizards News

I wanted to include several announcements and links in here this post will cover a couple of different areas. First of all the June DDI update was released last week. There wasn't a lot of new material to include, and the usual smattering of bug fixes was always interesting to peruse, so I guess overall there really wasn't much to report here.

DnDNext Playtest Play Observations (Updated)

Our Sunday Night DnD group took an opportunity to run through the DnDNext Playtest material this past weekend. We had two players missing this week, one being our current DM, so with a player available for each of the Pre-Gen characters and myself to DM we wandered into the Caves of Chaos. I am not going to provide a blow-by-blow description of the action as I have done in the past, but rather wanted to walk through our comments, thoughts, and questions as gathered from the game play this evening.

Welcome to the Caves of Chaos

Different countries, different races or tribes, all with with different languages, and even cultures as old as the ages all have made reference to the caves. The actual words or the titles applied to this location may be different, but their intent was all the same. This particular corner of the world, this little hell’s half acre, was a foul and odious place, a blight on the land around it and on the planet on which it resided.

We'll Be Playtesting

Over the past few weeks almost every DnD related blog has some sort of opinion on the DnDNext playtest package and/or some amount of feedback based on their play results. There are always naysayers of course, but the opinions do seem to be generally positive. The thing to remember is that this is a very early version of the game with a lot more yet to come, so chances are that the one thing you would like to see is probably still forthcoming. I don't like having character sheets without the spells detailed on them ... I get it ... it's not really a playtest issue. Patience - all you can really do is to playtest what you've got and provide feedback on that.