Another big announcement from Reaper Minis

For those of you who like to game with miniatures, but do not necessarily care to spend hours painting them, this might be of interest to you.

>>>> Official announcement from Reaper's web site <<<<<<

Reaper Miniatures is proud to announce the creation of a new miniatures company: Asylum Miniatures.

Asylum Miniatures is an independent company wholly owned by Reaper focused on the creation of pre-painted miniatures, games, and associated products.

Under its own banner, Asylum Miniatures will launch with and supply the Reaper Miniatures pre-painted plastic line Legendary Encounters™. Asylum Miniatures will also pursue the development of products and lines outside of the Reaper Miniatures core brands.

Offered in an open, non-blind, non-random format, Legendary Encounters™ pre-painted plastic miniatures will be packaged in Asylum Miniatures blister cards. Both single and multiple piece packs will be offered.

Asylum Miniatures will continue to draw upon Reaper's vast miniatures catalog of thousands of metal models to expand the Legendary Encounters™ miniature line.

From Ed Pugh (CEO of Reaper Miniatures): "This new company solves several problems Reaper has been facing concerning the creation, marketing, and brand awareness of our pre-painted products. Allowing Asylum Miniatures to operate independently of Reaper Miniatures will give management much more flexibility to create, market, and supply pre-painted miniatures, games, and products."

Asylum Miniatures -- what you need, when you need it!

Reaper Miniatures is a worldwide leader in the design and casting of metal science fiction and fantasy miniature figurines. Based in Denton, Texas, Reaper products are available in fine hobby shops around the world.

For more information about Reaper Miniatures, visit the Reaper Miniatures website at ReaperMini.com.

>>>> END QUOTES <<<<<<

I'm hoping that this will mean lots more new releases to add to the existing range of models we've seen in the Legendary Encounters™ line. Specifically, I'm hoping for MORE pre-painted orky goodness to further my plot of world domination...but that'll be our little secret.

Also drop by Reaper's store to get the freshly released (yesterday, as a matter of fact) Warlord 2nd Edition. I think you'll like it too.

A bit of half-orc nostalgia

"I've been a half-orc almost as long as I can remember."

-Janara

I started playing D&D during the reign of 2nd edition, and of course there were no half-orcs in 2nd edition, not even in the Monstrous Manual as I recall it. So I had to bide my time playing halfling thieves and human barbarian fighters and yes..even an elf wizard. It's all true. I have the dog-eared character sheets to prove it.

Of course 3e came along and with it came my favored race. I mean, what's not to like about being a half-orc. You get a minus to your INT and CHA scores right away.... okay fine.. so maybe that's a bad example..but you get Darkvision, right? Oh..wait...so do all the other non-human humanoids..but hey, you get Orc Blood. But wait..that's not a good thing either. Wow, being a half-orc kinda sucks...except for the STR bonus. Now that I put it down in those terms, I wonder why all those disenfranchised half-orc players got so vocal when they had to wait a few extra months for their 4e 2nd Player Guide to come along so they could get their game back on. Being a Dragonborn ought to be so much cooler, right?

So..let's have a look at a 4e half-orc, shall we?

I've been following a PbP 4e game on the Reaper forum because 1) I don't want to be counted among the OSR pundits who hate the game but have never really played or even watched it being played and 2) the DM and players are all excellent roleplayers and writers and it should be an entertaining story to read.

I personally don't own any 4e books, but might download the quickstart to get a better perspective on what's going on in the PbP. Anyway, here's the character stats for Kaanite the 1st Level Half Orc Two-Weapon-Fightin' Ranger who just so happened to have once been a cat burglar.

FINAL ABILITY SCORES
Str 20, Con 14, Dex 19, Int 14, Wis 17, Cha 13.

STARTING ABILITY SCORES
Str 18, Con 14, Dex 17, Int 14, Wis 17, Cha 13.

Huh? None of his scores even went down...and he gained DEX...and he has 31 HP starting out?!

And get a look at this!

TRAINED SKILLS
Dungeoneering +8, Acrobatics +9, Perception +8, Athletics +11, Stealth +9, Thievery +10 (+12 w/ Thieves tools)

Acrobatics and Stealth? NO WAY! This guy's TOTALLY UBER! And I say that with the utmost respect for the player (Hi there, Orcsoul) and with no disrespect toward the game. If it works for you and it makes you happy, then go play.

WHIIIIICH brings me slowly round to the point that I alluded to earlier. Early in this blog's archives, somebody corrected me on my assumption that there were no half-orcs before 3e. I had always assumed that it was the not the way of any reasonable game company to giveth and then to taketh away.

Once I joined the old-school, I really had no good reason to look through the AD&D Players Handbook. I was content to play my homebrew-hafforc and call it good, but curiosity got the best of me and I decided to have a look at a 1st edition half-orc for nostalgia's sake. I've made a few observations.

It's a man's world

And by "man" I mean huMAN. Every other race (including half-orcs) has a glass-ceiling in the form of level limits. These limits are based on class of course, but even among the non-human-humanoids, half-orcs get the shaft. A half-orc Cleric can only advance to 4th level...a Thief only to 8th..provided his/her DEX isn't less than 17, in which case he'll get stuck at 6th. The only class that favors half-orcs, the Fighter, limits them to 10th..which is higher than fighters of other races...except humans, of course. THEY can do ANYTHING...pth.

And it's a MAN'S world

By "man" I mean hi-honey-I'm-home-what's-for-dinner-I-wear-the-pants-in-this-household....that kind of man. On the Race Ability Score Minimums/Maximums, it was for some reason necessary to break those scores out by male and female. As you might have guessed, humans are excluded from this table because...well..they're human. They don't have limitations. Also you probably guessed it... almost all women are weaker....by an average of 1.6 points of STR below their male counterparts. I suppose as a self-liberated woman, I should at least be thankful that the gender difference is limited to STR. Even Gygax "knew better than to go there." Interestingly enough, the only race to NOT have weaker women-folk was the half-orcs. Yep, it kinda makes a girl proud. :D

It ain't no world for a half-orc girl, that's for sure

Half-Orcs:
Orcs are fecund and create many cross-breeds, most of the offspring of
such being typically orcish. However, some one-tenth of orc-human
mongrels ore sufficiently non-orcish to pass for human. Complete details
of orcs and crossbreeds will be found under the heading Orc in
ADVANCED DUNGEONS L DRAGONS, MONSTER MANUAL.
As it is assumed that player characters which are of half-orc race are
within the superior lo%, they have certain advantages

The description for Half-Elves is nothing like this. I mean, far be it from me to play a race-card, but this particular description about percentages and racial purity sound a lot less like the world of Tolkien and a bit more like the world of Alabama in the 1920s. Yeah I know it's only a game..a fantasy game at that, but in my opinion, D&D has certainly evolved in the right direction as far as sensitivity to race and gender are concerned.

_____________________

So, now I have actually defended 4e and then spoke disparagingly of 1e. I can almost imagine the angry mob gathering outside now with their torches and pitchforks and descending ACs to roast me on a spit.

On the other hand, I've had fun looking at a bit of D&D history.

RPG off-season and how to feed the need

Due to various family circumstances, friends taking vacations, work schedule conflicts and whatnot, it has been almost two months since our group has played any of our ongoing RPG campaigns. We've met a time or two since then, but for other games, one of which is still in closed beta.

Which brings me with unusual swiftness right to the point.

What do you do when you, for whatever reason, can't get a game on?

In the past, I've fallen back on play-by-post online web forum games. Providing the players are all enthusiastic and share a common style of play (be it narrative, hack-and-slay, or even the much discussed "roll-play" attitude), these games can be a great outlet to sate the unrequited need for high adventure. But often these games fizzle because one or more players or even the game-master loses interest. Granted the same thing can happen with a face-to-face group, but the yawning and fidgeting usually cues you in. A PbP can sometimes lag for days or even weeks even if all players are still eager to continue. Eventually somebody will post "Are we still playing" in order to snap the game out of its slumber.

Of late though, PbP gaming has lost its popularity to more flashy graphics multi-player games (not naming names here) that grant the player instant gratification and in spite of all those jokes about MMRPG online gamers having teeny spans of attention, they still manage to be able to play for hours. That being the case, there's always somebody online to game with, even at 4 AM on a Tuesday. I may not speak on behalf of all traditional gamers, but I just can't keep an RPG session going that long or start one that late, even with stockpiles of Mountain Dew and triple-fudge brownies. Besides, my relic of a PC probably can't handle the software...and yeah, my OSR friends would revoke my membership card and glow-in-the-dark secret decoder ring.

And then there's the real-time online option. Depending on how sophisticated you and your buddies' computers and internet connections are, there are programs out there that can provide you with a virtual gametable map and virtual dice. For the rest of us who aren't quite so well-equipped or technologically savvy, there's still the opportunity to run a game in any ordinary chat application. Of course the beauty of that plan falls apart when one or more of your players is a slow typist or worse yet, completey incoherent in chat rooms.

KTHNX LOL?

So..for the past weeks I've been filling my usual gaming time with miniature painting and a good deal of blog reading. But I just can't bring myself to post on a regular basis about playing the games I love when I've not actually played lately. But I do want you, the Esteemed Reader, to know that I've not lost interest, nor have any of the guys in our group. We've just been busy. Life does that to a person from time to time.

With the real promise that regular game nights will resume at the end of this month, I am thinking it is time to once again prepare for that little one-off adventure I blogged about a few months ago. It'll do me good to get out the books again and shake some of the dust off of my imagination. It's been rather underworked lately.

Until my next blog ... sooner or later...hopefully.... I wish y'all happy gaming.

BIG news from Reaper Minis

As you may recall a LONG time ago (or so it seems) I posted here that I was going to ReaperCon out in Denton, TX for a weekend of mini painting, gaming and being around lots of cool like-minded people. As it turns out, I had a great time, did some old-school RPGing, a bit of Pathfinder, got to watch some 4e being played, took tons of pictures, and talked quite a bit about Reaper's own tabletop fantasy game called Warlord...which brings me to good news.

Warlord has been revised and is slated for release later this summer. This isn't yet another pile of errata or repack of the same old game, but a complete new set of rules...so new that it is being called Warlord 2nd Edition (no 1.5 here, my friends). There's a brand-new cover art so you'll know it's the new edition, and below that is a snippet from the official Reaper web site's news.

• Uses the same RAGE combat system as previous versions of the game.
• Completely re-invented magic system that allows spellcasters to choose their spells during the game.
• We got rid of all the little rules that either didn't get used, or were unnecessarily complex.
• Reduced number of damage tracks for faster play.
• Includes the 10 core factions that the first edition rulebook featured.
• Remaining factions, as well as 5 brand new ones, will be featured in a follow-up book later this year.

(end quote)

Warlord in its beginnings was meant to be a quick skirmish game with simplified d10 combat, simple easy-to-learn rules, and each game model (made by Reaper of course) would come with its own data card with all the vital statistics needed for game play. And it was great fun, but as things often seem to go, it needed some "fixing" in order to make the game more fair as well as to add in more new models and factions and subfactions and new rules and new-improved data cards and ..... you get the picture. During the past three years or so, the game underwent so many changes that many players, myself included, lost interest and moved on to other things. And believe me, moving on was not easy. I loved that game. My husband and I along with many from our gaming group were part of the original beta play-test group and up until the first major revamp we played almost every Sunday. Then, when the first major revamp came along, we playtested that also, but in the end most of us agreed that too much of the game's selling points had been lost. It seems others felt the same way too, and eventually enough voices let themselves be heard that the game developers decided to take a second look at what made the game so popular in its original form, fixed what needed fixing, tossed out what didn't work, and gave us what we wanted.

To quote my mother, "dance with the one that brought you"

Right now, Warlord 2 is in the very last stages of open beta testing. The book and faction data are both being checked and double-checked to be sure that this WILL be the LAST new edition you'll be seeing for a long time. I'm very pleased with what I've seen and although I had no real hand in the development of WL2 aside from two years of grumbling about the state of the game I love, I am once again proud to recommend this game to anybody looking for some good tabletop skirmish fun.

The game itself is simple. You and your opponent(s) buy armies using points. You have some models that are leaders, others that are grunts who require leaders, some who are elites such as mages or heroes and some who are solos such as assassins or monsters. Rather than the old I-go-You-go, players activate one leader and troop or one solo at a time and player activation is determined randomly with chances based on total number of troops per player. Combat is done using d10s versus the opposed model's defense number, and offensive and defensive strikes take place simultaneously. The point-cost of all magic-users includes their spells, which are chosen from spell-lists as the game is being played. All you need to play is a few d10s, a measuring tape or small ruler, a dozen or two minis, the rule book, a 4X4 table, half an hour to an hour to kill, and a friend to play with.

The softcover rule book will be available July 27th. A hard-cover version shold be along not too long after. There will also likely be a PDF, but I'm not sure when that will be released.

___________

In other not-so-happy news, the reason I have been so long overdue in updating is that on May 20th, the day after we got back from Texas, Steve's father passed away of an apparant stroke. He died as he might've wished to..in his own home at his rocker chair with a book nearby. Since then, we've had much work to get done at his house and at ours, therefore not much time yet for gaming.

Steve's dad was very supportive of all of Steve's hobbies as well as mine. Paint-&-Play was one of our pursuits he particularly liked, saying that "Anything that gets kids and their parents to do things together is a good cause."

___________

I promise there's more exciting updates to come. I'm working on a fun paint project right now and there's some interesting RPG news in the works. I'll have more on both as soon as I can. I also hope to be doing a review soon on Mythmere Games' new Swords & Wizardry monster manual, which just came available on Lulu this past week.

Tips for photographing your gaming models

Okay, I know there's a few of you out there who don't use miniatures in your games, and that's perfectly okay. These tips and suggestions can be applied to any sort of closeup or "macro" photography, or even if you just want to upload a few images of some things you want to sell on eBay.

The most common problem to overcome for most beginning photography seems to be getting the light just right. Sometimes the subject of the photo is too dark or the backdrop too bright. Other times the whole picture takes on a yellowy hue no matter what colour backdrop you use or what sort of white-balance setting you set your camera for.

There are three things that almost EVERY experienced photographer can agree on.

• Multiple light sources help prevent distracting shadows
• If natural daylight is unavailable, then "natural daylight" bulbs are the next best thing. Most yellow or red shift is caused by overexposing the subject under tungsten lamps.
  
• Avoid mixing the types of light if possible. This makes white-balancing much easier.
  
• Diffusing the light helps prevent glaring bright spots or reflections on the subject
• Do not use the flash if you can possibly avoid it

If you're not much of a DIY person, there are a good number of home studio lighting kits available online. This one by Digital Concepts is quite popular and affordable, though I'm told that getting replacements for the lamps is difficult to impossible. There's also the XPRO Light Cube and other similar products out there. Unlike the first style I linked to, the cube allows you to light from any direction including underneath. Of course the lamps are sold seperately.

If you're a bit more inclined to making your own, there are some darn good tutorials out there to help you. I've also designed one of my own, which I have posted on my photography blog. (Yeah, I have other hobbies too. LOL)

No matter what sort of camera you use (including a camera phone), there are a few basic things you can do to make better photos.

• Use a tripod or some other sturdy platform rather than "hand-held" if possible
• If your camera has a shutter timer or remote shutter control, use that instead. Shaky hands make blurry photos.
  
• Know your camera. Read the manual and learn its capabilities and limitations.You might be pleasantly surprised.
  

Being aware of your camera's focal range is important. Most cameras have the macro function (the one with the tulip) that lets you get a bit closer, but in most cases, six or eight inches is as close as you will be able to go. Fortunately, most modern cameras have high enough pixel resolution that a photo of a single elf archer from two feet away can be cropped so that the subject fills a typical web 400X300 pixel image.

For taking photos of games in progress, the real challenge is to do so without interrupting the game unnecessarily. This is when you may find you need to use the built-in flash. A simple way to avoid overexposed washed-out or red-eyed subjects in those situations is to diffuse the built-in flash. I've used everything from a folded slip of waxed paper to a potato chip can lid and got decent results.

Again, a tripod always helps. If you don't want to be bothered with using a tabletop tripod, you can use a plain old soda can to steady your camera upon. (Chances are there's an empty soda can sitting around the gametable somewhere.)

BUT THE MOST IMPORTANT THING to remember is that you are there first and foremost to play games. If your friends tell you to put that darn camera away, listen to them. Pictures are meant to capture a good time, not to spoil it.

Anyway, I hope this post can be of help to somebody. HOPEFULLY I will resume a more directly game-related pattern of posting after ReaperCon. There I'll be playing in several RPGs including one Swords & Wizardry advenure. I'll also be hob-nobbing with a lot of talented painters, fellow RPG enthusiasts, tournament gamers and nice folks in general.

Here's a picture made using my own light box.

orcs of ubiquity (Reaper Legendary Encounter pre-painted minis
And yeah...when I get back from ReaperCon, I'll be posting tons of photos.

Mindless fun.... Ubiquitous Orc style!

..and JUST when you thought this blog was getting all booknosey and educated-like, I've found you a new time-waster.

When you finally have had enough complex plot twists, overdeveloped characters, laboriously-custom-designed game settings and all the multicultural and multinational intrigue they entail..and you just wanna go on a rampage, then Shotgun Orc's the game for you.

Yeah..it's free, and it's in my sidebar right over there. >>

You gotta scroll down, but trust me it's there. I just lost an hour of valuable house-cleaning time because of it.

Basically, you're an orc. You've found a shotgun, and because you're an orc with a shotgun, you get to shoot people..mostly knights, wizards, elves and the like....hopefully before they can get a whack or shot or spell at you. The game is multilingual so you can play in English, Swedish or Japanese. Sorry, elves. It don't speak Sindarin.

Book Review - Orcs, by Stan Nicholls

Around a week or so ago, a friend of mine was in a Books-A-Million and saw a copy of Orcs, by Stan Nicholls, and in his own words "If I didn't get it for Spike, she'd kill me." ..and also in his own words was initially compelled by "the badass orc on the cover".

Yeah...I was smitten too. And that was without even reading it.

As the blurb promises, this book will change how you feel about orcs..unless of course you are like me..but then, few are. Anyhoo, this is a story of the Wolverines, an elite warband of orc fighters, who are sent on a quest by a particularly wicked half-human queen who needs a magical artifact in order to further her evilness. After an unexpected delay in returning the queen's prize, the orcs realize they have likely brought her wrath down upon themselves and soon find themselves branded as renegades. Next thing they know, they are on the run from everybody including a trio of bounty hunters, a band of human religious fanatics, and a small army of orcs who still remain loyal to the queen.

These aren't Tolkien's orcs, nor WoTC's orcs, nor Blizzard Entertainment's orcs. If you are expecting brutish thugs who kill for the sake of killing, have low Intelligence scores, and speak gratuitous Cockney, then you'll probably be disappointed. These orcs never say "WAAAAGH", nor "Zugzug", though they do freely drop some of the more choice four-letter words. After all they are still orcs.

Without giving too much away, the story's "plot" almost takes a back seat to the real story, which is in my opinion about different perspectives of race relations and intolerance. The world of Maras-Dantia is a place gripped by spreading chaos. Glaciers are quickly advancing upon civilisation and the world seems to be dying. Worse yet, the magic that once coursed through the earth in ley lines has been bled almost dry. And it would seem the humans are to blame. Of course there are many races of beings in this world, but the course of their history has pitted the elder races and their many gods against the humans and their one god. Of course not all humans are "the bad guys", and throughout the story there are plenty of situations in which various characters learn to put their differences behind them and work together. During their adventure, the Wolverines (including a dwarf sergeant) encounter gremlins, pixies, brownies, centaurs, goblins, trolls, friendly humans, bad orcs, and even a dragon or two.

The battle scenes are quite embellished; a good thing for those of you who enjoy the works of Robert "Two Guns Bob" Howard. And so are some of the vignettes concernign the bloody rituals of the wicked queen. This isn't a book for the youngsters or the faint-hearted. If you don't care for adult language and some adult content, you may want to pass this one over. I'd say it's rated M14 at the very least.

The book picture above is actually a trio of shorter novels bound into an omnibus publication. A second trio of books bound under the title "Orcs - Bad Blood" should be coming available right about now. and I for one will be on the lookout for it.

The Seven Minute Orc

For some, painted miniatures are an essential part of the role playing experience. Back in the Long-Time-Ago when old-school was still new-school and TSR was known for historical games, it was necessary to improvise and compromise, because very few manufacturers of miniatures delved into fantasy at all, and those that did ran a rather limited repertoire of models to pick from. Luckily, the hobby grew, and so has selection. Nowadays you can not only find just about any creature imaginable to stock your dungeon, but if you shop around, chances are there's a model that can represent fairly well just about any player-character a player can conjure.

Of course, not only have miniatures "grown up" a bit in the last 30 years, but so has the hobby of painting them. Once, you could slap a quick base coat of model paint on an unprimed mini, and so long as the other guys at the table could easily guess what your mini represented, then you had succeeded. These days, however, mini painting has become an art form, complete with its own "masters" and numerous arenas of competition such as CoolMiniOrNot.com have sprung up so that novice painters can have their self-esteem put into proper perspective publicly..for better or for worse. There are painters who sell single painted minis for upwards of $300 apiece and often sink 40 hours or more into the mini to do so. (Do the math... minimum wage?) But the craziest thing to come about in the world of minis is that people actually paint the darn things and then DON'T PLAY WITH 'EM!

Three years ago or so, on the occasion of an upcoming local "convention" my husband and I organized, it was decided by mutual insanity that we should have a massive miniature skirmish game involving a single unified orcish horde taking on all the other races of the fantasy world. It was just a few weeks until the Con, and we were a few score orcs short..and he went to painting. My kitchen table looked like some kind of Isengard assembly line with queues of unpainted orcs lined up waiting for their latex makeovers. And of course he started bragging about how fast he could finish one. "I can paint an orc in seven minutes..quicker than you can make cake-frosting." said he. "Put up or shuddup!" said I, and I got my camera and stopwatch.

When I uploaded the video (no sound, bad focus, old camera) to Reaper Miniatures' forum, I think it scared some folks. He might be what you call an old-school painter. He doesn't use any of those fancy-schmancy Liquitex additives. He don't wash his brush in between colours, and he paints straight from the pot..sometimes even mixing colours in the lids. If he were any more old-school, he'd be pre-school..using his fingers and wearing a plastic smock.

So that year, at ReaperCon '05, somebody (Reaper Kit, I think) asked him to repeat his seven-minute orc feat in a much higher quality video with sound and titles and narrative and all kinds of groovy things. A few days ago, I got permission to repost the video to YouTube.

So...here it is..... kinda like Saruman.

Enjoy!

Magical item - Hammer-pants - +3 to bustin' dope rhymes

And you were expecting something enlightening and/or sophisticated here? No?

The topic came up on Mythmere's S&W message forum about the alleged negative impact of the term "old-school", in which I responded with my $.o2 concerning the culture I grew up in. Methinks some folks are missing the difference between "old-school" and "old farts". But then The Venomous Pau came in behind me and REALLY "took 'em back to school" on the subject.

Here's quotage.

by The Venomous Pao on Thu Apr 09, 2009 8:12 am

Spike beat me to the punch on mentioning the Hip Hop connotations of the phrase (nice work, Spike!), so I'll just echo the sentiment.

{beatbox}

Old School is cool, I must insist,
not negative, nor exclusionary
Brothers are whack if they resist
and claim the phrase is too contrary

Step back y'all and roll the dice
The way they did in seventy fo'
Don't need no lists of skills and feats
Just play the game, let imagination flow

Yo elf! Whatcha class?
I'm a martial striker with seven ranks in rules lawyer...
No, elf! Whatcha class?
Um, I'm a Fighter/Cleric/Magic-User with nwops in rope use?
NO, ELF! Whatcha class?
I'm an elf, pure and simple
Don't need no incidentals
I kick it hard, the old school way
Tomorrow I fight but I cast spells today

Word.

Step back y'all and roll the dice
The way they did in seventy fo'
Don't need no lists of skills and feats
Just play the game, let imagination flow

East Austin Represent, Yo!

{beatbox}

WHO SAYS there's no Bards in Original Edition!

The Perfect Campaign

For those of you who just dropped in from RPGBN or other quality places, there's no doubt you've already read the news about WoTC's move to pull all WoTC-related PDFs from the various download sites such as Drive-Thru RPG and Paizo...and you probably also have heard the sad news concerning the ailing Dave Arneson. The fact that the former event has had the poor taste to concur with the latter event only makes both seem worse.

Therefore I will not try to contribute any furhter commentary on either. To quote that song by REM, "Let's try and find a happy game to play."

So, how about a campaign that lasts a long time? Yeah, I suppose we'd all like something like that, so I'm not really bringing any new suggestions to the table here. I've been playing on-and-off for a little over ten years and have yet to get a character past 5th level, not because she gets killed or retires, but because the campaign just fizzles out. Sometimes it's because one or more players leaves the group, or maybe the GM just gets bored. It's hard to say, but it just happens. And it has happened so often that I actually have a sense of dread for my poor character who has just reached 5th level. Rather the same sense of dread one feels when the 3-year bumper-to-bumper warranty has just run out and there's a strange new noise coming from the transmission. But what makes this so funny is that in all honesty I really do not care so much about gaining levels as I care about gaining experience. And when I say experience I'm not talking about XP either. I mean real campaign-setting worldly adventuring experience of the kind that turn ordinary game sessions into memorable stories and perhaps legends.

So how about a campaign where more XP is needed to gain levels? Or maybe let XP only count half? Yeah sure it would make the game take twice as long, but think of the extra time spent as opportunity for character development and growth. If I had my way in that regard, the game referee would not need to spend near so much time coming up with "epic" level encounters to challenge the player characters. Of course after a while, players might get bored with fighting the same level of creatures, so it would be up to the referee to find new ways to make the gaining of XP more challenging without pouring on more creatures or badder creatures. Players who like "kobold bashing" or "grinding" probably would not enjoy playing in my Perfect Campaign.

So, how about lots of new traps, monsters never before encountered in anybody's 'manuals", and maybe some new and imaginative cursed items to place in the path of ambitious PCs? Okay, so there would be players grumbling about "killer referees" spoiling the game for them. So maybe the ref should find other ways to challenge the players besides with deadly combat. Maybe the players could face other challenges that involve non-combat abilities. Maybe these could even help earn XP for the players if they succeed. We could call them "skill challenges"...........or maybe not!

So how about skills? Yeah okay I can see a few of you fellow old-schoolers rolling your eyes at me for such heresy. But seriously, there comes a time in a well-developed character's career that he or she has scaled enough walls, picked enough locks, or practiced his lute enough that he deserves a small bonus whether his chosen class dictates so or not. Now I know there are folks that play versions of The Game in which skills are bought with XP..and that's fine, but so much can be said for the personal satisfaction of having earned a skill through practice and mastery rather than having paid for it via a game mechanism. And maybe the character does not even know when he's actually achieved mastery of a new skill. Maybe it's the ref's little secret and the player is left to figure out that lately something has gotten a little bit easier to do.

So how about a sort of character sheet for the ref? Now I see you new-schooler folks rolling your eyes at me (all theee of you) and wondering why in heck anybody would spend so much time developing a character just to give control of that character over to the referee. Of course the player gets to keep a character sheet. I don't want the ref having to do all the work, but there are certain things about one's self that most people do not know. Remember the first time you ever successfully hit a baseball? Did you know your batting average at the time? Okay, so sports metaphors might be lost on a few of us, since we gamers don't like to venture out of our social stereotypes for fear of being penalized as 'multiclass', but you get the point, right? To quote Han Solo (perhaps a more familiar icon to us), "Never tell me the odds."

And that, my friends, would be The Perfect Campaign. It might be winter of 2025 before poor Janara the *cough* Fighting-Man has her own Barony, but dangit, the getting-there would make for one helluva saga.

So in closing..tomorrow is game-night once again after a three-weeks layoff. Perhaps a Level Drain spell awaits?

Also, remember Dave Arneson and his family in your prayers or meditations. Like others have said more eloquently than I can, his contributions to our hobby are great and he deserves to be memorialized with the perpetuation of the game he helped create.

Fight on!