The Dormant Blog

Its still in the midst of winter in south-western Nebraska, albeit not a lot of snow. I had hoped for a lot more, so I might get out of going to work for an extra day or two, in order to allow me a few extra hours to finish up a few D&D projects.

What, praytell, am I working on now? Well, there has been a fundamental shift in my gaming focus, as I've joined a 5e group at the FLGS, and I am having a lot of fun just being a player. However, there have been a few sessions when the DM never even bothered to call ahead and say he was unable to run the game, due to family obligations or coming down with the crud.

It fell on my shoulders to do something about it, to no one's total satisfaction. In one session, we played Three Dragon Ante, a passable 3e era card-game with some mechanics to allow the game to be played as part of the D&D game, and the other session, I bought the Temple of Elemental Evil board-game & we spent the whole session attempting to play the game while we learned the rules at the same time. That was an expensive solution on my part, so I decided to start my own 5e campaign setting; totally separate from the regular DM's campaign.

What I've 'thrown' together in the last 2 months is incredible, and far much more than I've ever created for Holmes or 0e; Yeah, I don't get it either...

Thankfully, the new campaign setting is mostly edition neutral, except for a few additional race & class additions, house rules to make it more "Old Skull", and some additional 5e crunch, so when it's all laid out, one could ostensibly use it for any edition.

I'll post a bit about it in the next few months. Yes, there's that much of it. The biggest challenge will be how to present it, when to cut it off and leave y'all hanging for the next installment, etc., including the appropriate time to post the nearly complete "Lair of the Frogs", a dungeon design by Dyson Logos, stocked for a 5e game by moiself. However, I won't be putting any 5e monster stat-blocks in it, so it'll be easy-peasy to add your favorite edition/clone stat-blocks. The treasures are all randomly rolled by the referee/DM before running the adventure, so simply use the monster treasure types from your favored edition to fill in the blanks.

So until I get that finished, there is this teaser post. ;)

"But, Bob!" I hear at least one of you wail, "Why 5e? Why have you turned your back on Holmes & 0e?"

All I can say in my defense is that while I was under the impression that I'd never run anything but 0e/1e/Holmes/BX, etc., I'd gladly play in any game that came my way, because I haven't been able to find group for so long now.

It turns out that after reading the 5e rules, this version of D&D isn't so bad, and is at least as easy to run as 0e/1e/Holmes/BX! ...and if you're hearing that from my mouth, that outta mean something. Besides, I know you've been quietly thumbing through your son's Pathfinder rules, and you've even admitted that 3e isn't a bad system 'by itself' (meaning no splat-books), so you have your conceits, I have mine. 5e will be mine. In fact, I mean to own it.

'I'll have her, and I'll keep her, but I'll not keep her long!'