The Joy of Tabletop Roleplaying Games

Up to now, I've really only posted stuff relating to my career as a User Experience professional, so I thought it was about time I put down something related to something else: tabletop roleplaying games, the hobby that I spend most of my spare time on.

I'm a big fan of the grand-daddy of all tabletop roleplaying games Dungeons & Dragons, and have been since I was 9 years old, when the first Basic D&D Boxed Set came out. I currently play in or "referee" (DM in D&D parlance) five separate campaigns:

The Discoverers

Set in the world of Mystara, this campaign has been running, on and off, since 1993, and uses the "original" D&D rules (0E for short - it's based on the Basic, Expert, &c., boxed sets and the D&D Rules Cyclopedia - and is the rule set Mystara was invented for). In it, I play Katarina Jenner, an 18 year old, human Magic User from the island nation known as the Minrothad Guilds. Kat and her companions have recently passed the 5th level mark (I did say the game has run "on and off"), and they are currently adventuring in the Hollow World.

The World of Pelinore

This is an online campaign that runs in real time using a chat program every Saturday from 8p-11p current British Time (The DM, Richard T., lives in the UK). Including the DM, the campaign players cover four continents two of us live in North America (but in different time zones), one of us lives in Australia (for him, the games are very early Sunday morning!), and one in South America (Lima, Peru, to be exact). In this game I play a 4' tall Halfling named Gemma Merrymead, who's fairly handy with a short sword and really knows how to play up the "bad cop" role in "good cop, bad cop".

Night's Dark Terror

Set in a heavily tweaked personalized version of Mystara, this campaign originally started as a "tweaked" 2nd-Edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons campaign which was converted to 3rd-Edition Dungeons and Dragons (3E) and was even more recently converted into 3.5 Edition D&D (3e5). The adventure plot currently revolves around what is probably the best module ever written for the 0E rules - B10 Night's Dark Terror. In this campaign I play Andrea "Andy" Tschoroff a 19-year old "Swordsman of the Order of the Lion Blades" (an exclusive order of men and women-at-arms, famed for their skill with the Katana and in various forms of unarmed combat). In 3e5, Andy (and other Lion Blades) have been implemented as multiclassed Katana Kensai / Martial Monk (The Katana Kensai is a fighter class variant, and the Martial Monk is a monk class variant, both from Dragon Magazine #310). Andy is currently a Ken2/Mmk3.

RttToEE

This is a Play-by-E-mail campaign that was started explicitly to run through Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil - a 3E revision and update to Temple of Elemental Evil one of the biggest, baddass, player-character killing adventure series ever written for 2E AD&D. The characters, who were started at 4th level, recently reached 5th level. And with only three player character deaths so far! (Woohoo!) In this game, which was also recently converted over to 3e5, I play a human Ranger/Sorcerer with undead as a favoured enemy and who loves nothing more than charming the bad-guys into being her best friend.

My Campaign

This is the one campaign I run and is set in a Mystara that has been Converted to 3e5 (with a few personal variations thrown in). There are five PCs - Cassia Manre Mattwick, a female human Sea Ranger/Cleric of Calitha from the Minrothad Guilds, she has a water elf grandmother and her father is a member of the Diplomat Corps of the Republic of Darokin and who had been stationed in the Minrothad Guilds; Alisandro Manre, a male water elf Rogue/Wizard from the Minrothad Guilds, he officially works as a courier for the Minrothad government (and others), and is a not-too-distant cousin of Cassia's; Tannen Essex of Clan Chossum, a male elf Fighter/Wizard from Darokin who is a recently graduated trainee in the Darokin Diplomatic Corps; Andrinor Marchant, a male Fighter from Darokin who initially joined the Darokin army but ended up choosing the life of a man at arms; and Cian Ionescu, a youthful male Rogue/Sorcerer of mysterious ancestry, he was found on the border of the Canolbarth Forest and raised by vagabond Rom Gypsies travelling throughout Darokin, Alfheim and the Duchy of Karameikos.

I'm also a big fan of the Open Gaming movement and especially of the d20 and d20-modern open gaming systems, which are based on what is essentially the core rules of the 3.5 Edition D&D game. This movement has really opened up the market for those wishing to publish modules, supplements and even entire campaign settings geared towards those who already know and understand the basic d20 rules, and that has served to dramatically increase the number of publishers and the selection of accessories in the table-top gaming industry.

Finally, I think I'll make a plug for a pretty good computer tool for Dungeon Masters and Players alike - PCGen. PCGen is a character generator for d20 games that was built using Java, so it runs on any platform. It currently supports 3e D&D, 3e5 D&D and d20-Modern. If you play, check it out. The User Experience could certainly stand some work (In fact, I'm trying to help out in that arena) but once you take some time to figure out what's what, it's an incredibly powerful little application.