King Arthur Pendragon 5.1

It's been a long while since I wrote in this blog. In fact, two years went by and my gaming time suffered some changes. Some players left, others joined. In fact, for a full year now, I have been playing King Arthur Pendragon 5.1 by Greg Stafford, of Glorantha fame. So far, this has been the most I have played the same game for any stretch of time. For those who don't know (and if you don't know, shame on you!), King Arthur Pendragon, or KAP from now on, is a game about the Arthurian mythos, primarily based on Le Morte d'Arthur by Thomas Mallory but also drawing from a number of other sources, mashing the many legends and tales about Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table in a mostly coherent whole.

As you have already guessed by the name, this is version 5 of the game, first published in 1981. In fact, this new version (5.1) is version 5 with corrected typos and errata added. And this version is set in the years of Uther Pendragon, father of Arthur, allowing the players and GM to play the years before Arthur draws the sword from the stone. This can be somewhat misleading, and disappointing, if you are expecting to play a game about King Arthur and his knights. In fact, as written, the game only allows the creation of knights from Salisbury in the year 485 AD (Arthur only draws the sword from the stone in year 509 AD), but by setting the game in this era, the knights can witness, and be an active part in, the prehistory of the Arthurian mythos (Uther conquers Cornwal, Uther beds Ygraine, Merlin takes the baby, Uther dies, etc.). As I understand, earlier version of the game were set in 530 AD which is the era commonly associated with knightly adventures in Arthur's court and enchanted tales of damsels in distress and magic fairies in the woods.

What drew me to the game was simply its mechanics (being a great fan of Arthurian lore helps). This is one of those few games where mechanics are so wedded to the source material that you dissociate one from the other. Many elements contribute to this: for instance, the skill list is focused on knights with skills such as Falconry, Courtesy, Battle and Lance (you won't find here stealth skills or sorcery skills). However, the central element are the paired traits.

There are 13 pairs of opposed traits such as Merciful/Cruel, Chaste Lustful or Pious/Worldly. Although a knight has many personality traits worth playing, these are the ones that most define his behavior. And by sometimes allowing the traits to control the actions of the characters, even those players who never picked up a book about King Arthur or saw the movie Excalibur can follow the genre conventions. How?

The sum of each pair is 20. So a knight with Chaste 13, has Lustful 7. If Chaste raises to 14, Lustful drops to 6. When a situation occurs that would trigger a certain type of behavior falling under the purview of one those paired traits, the characters is allowed to roll to see how he behaves. Most of the times, the players just behaves however he thinks his character would and he earns a check in a trait (more on these later). Sometimes, the GM deems the situation important to ask a player to roll a d20. Let's suppose it's a choice between being Chaste 13 or Lustful 7 (either you resist temptation or go to bed with the daughter of the castle's steward). If the player rolls equal or under Chaste, he acts in a most chaste manner. If he fails his Chaste roll, he immediately rolls his Lustful 7. If he rolls equal to or under Lustful, he must behave in a Lustful manner. Whatever was successful, receives a check, which means that by the end of the session, there's a chance to improve whatever traits or skills were checked (if you know the Call of Cthulhu system, of which KAP is an adaptation, you know what I mean).

Whatever the characters do, by keeping their traits in check and enforcing proper behavior according to traits, the genre conventions are followed in a way that few others systems applied to settings do. Since this is not a review but my thoughts about the game, here are a few others things I really like about this game:

• It's a generational game. Sessions are played in years, not in weeks or months. Roughly, each sessions is about 1 game year, ending with a Winter Phase (see below). Since the game is played in years, and the campaign extends from year 485 AD to year 566 AD, when Arthur dies, you are expected to play your character, his son and probably his grandson. This lends an epic feel to the game as family is more important than a single character. And believe me, when years pass and you don't have a male heir, players will start to fret.
• The Winter Phase is where you improve your skills, compute your Glory (a sort of reputation) and apply modifiers by getting older. By setting this roughly at the end of each session, you can visibly see the evolution of your character as he grows older, marries, has children, improves his skills and becomes a well-known knight of Britain.
• The Great Pendragon Campaign, this is a MUST HAVE. You don't have to buy it to play a good campaign of KAP, but it provides a roll of years, and adventure upon adventure from the time of Uther to the death of Arthur, touching upon all the milestones of the Arthurian mythos: the drawing of the sword, the coronation of Arthur, the wedding of Arthur, the conquest of Rome, and the Battle of Camlann. It's a sort of meta-plot to end all meta-plots and one that does not force you to play it to have fun (I'll post more about this campaign later).

I love this game to bits. The players love this game. But don't take my word for it, go get it NOW and play it. You won't play rogues or sorcerers, elves or dwarves, but knights of Britain in the time of King Arthur. To some, this laser-focus is a drawback. To me, it facilitates how to present the game to the players, narrows their choices (how many game present so many choices the player agonize for days) and sets a clear starting point for a campaign. This is rightly called a classic. My only regret is having taken so long to start playing it.

Legacy of the Ancients - The Towers

Warning: This post contains spoilers for my upcoming Numenera campaign. If you are a player, stay away..

Every campaign should have a name and this one is no exception: Legacy of the Ancients. The name just popped into my mind and I really don't care if it's already used somewhere else. I like it. It conveys what the campaign is about. Besides, it's a cool sounding name for a campaign.

Below, you can see a diagram of the existing towers. Eons ago, the network covered the whole planet. Are there other towers still standing? Most likely. However, they are not longer part of the network because the portals inside are no longer active.

The diagram is a handy reference. It doesn't represent the towers' geographical position nor the spacial position between them. I will place each tower on the map of the Ninth World as it suits my campaign. For instance, tower 8 is not necessary in the center of the existing network as the diagram shows. The lines indicate how the towers are connected as follows:

• Dotted lines indicate non-functioning portals.
• Solid lines show working portals.
• Arrows indicate one-way or two-way portals and direction of travel. For instance, tower 3 connects to tower 5 via a one-way portal. The PCs will travel to tower 5 but cannot return to tower 3. Tower 3 also connects to tower 4 via a two-way portal. PCs can arrive at tower 3 from tower 8 but cannot go return the same way.

Each portal or transport bubble is similar. It's a large bubble - approximately 3 meter radius - floating in the center of a large chamber. Its transparent surface ripples much like water on a pond disturbed by the wind. Inside, there is no gravity. Many unidentified symbols glow on interior surface. Some appear and disappear. Occasional, smaller diagrams are visible but these are meaningless. The symbols can be manipulated by touch (like a touch screen). With an Intellect roll the PCs can "dial" other towers. Transportation is instantaneous and seamless. The PCs feel no transition other than that the chamber in which the bubble is standing changes slightly according to the destination ("The room changes slightly. You see a pile of dead bodies that wasn't there before").

I still don't want to go into much detail about the towers' location, precise operation or even layout as these will adapt to suit the story of the campaign. Many eons passed since the towers were built. The geography changed, some were looted, others are occupied by creatures - natural or otherwise.

THE FIRST TOWER

Here's what I sketched about the first tower: it is now in a marshy area of the Orrimare forest - a fungal forest of giant mushrooms. Nearby is a small village. The tower itself is two structures: A cube made of an unidentified black metal that barely reflects the light. Each face is about 30 meters long and there are no doors or windows or any other openings. It floats on the air, slowly spinning on its axis, with one vertex pointing down to the top of a stone-like, tapering, rectangular pillar, 9 meters high. Inside the pillar, the PCs will find a control room. From there, they can teleport into the cube and explore further. There are many rooms inside the cube and these will be detailed for my first session. One of these is, obviously, the bubble chamber.

Numenera - Genesis of a Campaign (Part 3)

Continued from a previous post.

WARNING: This post contains spoilers for my upcoming Numenera campaign. If you are a player, keep away.

Now that we have a basic premise for the campaign and a potential powerful technological artifact - The Eye of Azhura - as the McGuffin (aka Ronin's suitcase), it's time to write down some of the potential oposition the player-characters will face either willingly or unwillingly. Not every one of these non-player characters are out to get the Eye of Azhura. Some want to loot the towers, others are secretely spying the player-characters and still others are doing their own thing but fate puts them in the player-characters' path.

Some of the following non-player characters were created by me, others were suggested during character creation. These are only the initial ideas. The campaign is always in flux and much can be changed depending on the players' ideas and characters' actions.

There are three characters in play so far: a nano, a glaive and a jack.

• A Tough Glaive Who Controls Beasts.
• A Mechanical Nano Who Exists Partly Out of Phase.
• A Graceful Jack Who Entertains.

I asked the players to roll/choose from the connection table on each type.

NPCs suggested during character creation:

• Kreel, the glaive's pet. This NPC has lots of potential for GM intrusions. According to this focus, the kreel hates another player-character. I sketched the beast as it exists in nature.
• The teachers of the nano and the powers that be who are keeping an eye on him rolled on the Nano Connection table. I'll leave these "powers that be" open for now. The players will provide me some ideas later. Perhaps they are the teachers of the nano, perhaps a different faction within the same school or a different group altogether.
• The jack's troupe of travelling minstrels and performers rolled on the Jack Connection table. These can make an appearance anywhere as they are a travelling group. They can help or hinder the player-characters.

NPCs suggested by the campaign premise:

• Tregor and Helion, a warrior and a nano. They lead a force of ragtag misfits and cutthroats. Initially, they will be pursuing the jack as she came into possession of information regarding the location of a source of potentially valuable numenera. Tregor is a violent man who leads by fear and force. Helion is no less violent but resorts to manipulation to achieve his own ends. He keeps Tregor in check. In fact, Tregor fears him. At first, it will seem Tregor is the leader of the two, but, in fact, Helion gives the orders.
• Volarus, the wanderer. I don't know who this NPC is... yet! He will be introduced early in the campaign and perhaps play a major part. My idea is that once he was a normal man who came into contact with ancient technology. Something blended with him and rewrote his DNA. Now he is something else, more transhuman than human. He will seem to be a mere observer with an unknown agenda. He can heal the most serious wounds by touch and he has little recollection of his past.
• The Outsiders. They crashed on Earth a long time ago. Longer than any living human. They seek a power source for their starship so they can return home. The only power source in existence powerful enough is the Eye of Azhura. They wear dark hooded cloaks and metal gloves and hide their faces with metal masks in the likeness of the human physiognomy  In truth, these are suits that allow them to survive on Earth's atmosphere. They are not human, although I haven't decided their true nature yet.

At this point I don't think I need to over-complicate things. Two or three opponents with conflicting agendas is all that's needed to propel the plot. Other NPCs appear on a scenario to scenario basis like the local innkeeper or aeon priest.

Next: The Towers' Map

The Gap in Play

This post in The Signe of the Frothing Mug mirrors most of my own experiences. Sometimes it happens unexpectedly. With so many busy working schedules, family issues and other real life issues, someone misses one session. As we are in a middle of a scenario, we take the time out waiting for the player to return. Suddenly, someone else fails to show up on the second week. Before we know it, we don't play for three weeks in a row, and I begin to lose interest. After all, I'm not willing to spend time preparing a session if I don't know whether we're playing or not. And then, the campaign implodes as everyone loses interest. Some of us been there and done that. So, what can we do to avoid a campaign implosion by lack of attendance?

In the past, we arranged for a quorum, that is, if at least half the players could make it, we would still play regardless. This almost guarantees the campaign never stops. I used this with mixed results. I never got the sense I was playing with a cohesive group as different players failed to show up on different occasions. I was never playing with the full group. This meant individual storylines failed to take root and even the overall story arcs didn't generate much interest because no player was there all the time to play through it.

We also tried to play in episodic style. This style meant sacrificing long, involving and complex stories for shorter stories of 1-2 sessions. This worked better specially if there were a rotating cast. Every story started with whoever was available and off they went. At the end of session, they returned to their base camp (or ship or whatever) to rest. Next session, rinse and repeat. The problem is this only works if the group is traveling in a mobile base (a spaceship or a boat) or if the campaign is bound within certain geographic limits and the group returns to the same place to rest. In some games, requiring lots of travel, it becomes increasingly difficult to rationalize why some of the missing characters manage to find the rest of the group if they travel all the way to the other side of world.

In the end, I find that both solutions are not ideal ones. When I start a new campaign, I just hope the players commit to the game schedule we agree and take it seriously. Currently, we play twice a month. We hope that, by devoting one week to gaming and another to our families, we will maintain a regular gaming schedule and the campaign won't implode from lack of interest generated by long gaps in play. It still doesn't solve the problem of one player missing a session and waiting three weeks to be able to play again, but then again, by not imposing a weekly game, perhaps the players will show up more often because they are not forced to choose between the game and other things so often.

I am interested in hearing about your own experiences and solutions to this problem, and how did they work out in the end.

Numenera Creatures: Kreel

WARNING: This post contains spoilers for a creature in upcoming Numenera campaign. My players are advised to stay away.

One of the players in my upcoming Numenera campaign is a Tough Glaive Who Controls Beasts. Instead of forcing the player to take of the creatures from the bestiary of the Numenera corebook, I allowed him to flex his creative muscles and give me a description of a creature he envisioned for his character. The Ninth World being a weird place filled with many creatures created by past civilizations, this was only fitting. According to the corebook, the creature starts as at level 2 and progresses from there, and since it exists in the world, there are more like it. So, level 2 is a good baseline for this creature. Below I present this new beast in Numenera format.

KREEL (LEVEL 2)

A kreel is a writhing mass, the size of a human head, of yellow-orange tentacles with purple tips. This mass envelops a minuscule body with a toothed orifice that serves as mouth. They slight shift coloration from deep red to bright yellow, perhaps a form of communication with other kreel. They move silently, gliding through the air in short bursts.

Kreel are rarely seen in nature. Scholars debate their exact nature but it is commonly agreed they are an animal / plant hybrid with a diet of small animals, complemented by some sort of photosynthetic process.

Motive: Breed and protection.

Environment: Found only in deep underground caves or the giant mushroom forests of Drej and Orrimare.

Health: 6

Damage Inflicted: 2 points

Movement: Short

Modifications: Moves silently as level 5.

Combat: Mostly found in colonies, kreel flee if alone unless cornered. They attack the exposed skin of the opponent, trying to wrap their tentacles around an arm, leg or even head. Then, the creatures releases a small, stinging poison, while biting with its mouth.

Interaction: With an animal level of intelligence and no means of communication, a kreel is very difficult to interact with. They are aggressive and territorial. More often than not, they attack whomever comes into contact with them. Even someone capable of handling animals will find it next to impossible to interact with one.

Use: The PCs wander into a colony of kreel while exploring. Someone hires the PCs to capture a kreel alive to breed as a pet or curiosity for some bored noble. The acid in their tentacles can be extracted and processed into a poison with alchemy (inflicts 1 additional point of damage).

Loot: None, although kreel flesh is a delicacy in The Steadfast and can earn the PCs good shin.

GM intrusion: The acid of a kreel is stronger than normal. The PC suffers wracking pain and muscle spasms loosing an action. A kreel is larger than normal. It has 8 points of health and inflicts 3 points of damage.

Final Note: In my campaign world, no one can tame kreel except the PC (who helped me create it) using an tattoo-like implant on his forehead that glows when he sends impulses to his kreel in a higher frequency range than the normal human ear can pick.

Comedy of Horrors

Today I participated in a meeting of several roleplaying groups under the theme Horror and the Fantastic. Being so close to the Halloween, this was only fitting. I took a break from preparing Numenera to run a session of Trail of Cthulhu. I used a Purist adventure called the The Dance in the Blood. For those who don't know, in Trail of Cthulhu there are two modes: the Purist mode, typical Lovecraft, in which the investigators will never make a difference, their efforts are futile and all their beliefs will be rendered null at the end of the scenario, and the Pulp mode, in which the investigators have a fighting chance, they will go down but with guns blazing, it's a mode designed to simulate Robert E. Howard's Mythos stories. You can mix and match several modular rules to achieve the proper mode or anything in between.

As I stated, we were playing in full Purist mode (and the game was advertised as such), meaning the investigators would be trying to solve the case and reach the final revelation before going mad or dying. Everyone knew the story would not end happily, although the characters would have a chance to solve the case, they would not survive unscathed.

It's was a public place. I don't like playing Trail of Cthulhu with background noise. I like my Trail of Cthulhu sessions in a quiet place to achieve the proper mood and immersion. These notwithstanding, we did quite well. There were three players: two girls and a guy, not that it matters, but I think Mythos games tend to attract a higher ratio of girls. The girls were doing quite well, but for some reason the guy was not, breaking constantly the mood and telling jokes. I ignored some of it at the beginning for the simple reason that I was playing in a public meeting and we don't get to choose the players. It's a a demo session, after all. However, the silly behavior was annoying me.

I had to pause the game to remind the players (I avoided talking directly to THAT player) that they were also responsible for preserving the mood and horror of the game. Despite the many nods, he didn't stop. He wasn't being a jerk. He thought it was only natural since it's "just" a game, and people play to have fun. To him, fun obviously equates to telling constant jokes and distracting other players. He finally admitted it was a sort of defense mechanism much like when we say something funny when the tension is unbearable. Not that it was that, we playing in a public place and all.

He was also the first player I met who actively resisted the system. In other words, he didn't think his character should loose Stability EVER, he justified every Stability loss with some logical reason (in his mind). It went something like this:

Keeper: "You finally understand YOU are a monster beneath your human skin."

Player: "Ah, I would never lose Stability because I already had a dream about it so I'm used to it."

And this went on and on and on specially during the climatic encounter when revelations were coming fast and loose. Nevertheless, the girls were doing OK and much of what worked in that session was because of them. They were roleplaying their characters, they were investigating, the reacted adequately to every situation even in sanity-shaking moments.

My point being that some players don't really understand Call of Cthulhu or Trail of Cthulhu. It's not a game for everyone (worse still in Purist mode). However, some people also don't seem to get that their inability to play a certain game should never be an excuse to drag down the game and annoy the other players. Just walk away please or better yet, make sure you, at least, enjoy the premise before signing to play. I would be less miffed if he would be honest and say something like "Sorry guys, this game isn't for me, I'm bowing out".

Some Nice Pictures

Two weeks ago, I GMed my first Numenera session, the Nightmare Switch, an exclusive kickstarter scenario. It went quite well, I think. At least, everyone had fun so I use that as measuring stick as to whether I did ok as a GM. Perhaps sometime soon I'll post a brief review / actual play of that game that took three and half hours to complete. In any case, one of the players was constantly sketching as I was playing and here are some of his drawings:

This is the tower where the priests of the village lived, a clave of Aeon Priests. It was secured by a garden of poisonous plants and an odd device that rendered people unconscious should they get too near the inner tower.

Out in the desert, there was a mysterious dome of a previous civilization with many strange machines inside of unknown purpose. I was quite satisfied with these drawings as they accurately depict what I had in mind and my description of these places. It was also a first for me to have a player who was drawing my descriptions so I asked him to take these and scan them to share with you all.

Retrospective: Shadow World Master Atlas

My recent posts here and here concerning my Numenera campaign brought back memories of an old setting favorite of mine: Shadow World. Published by Iron Crown Enterprises (ICE) in boxed set format, it caught my attention at a time when I was being introduced to roleplaying games. Prior to 1990, I had only played the Dungeons & Dragons red box.

At the time, this boxed set was dual stated for Rolemaster and Hero System. I recall visiting my local game store with two friends. Each of us had decided to buy a different game so we could each take turns as GMs. I bought Middle Earth Roleplaying (MERP), another bought Shadowrun (1st edition) and the third bought the Hero System plus Fantasy Hero. He also bought Shadow World. This was my first contact with the setting, although I never had a chance to be a player in it. Instead, my friend decided that being a GM was too much work and I borrowed his books.

I played a lot of MERP in those days before finally getting my hands on a copy of Call of Cthulhu. My gaming priorities shifted from fantasy to horror. Even though I occasionally tried other systems (the occasional AD&D one-shot or a few sessions of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay), my heart was set in Call of Cthulhu and I never looked back.

However, I read the Shadow World boxed set. I even managed to pull myself from Call of Cthulhu for a week or two to try and create characters with my players (one was a centaur, as I remember) but, alas, it never came to pass. And yet, I enjoyed the setting a lot. It was a typical ICE product with a lot of emphasis on minutia such as flora, fauna and weather patterns. I was used to such information from the MERP books, although in retrospective much of that is unnecessary to create a good campaign and useless to all but the most detailed-obsessed readers. The layout was two blocky columns with a minuscule font filled with page after page of stats. Taking a cue from AD&D's Monster Manual, it even had stats for the deities, although I suspect (my memory is a bit hazy) that those were more super-beings than divine beings.

Shadow World was a typical high fantasy world where magic coexisted with psionics and divine spells so it could make full use of the Spell Law book from Rolemaster with its three schools of magic: Mentalism (psionics), Essence (magic) and Channeling (divine). Most of the standard fantasy races such as elves, dwarves and hobbits were also present as well as the more commonly known fantasy creatures, such as trolls, orcs and dragons.

In retrospect, what fascinated me most about it were the science-fiction elements. They were subdued, of course, but they were there. Kulthea (the main planet) had been colonized by beings from a galactic empire in the distant past, some of who were still alive working in the shadows. Technology from that empire could still be found in remote place and deep in underground dungeons. Unlike my present game, Numenera, the system made no distinction between these technological artifacts and magic items, but the very notion of them being there was enough to pull me into the world. I could envision fantastic underground structures with sleek corridors and technical panels, forgotten tombs with mechanical guardians and all sorts of mysterious technologies. The moon of Orhan, where super-beings live, is described as possibly having been terraformed a long time ago.

In Numenera, the world is a fantastic place shaped visibly by impossibly advanced technologies. In Shadow World, the world feels more "natural" because the sci-fi elements are more subdued. They are there to be sure, but the setting never strays far from its fantasy roots, focusing on high fantasy rather than a melange of both genres. I can still find some inspiration there, as my recent posts attest, and I still find it a good setting to create adventures and even very adaptable to other systems (as was the original intent). It is one of my top five fantasy settings even if it's not one of the most original out there.

Numenera - Genesis of a Campaign (Part 2)

WARNING: This post contains spoilers for my upcoming Numenera campaign. Players: stay away!

In my campaign's first post I described the basic premise of the campaign. From the get-go, even before I considered using a network of transdimensional gates as a clothesline where to hang the player characters' stories, I decided I wanted to include a powerful artifact. And where there is a powerful artifact, you can bet there are all sorts of factions trying to get their hands on it.

This being Numenera, the artifact is called the Eye of Azhura. The players will find a mystifying veil of stories and old wives-tales surrounding the Eye of Azhura. Most of the people of the Ninth World is superstitious and understands little of the technology left by the super-advanced civilizations of old. They know what trickles from the distant past in musty old tomes and oral tradition. It's a powerful gem or perhaps the eye of a god that unleashed divine wrath and brought the dead back to life. At this moment, I'm still playing with the form these legends will take, but it won't be a gem except in the minds of the people who tell these tales.

Taking inspiration from one of my favorite settings of 80s, Shadow World, published by Iron Crown Enterprises, the Eye of Azhura is an energy source placed inside a shrine to power a force field around the Earth that protects it against energy forces inimical to all life. In fact, there are two Eyes of Azhura: one on the north pole and the other on the south pole. How does this tie with the network of gates? As the player characters explore the tower structures, they learn about the Eyes (perhaps both the artifacts and the gate structures were created by the same civilization) and that others also seek to control the towers for their own ends including a group of voyagers from the stars stranded on Earth long ago who seek a functioning power source to restart their ship and leave the planet. This, of course, poses a problem since the removal of either Eye will deactivate the Earth shield, thereby exposing the planet to deadly energies.

Since I like to complicate things, not all of these opposing groups want or seek the Eyes. Some just want to reach far away places through the gates for their own purposes. Some are just in it for the numenera. I don't want to turn this into an epic affair with whole armies battling for a powerful artifact. I want to keep low-key approach with a small cast of player and non-player characters. Numenera runs quite well by introducing little by little the sci-fi elements. When the players look around, they will be knee-deep in transdimensional gates, powerful structures filled with ancient machines, an artifact that is a power source of a planetary force shield, visitors from the stars and ancient space ships. I like where this is going so far.

Next...

In praise of Grognardia

I don't remember how I came across Grognardia, James Malizsewski's blog about old school gaming. I don't even remember if I learned about the blog's existence before I began playing AD&D 1st edition two years ago or if I was surfing the web looking for old school gaming advice after I started playing AD&D 1st edition. What I can say with certainty is that Grognardia was a source of inspiration and entertainment for a good many months, mostly between 2010 and the end of the blog in 2012. I was reading it even before I knew what OSR (Old School Renaissance) was. I wasn't part of that movement. My reading of the blog was more of an attempt to learn about that nebulous period (for me) that encompasses the origins of the hobby, from circa 1974, to the mid-1980s.

I came relatively late to the hobby around 1989 with Frank Mentzer's Dungeons & Dragons red box and skipped right to Middle Earth roleplaying game (MERP), then Call of Cthulhu. I never played Advanced Dungeons & Dragons regularly, except for the occasional one-shot scenario during the second edition years. Fantasy-wise I was mostly a MERP and Warhammer Roleplaying game fan, although most of my hobby time was devoted to Call of Cthulhu. My serious involvement with old school gaming, to the extent that involvement implies not only playing the game, but also reading about the early days and its key figures, began in 2010.

In the end, it matters little how I discovered Grognardia. What matters is that the blog was my go-to blog for a few months. It was inspirational reading and many a night I spent pouring through hundreds of articles. I learned more about funhouse dungeons, what particular historical context a certain module was published in, who some of the most influencial figures of the early days of the hobby were, and many other facts. I learned to what extent the Dragonlance modules influenced TSR to go from a dungeon-oriented model to a story-oriented module, I learned some entertaining facts about those who tackled the legendary Tomb of Horrors and something about the history of the long lost Greyhawk campaign.

Its influence on the whole OSR movement, of which James Maliszewski was a fierce proponent, is undeniable. Now that the blog seems to be dead, I join others like Once More Unto the Breach in remembering. Would you care to share some of own your memories about Grognardia?