Time for pagan traditions

It’s been a busy month both in gaming and real life too.

RPGs

Our 4e campaign has been marching on quite steadily. My cleric just reached the 6th level. I still have some doubts about the 4e system as anything else but miniature wargame. The more I read about Hackmaster though the more convinced I become, of it being the game for me. But gaming for me is after all about meeting friends and having a good time so I can bear gaming with 4e rule set too.

Boardgames

I have not had much time to play face to face boardgames this month but I have been closely involved with playtesting Ed Beach’s upcoming game The Virgin Queen. It’s a sequel to his wonderful history lesson Here I Stand. So far it has been very interesting experience and the game itself is perhaps even more diabolical struggle between diplomacy, military and religious powers. I am very excited about the game.

But now it is soon time to celebrate some age old pagan ceremonies that are veiled in christian shrouds these days. And most importantly enjoy the excitement and happiness glowing on the kids’ faces 🙂

Merry Christmas!

I’ll return to Hackmaster after Christmas… 😉

Playing D&D 4e this week

On monday we continued our 4e D&D campaign. The Dungeon Master managed to have a QPK or Quarter Party Kill and almost an HPK too 😉 Usually the PC deaths have been averted so far with my cleric’s powerful 2nd level utility spell which triggers when an ally fails a death save and grants him a healing surge. This time however a fenhydra got all four attacks through our Dragonborn paladin and rended him into shish kebab on the second turn of the combat! The rest of the battle was rather demanding with only three of us left and a dozen minions (elven archers mostly) and their commanders fighting us besides the hydra.

It still seems very safe rule system for the characters statistically. With wise use of healing surges the players can be quite assured they’ll survive even the most difficult encounters. Then comes some statistic anomaly of Hydra and strikes four hits to one character and reduces his HPs down to the immediate death. Is that the only way to create danger of death in 4e? I can’t help but compare this with Hackmaster Basic system (and several others similar systems) where each creature (well at least most of them) have some certain value of damage that can knock the character out without having to grind him down to 0 HP or lower. That also ensures that almost each attack can be lethal if the opponent could coup de grâce his helpless adversary. Please bring the danger back into 4e!

-F-

RPG night of week 47/2009

Yesterday night we continued our 4e D&D campaign. It is the campaign we started originally with Mentzer Red Box D&D, in legendary Grand Duchy of Karameikos. After some low-level casualties we had a group of characters about around levels 3 to 5. At that point some magical maelstrom rushed over the world and our characters were brought to the world of Argarak – a homebrewn campaign setting of our DM running this particular campaign. Characters were also converted to the latest edition of D&D.

RPG campaign of the moment

Currently my role-playing gaming is in the role of a player in a D&D 4th edition campaign. This campaign has its roots in a classic red box D&D basic set campaign started about one year ago. Our gaming group has total gaming experience of well over a century and we play a variety of games, changing turns every now and then.