Thus ends the longest RPG campaign I've ever run. Tonight, the Hamilton Underdark Exploration Society finally faced and defeated Ashardalon, an anicent red dragon with designs on godhood.


He straddled the Fount of Pre-Incarnate Souls, devouring them, preventing new life from entering the Prime Material Plane. The heroes fought well - two of them died in the struggle. mar2nee's warrior madien, Ariadne, struck the final blow.


At the end of the game, everyone was 19th or 20th level.

• velvetpage was Velvet, who retired as a Rogue 9/Shadowdancer 10 to become spymaster for the Duchy of Urnst.


• doc_mystery, who has been writing about our exploits for the Alarums & Excursions zine, was Bishop Roger Thursday, 20th cleric of St. Cuthbert. Bishop Thursday went into a monastery to study and pray, at least for a time.


• shadow_maze was Eidolon, 20th level Elven Illusionist. He returned to spread the gospel of the Maze, and right the heresies that had arisen in his cult.


• mar2nee was Ariadne, 19th level Fighter. Though a human, she had risen to great respect amongst the Dwarves of Oerth, and settled down as a master smith in the Caves of Iron.


• Finally, Daniel's 19th level Half-Elven Ranger, Laucian. He retired with his wife and child in the Druid enclave of Ossington, where he dedicated his life to learning the ways of the forest.

It was a grand adventure with good friends. I know we will keep playing together, and I look forward to the next 8 years together!

Ten randomly rolled Belters, ten funerals! Worst profession in the game!

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Oh, Traveller. :) Just to clarify, these were the first ten results I got from this webpage. All ten died during character creation. To be fair, the Belter profession is supposed to be incredibly dangerous.

1. Captain Ajeet Mittal
Retired Merchant Captain 616668 Age 50 8 terms Cr1,000
Navigation-1, Admin-1, Steward-1, Medic-1 , Pilot-1 , Shotgun-1
Benefits: Ship

For 32 years, Ajeet Mittal travelled the space lanes on a lazy course for nowhere. He signed up at Xagra Downport as a ship's hand on his 18th birthday and worked milk runs in the Core. Before long, he'd transferred to a run in the next subsector as a petty officer. When another transfer opportunity came up, he took it. And then another... and another.

That's how Ajeet made his way from the Core to the Spinward Marches. He came on a series of Subsidized Liners, Free Traders, Far Traders, Fat Traders, Fast Traders and Bulk Freighters. Some might say it wasn't much of a career, or much of a life. There's no chance for family or roots when you're moving away from your home, slow parsec by slow parsec. And Ajeet is now so far from Xagra (about 2000 light years) it'd take him years and a fortune to get back. But Ajeet was happy enough, and looked forward to a comfortable retirement on some unfashionable backwater.

Two years ago, he was making a run from Horosho to Glisten in a company Free Trader, with a shipment of water filters for a mining platform. As they left the platform a badly aligned mineral railcannon fired 30 tons of methane ice off course, and directly into his ship.

Ajeet managed to land the freighter with his cargo and crew intact. However, the bridge lost pressure, and for two minutes he worked in a near vacuum. He survived, but suffered irreparable nerve damage. The corporate medicos did their best, but now his hands shake and his legs quiver. The corporation invalided him out with a small pension.

In recognition of his service and heroism, they also gave him free and clear ownership of a 40-year-old Trader. Of course, the legal paperwork and insurance claims took a couple of years to clear up, so he couldn't just sell the thing. He's lived on savings the last couple of years, sleeping in the ship and going out drinking more than he should. But now the money's running out, and the ship is his.

He's hired a crew for a few more cargo runs. Ajeet is hoping to end up someplace he thinks he can retire at last. He's not sure where, or how. Someplace with green, green hills and not too many people.

***

I picture him as a middle-aged, somewhat paunchy Indian man. I'm imagining an Indian Ocean freighter captain I once saw in a documentary, gone to seed but still ready for a new job. (Maybe a fatter Sanjay Dutt?)

His stats and skills (with the exception of that low dex) suugest a stolid, average career man from a lower-upper-class family. He's not a hero or a villain - just an honest merchant making his way through the universe.

Yesterday we went to a family Christmas party for my mother's side of the family. The girls had a lot of fun (as did we), and there was an excess of good food. One of my cousins and his wife have been watching my Youtube videos, and were very flattering about them.

***

Elizabeth has been wanting to play a roleplaying game for some time now. She's been drawing characters - usually princesses with swords - rescuing people from prisons and fighting wizards. She insisted she wanted to play Dungeons and Dragons, though she's also talked about Star Wars and Mouse Guard. I was fretting about systems, and appropriate content for a little girl, etc., but after the Christmas party I decided to just go ahead with it.


_{Complete with homemade bracers.}

I dug out a 1999 fast-play adventure for AD&D. Maybe not the best system to start on, but the fast-play adventures had the advantage of having a range of pre-generated characters. In addition, AD&D really doesn't require much comprehension of rules on the part of the player. They just have to know how to read a die. Everything else can be managed by the DM. Elizabeth did a good job. The game lasted about an hour, and she wanted it to go longer. She realized very quickly that she was helping to tell the story from the perspective of her character.


_{Chrissy finds a door. Theodora regards a dead rat warily.}

Elizabeth took the part of Chrissy, a 2nd level fighter/catperson princess. velvetpage was Theodora, a 2nd level human Magic User. They were friends, walking through the woods to find a wicked goblin who'd stolen a magic ring from a friend of Theodora's. They stumbled across a ruined tower in the woods, and fought a pair of Rodents of Unusual Size in the rubble. Chrissy got bitten in the leg, but fought on. Theodora was bitten twice, but managed to take out the second rat with a magic missile.

They crept down a semi-secret tunnel in the side of the hill. Theodora spotted writing on a door inside the tunnel, and led the way. Foolish mage! She fell down a hole, and had to be fished out by Chrissy. The door was inscribed with the words, "Scriptorium: DO NOT DISTURB THE MONKS." The duo ventured through, and saw a dry, dusty room tracked with footprints. In a dim corner, a cloaked figure hunched over a writing desk. Ignoring the injunction on the door, Theodora wandered over to question the monk, only to find an animated skeleton who attacked her. They were able to smash it into pieces without much effort.

They were now faced with a locked iron door, which Theodora opened with a scroll of "Knock". Inside, they found a water damaged library, and a pair of goblins arguing over a golden ring and a stack of coins. Chrissy asked Theodora to put a magical whammy on them, and Theodora did so, casting a Sleep spell on the thieves.


All in all, a very successful little venture, and Elizabeth has been asking for another game tonight.

(Also, for those wondering, Elizabeth is six years old.)

I've not been posting much beyond photos of late, I know. Here's a bit of an update.

J&F Hobbies, the curious little RPG store and jumble shop in the west end of the city, finally closed in the spring of this year. I discovered this last week, when I attemped to bring shadow_maze there. The store had been in business for 20 years, and perpetually seemed to be on the verge of closing. I first discovered it in 1997. My last visit was in mid-March, when I picked up a bunch of Planescape books, some still in their shrinkwrap.

On Friday evening I was in Toronto for a planning/character generation session for kores_rabbit's new Eberron game. I've rolled up a Warforged Cleric, a worshipper of the god of profit and gold. I see him as a sort of combination of Syndey Greenstreet, Mr. Punch, and a Franklin stove. After, I drove kores_rabbit home and my headlights stopped working. Joy!

Saturday, commanderteddog and her sister, sassy_fae, nottheterritory, catsarah and momentrabbit were over for the next installment of my Star Wars game. A couple of the players were recovering from flu and were feeling poorly, and my own energy ebbed rapidly as the evening proceeded, so we broke up stupidly early. (Like, 7:30 PM.) However, much of the group had been over before the game for a screening of the 1980 Flash Gordon movie, so the day was not as disappointing as it might have been.


I should make a note of Teddog's dedication to the game! She baked Alderaan Chocolate Chunk Wookie Cookies. Which is to say, she made chocolate chip cookies with green and brown chunks of chocolate in them, representing pieces of Alderaan. Except it's better than that.


You see, in order to create a proper set of Alderaan chunks, she melted the chocolate into a global map Alderaan. Before smashing it, and baking it into cookies.


Also, everyone liked the little Lego minis I put together for them.

Work continues to be dire. Angry clients, troubling phonecalls half-overheard, sudden closed door meetings, etc.


The weekend was not so dire! Yesterday was the "House Cooling" party for anidada and nottheterritory, the last event at their Toronto digs.


I got to meet some very cool people...


... and the kids had a blast.


Today, I had the honour of joining kores_rabbit's D&D game! She really is quite a good Dungeon Mistress, and the players were all charming fellows. Plus, there were rats.


And licorice!


You know you're getting old when your RPG characters seem impossibly young.


'Twas a good game!

And now... good night.

D&D! In a basement! With tea service!

We went out to mar2nee and Daniel's suburban home today, for some very old school D&D/homebrew, courtesy of their friend Grant. His variant of the system is marked (I hear) by very slow level progression, book keeping, and attention to small details. It was fun enough, though! I was playing a pre-gen 1st level Dwarf fighter named "Hammerfist," and roared and shouted a fair bit.


THIS! IS! SODAAAAAAAAA!


Battle is joined.


Claire likes dice.

There was heavy rain throughout the afternoon, perplexing the westerners, and the front lawn received a visit from a doe, who wandered off down the street after Elizabeth pointed her out.

Now, we're awaiting the arrival of anidada, nottheterritory, and sassy_fae. Depending on weather, some of all of us are going to see fireworks.

A ran a Call of Cthulhu game this evening, my first in about six or seven years. It went well! mar2nee and Daniel had some friends visiting from out west, and they joined in, along with velvetpage and shadow_maze. I was running a sort of homebrew variant of one the starting adventures from the 5th edition, with a little subplot/scene involving an abandoned Baptist church and ghost town that was once an Underground Railway community.

An interesting game moment came near the end of the evening, as the heroes were sitting around chanting to destroy a monster. velvetpage's character went temporarily insane, and the chanting circle seemed about to be broken. However, rolling on the Temporary Insanity table produced the result of "echolocalia," meaning her character simply repeated what everyone else was saying for several rounds. And, of course, they were all chanting, so she joined in again.

Evil was defeated, with only one party death. However, that character had accidentally shot a vagrant, so in some way it was an act of cosmic justice.

Starships I designed for FASA's Star Trek RPG, using the Starship Construction Manual. At some point the mid-90s I used scissors to cut out photocopied pictures of spaceships, chopped 'em up into new designs, printed out the stats on a bubble jet, and scanned the result in with a handscanner. How these images have survived various crashes and reboots and floppy disk corruption so long is beyond me.




The guys I was playing with spent a lot of time on this ship, before moving to a "Mantis" class cruiser, which looked like a stingray. I can't find that image, though.