End of Summer Update

It’s been a strange summer with COVID-19, and although this blog has fallen fallow I’ve actually been gaming as much as ever. I’ve been running two weekly Roll20 games so most of my spare time has been spent prepping and refereeing those campaigns. And I’ve even had a chance to play a bit, which I always enjoy. A quick recap of what’s been going on:

Age of Worms. Our 1e Pathfinder conversion of the classic Dungeon adventure path, explicitly set in Greyhawk, is drawing near its end. The PCs are all 20th level and have only a few final encounters before taking on the dreaded Wormgod, Kyuss. This game has been a lot of fun: I’m so glad we picked this back up and are finishing it out. But that said, high level 3e/PF is just brutal to run, even for the players. The experience has been a good reminder of all the things I loved—and hated—about that edition.

Rage of Demons. This 5e adventure path has been a really good contrast to Age of Worms, though I sometimes feel a bit of whiplash moving back and forth between ultra-complicated high level 3e and lower level 5e. The group is almost halfway through the campaign; a couple of months ago Wizards began offering a Roll20 module of the book, which has made prepping and running the game much easier.

Lost Mine of Phandelver. A friend of mine ran this 5e module about a month ago and we had a blast. It’s a very nice introduction to the game, with an exciting mix of wilderness, town, and dungeon adventuring. All the players opted for character classes they had never or rarely played, so I had a chance to play a bard—which is actually a very versatile and effective class in 5e. 

The Ruined Tower of Zenopus. Speaking of nice introductions to the game, I recently bought Zach Howard’s 5e conversion of the sample dungeon from the 1977 Holmes’ Basic Set. Howard carefully updated and expanded his brief source text into a very nice adventure, brimful of iconic D&D encounters.

Into the Interface. Unfortunately, all of the D&D games crowded out my Mongoose Traveller 2e game set in Magyar sector, which fizzled in early May. I’ve got some thoughts on what worked and what didn’t, so I would like to take another run at this game after Age of Worms wraps up.

Miniatures. I’ve really had no time to paint much of anything over the summer, which has left several very cool models sitting on my workbench gathering dust. It will probably be a few months more before I will get back to any of them. 

That is Not Dead Which Can Eternal Lie. On another note, it’s been a pleasant surprise to see the revival of the Grognardia blog, which has been sorely missed since its last entry back in 2012 (!). I think it’s great that James Maliszewski has just quietly resumed blogging without any fanfare, in some cases picking up on topics as if he never left. So much has changed in the last eight years and I’d really like to read his take on 5e, which incorporated many of the OSR philosophies he championed.