“What we need to do is to think outside the box.” –Meeting Room Proverb

Thinking outside the box, that is coming up with ideas outside of the established norm, is the battle cry heard in meeting rooms in corporations around the world. The idea is to think past our base assumptions and rules that were established previously. By thinking beyond those assumptions, we can then explore new ideas that may lead to true innovation. As much of a cliche as it in the business world, there is some truth to the phrase.

In gaming, there is a belief that when it comes to rule systems, that thinking outside the box, that is using the rules outside of their initial design, is being innovative. It has been my experience, that when you do that, you create more frustration than innovation…

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So if you have been connected to the Internet in the past week, you likely have seen the release of the Rogue class for Dungeons & Dragons 4e. If not, welcome from out your hole, and click the link above and take a look.

It is no secret that I am a Mike Mearls fan. I even stalked him at GenCon 2006, to get him to sign my Iron Heroes book. So it goes to say, that I have been very curious to see what Mike would do with 4e. Would he bring in some of the things that I love the most about Iron Heroes into D&D? The short answer…yes, yes he did.

Below are some of my comments on the Rogue class.

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How sweet it is….the return of my Iron Heroes campaign.  After nearly three months off, my group returned to the table to continue our campaign.  This session was started off by a group meal, cooked up by one of my players, Sargon.  We dined on his Beef and Snow Peas dish, and it was very good.  After dinner, we headed down to my game room (yes, in the basement) and slowly got the game going.

This session was special, not only because of the amount of time we were off, but because this was our first session using the Mass Combat rules from the Fields of Blood book from Eden Studios.  In our campaign, the PC’s have been building up towards open war with the Demons.  This session, the War began, in the location where the campaign first started, a small tree town, called Kimryn.   Two years later, in both campaign terms and in real time, and the PC’s have returned to Kimryn to stage their first strike against the Demon Empire.

The mass combat went well, and the Fields of Blood rules worked out much better than I thought they would.  The rules played like a wargame, reminding me of my Mage Knight days.   That may have been in part, becuase we used my old green felt and some of my Mage Knight rulers and some felt templates for the game.  In the end, the PC’s triumphed, and the first blow was dealt to the Demon Empire, but the war has just begun.

For me it was a relief to be back behind the screen.  Three months was the longest I have been off from actively running a game, in almost 10 years.  From some of my earlier posts over the past week, I cannot lie, and say I was not concerned about coming back with the same intensity that I had when I put the game on hiatus.   But after a few minutes, with my players around me, it came right back.  The energy level was up, and we finished the session, like we never missed a session.

Now with my session done, I am going to dig in and do some writing this week for the site.  One of the first things that I plan on writing about was the posting of the Dungeon & Dragons 4e, Rogue class.  I will take the posting and dissect it, and make some comments on my likes and (if possible) dislikes, based on the content posted.  Not sure what I am going to do for the end of the week, but we will see what the blogosphere cooks up, and I am sure I will find something to write about.

So make sure you come back this week and I will make it worth your while….

Thirteen (by Richard K. Morgan)–My hiatus from gaming, these past 4 weeks, as resulted in another book on my 2008 Reading List completed. Earlier this week I finished the latest book from Richard K. Morgan, Thirteen.

If you are not familiar with Morgan, you should put his name in Amazon right now and order all his books right now. A co-worker of mine got me started on Morgan, with Altered Carbon (the first of the Kovacs trilogy) , which I would say is in my top 5 books. If you enjoy good sci-fi, in a post-cyberpunk setting, you will enjoy Morgan. Enough fanboy raving, and lets get to the review…

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Exactly one month since the birth of my daughter, and this past Sunday, my gaming group returned to the table, to launch Sargon’s Cyberpunk 2020 campaign.  The game was a lot of fun, and in addition to our regulars, one of our friends, who use to game with us, has returned to the table, and it was a pleasure to get to game with him again.

Also this weekend, I submitted an event for GenCon.  It is being done in conjunction with some fellow bloggers and and some people I have done talks with over the past two years.  The workshop is going to be about Session Prep, and it’s going to be a chance to do some small group, and one-on-one work with GM’s who are looking to develop their Session Prep. The event was submitted for consideration, and its now just a waiting game until we hear if its been accepted.  I did put up a page, here on the site, about the talk, so you can find it in the page links (Hint: GM-Fu).

Finally, next Sunday, is the return of my Iron Heroes campaign.  I am frantically working on my session notes, while I am still getting use to the new routine, with the addition of my daughter, in the house.  Right now my biggest issue is having enough energy to do the really creative writing.  It is requiring the addition of some extra coffee and a cup of dedication to buckle down and get these notes done properly.

Not 100% sure what I will be covering this week.  I think I am going to keep it light, and reflect on some blog posts that I read this week.  I had a lot of luck (and traffic) with Friday’s post: The Most Useful DM Skills. So I think I will be doing that again this week, while I am writing my Iron Heroes notes.   Next week, I will dig in and put up some new, and more original content.

So stop on by this week….

On the Dungeon Mastering blog, Yax asked: What’s the most useful DM Skill? In the article Yax lists his top 3 necessary DM skills, and then asked the readers to list their’s. I liked Yax’s list of skills, but I knew I could come up with my own three.  So after some thought, I have come up with my top three skills….

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