Hello all.  I am on a little vacation, but had some time to get a weekend update together.  Last night, we played Star Wars SAGA, and had a great time.  I nearly lost my Padwan to a gernade and some Stormtroopers, but we managed to pull out a hard fought victory.  The game is a blast, and I am fully enjoying my character and the SAGA mechanics.  Having played all the d20 versions of SW, I have to say that the SAGA ones are by far the easiest to use, and give the most SW feel during the game.

While on vacation, I have also been writing my Iron Heroes game that I am gonig to run for my friends, on Sunday afternoon at GenCon.  I did this last year, for some friends, and it was great.  I created a one-shot adventure, that was part of my main IH campaign.  The outcome of the one-shot plays right into my main campaign story line.

At last years game, one of the players captured a Fiend, rather than killing, leading to some very unexpected, but very cool consquences in my main campaign.  With my main IH game down to its last 4 sessions, the outcome of this session will not as may long lasting effects, but will help to kick off the final 4 sessions that will end my campaign.

I am also brainstorming the IH session that I need to run, the Sunday before GenCon.  Normally I would have waived off a game this close to GenCon, but it will be part of the One-Shot, so I wanted to get it run.  I will be writing it all next week, after my vacation is done.

As for the GM-Fu workshop, all the writing is done and our editor Vicki, is putting all the text together, and doing the layout.  The book will go to press (at Kinko’s) next week.  We are working out a few more details for another surprise.  This has the makings of being quite an interesting workshop.

I will not be writing again this week, I am going to be on holiday for the rest of the week, and will be taking full advantage of it.  I will talk to you again next week.

Wow…missed posting last week, and honestly it likely will not be much better for the next week or two.  But more of that later, let me talk about what gaming stuff has been going on.

Last night I ran my Iron Heroes game.  i did a much better job of calibrating the encounter level.  Now at 16th level, a single fight is lasting almost 2 hours long. It has had a big impact on what material I can finish in a session, and has actually bumped out my prep time by 1-2 writing sessions (aobut 2 hours time).  But the session went off great, much better than my previous session.  The heroes had a few moderate reveals, including the explanation of who killed the Queen.  Next session, right before GenCon, will be one of the biggest reveals thus far…I am very psyched.

We have been playing more D&D 4e in prep for our campaign starting in September.  On Tuesday we had an awesome battle with some Undead.   Even better, one of my oldest gaming buddies, who had moved away years ago, was in town and we were able to get him to the table for a night of 4e.  We had a blast of a time, and really got to see how 4e so much more about teamwork, than character tweaking/exploitation/masturbation.  We had a real blast playing.

The week before that, we play some Star Wars SAGA, and that was also awesome.  We are playing in the time after Epi 3, and it is a blast.  I am a Padawan, currently without a master.  The game mechanics are very close to 4e, so it is a lot of fun playing it, and Sargon is doing a great job running it.

This past week, I also finished my reading of the 4e PHB.  I fully enjoyed it, and really like where the game has gone in terms of character balancing and teamwork.  I am not going to start the DMG, as I am going to queue up a few other reading items.  In fact, I am going to take a few weeks off of RPG reading, and revisit the Getting Things Done book by David Allen.  I feel that I need my annual refresher course, so I will be sitting down and reading this book this week and next, as I am half on vacation this week, and will be on vacation next week.

Finally,  I finished writing my sections of the GM-Fu workbook, Essential Elements and Writing Cycle.  I have some presentation notes to put together, and then the GM-Fu stuff should be done.  This workshop is turning out to be a blast, and I am really looking forward to it.

As for this week, I am going to try to get some posts in, but I think the next few weeks are going to be pretty lean.  There is a lot of prep work that needs to be done for GenCon, and I have one more Iron Heroes session to get in before we leave.  So please keep an eye out, but my guess is that there will not be a lot of activity on here.  For some intresting reading make sure you keep an eye on The Chatty DM, as Philippe does a great job of keeping posts going, even when he is busy, and of course, Gnome Stew, where my fellow Gnomes keep on turning out great posts.

Talk to you later.

I have all but fallen off the grid this month.

Things are really crazy right now, with the return of my Iron Heroes game, and starting up playing in Spenser’s D&D 4e game, and Sargon’s Star Wars SAGA game.  Top that off with the writing I am doing for the GenCon talk, as well as preparing an Iron Heroes adventure for some friends at GenCon, and blog writing is taking a beating.

The good news is, that unlike the last time I was not writing, I am actually full of energy and charged up about gaming.  The downside is, I am so crunched for time, it is not funny.  That aside, I will do what I can to keep some posts out here.  I have some great ideas for some Gnome Stew articles as well, but those are on the back burner for now.

On Sunday, Sargon kicked off his Start Wars SAGA game.  He is using the WoTC published adventure arc.  I am playing a Zabrak Padawan, who has been master-less since Order 66 came down.  All in all, the SAGA system is a lot of fun to play.  The session went great, and the party is a nice balance, and clicked right away.  It was a great start, to what I hope is going to be a long campaign.

As I am down to my last 5 sessions of Iron Heroes, I am thinking more about what games I want to run next.  My current interest has drifted to Spycraft 2.0.  I am feeling like I have run enough fantasy for a while, and would like to get back to running something more modern.  I have been talking to Spenser and Sargon about it, and both of them like the idea.  So I am adding Spycraft to my shopping list for GenCon.

I would like to promise some articles this week, but I am not going to make any promises, while I am under such a crunch.  So check your feeds, I may just have something out there.

This past Sunday was the return of my Iron Heroes campaign.  The characters have fast-forwarded in time, gaining 4 levels (from 12 to 16), and on the verge of capturing the capital city of Arion’s home land.  In all the session went OK, but he had a lot of challenges.  The first was that I did not eat before the session, so by 9:30pm, in the middle of a huge combat, my blood sugar reached rock bottom, and I became quite irritable.  Sargon, had hurt his neck and was taking some Rx for it, leaving him a bit off.  That left J and Spenser to hold up the other half of the table.  Add to this, that my NPC’s that I designed were getting housed, bad, it was a rough session.

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