I am back from my family vacation, and just 8 days from GenCon.  It has been really crazy around here, with all the vacation logistics and then having to come back to work for one week, and then start my GenCon prep.  On top of that, I am running Iron Heroes this week, and am in the middle of writing my session notes.

I was able to get some gaming done during my vacation, despite the very poor internet connection i was connected to, via a neighbors house.  The first week of my vacation was spent getting the GenCon workbook sections finished, which I did.  I spent the second week answering questions from Vicki, who was editing the whole workbook, and doing our layout.

I was able to write all the notes for my Iron Heroes game that I am running at GenCon.  This is a private game, for some friends, and is a part of my ongoing campaign.  Last year I wrote the notes in Confluence, but this year, I did them in MS One Note.  I will in a future post rave about all the things I love about One Note, but time is quite limited.  The only thing I have left to do for this game, is print some map tiles and counters, but I will do that over the weekend.

I also got to run a few encounters of 4e for my two Brother’s In Law, as well as my 9yr Nephew.  All had a good time, and I have to say that my Nephew had no problem understanding the power system, and loved the flavor text for the various moves.  He was able to use the flavor text in his descriptions of his strikes, which was great.  I am sure the 4e haters will consider that another feather in their cap, about how 4e is too watered down, but as I remember it, I was about 9yr old when I learned D&D, and the game was not that easy to learn.  So any game that is enjoyable to experienced players (like myself) and easy to get into for younger players, is a good system for me.

That is about it for me.  I don’t think there will be any posts this week, as I am swamped with IH writing and GenCon prep.

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.

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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I am actually writing this on a Sunday night, early rather than later.

Been a busy weekend around DNAphil’s house.  Mrs. DNAphil is in Chicago for a family event, with the daughter, leaving DNAphil alone with the boy for the weekend.  All in all, we did fine, and I managed to a few blog and gaming related things done this weekend.

On Tuesday, Sargon lead a demo of the Star Wars Saga game.  Very nice.  I got to play a Jedi and had a so-so combat, mostly do to some really low rolls at first.  But I like the way the SW powers work, and the Jedi was a lot of fun to play.  We also did some space combat, and I really liked it.  I have played the other d20 versions of the starship combat rules, and this one was a lot better than the past ones.  This Tuesday we do character generation for the game.  I just need to decided on what race I am going to play, because there is no way I am not going to be a Jedi.

On Friday, I did some minor upgrades to the site.  Starting with puttin the search box on the side bar.  I had this turned off when I did the initial install for the site, because the sytlesheet mangled the box and the Search button, but after a little tinkering, I was able to fix them and install them.  I also added a plugin to allow you to edit your comments, something I picked up from my good friend Philippe (aka The Chatty DM).  Finally I activated Gravatars for comments.  So if you have a Gravatar, it will show up when you post comments.

Saturday and Sunday, I worked on my brainstorming for my Iron Heroes campaign.  We are starting the final big story arc that will take this campaign to its conclusion, at the end of the year.  The pressure is on now, as each one of these sessions has to be big… big combats, big reveals, the whole works.  This is going to be a big challenge for me, but I really want this campaign to end with the intensity that it has had all along, so I am putting everything I have into it.

Sunday night, we got to play some D&D 4e.  Mmmm….mmm…good.  I created a Dragonborn Warlord, and we played the Game Day adventure.  While I have not gotten too far into my new PHB, and we stumbled a bit on the rules, the game play was awesome.  I love 4e combat.  The final combat, against the golems, was great.  Our Paladin and Ranger both went down, and yet we were able to rally the remaining party members, cover our wounded and get them back up on their feet, and complete the encounter.  It was so cool.   I will be looking forward to playing this for some time.

This week is my writing week for Iron Heroes so I will try for some short posts during the week.  I won’t be writing a Gnome Stew article until next week.  So check our feeds, as I am sure I will get some post up later this week.

In light of the news of the passing of Erick Wujick, on Monday, I wanted to delay my weekend update post until after Monday, so the article on his passing would remain at the top of my feeds.  But so that I don’t completely forget how to write on this blog….

I had a good gaming weekend.  It was my night to run Iron Heroes, but rather than running a normal session, we changed things up a bit.  First,  a bit of back story.  At my last session of IH, it became clear that the end of the campaign was in the horizon.  We had completed most of the PC’s personal stories, and all the groundwork for the coming war had been laid.  It was decided about a month ago, that no one had the time to do a d20 Mass Combat campaign to play out the war, so we were left with a gap in the story, before the final story arc could take place.

So rather than just narrating the war as the opening to a session, I decided to enlist my players to help describe how the war went, and what events transpired before we resumed playing.  I cobbled together some quick rules, inspired by Universalis, and came up with a simple, coin driven narrative mechanic.  I got the players on board, and on Sunday night, we gathered around the table, with our stack of poker chips and began to collaboratively tell the story of how the war progressed, what happened to the players during that time, and how did they come to be on the steps of liberating Arion’s country, Kotkala.

The session was a success, and the ideas generated were excellent and far more detailed than had I sat and worked out the narrative on my own.  I captured the whole process on our campaign wiki, and am in the process of cleaning the text up.  When it is done, it will server as not only the historical account of how the War for Kotkala went, but it is seeded with ideas for things to weave into the final story arc of the campaign.

So that was Sunday, last night, Sargon and Spenser came over and we worked more on our Global Frequency rules.  Work on this had taken a back seat with the arrival of 4e (of which I have not yet received my box set Amazon!), and the launch of Sargon’s Star Wars Saga campaign.  But last night, we had time to do some work on it, so after some amazing Indian food, we headed down to the Gaming Lounge (read: Basement) and in about 90 minutes got through the material we needed to.  Now I will turn the notes on my dry erase board into some more rules, and then prepare for one more round of play testing.

One last RPG update, I finished reading Corporation just in time for the late arrival of my 4e core books.  I will post my thoughts about Corporation later, but I liked the rules well enough to buy the starter adventure, and will be running it for Sargon, Spenser, and some friends, in a few weeks.

This week, I will be writing a post for Gnome Stew, on the replay-ability of certain RPG’s.  I will also get my thoughts about Corporation up as well.  So update your RSS feeds and keep an eye out.

I am sad to report, that Erick Wujcik, the great game designer, has passed away. It was made public, months ago that he was diagnosed with cancer. I am a great fan of Erick’s work, and when I first read the news, posted an article, that summed up my feelings for what he meant to me as a GM, and what he did for the role playing world. That post can be found here.

Thank you again Erick for all you have done.  I will not forget the times that I got to meet you and that sense of awe listening to you talk about games and game theory.   My condolences go to Erick and his family and friends, and to all the gamers who were touched by Erick’s games and words.