Let's Get Silly!

Toon. Good times. I've only had a chance to run it on one night, and damn it was a lot of fun. Adventures are classified as quick flicks, short subjects and feature films. A quick flick is supposed to last about 15 minutes per player, a short subject about 20, feature film around 30. Characters don't die, they fall down. They then have to sit out the game for 3 minutes. This timed set-up makes for some fast furious fun. I wonder if this is one of those rules that pop up that few people actually use? I consider it one of the best features of the game. That, and the gajillion random tables.

With this timed scenario idea, you can cram like 2 to 4 crazy little scenarios into one gaming session, with like 1 to 3 scheduled breaks. I really can't see playing this as a campaign, even though they suggest it. Themed cartoon series, the examples are a knock off of ghost busters, a space opera, and spies. Great game to use as an introduction to our crazy little hobby I think.

Magic Abuser

I'm playing a wizard in ol' Jum-Jums game. What I have learned so far, is wizards shoot from the hip with the wands. Like pointy hatted gunslingers, they make with the wand action. Zero level spells are for usage against NPCs that annoy you. Those area affect damage spells that annoy other classes will destroy a mage. Having a limited spell book is more appealing to me than having to sift through the entire spell list every time I pick spells. Ignore your familiar, and hopefully the DM will too. You can never have too many scrolls.

The secrets of the spirit world unveiled for the first time!

This supplement came out when AD&D was seriously winding down. White Wolf was kicking their ass without a doubt. It introduced the spirit world, and three classes that gained their power from it. Saying three new classes was a little misleading, it was more like one new class, three kits.

The new classes were a little like priests, but when they chose spells for their spell slots, it was permanent. If they wanted to switch out a spell it would offend their patron spirit. Most of the spells dealt exclusively with spirits. One gave the shaman the ability to bind spirits into fetishes.

Pretty pointless supplement. In the DM only section, it is revealed that the spirit world doesn't exist. It's all in the heads of the shaman. Stupid. Integrating this into a running campaign would assuredly end it. Starting a new campaign based on this would turn into one guy is the hero, everyone else follows him around as he reads omens and barters with ancestors.

More Parlainth

Last post really felt incomplete, so I'm gonna revisit the boxed set. Still strong smell in it, I'm hoping the more I open it, the better it will smell. The smell I would prefer is rotting paper, like the funk given off by the 1st ed. AD&D books. Maybe even the sweet ink smell that books with lots of color illustrations seem to emanate.

The box contains two punch out card sheets of monsters and magic items detailed in the enclosed campaign book. Awesome idea, I'm glad Paizo is running with this now. The one pictured on the left is the Butterspider Box. It's a beat up rusty tin box with a lump of lard in the shape of a wolfspider inside of it. When you touch the spider, you heal, and it melts. This is one of my favorite magic items ever. That is some flavor right there (lard flavor at least). Makes a healing potion look lazy and weak. The illustration doesn't make the box look all beat up. It makes it look like a eldrich rune encrusted obvious artifact. The real shape of it makes it look like some sort of random flea market junk. Something a compulsive hoarder would store with all of their mason jars and christmas cards.

The Forgotten City

About seven or eight years ago, I stumbled onto this boxed set at a flea market. For a short span of time, maybe about a summer, I found a big stack of loot there. The blue cover Holmes D&D, Twilight 2000 boxed set, a D&D calendar from like 1981, a couple of issues of dragon from the early eighties, and this boxed set. The stall selling it had like ten copies of it. Awesome.

I ran Earthdawn, maybe four to six times. Didn't get a chance to use anything from this set. I'm pretty sure I found it near the end of my interest in said campaign. It is a pretty sweet box of goodies though. Nice almost sandbox style setting. Rough maps, all sorts of adventure seeds. I really should have read through it again if I was going to blog about it I guess. Huh. Inside of it I have typed notes of all the Earthdawn adventures I ran in the mini campaign. Also in there is the stale smell of smoke. I used to be a smoker, quit about a year ago, so now when ever I open a book or boxed set that I haven't touched in a while, I get a whiff of old smoke. It's kind of gross.