Finally...

I finally finished getting everything squared away that happened last session. I also finished the prep for tomorrow's game, and I'm hoping it should be a killer series of events. Maybe not killer for the party, but in fun levels. Yeah, that's exactly what I mean.

But yeah, the party almost TPK'd last Friday, in a display of I don't even know what. Mr. Theeves Cant Spell decided to blow everyone up, everyone but the ranger...and the ranger only had 1 hp left. 1. It was bad.

I'm ready to put that all behind us, however, and plow into the combat-fueled killfest I have written up.

As long as they don't bite the dust en route.

Inspiration

I've been doing a whole lot of inspirational reading the last few weeks, to try and find something I can twist to work with my AD&D 2e game. Though I read a lot of fantasy stuff, I don't find that material working its way into my campaigns. When I read things, a lot of my inspiration comes from the characters in the literature. The personalities and conflicts make for good starting points, and from there it is easy to piece together a fully-formed character. The boastful general that is secretly a coward? Jack Gladney from Don DeLillo's White Noise. The shy character that is terrifying in battle? Robert Cohn from Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises. The insane, religious, sexist dictator? Commander Fred from Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. There's so much material out there it can be hard to keep track of, but that's part of the fun.

One of my favorite characters of all (besides Capain Ahab, of course) would be Minister Hooper from Hawthorne's The Minister's Black Veil. Over the course of a few pages, the character goes from a kindly minister to a ghoulish presence amongst the townsfolk, a sinister character that is shunned for his choices in clothing. The character is so interesting and so well-written that he makes for a really interesting fellow to pull ideas from.

I've always had a hard time with settings, rather than characters. I can't design a city worth a crap, but I can populate them pretty well, I like to think. I get to introduce a character I've been working on for a while during tomorrow's game, so I'm pretty stoked about that.

For now, it's back to statting up some monsters. Boatloads of fun.

Brief Update

So we've managed to pick back up on my AD&D 2e game pretty well. The guys got right back into the swing of it after a 6 month (roughly) hiatus. It was a pretty big relief, as I was expecting it to be a difficult transition from Dan's 3.5 game and John's Reverse Dungeon minicampaign (both of which were excellent) back into mine, but aside from a few minor details the guys slipped right back into character and picked up where we left off.

We're still in Ravenloft, and the characters have found a bunch of really ancient books in an underground library, while trying to figure out how to combat the highly addictive edible slugs (which happen to be the only food available) and being tasked with organizing and cataloging a prehistoric armory.

I'm hoping to get out of Ravenloft within the next two or three sessions, so hopefully I can pull that off and get into the real meat of the campaign as I have it planned so far.

In other news, James (Theeves Cant Spell) and I have begun work on our yet-unnamed post-apocalyptic utopia epic. Maybe we'll post some chapters or dialog when we get further into it. It's shaping up pretty well and we're really optimistic about it.

That's all for now, back to Transporter 3 on Showtime.

On Naming Characters.....

I know lots of people have trouble with names, but there are many easy ways to pick up some quick names for characters and NPCs, or even locations. Here's a few that I've learned over the years from some good people:

1. For somewhat modern-sounding names, a good place to pick up names is the spam folder in your email. I know a lot of people don't go in there, but there are some gems if you have the patience to look. Just a few from my spam folder, right now: Dena Lorna, Albert Faith, Karie Sammie, Jack Marietta.

2. For a name that sounds a little out there or fantastic, look to works both out there and fantastic (especially if your players won't go near it anytime soon). Now, I'm not saying that you should name all of your dwarves Gimli or all of your wizards Harry Potter, but in classic tales there are some great names. From Beowulf: Hildeburh, Aeschere, Herebeald. From The Canterbury Tales: Wilkin, Janekin (Jenkin), Alisoun (Allison), Phoebus. From The Iliad: Menelaos, Andromache, Priam. From Le Morte d'Arthur: Baldwin, Tristan, Urian, Mark. (And of course, Merlyn/Merlin!) From The Divine Comedy: Megaera, Cagnazzo, Apulia.

 3. Name your characters after things or noises or something. We've had many characters named silly things like Scribbles, Crunchy, Thouch, etc.

It's a lot of fun to find new ways to name your characters, in some cases more fun that playing them. :)