A Cascade of D&D

Ha, so all our games were not drug and alcohol infused debauchery.

Technically speaking, our first game system was from the Dungeons and Dragons Basic Set by J. Eric Holmes. Holmes uses a very simple weapon speed system - Daggers get 2 blows per round, long swords 1, and 2-handed swords 1 every 2 rounds. When the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Players Handbook came out the summer of 1978 we naturally assumed the 'speed factor' of weapons indicated the number of segments within a round it took to wield any particular weapon.

There was no AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide until sometime during the summer of 1979, and I don’t believe I ever read that book straight through. We just began using the updated to-hit and saving through tables, magic items and such, but never got into the nitty-gritty for what we thought we already knew. (Ha, except Dr. John PhD may have tried to explain the DMs Guide version of speed factor, lo by then the drugs were beginning to kick in.)

Pre-Blipping Campaign Dr. John PhD ran our 8th grade Greyhawk campaign from the formal dining table in John's family’s front room. I began to DM some when we hit high school and at the same time began branching out into the Wilderlands of High Fantasy City State of the Invincible Overlord campaign and started integrating the Arduin Grimoire original trilogy into our rules. (We also I think never played at John's again, his mom had a better nose than mine for weed!)

Our D&D combat was FAST, segment by segment actions with multitudes of attacks per 1-minute rounds. Often decisions had to be made in half a melee round or less.

Post Blipping Campaign we never quite attained our old style of play. Ha, #1 was because we were not plying rules-as-written (the DMs Guide strangely only used speed factor for initiative). But also, #2, because 2e, 3e, 3.5, etc. (including most all of the reputed “Advanced” retro clones) were based on a style of play where AD&D was cropped onto the Moldvey/Cook BX D&D or the Mentzer BECMI. 

Rather than our simulation where actions were subjugated to TIME, i.e. the clock would be ticking and the PCs and monsters had to fit their possible and variable duration-based actions within the confines of the passing seconds, the new versions has time subjugated to the ACTIONS of each participant, i.e. everyone gets their move and their attack and at that moment 6 seconds (or 10 seconds depending on the version) duration had passed.

A rundown of our main campaigns pre-Blipping Campaign were:

    • Dr. John PhD’s “Greyhawk” (1977-1982) – Pretty much centered in the Pomarj, we went through most all the classic AD&D modules: Hommlet, the Giants and Descent into the Depth of the Earth series, White Plume Mountain, Tomb of Horrors. This campaign ended after we graduated high school when Dr. John headed of to UC Santa Barbara to become a chemist.

    • Matrox Lusch & Others “Wilderlands of High Fantasy” (1979-1984) – I piggy backed several T$R modules like the giant series, but also ran Tegal Manor, Thieves of Fortress Badabaskor, Dark Tower, all 3 city states (Invincible Overlord, World Emperor, and Tarantis) as part of my main campaign. I also ran the some of the Judges Guild one-offs like Citadel of Fire, Sword of Hope, and Under the Storm Giant’s Castle. The Wilderlands was somewhat of a shared campaign as my brother Sumerled ran Modron and Verbosh and our friend Spacin Jason would run the Arguin dungeons there. In 1982 Judges Guild lost their license to publish “official” AD&D materials and started to use this “Universal” format which was a pain in the ass. Plus a lot of Judges Guild had been disconnected from the Wilderlands setting and sort of silly even before they lost the license.

    • Matrox Lusch “Krull” (1980-1985) – To fill in the gaps of the Wilderlands I would just make things up, ha, with the problem being the monsters would usually “cry uncle” when I was too tired to carry on. So I was accused of “making things up” (true) and also railroading (somewhat true when I was falling asleep in the wee hours). I had written up a dungeon during probably 1979 or so based on the “Pirates of the Caribbean” ride at Disneyland (one of my favorites), and began to spread out from there into other regions of my game world “Krull” (well before the 1983 movie of the same name). Ha, the problem was I still made shit up – I mean it’s D&D and I loved a sandbox and would do these on the fly all the time.

    • J.A.S. “Drow Mag-Tec” (1986-1987) – This is seriously as close as I got to the 80s “Satanic Panic” (our group was so insulated we never heard of that at the time). J.A.S.’s wife watched the 700 Club (Jim Bakker & Tammy Fay Bakker) who did a show on the evils of D&D. So his wife wanted J.A.S. to stop playing that evil magic game immediately. John compromised by developing a setting with no other religions besides the Mycretians (a Wilderlands quasi-Christian-type religion) and the main enemies were the Drow who used something called “Mag-Tec” which was basically sci-fi technology. All the characters were fey (our party was a brownie, a pixie, and a leprechaun) so we had a bunch of innate magical abilities, but no spells. Ha, we were all technos.

By the time our Post Blipping campaigns began in 2004 I had sobered up and wondered what happened to all the friends I used to have, so toward the end of 2005 corralled everyone into version 3.5 by anonymously sending them copies of the new Player’s Handbook. (Also, since Dr. John PhD had moved off to Oregon with his Physician wife I was the de facto DM.)

    • Matrox Lusch “High Fantasy” (2005-2011) – This campaign was set in the Wilderlands, but the party did travel around the planes quite a bit. Timewise I don’t think there was any time travel, but I did have the party visit other settings such as Grayhawk and Arduin during different time periods than when campaigns in these settings typically started. Tragically in 2011 we lost our long-time 30-year gaming friend, Postman Bob (and a friend of J.A.S. longer than that). This sad event resulted in the campaign ending as we decided to roll up new characters rather than carry on without Bob. In addition to Wilderlands products, among the other published works I leaned on for this campaign were Red Hand of Doom, City of the Spider Queen, Expedition to the Demonweb Pits, “The Lich-Queen’s Beloved” three-magazine Incursion event featured in POLYHEDRON #159, DRAGON #309, and DUNGEON #100. The overarching plot was an attempt by Tharizdun to free itself from Prime Material chains.

    • Matrox Lusch “Blipping 2” (2012-2019) – In this campaign the characters were unstuck in time and space, but it was due to a mysterious orb they discovered (or possibly revealed itself to them) on Sigil, and the orb transported the party around. We also did not rotate DMs in this campaign, but I visited many of the locations and NPCs from our Blipping Campaign. I also developed a set of rules for this campaign that was a blend between v3.5 and AD&D. Fast forward to DunDraCon in 2018, I ran an “official” game where players could bring in any D&D version of a character they wished, hoping folks would bring out some old high-level characters they hadn’t played in years. However, every single player in that game brought a 5th edition character. Then, at our regular game that Saturday night at the Con the group was short a cleric and advertised for one – every interested person brought a 5th edition cleric. The writing, I saw, was on the wall that 5e had settled in as the standard. I put together a hand-crafted 5e adding some modifications such as critical hit tables and psionic abilities and we ran this modified 5th edition for almost 2 years.

    • Various “New Old Weird World” (2019-2023) – I was fortunate to run a character in a scenario Jeff Rients was testing out and had this realization I had not run a character since I became sober 15 years earlier! I kind of overreacted and told my group I wasn’t going to run the campaign solo any more, that I was going to run a character, we were going to rotate DMs, and we were going to run an AD&D retro-clone (we ended up using Advanced Labyrinth Lord with some of my collected mods). This was more truly a Blipping 2 campaign, although we used only single DMs for 3 sessions each. After the campaign surviving through Coved that campaign took a hiatus when we had all kinds of troubles getting the group together, and were missing some fun players like Sumerled and Random Addison who were extremely opposed to online D&D games. These are the characters I am running (in-person) my End of Time Extravaganza for up at J.A.S.’s mountain abode next October 27, 2025. 

And now I've ended up co-DMing and DMing two 5th edition (2024) campaigns: The Psychedelic Deadlands / Dreamer of Dreams campaign online with Dr. John PhD, and the new "5th Iteration Wilderlands" in-person campaign.

My next task is to understand how I can break down the variety of things folks can do in a 5th edition melee round, and to see if I can get the game subject to time again rather than time subject to the actions. Perhaps it's a difference with no meaning - but I am digging in. It has been almost 15 years since we all last played an official Dungeons & Dragons RAW. Until next week I hope you go easy.

Anatomy of A Grown-Ass Dysfunctional Dungeons and Dragons Game: The Movie

***This Video has been corrected to meet YouTube Standards***

 

A portion of AC/DC's "Back in Black" is in the background during a segment of this video. The song is globally blocked by SEM Entertainment Group in unofficial videos on YouTube. The offending audio has been replaced with an excerpt from my original music: "Teacher Summertime Blues"

The Blipping Campaign, Saturday July 27, 1996

Magic Item of Note: Star Trek Armored Space Shuttle (The “Agencourt”); Jump Drive A = Jump 2; Movement Drive A = 2 Gs; Power Plant A = 40 tons fuel; 2 staterooms; Mod. 3 Computer (CPU = 5, Storage = 9); 2 low berths; 20 point force field; 10 ton cargo area; Triple Turret = Beam laser, Sandcaster, Beam Laser; Computer = (1) Jump 1 – 1, (2) Jump 2 – 2, (3) Library – 1, (4) Navigation – 1, (5) Target – 1, (6) Gunner Interact – 1, (7) Auto Evade – 1, (8) Return Fire – 1, (9) Launch – 1, (10) Anti-hijack – 1, (11) E.C.M. – 3.

Game Background Music: Yes, (?), U2, Queensryche, AC/DC, Neal Young, Mr. Bungle, Jethro Tull.

Anatomy of Grown-Ass Dysfunctional Dungeons and Dragons Games

 

("How it started" by Mike Morrison)

As my gaming group hit the 1990's and individual players our late 20's into our thirtysomethings, we left a trail of alcohol bottles, cigarette butts, vomit, hanger heads, stacked and painted people, and fucking hellacious games. 

Our DunDraCon game sessions were so renowned we designated them with proper nouns: The undercover Flower People ('92), Pee-Wee Herman's genie-inspired Jambicon ('93), methamphetamine-fueled Jitterycon ('94), insanely drunk dungeon mastering Revenge of the Son of Greg ('95), and the Wild Turkey 101 extravaganza Executive Decision ('96). 

Now I wouldn't recommend drinking, drugs, insanity to anyone. And eventually they exact their pounds of flesh. As these epic games progressed through the decade I entered the Dark Times from 1997 through 2004, coming out of that for our group to begin running some things where sessions were more, say, congruent?

However, while reviewing another one of our old videos, this one from 1996, I remembered we did have a rhythm to our games that sat on top of whomever was running the game and whatever the details were of the adventure. I always said our sessions were like poker games where you didn't lose any money. All night affairs to avoid imperial entanglements. In general if you were there for the game you were there for the night.

We generally ran about 6-8 games each year rotated to different locations, including annual games at DunDraCon and a variety of camping locations for our annual camping trip. 

Each game had distinct parts that recurred each session...

The Drive: Since by this decade of the 90s most of us had jobs and were raising families there was some dispersment around the San Francisco Bay Area and Northern California. Unless you were hosting there was often a 1-3 hour beer-fueled freeway trip to get to the game location.

The Jam: Many of the folks in my gaming group were either presently or formerly in bands together so there were electric and acoustic music jams to kick off the event (much to the chagrin of our non-music playing friends). 

The Feeding Frenzy: Most often BBQ, but for sure some kind feast either hosted or pot luck before the game. So everyone started the night with a good meal in their belly - sometimes with disastrous results. (pickles)

Pre-Game Business: Who was here last time? How many experience points were awarded? Was there time to train and level up? What the hell is even going on right now??? We rotated DMs after 3 sessions for two co-DMs and after a single game for solo DMs.

The Game: This is it, the game session where all the action happens either connected or not with the prior session or any sort of campaign arc. (Our characters became unstuck in the Multiverse and could end up virtually any place or time.)

The Interlude Journey: This most often occurred around 1-2am involving Sumerled and whomever he could drag along for the alcohol/cigarettes/snacks/candles/etc.-run. That magical time during the Witching Hour when a previously bare fridge would become amazingly restocked to the brim with Budweiser.

Stacking: Did not want to be the first to pass out at our games. We practiced a parlor game we called "stacking" which was basically to see how many pizza cartons, paper plates, dog masks, candles, etc. we could build on top a dozing player without causing them to move and have the entire structure come tumbling down. Extra points for the number of empty beer can layers, the record was at least 4 and maybe 5 cans high. This might involve face painting.

Wind-down: As the sky turns from black to purple and then the Sun begins to peek our game is wrapping up, early sleepers are waking up and the hardcore beer-drinkers are still drinking beer. Might involve a little quiet acoustic guitar, baseball catch, or hurling in the corner of someone's yard.

Breakfast/The Ride Home: Some games, like DunDraCon and the camping trip, J.A.S. would break out his gas grill for pancakes. Otherwise it was some kind of fast food breakfast sandwich on the drive home, which often also involved more beer albeit not consumed quit so vigorously as the previous night's trip.

If we had an agenda for each games session this would be it. The lack of sleep and overabundance of alcohol was not sustainable, recovery time from each game increased as the years went by. Most of us are on the proverbial wagon now, and even those that still imbibe generally are not pulling all-nighters.

Amazingly, with most of the original group in their sixties now, we only lost one of our friends - Postman Bob, RIP, who passed back in 2011.

What did we earn from all of these games? Ha, one thing is we kind of do whatever the fuck we want within the context of our careers. (OK Boomer.) Another is that when emergencies occur and late or all night hours are required we laugh when other more normal folks are whimpering. 

("By Crom" by Shel Kahn)

The Astral Asshole

 

The Blipping Campaign, Friday November 29, 1996

Magic Item of Note: Mithral Torch (+1 to Wisdom, True Sight line of sight, it burns twice as bright as a normal torch (80 feet). Once per month everyone within the light has protection from evil and undead within the light are effected as if by sunlight.)

Game Background Music: Old Dick Dale (I think), Ministry, and the Steve Miller Band.

So from where J.A.S. is indicating in the Deities and Demigods we were battling Cthulhi Mythos, namely Nyarlathotep in this session. Plus it seems to have some friend with him. It seems creatures from the Far Realm (called the “Aberrant Realm” in my game) are fleeing from something even worse – The Old Ones.

In my pre- and post-End of Time scenario then the New Old Weird World adventuring party (or parties) could encounter two Illithid time-traveling starcrafts, one from the Illithids preparing to travel backwards in time to escape the End of Time event and the second the first Illithids’ ancestors who traveled forward in time to escape the Githyanki. Both are aware of the impending End of Time event and presumably would be aware of involvement by the Old Ones.

The Cthulhu connection from the Blipping Campaign is interesting because the New Old Weird World campaign also intersected with some Cthulhu mythos after escaping from a future Sigil. We departed from the besieged Cthulhu lands by way of resetting the mysterious “Great Portal of Broya,” ending up in an unstuck, time and space-wise, Tegal Manor.

Now I have a couple tricks to play with:

1. One is my thoughts of using the Decanter Room extradimensional space broken through to the Shadow Plane (a colloquial name, not any “official” Plane of Shadow); and

2. How the Old Ones intersect with the End of Time even and their essential indifference to the rest of reality.

More Slippery Time ...

I have 2 D&D campaigns running post-End of Time event: Wilderlands 5th Iteration and the shared Psychedelic Deadlands / Dreamer of Dreams (co-DMed with Dr. John PhD), both running 5th edition 2024 rules. The new Wilderlands game incorporates 5e recreations of the original Judges Guild by Goodman Games (Caverns of Thracia and City State of the Invincible Overlord) and Frog God Games (Tegel Manor) with plans to very loosely lay "Tula, City of Mages" over the 5e Historica Arcanum "The City of Crescent" (Victorian-era Istanbul with magic) from Metis Creative. My Psychedelic Deadlands piece of the shared campaign is set in a nascent Outlands centered - again very loosely - around Monty Cook Games 5e version of Ptolus, City By the Spire and surrounded spreading outward, among other things, with hacked bits from the Ultra Violet Grasslands (2nd Edition) by Luka Rejec and Numenera, also by Monty Cook.

My longtime gaming and jamming buddy J.A.S. has moved to a big piece of property waaaay up in the higher foothills California side of the Sierra Nevada mountain range. The makes it quite a hoof to journey up there for D&D and playing music. After our first visit there we had an idea that we could re-enact anew one of our old gaming traditions: the annual camping trip (albeit with the comfortable situation of electricity, running water, and no Park Rangers).

We had left our New Old Weird World campaign hanging just at the time our heroes were on the the Mind Flayers' home planet of Penumbra searching for the Annulus psionic nullity device with pursuing Githyanki warriors barking at the party's collective heels. I thought a great idea would be to have an overnight affair up there with the gang for guitar jam and a tournament-style session of gaming to resolve the mess of the Mind Flayers traveling back in time to re-enslave the Gith origin peoples.

However... it seems the New Old Weird World campaign must have started before the end of time event, although definitely far in the future of the campaign multiverse and seemingly near the end of time event itself.

During the seminal sessions (heh, heh ... he said “semen”) of the New Old Weird World campaign the party met Sick Rick’s old PC “Ranger Rick” from the Original 90s Blipping Campaign. At the time Ranger Rick had been for “hundreds of years” magically kept in an undying state deep in a dungeon designed to keep something in (Deep Carbon Observatory by Patrick Stuart). When he encountered the party he offered a warning, “They’re here from the shadow,” then used the dispel magic ability from the Blipping Campaign’s Amethyst Throne to remove the magic keeping him “alive” and permitting him to die.

Now I’ve looked back to see where we left of the Blipping Campaign PCs. This was before we rolled characters for a “less good” Blipping Campaign in December 1997 when I began to have other priorities... I don’t have any notes from the last session we gamed with the original Blipping PCs, but there is a video (oh god yes) from the second-to-last session titled “The Astral Asshole” no less.

This also happens to be the last video from our classic AD&D 1st Edition period of gaming which lasted from December 1977 through February 2005. (Out of preservation for our battered original rule books and to have some welcome updates to the somewhat confusing original Gygaxian rules, whenever we’ve played “AD&D”-style since we’ve used some retro-clone.)

Now that I am getting closer to the End of Time event, I'll also note (again) the New Old Weird World Campaign wasn’t the only party of PC adventurers who had reached the Mind Flayer home world of Penumbra. Our “Blipping #2” campaign from a far-future Wilderlands had discovered in undead caverns on Ghenrek IV an Illithid Spelljamming Nautiloid ship which had an autopilot taking that party to Penumbra.

So there are two parties on Penumbra as the Illithids attempt to flee. Could there be two sets of time-traveling Illithids? There are for sure the Illithids planning to escape the End of Time event by time travel to the past. But there are also the ancestors of those Illithids fleeing the past back to the future. Should they meet, hmmmmmmm...

Slipping Time in Dungeons and Dragons (Another Essay Wherein It Is Good Players Do Not Read My Blog)

I have devoted lots of hours (weeks, months, years, decades) toward the Dungeons and Dragons game, right up there with jobs, and only essential compensation having been companionship with my fellows of the game. (There is also a distinct possibility based on personal and family history I am somewhere on the spectrum for autism and that D&D helped me build self-esteem and rewrite my personal narrative, ha, so there is that too.) The campaigns I run I attempt as best I can to all fit together in strange and wonderful ways into a single overarching setting. This banks time I can re-use to construct narrative background and provides great rewards forming common existential bases for the variety of adventuring party settings and events.

However, several campaigns over the past 5 years have reached a point where they have begun to approach and even wrap around an “End of Time” event where I feel the need to at least make an observational leap to what happens at the “End of Time” for my game.

The caveats are that my observations must be somewhat in harmony with how the still-developing adventuring campaigns have already “wrapped” around the end of time. And also be as best as I can manage philosophically consistent with the game Multiverse which in various magic and lore has already co-signed time travel itself as a thing. That said, I am not too much worried about specific outer plane Gygaxian metaphysics because what I imagine is a moment where time and space do, or at least seem to, cease to exist – temporal movement, the Multiverse, and all related planes are gone… or perhaps almost gone. Of necessary the event itself is beyond experience for any planar and extra-planar beings or spaces.

****NOTE: I have used in-game the apocalyptic description for the “End of Time” reckoning from Star Rovers RPG, co-written by David Hargrave, which I loosely pasted over some Judges Guild Traveller background… 

For Time has begun to run out. The Hurrakku — they who would gnaw their way through a starcluster and leave nothing in their wake — had already starswarmed. And even though they were still more than forty galaxies away, they were headed in the Empire’s direction.

But they were only the messengers of a great doom. What goaded the Hurrakku onward was the fear of impending annihilation. There loomed behind them an expanding, starless, blackness — A rift in the Space/Time fabric grown so large that it consumed the Past, the Present, and the Future. This was the Final Darkness that Would Cancel Everything!

And also the description from the 3.5 supplement Lords of Madness that Illithids existed “… at the end of time.” “Facing annihilation,” Illithids “… traveled to the past, arriving roughly 2000 years before the present in any given D&D campaign.” Mind Flayers are almost always lurking in the background of my campaigns.

Otherwise, without so far having researched in any depth folks smarter than me on the subject, either in a game sense or our own “real world” physics, I am attracted to 4 possibilities that might fit given I’ve already gamed adventuring parties whose adventures at least seem to have wrapped beyond the end of time relative to parties prior to the “End of Time” event.

Full Stop / “Dead End”: The Multiverse “births” then events unfold in a singular routine. Time travel past and forward is unable to change events because appearances in the past/future have or will have already happened or deigned to occur. This is Robert A. Heinlein’s “The Door Into Summer” version and how I generally structured time travel in my game without having yet added the “End of Time” epistemological considerations. But with time travel another possibility arises for perpetuating the game Multiverse...

The Loop / “Roly Poly”: The existent “wrap” in my game may indicate time folded back on itself as characters or beings head back in time before the “End of Time” event, but appear early in the generation of the Multiverse such that it only seems new. Yet ultimately, given “The Door Into Summer” the Multiverse unfolds exactly the same as a result of no change with the inputs (i.e. anything that happens in the past has already happened). A game could have new characters and delve deeper into incidents for how this or that history actually occurred – but characters would have no agency to change actual events that are “known,” either in game or meta–game. That is sort of a bummer given my sanboxxy sensitivities, which leads to my next possibility…

Re-Birth / “New Big Bang”: Something nature to the “End of Time” event, or perhaps some interruption or alteration or missing/hidden piece of the Multiverse re-births into a new multiverse, sort of a new Big Bang with new possibilities, and explains the formation of a Multiverse some ways similar to, but not exactly same or maybe very different than, the former Multiverse. There is also a possibility of entities from the old multiverse to jump through time over the “end” and “bang” events into the new Multiverse.

Of course, it could be that “The Door Into Summer” set history is not the nature of the Multiverse, leading into the 4th possibility I consider…

Temporal Branches / “Time-Stems”: This is a William Gibson-esque infinite multitude of potential universal timestreams where time travel does not change the source Multiverse, but rather produces an alternate branch of time. While it is not possible to physically pop over from one time-branch to another, characters would still meet beings from their origin Multiverse altered only in the sense of their contact with different branches. Potentially an infinite number of Multiverses from which, as a result of cross contamination through time travel, it would be virtually impossible to discern which is the “real” Multiverse, or even if that really matters. 

Anyhow, that is a long explanation being the good news is that I do not need to answer any of these questions quite yet. I can preserve a timeline of my campaigns to date (below) to set some parameters, then just see what direction where go the present campaigns.

I have 2 campaigns on hiatus that both are approaching near the “End of Time” event that some of the players are encouraging me to run “tournament style” and the remaining campaigns I feel are post-”End of Time” event, so possibilities 1 & 2 seem to be excluded and I am leaning into possibility 3.

CAMPAIGNS TIMELINE

The years are 1st Year 0 relative to the High Fantasy campaign (where the time stuff began to loosely cohere), 2nd the Wilderlands Balozkinar’s Corrected Commoners Calendar (“BCCC”), and 3rd Greyhawks Common Year calendar (“CY” and “BCY”). Note that many dates are approximations.

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-47,733 / -43300 / -47,158: Uttermost War comes to an end.

       |

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-35,000 / -30567 / -34,423: During Century Wars of Domination Agent Smith arrives from early 21^st Century Earth and is transformed into cybernetic unit 718552.

       |

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-2,000 / 2433 / -423: Future Illithids arrive in past.

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-200 / 4233 / 376: Githyanki uprising, future Illithids disappear from past & Astral Plane.

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0 / 4433 / 576: High Fantasy Campaign begins in the Wilderlands, Blipping #2 Campaign begins in Sigil, Wilderlands of the Torment Nexus Campaign begins in the Wilderlands and a cursed scroll from the ancient Markab ruins in Ashenshaft and found in the library of the Wizard Korpauntarl transported the adventurers through time and dimensions in space to Cube World.

       |

1 / 4434 / 577: Blipping Campaign begins in Arduin. High Fantasy thermonuclear-like explosion resulting from Tharzadu'un traversing portal escaping to Arduin - Artaban/Codex of the Infinite Planes intervenese saving party; throws Blipping Campaign to be "unstuck" in the Multiverse.

       |

2 / 4435 / 578: Baron Uther of Blackmoor activates the “secret weapon” from City of Gods in Valley of the Ancients, unwittingly a massive terraforming device, and the planet Ghenrek IV is forcibly tilted from its axis.

       |

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4,000 / 8433 / 4,576: Blipping Campaign #2 arrives in future Comeback Inn.

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16,345 / 20778 / 16,921: Blipping Campaign #2 arrives in late 20^th Century Earth.

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16,355 / 20788 / 16,931: Blipping Campaign arrives in late 20^th Century Earth.

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16,565 / 20998 / 17,141: Blipping Campaign #2 arrives in late 22^nd Century Demonic Earth.

       |

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20,000 / 24433 / 20,576: Space/Time Rift approaches Imperium, Blipping #2 Campaign arrives in future Ghenrek IV/Ghostring to discover Illithid Spelljammer which carries them to Illithid origin disc-world “Penumbra.” New Old Weird World Campaign adventurers also end up on Penumbra after visiting future Sigil and future Illithids depart the future to the past. 

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Out of Time and Wrapped Campaigns

• New Old Weird World Campaign: A flat disc planet (on the back of a turtle?) on pocket plane (post “End of Time” event) but passes through a far future Sigil to Penumbra prior to Illithids fleeing (pre-"End of Time" event)
• Wilderlands of the Torment Nexus: Wilderlands of High Fantasy on Prime Material Plane (Pre-"End of Time" event), sent to Cube World on pocket plane (Post “End of Time” event)
• Psychedelic Deadlands / Dreamer of Dreams Campaign: On Outlands and Prime Material Plane (Post “End of Time” event)
• Wilderlands 5th Iteration: Wilderlands of High Fantasy on Prime Material Plane (Post "End of Time" event and pre-"End of Time" event???)

No DunDraCon in 2021

 

So, for only the second time in DunDraCon's 44 year history the convention was cancelled for President's Day Weekend. (The first time in 1982 DunDraClone was held that year the weekend of Memorial Day.)

2021 was supposed to be the inaugural year for DunDraCon's new location at the Marriott Hotel in Santa Clara, CA, but the pandemic has put the kibosh on festivities and our traditional Saturday night game was on-the-line. Ha, so glad we got our last DunDraCon in San Ramon, CA in for February 2020 before everything began shutting down.

DunDraCon, the West Coast's longest running gaming convention:

• Claremont Hotel in Berkeley, CA (1976-1977)
• Lemington Hotel in Oakland, CA (1978)
• Villa Hotel in Oakland, CA (1979-1980)
• Dunfey Hotel in San Mateo, CA (1981)
• Hyatt Hotel, Oakland, CA (1982 for DunDraClone, and 1983-1991)
• Marriott Hotel, San Ramon, CA (1992-2020)
• Marriott Hotel, Santa Clara, CA (coming in 2022)

Everything Is Connected

 

(Wilderlands imposed on Ghostring)

My present Judges Guild Wilderlands campaign has been running for 15 years, and has direct linkages back through our "Blipping" campaign running between 1988-2005 and somewhat looser connections from our earliest campaigns there and elsewhere from as far back as 1979. (Ha, however, in a sort of "Groundhog's Day," every Wilderness campaign restarted the jumpstart year of 4433.)

Unfortunately, fast-forward back to nowadays after Bat in the Attic Games announced in February 2020 it would suspend all future dealings with Judges Guild over a series of racist and antisemitic posts made by Judges Guild owner Bob Bledsaw II, and it has become complicated to support the old-school brilliance of these Wilderlands works by the Senior Bob Bledsaw, who passed in 2008 and is unconnected to the present drama and controversy.

I sort of pulled a fast one on our shared referee "New Old Weird World" campaign and slipped the Wilderlands into a world map there, albeit in a Tekumellian, post-apocalyptic scene more than 20,000 years in the future.

Basically, I had found some time back a Judges Guild adventure for the sci-fi game Traveller call "Marooned on Ghostring." The setting is a planetary system missing from records of the galactic Imperial government, and several (but not all) of the attributes are similar to the system of Ghenrek IV, the planet where The Wilderlands exist.

I ran with this information adopting what I needed and changing the rest to fit the world into the Imperial empire of the far future.

Ha, so myself, I have been running essentially one campaign all this time. Everything is sought to fit (not always smoothly) within an ongoing story of our group's adventures where I've refereed.

• Furthest back, circa year -30,000 BCCC, Agent Smith (High Fantasy campaign) from an alternate or far-away galaxy future had dabbled in forbidden arts and ends up on Ghenrek IV during the Uttermost War between the intergalactic Elder Alliance and the forces of a single Markab prince from The Void. Smith is attacked by "Grey Goo" (a nanotech swarm) and only saved when Elder Alliance engineers transform Smith into a cyborg. Smith is secretly left behind on Ghenrek IV when the Elder Alliance abandons their starbase there under terms of a cease fire with the Markrab Prince.
• During the year 4433 several large masses of combatants ranged across the Wilderlands (High Fantasy campaign). A humanoid and giant force that sieged City State of the Invincible Overlord. Githyanki sent by their Lich Queen to establish a massive hatchery helping combat future Mind Flayer domination. The traitorous Drow Necromancer who plotted with the World Emperor to field an undead army. And finally the undead horde released from Mount Doom across the Wild North above Valon.
• Also during 4433 an adventuring party (High Fantasy campaign) resisting the Githyanki incursion assembled the Tripartate of All Evil, inadvertently releasing the dreaded elder god, Tharzadu'un. As the elder god attempts to access a hidden portal to escape from this prime material plane, a massive magical-thermonuclear explosion occurs and the party/world (?) only survives through intervention from Codex of the Infinite Planes. This adventuring party is soon after imprisoned in a stasis field as when they moved to defeat the Drow necromancer.
• At some point by 4434 the Baron of Blackmoor sends a group of adventurers (Blipping #2 campaign) to acquire what he believes to be a powerful weapon to defeat the various forces threatening Blackmoor. Unfortunately the "weapon" activates "The City of Gods," a terraforming installation left over from the Elder Alliance/Markab days which was never put into use. The Baron activates terraforming force beams to manipulate flows in the molten core of Ghenrek IV altering the planet's tilt, spin, magnetic field, gravity, etc. and creates a world-wide apocalypse.
• The adventurers (Blipping #2 campaign), after messing with a faulty Mind Flayer time ship, are deposited sometime around year 8400 in the northern post-apocalyptic dry barren waste. They are only able to escape back in time after discovering the Comeback Inn situated on a barren outcropping of magical black rock. The inn has a somewhat randomized time portal in its basement. This is how the adventurers meet the Baron of Blackmoor in 4433.
• After these adventurers (Blipping #2 campaign) fell through an interplanar transtemporal "rabbit hole" into an alternate prime material plane where they meet Matsuhara Yatsuya, a Time Lord, who sends the party through using his TARDIS to a number of alternate far, far future scenarios, which seem to ultimately resolve in either a "Matrix"-like AI generated artificial existence, or a fiery ecological disaster of acid rains and marauding demons.
• The adventurers (Blipping #2 campaign)are abandoned in the Wilderlands approximately in year 5,433 where there is only a barren, icy wasteland populated by cultish white elves who are in transdimensional communication with Githyanki. Ultimately, they discovers a Githyanki plan to infiltrate the Mind Flayer home planet, a discworld.
• In our latest campaign (New Old Weird World campaign)adventurers are back on Ghenrek IV circa 25,019, utilizing the Ghostring world map to provide new terrain, and the planet is still tilted from the terraforming 20,000 years previously which has altered the original climate.

We are now rotating referees, so while I started the campaign I have little control over where the campaign will end up (although I did hit up Sick Rick our next referee about the Wilderlands connection).

Despite the recent drama of Bob Bledsaw's son, the Wilderlands for me continues to be our longest running campaign setting which still pays dividends to our imagination.

Legendary Lands of Arduin, Episode 3 (Home Brew)

A delve into the original gonzo DIY RPG setting of Arduin.

In this video, while working out new audio, I take an interlude to expose some of my personal Arduin home brew from a long ago campaign.

Note: I mention that each DM's scenario lasted for 3 sessions. Understand at this point in our gaming (late 1980s) our gang is mostly in our mid twenties, some are married, some with children, so we gamed probably once every month or two in Saturday night marathon sessions lasting 10-12 hours.

Also, I think now looking at the overland map that the party never made it across Moon Water to Bordertown. It looks like Black Bog is right on the way around Moon Water and that just happened to be where things ended up after my last session.

Campaign Hexagon System...

Home Brew Map...
Blipping Campaign Webpage... 

Blipping Campaign Video Playlist... 

Arduin is a Registered Trademark of Emperors Choice Games & Miniatures

(Arduin home brew map...)

Soon... The Crimping

(Party on the bridge between stalactites in Deep Carbon Observatory)

The adventuring party has been headed down long enough into Deep Carbon Observatory to catch a clew about what is kept deep in this underworld..., however this the last DunDraCon in San Ramon, California. Our annual President's Weekend haunt for the past (mumble, mumble) 29 years.

So Sick Rick brought up the idea of his DMing some games which got me hyper-loaded that we could co-DM the last session at the San Ramon Marriott and my brain began to envision all the crazy ways we could throw back to our classic games there.

Our very first year (1992, thanks Kev for cluing us in) we "borrowed" some room with an official game scheduled that had vacated, pretended to be that game, smoked so much weed filling the hall with smoke that two poor dudes couple doors down got busted (we were smart enough to lock the door), and left the commandeered hotel room littered with liquor and beer bottles. My goodness, the expression of that DM arriving early for his 8:00am game.

We left a trail of bottles, cigarette butts, vomit, stacked furniture, and fucking hellacious games. Game sessions designated with proper names: aforementioned Flower People ('92), Pee-Wee Herman God Jambicon ('93), methamphetamine-fueled Jitterycon ('94), insanely drunk dungeon mastering Revenge of the Son of Greg ('95), Porno Matt and Kev's Wild Turkey 101-infused Executive Decision ('96).

Early on we mostly commandeered vacant gaming rooms, but we also gamed in the stairwell a bunch (no cameras then and you could smoke in there), hallways were good, and then the standby open gaming rooms.

Well the one thing I'm gonna do is keep it moving, the party this game should either be running or fighting.

Blipping Campaign Video Playlist on YouTube

I just created a YouTube playlist here for our Blipping campaign videos from the 1990s. There are presently 60 5-minute segments, essentially 5 hours of gaming spread among 12 different game sessions of varying length.

Ha, it may be that some folks have game snippets or single games, but the nearest I can tell we were unique being the first and only by around 2 decades to video tape most of our game sessions. Plus we gamed 1st edition (with various mods depending on who was DMing) up until the end of this campaign in 2005.

There a many more videos to come as I am barely to mid-1993...

Campaign Re-Boot

(Patrick Wetmore's ASE overland map hand-copied into the free-version of Worldographer) 

When we originally conceived what became the "Blipping" campaign back in 1988, I did not envision any "blipping" at all. First off, we never had other characters disappear just because the player was absent from the session. Basically, their characters became quasi-retainers who hung in the back and out of combat, but were ready to be used in an emergency if the party ended up in a tight spot. These lurking PCs did not receive any share of experience though, unless they were called upon to enter combat, cast some healing, or such, then they received a whole share if I remember correctly. (A boon because if the character was thrown into combat they could be killed too even with the player awol.)

Kind of like now, but for different reasons (our main DM Dr. John was off on his journey becoming a mad scientist), I ended up DMing our main game fore a long time and wanted to game a character of mine own for a minute. My original plan, upon which apparently I did not achieve consensus, was to start out in the land of Arduin and branch out from there. I even drew a starting map.

Arduin worked not only because it hosted the nexus of all the planes of the Multiverse, but also because the setting could handle straight sword and sorcery up to techno and sci-fi. Plus all of our group were familiar with the setting and there were enough hooks with little that was canon which in my idea left us free to extrapolate.

I ran the first three sessions in March-April-May 1989, doing some overland and Dead Watch Mountain I believe. Next Dr. John took over and BOOM we were on some other planet. As time passed we went from blipping to other settings each time a new DM took over (typically 3 session cycles) to our characters blipping in and out dependent on whether the character's player was actually present. Best laid plans, eh?

This time around, 30 years later(!), I am again trying my hand birthing a co-created connected land.

I bounced around for a setting (and had just about settled on Chaosium's original rpg treatment of "Thieves' World") when "Anomolous Subsurface Environment" (ASE) popped up during my online search/musing of all things Labyrinth Lord (the old school retro-clone settled on for our trip back to old-style gaming).

ASE is gonzo, sci-fi infused megadungeon that I had been interested in for many years. What I did not realize is contained in Patrick Wetmore's adventure is a gonzo city and setting surrounding the megadungeon. As I read more ASE seemed the perfect starting point to our campaign. A futuristic world destroyed thousands of years ago and now a place of magic and barbarism - just enough details to go off in any direction. (Was particularly keen on versatility because the suggested next DM up wanted to run an Arabian Nights theme.)

Next thing that cam to mind was how to keep the maps together as close to seamless as possible?

Mapping software was the obvious solution, however, many of our group (myself included) are rather short on the ducats. That meant for mapping software to work for everyone there had to be a free solution.

Inkscape is far and away the best quality freeware for vector graphing, but requires time both to learn and to draw. I tried a number of online applications (like HEXTML, HexDraw, and others) which all had limitations in the free versions such map size or features that made them less useful.

I finally settled on Worldographer, which the main drawback I had to live with is I couldn't draw coastlines freehand. Arrggh!!!! Ha, otherwise though the free version is pretty sweet with classic-style terrain and hex features.

Since most of our group does not hyper-focus like me this is the best thing to easily encourage everyone to add their overland to the unified campaign.

First game in 4 weeks, and then I'll get you my pretty...!  ;~)

DunDraCon Moving to Santa Clara after 29 Years

(My first DunDraCon convention badge, DDC 16. Then hacked it for DDC 17.)

DunDraCon announced that DDC 44 will be the last at the San Ramon, CA Marriott Hotel and are moving the gaming convention to the Santa Clara, CA Marriott.

My gaming group has attended DunDraCon in San Ramon since Kevin tipped us off about the convention moving there in 1992. We have commandeered vacant rooms, gamed in stairwells, hallways, private guest rooms, and of course all the open gaming rooms.

Sumerled, J.A.S., and Postman Bob even made it up onto the roof of the hotel one year. (Somebody in maintenance left a long ladder alongside the building - attractive nuisance!)

We have had an annual pre-game parking lot BBQ nearly every year (even in the rain), and used to hold a breakfast BBQ also with J.A.S. and his gas-grilled pancakes.

During my "dark times" with the drink when our d&d game wasn't all that healthy our single game every year was still The Con. The only two I missed are 2005 when I resided, newly sober, in my SLE, and 2014 when I had to retake the bar exam that February.

Dang, nearly 3 fucking DECADES... that I believe qualifies as an era.

Of Techno Demons and Zippo Knights

Sick Rick and Dinglebrandsongulbunsonburner (Dingle for short) were always a trippy pair of co-DMs. Their first quest for our party (back in 1990) was across the Great Glass Sea on land-ships battling thri-kreen, then flying up mountain ranges to ruined cities and vampires.

This is their second go round occurred 'round 1994. Although my records say me and Sick Rick were DMing at the time, I am sure Sick Rick and Dingle ran this campaign. (Fixed the record.)

Now, I don't really know what the city of Lankhmar had to do with anything. I remember the weird, fiery City, Chicilube, and fighting techno demons - and that was the easy part! Our troubles really started once we were chased by the drow Zippo Knights riding their light spheres wielding horrendous artifact weapons and ended up in a forest to encounter mutant wood elves.

It seems we ended up finding some artifact of our own that saved the day.

Anyhow, Sick Rick passed his game binder on to me and I scanned what notes they had from that scenario. The link above is Sick Rick and Dingle notes to run those games, although I returned Sick Rick's binder and am not sure if the page order is exactly correct.

Ha, use them if you dare...

1991 Mystery Map

Some of the joy I've been having re-running my home game through the Lands of Krull once again is having an opportunity to flesh out or re-develop ideas and scenarios that were incomplete or poorly thought out.

A major thorn is what in heck I was trying to run for our first camping trip up Mount Diablo one weekend in August, 1991. I do know I was wasted after drinking beer for about 4 hours straight before we even started the game. Also, I was winging it most of that night - very ill-prepared compounded by intoxication. But I do have clear in my mind what the huge Dwarven stronghold was supposed to look like with 3 tiers of walls, each built upwards from the wall in front of it, and the large, domed keep on top with no visible doors or windows.

There was something to do with a mace or maces and dragons. However, the most interesting thing I discovered when I edited the raw video from this session is that I had an OVERLAND MAP!

None of my hand-drawn maps that I can find show that island off the south coast (I know it's the south coast because my place names run west to east across my maps). I can tell from the video that the map is incomplete, maybe a third at most. The cool thing is that it should show the location of the Dwarven stronghold.

Now, it doesn't appear that this map aligns with my two Krull maps. I have a vague recollection charting an adjoining map to my personal interpretation of the Lands of Arduin, but this section does not seem to attach up to the east side of that map. The map is definitely my style of cartography.

Anyhow, it's a mystery. I will continue searching through my game stuff. There is a possibility I used the other side for a different map, or gave the map to another DM from our Blipping Game to draw their map. Grrrrrr...

1st Episode of an Original Campaign Video from 1991

Mic'ed D&D. Ha, there is so much going on at these games that is left on the cutting room floor for a variety of reasons. Just let it be said that this particular game at Sick Rick's in Santa Rosa was EPIC in the annals of our band of heroes.

As per usual, the system is 1st edition AD&D. J.A.S. typically runs his game tournament-style requiring spell details to be written down rather than looked up in books when cast. You might notice our Barbarian-Techno, Grady, is being run by someone new. Grady was basically our traveling NPC who pretty much was turned over to anyone who wanted to join up and didn't have a character. We actually still use Grady today in our game, one of the last remnants of this bygone age...

9th and Final Episode from 1990 Game Session

We conclude after about a 10-hour game session. Looks like Spacin' Jason crashed shortly after midnight (it was his apartment and visiting girlfriend); Dr. John departed after the 2am beer run (was sober enough to drive home and on beer run); Matrox and Postman Bob both slept during the game's latter moments. Other than that our DMs Sick Rick and Dingul, and players J.A.S., Summerled, Greg, and Shade Structure were all up for the duration.

The adventure created by Sick Rick and Dingul was actually very interesting. Ha, even the parrot. I really enjoyed what was done with the desert and Glass Sea, and had completely forgot about the Thri-Kreen. Of course, by the wee wee hours of the morning there is not a lot of deep thought, but our DMs seemed well-prepared.

Note that this recorded session was not the concluding session for Sick Rick's and Dingul's adventure. Our DM rotation was 2 sessions for a single DM or 3 sessions for two co-DMs, so this game had one more night to go which occurred the following late spring or early summer (alas, no video).

Now I want to see if I can clear up some holes the video left in the scenario. Mainly, what happened with Orcus?

8th Episode from 1990 Game Session

Moving to the conclusion, a final beer run takes place (off-screen) during this episode so the hour is after 2:00am - approaching 4:00am toward the end of this excerpt.

While the adventuring party does not seem to have found time and/or a place to rest, players (myself included) are dropping out for naps here and there. Ha, we woke folks (especially those who played clerics) when we needed them.

7th Episode from 1990 Game Session

We are closing in on the witching hour from this game night.

This particular segment is mostly a combat, the "roll" playing, which is interesting for 1-minute melee rounds and our Arduin Grimoire standard critical hits occurring after 2 natural 20s. And, yes, during this portion of the video we are indeed listening to the proverbial Led Zeppelin (their live "Song Remains the Same" album).

6th Episode from 1990 Game Session

My my my, I found out there is actually a link between this campaign from 1990 and my current game. Sick Rick and Dingul who DMed this ancient session actual gave a shout out in their scenario to my old "Krull" campaign, mentioning Orcus imprisoned in a sword and smashed "at the Gates of Hell!" (A prime material gate to the Abyss, actually) My current campaign had found the smashed sword, re-forged through the machinations of an Orcus-cult seeking to free Orcus. This is exactly what was going on in Sick Rick's and Dingul's scenario.

Did their Orcus-cult succeed?

That could throw an interesting timeline, or some alternative reality stream, into my current campaign...