My Brain Said "Don't Engage," But I Did Not Listen

 We all sometimes make silly decisions and do things we know we oughtn't. 

My most recent blunder was engaging in Twitter discourse with the crowd that think that Dungeons & Dragons is primarily a tool for "storytelling," that DMs are obligated to provide the players with story arcs, tension building, and other techniques of crafting a narrative. At their most extreme (and I know I am speaking in generalities), player characters should never die unless it's "dramatically appropriate." 

I was crafting an essay, perhaps a meditation, on how storytelling is one style of play, that there are roleplaying games that integrate storytelling into gameplay, and that it has always been a secondary concern in Dungeons & Dragons specifically as opposed to other games. However, with my would-be father-in-law's funeral just a two days behind me, the holiday tomorrow, and my marriage coming up this weekend, I haven't the energy to finish it. Also, reviewing the discourse, and the smug strawman arguments and the assumptions that people who don't prioritize storytelling as the primary objective of Dungeons & Dragons somehow "don't get it," I've decided to boil my whole thesis into just two bullet points: 

-In the words of Homer Simpson, "Just because I don't care doesn't mean I don't understand," and 

-Dude, it was a fucking first level character. Get over it. It'll take you all of ten minutes to make another one. 

In the meantime, I have set a start date of December 7th for OpenQuest 3. It'll be nice to be in the saddle again. 

Enjoy your holiday, whatever traditions you may have. 

I'LL USE MY BRODE SORD!

 Ah, HeroQuest...the game that literally set me on the path of nerddom. 

In the backtimes, before the Rona, I backed the Kickstarter or whatever to fund the reissue of HeroQuest. 

It arrived on my doorstep last week, in all of it's chonky glory.

It's a nice, if pricey, piece of nostalgia. I tried to play it with some of the kids at board game club, but public school children are currently feral and lack the basic social skills to play a board game. That, however, is another story, and one unrelated to gaming. 

The 'Bro has dropped an app that allows for solo play. Sadly, I don't have enough space left on my garbage phone to download it, and it runs like absolute ass on the Android emulator I have on my personal laptop. Luckily, my wife-to-be is giving me an unused tablet she found while sorting through her late father's belongings, so soon I'll be playing HQ alone in a dark room...just like the good old days. 

As an aside, I love how the kid in the old HQ commercial slaps down Fire of Wrath like it's some kind of game-changer...FoW is the arguably the worst spell in the game. Now Genie, on the other hand... that used to be our boss-killer. 

In other news, that map generator I mentioned has rabbit-hole'd me so deep with the campaign world I'm designing for OpenQuest 3 that I have to give myself a deadline or I'm going to detail myself into oblivion and never actually run the game. 

Bangin' Map Generator

 This map generator is off the fuckin' chain, y'all! 

A lot of the names it generates can be... iffy... BUT this thing goes so, so deep, and it's free, and you can change the stuff you don't like. Cultures, religions, even military units. Unnf.

I am presently tinkering with it to create a map for my upcoming OpenQuest 3 game. 

Obligatory Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with this person or their creation stuff in any way, I just wanted to share the deepest map generator I've used since Wizardawn. The only thing I'm affiliated with is BOFA. 

 Updates as I get the campaign developed. I know you're on the edge of your seat. 

Checking In

 I somehow missed October.

Anyway what up I'm going to be running OpenQuest 3rd edition for 4 people 

also I'm getting married in 25 days, this will be marriage #2. 

More on my setting and shit as I get it locked down. 

Deuces.