The Haphazard Workshop

A very big stock pot to be precise, currently filled with homemade chicken noodle soup.  Now, my wife is a good cook, phenomenal really.  In ten years of marriage (plus seven of knowing her) she has had one "off" meal. (A thai dish that fell victim of old bean sprouts).  So, when I get home from the hospital at half past midnight and find that my sick daughter has been trying to stay up in order to ask me to cook MY chicken soup because she likes it better.... Well, its 3 AM and the soup is done.  My house smells wonderfully of ginger, garlic  and celery and what had been a lousy day from work is finished off with a pleasant glow.  I love my family.  :)

Ahhh.  The second week of vacation!  I spent first week working on my dad's shed and getting myself in better psychological shape.

I'm off to serve a turn as the nurse at my daughter's camp, which is why she gets to go for an additional week this year.  Barter! Its the new economy.  It should be a lot of fun as I've apparently pulled the week with the least number of campers.  Since it is camp I fully expect to have some adventures, (short hand for how one handles it when things inevitably don't go according to plan) and hope to post about them.

Happy Summer All!

Well, after a long hiatus from the being in the big chair I was convinced by my current game master to run Athas, who ever so helpfully supplied me with, I kid you not, two crates of resources he had sitting in his basement gathering dust. 
    So I read, and prepared, and plotted and on Sunday last I ran my first char/Gen game session.  My Dm was a bit surprised when it came to my syle of Running a game.  I think rules are guidelines at best  and silly things to be tossed at worst.  Consistency and clarity is what matters.  So the first session yielded our first house rules.

House rules.
Armor optimatization does apply to natural armor.
Sure, you can use your str bonus to a bite attack as a thri-kreeen.... course i can too now.

 Level restriction *bah!*  race limits on class *bah*  give me a good story, background and sense of char and we'll figure out the numbers later.
   We began char gen with race, class, and then the barrage. (thanks Matt!  )
"whats your character's favorite color? why? what would they never do? what motivates them? etc."
This last one led the novice player who was running a mul gladiator to say "Alcohol! Alcohol is the energy drink!"

So I end up with *drumroll*

Garthun the Bright, a halfgiant Psion/water cleric, (My DM's char who will allow anything provided there is a published rule to cover it)

Chak cha Chak, dubbed Fahid by the party, A thri-kreen ranger with a taste for beetles... did I mention that Kanks, the most common riding
animal on Athas are beetles?

Deva the female Mul gladiator powered by alcohol, ("alcohol is the energy drink!" )and escaped only two weeks ago from the arena of Nibebay! (I love it when a novice player hands me something like this! instant plot hook!)

Fratley the dwarven bard whose focus is on cooking the worlds perfect meal, which means of course she must cook everything she hasn't yet to determine what is best, and have the perfect luxurious settings for it.  A 5 foot tall, built like a boulder, Dandy is quite a char.  This character is being run by my Dm's mild mannered wife who came up with this cry from  Fratley as he strode into combat.
"Get HIM!  We'll boil him in oil and suck his innards from his anus!" 

and Tania, the druid whose lands have been destroyed by a potent defiler, (so no magic for her),  kept alive only by force of will and consumed with a desire to destroy this villian.  At which time her char will drop dead, if not killed prior to this.  This char is being run by my wife who cut her gaming teeth on White Wolf when the system was new.  tragic character arcs are second nature.

So, get a bunch of  creative folks together, stress story over rules, and have contingencies for each course of action you can think they can come up with and  YOU......


                                                                                                      fail

Three of my players are currently setting off towards the mountains in a carriage made out of the hollowed out bodies of two beetles placed belly ends together and fitted with wheels from a ruined wagon, being pulled by a thri-kreeen.  Fratley is currently trying to get Garthun to carry all his gear for him while Garthun is arguing that he's not a pack beast.  Meanwhile the beetle wagon is under way....

So, My parrty is split with a sandstorm moving in fast going in a direction I never considered.

I HATE IT... I LOVE IT....I HATE IT... I LOVE IT!

Ahh.. the sweet agony of the gamemaster, hand me that bottle of excedrin and let me look up the average move rate of a Mantis powered beetle wagon over rocky terrain...
Clover