Welcome to my world!

Sometimes, the sandy, fiery world of Athas is my home, but most of the time, it's Spring, Texas, where I live and go to school at DeVry in neighboring Houston, home of NASA, the Astros, and a lot of delicious ethnic food (don't look for barbecue here, folks, but the Jamaican Jerk is amazing!)

Right, time for a run down of a few things I've been working on, or just being a part of.

I'm gearing up for a 4th edition D&D campaign in the world of Athas, better known to the RPG world as Dark Sun.  Now, I was never able to enjoy this fine setting designed by Troy Denning (more about his works in this world another time) when the setting came out around 1991, though I did have a brief perusal of the products at a friend's house, whose brother had every 2e product under the sun lining the walls of his bedroom (an impressive sight to a 12 year old, indeed!) 

A few years later, I got the computer game Dark Sun: the Shattered Lands in a box set of AD&D computer games by SSI, and I was hooked.  The savage world smacked a bit of Conan and Beastmaster, but with a bit of an ancient feel, where completely different creatures and warped yet familiar beings battled fiercely for the most basic necessities. 

A few years ago, I finally got the chance to run the setting in its original context, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, 2nd edition.  Back to THAC0! Armed with my corebooks, the Dark Sun boxed set, and The Complete Psionics Handbook, I took a (sometimes revolving) group of friends through a year of wonderful adventure.  We ran through A Little Knowledge, which was included with the boxed set, in its unique dual-book format which included a plethora of great art by the legendary Brom.

Though the setting was great, battles fierce, and roleplaying witty and clever, I found the system really had some hangups, which seemed to be resolved in the second release of the boxed set.  First, Psionics was a nightmare.  Even with two decks of psionics cards, running the system properly took considerable management effort - there was a large amount of upkeep involved, and the players became agitated and confused by it and my delays as a dungeon master.  (As a strange side note, in the box I bought, the previous owner had a sheet with a bunch of stickies on it that read "no psionics" "psionics available" and other 'flag' type upkeep things that I never came to understand)

Not too long after that, much to my delight, a new version of the setting for 4th edition D&D was going to be released at Gen Con the following year.  What a great opportunity to show the better half what a big con was like!  We saved up, went, and I got my hands on that shiny new Dark Sun book, along with the creature catalog full of new and classic Athasian terrors.

I tried running it with my revolving group but unfortunately due to social and scheduling conflicts, we never really got very far with it.  I was a bit disappointed and discouraged by it, and I think I was even a little tired of running, so I put it to the side for awhile, and we played some 1st edition Dragonlance which I hope to elaborate on in the near future as well.

Currently, I've been involved in a game of D&D Encounters at the game store, which I'm less than underwhelmed with, but I blame that more on the combat-focused module design than the system itself - though Essentials has seemingly cut down the number of options in the system to near zero. (Knight levels 7 and 17 have no choices at all, for example.)

Therefore, I'm encouraging my players to use base 4e characters, which may include Heroes of Shadow, the new book of dark classes and races which most importantly include the Assassin.  This should keep things balanced and fun for everyone, without limiting their choices.

Phew! That'll be it for now.  This being my first blog post, I'm sure its full of poorly organized thoughts and bad grammar, but hey, it'll get better.  I promise!