Most of my Conan gaming posts have revolved around the original version of D&D, using Chainmail as the basis for the combat and rules systems. There are a lot of people out there, however, for whom AD&D is their preferred edition. The good news is, it's quite possible to apply about 90% of my tweaks to OD&D in an AD&D sense. There are already Hyborian Age tweaks to Conan available in the TSR Conan modules Conan Unchained, Conan Against Darkness, and Red Sonja Unconquered. These cover such things as Fear Factor, Heroism and Luck (with "Luck Points" filling a similar role to my own Fate Points), Healing, and an overview of the Hyborian World, including monsters, magic users and the like. These, however, can be difficult to get hold of; instead, my own Age of Conan resources can, by and large, graft right onto AD&D, or for those who do have them, my own tweaks to the game can be applied directly on top of these to expand the presentation. Magic ...

Been doing some cleanup and review of the blog recently. A few of you have doubtless noticed that I've begun posting again, though a bit irregularly. I'm trying to pick that up and get back into a routine. To that end it's also time to start moving away from calling out the assholes in our culture on their douchebaggery, and get back to talking about old school games. After all, there's always going to be jagoffs, and calling them out on their crap isn't going to make them change. It's really best just to sigh, roll your eyes at them, and move on. So, I originally started this blog to post thoughts and notes about a house sandbox setting I was putting together called The Wasted Lands. While I never got for with an actual campaign of it (it was supplanted by my Age of Conan Hyborian Age game), there were some really cool ideas in there and I'd like to revisit it. To do that, however, I had to make it easy to sift through these posts and find the stu...

I feel a bit bad for saying this. As anyone who knows me will tell you, I generally don't write negative reviews of product, as I find them unhelpful and only harmful to the product sales. However, this one in particular has been grating on me for quite some time and I need to get it off my chest. Thus, I'm going to say this up front: Do not fail to give this game a look based on what I say here. a LOT of people are enjoying it and by all reports it's doing well. The guys I've spoken to at Modiphius are nice guys and should be supported. I congratulate them on doing well. The following is my opinion only, and I have reason to believe I'm in the minority on it. Okay, so here goes. The more I read the Modiphius Conan RPG, the more I try to get into it...the less I like it. I love Conan more than any other fantasy property except Star Wars, and when this game was announced and I heard the dream team behind it, I was so excited. Then the playtest previews c...

  (Stock Image) Source: http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Product.aspx?x=dnd/products/dndacc/45390000 Introduction To put a crown jewel on their “Premium Reprint,” series, Wizards of the Coast has re-released the original Dungeons & Dragons rules. Specifically, this reprint is of the sixth printing, or “OCE” (Original Collector’s Edition) version of the rules. Like many fans of the old school, I was rather excited and more than a little nervous about this product. For $150, would they screw it up? Would it be handled properly? Would it, unlike the reprints for second and third editions, truly be premium? Yesterday, I headed to my FLGS and picked up my OD&D Premium Reprint. Here are my thoughts. Presentation This set is really nice. It comes in an actual wooden box, a nice nod to the original rules which came in a printed woodgrain box. The box construction is sturdy and just overall excellent. It has a nice velvet pad on the bottom to keep from scratching...

MONSTERS AND ORGANIZATION This section illustrates a part of the art of DMing that is perhaps lost on a lot of people now, but which post-3.x D&D actually tried to bring back a bit (to its credit). Monsters use tactics and behave in logical fashion.  The section deals heavily with the idea that  DM must be prepared for all eventualities, and should prepare in advance the course of action a given monster or group of monsters will take in the event PCs take any number of logical possible approaches to them. While a DM must be able to think on his feet and it's true PCs will often think of things the DM did not, this section isn't concerned with detail-oriented breakdowns of every PC strategy. Rather, the idea is, "how will monsters react if surprised/ambushed, if openly engaged, or if an effort to parlay is made."  These are the three basic things that can happen in an encounter. Also of importance here is what will happen if the PCs leave and return to enc...

As the title says: rumors of my website's disappearance are greatly exaggerated. I got a couple e-mails and messages lately asking what happened to my D&D resources site.  Oops. I shuffled some things around when I bought the elflair.com domain, and forgot to create a redirect. http://www.grey-elf.com/ now goes to my D&D page.  If you go to http://www.grey-elf.com/dnd/ you will now be redirected to the current proper URL. Sorry for any confusion, folks!  My bad!

Last session we played saw the heroes make it back to King Cneph Coalhair's ringfort with the horn in hand.  As they made their way to his throne room, they were ambushed by Vanir raiders who had infiltrated the fort.  These stole the horn and took off running.  The PCs gave chase, eventually capturing the thief just as he made it over the walls and outside.  They had the horn in hand, only to discover themselves face to face with a small Vanir army who had come to challenge the fort for the horn. Trapped outside, a few of the PCs fought valiantly as King Coalhair's men hacked and slashed their way to the rescue.  In the end, the Vanir were sent running and the horn presented to Coalhair. The next day, however, grave news came to the fort: Rorik Hodderson, one of the Vanir leaders, had captured Irda, a revered holy woman of Ymir who was said to be gifted with prophecy, and was threatening her death if the Aesir did not turn over the horn. Knowing full well t...

So as I mentioned in the blog post I put up yesterday, I've discovered that using standard OD&D summoning tables (per Greyhawk) loses some of the flavor of the Hyborian Age--a lot of the flavor, in fact, when sorcerers find themselves calling forth Elves, dwarves, harpies, and normal warriors or "evil clerics." Sorcerers in a Conan game should call forth creatures of the Outer Dark--demons and degenerates. As such, I've revised the summoning tables (a work in progress, obviously). Unfortunately, posting the revision now would do little good as I've called upon the following sources in addition to OD&D: Bestiary of the Hyborian Age (Mongoose Conan) Secrets of Skelos (Mongoose Conan) Call of Cthulhu d20 (WotC/Chaosium) Deities and Demigods (AD&D first ed. w/Cthulhu Mythos) Monster Manual II (AD&D first ed.) Can't just assume that everyone has these books. As such, I'm working on putting together quick Age of Conan stats for all th...

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! I haven't posted any session updates for Age of Conan for the past couple sessions--this is party out of laziness, partly due to the fact that I am now professionally ghost-writing blogs for Detroit-area law firms (which leaves precious little time for the writing I'd actually like to be doing), and partly because there's just not a lot to report. Sessions have been short lately, and honestly, the entire first section of Mongoose's Betrayer of Asgard is, well, rather slow. Essentially, the game flashed back to the period when the group stole the drinking horn from the Vanir, which they impressively managed to do without drawing a sword, and then flashed forward again to them being buried under a mountain of snow. They were dug out by giant wolves, which they had to battle while also suffering from exhaustion and frostbite. They then continued on their journey, and decided to take a dangerous road through Snow Devil Pass, rumored to be ha...

Fate Points A lot of old-school DMs will blanch at this idea, but I wanted to give my Age of Conan game a more over-the-top, heroic and pulpy feel this time around...plus I wanted a way to give a little something back to my players since the pre-written module I'm running is at places quite railroady, and I haven't been able to come up with good ways to fix that. So, I've implemented Fate Points, mostly as found in the Castles & Crusades Castle Keeper's Guide. Fate points are a character control/storytelling tool that have become very popular in the last decade or so, and let characters perform over-the-top feats of bravado, and mitigate the sheer randomness of the dice when things are just going really bad. For Age of Conan, my implementation is thus: Heroic Feat: Characters can spend 1 FP to add an extra die to their roll, keeping the normal amount (that is, if they're rolling 2d6 for an attack, they roll 3d6 and keep the best 2d6). Heroic Feat can b...

Atlantis was once the shining jewel of the ten continents, the pinnacle of civilization and progress. Its alabaster columns, domes and towers shone brightly in the morning sun, a beacon of hope to the rest of the world that yes, in the wake of the Old Ones, humankind could pave a new path to the future. That all changed when war erupted with the far continent of Thule. Thule, once very like Atlantis, rotted from within, turned to worship of the Old Ones--specifically the Old Ones Yog-Sothoth, Shub-Niggurath, Dagon and Hydra. These evil creatures, speaking to their sorcerer-priests in dreams dark and unholy, showed them the way to open portals through time and space, and with these portals they invaded Atlantis. The early stages of the war went very badly for Atlantis. Its cities were devastated by fire from the skies and mind bombs, ravaged by creatures of darkness like Byakhee, Shantaks, Deep Ones, and the subterranean Spawn of Cthulhu who tore the very brains from the heads ...

We're Back!!! Of all the regions in the Wasted Lands, Lemuria is arguably the most alien, beautiful, and sinister, save perhaps the Kingdom of Hastur. Lemuria is a continent of many features--it is host to plains, forests, foothills, and great mountain ranges, and is home to all manner of creatures, both intelligent and savage. The dominant race on Lemuria could be considered "semi-human"; that is, they are not entirely human but do not fit into the type of any other race. They are tall, reaching 7' in height, slender, hermaphroditic and have ghost-white skin. Rarely do they grow hair on their bodies. Some believe these "Ghost-Kings" are either a future evolution of humankind, or the original root from which humankind de-evolved. Still others claim that the Giant-Kings are not of this world at all, that they came from another plane of existence, or somewhere beyond the stars. They seem to have wondrous magic, including oddly-shaped wands that fire ...

Rossika is a vast stretch of largely featureless steppes. The terrain is mostly scrub grass, and the climate extreme. There are two seasons in Rossika: hot, humid summers, and bitterly cold killer winters. A low mountain range separates Rossika from Ashurii and Hastur, insulating Rossika from some of the conflicts that occur in the West. However, copies of The King in Yellow have made it through the mountains and into Rossika from Fennokarelia and the Barren Steppes are not immune to the poison of entropy and madness that afflicts that pallid kingdom. There are three major trade kingdoms in Rossika: Veps to the central north, Mari in the northeast, and the Great Kingdom of Khazan spanning an area in the south equal to that of Veps and Mari combined. The west is dominated by tribes of barbarians who practice a horse culture. Of these barbarians there are two distinct racial types: Kossaki and Hunni. The Kossaki tend to remain in the steppes and flatlands and are of a duskier h...