Inside My Go-To Gaming Cupboard

A couple of years ago there was a meme floating around RPG blogs where people would post the a pic of their game shelf and reveal a bit about what their choices said about them.

Now I've never been one to jump on a  bandwagon - more schlep along after it several years after it has whizzed by.
So here we go! This is what I turn to for inspiration when dreaming up encounters and adventures.

Looking at this picture, my obsession with monster books and dungeon masters' guides is pretty clear. I've got Monster Manuals from three editions here dating back to first. The first ed Monster Manual was one of my favourite DnD books for a long time, especially as I didn't actually own it but my best friend did. We would spend hours poring over the creatures and imagining what it would be like to fight them. It was at the height of the "DnD is Satanic" scare and having a book with devils and demons in it at the age of eight was pretty scary. Now it's still great for a flick through but the monsters are often wildly unbalanced, particularly when you get to those with magic resistance.

However I regularly turn to the great 4e monster books Monster Vault and Threats to Nentir Vale, even though I am running a 5e campaign. The simple but effective powers that a lot of the monsters in these books possess are cool for spicing up an important battle. I hack them for use in 5e, reducing hit points and armour class as well as stats to fit in more with the maths of the newer edition, but it's not too much work. I also have the Dark Sun Creature Catalog from 4e for when I need a strange creature (the 5e Monster Manual is great but sometimes you want something completely different!)

Another monster book that's really cool is Out of the Pit, the compilation of the beasties from the Fighting Fantasy game books that really got me into fantasy in the mid 1980s.
This might be less familiar to US readers but it's a treasure trove of mad ideas (stuff ripped off from DnD, yes, but other more original and esoteric monsters also). It's usually pretty cheap on eBay so track one down if you can.

As I mentioned I LOVE reading through Dungeon Masters Guides and there are a few of these here, including the 4e edition which is one of the best ever produced IMO. I have the third edition DMG II which doesn't have too many rules (rare for a 3e book) and has lots of advice on running towns etc.

I have a few select adventures too - including Hoard of the Dragon Queen, Princes of the Apocalypse, the Pathfinder AP Rise of the Runelords - just stuff you can easily dip into for an idea on a monster, encounter or NPC if you're stuck. And I just added the Goodman Games books from their recent Kickstarter - GM Gems, Dungeon Alphabet and the brand new Monster Alphabet. They're absolute treasure troves for fans or random tables. You could write a whole, totally random adventure using these three books and a bag of dice (now - that's an idea I'm going to have to try one day soon!)

I have smaller adventures mostly from third party, OSR publishers - I have stuff from Zak Smith and Lamentations of the Flame Princess in the right hand pile - just smaller bits you could throw into a campaign as well as the awesome Red and Pleasant Land.

The box sets complete the pile - of course the Monster Vault tokens as well as the fine 5e Starter Set and the awesome 4e adventure Madness at Gardmore Abbey which I hope to run in the future, probably hacked for 5e. It's a great sandboxy environment with nice random elements - harking back to the likes of the original Castle Ravenloft - but it does get quite "dungeon crawly" at times. So I think it would probably take an entire campaign to run it in 4e, with every fight taking over an hour! In 5e it could be faster and a lot of fun.

Er, at the back are some straw hats, stuck there since the last beach holiday.

Note that this is not even a quarter of my ENTIRE game collection. My 5e rulebooks sit here under my laptop, ready to be busted out on a regular basis. I have a whole crate of modules and other stuff next to my bed, that's my "waiting to be read" box. I have a couple of crates of modules out in my shed, mostly stuff that I've already played through or I didn't find too inspiring. And I have a LOAD of maps, dungeon tiles, and magazines in my attic. It's kinda taking over the house… but I am sure plenty of you know how that feels!

Back from the brink!

It's been over a month sadly. A combination of factors meant that November was a complete write-off. First the internet went on us, until November 20. Then the laptop computer completely died, eliciting a several-hundred-euro bill to recover all our precious files (no, we hadn't backed up…)

A crushing schedule in work, plus multiple bouts of sickness that swept through the entire family in several waves meant that it was largely a month to forget. 

And I certainly didn't have much free time to blog!

But just because I haven't blogged in ages doesn't mean I should give up completely, right?

I DID manage to get a SMALL amount of gaming done and I thought I'd use this post to update you a little. I have some hard-earned time off work this week so hopefully I'll get the chance to add some more posts. In the meantime, here's what rocked my world and rolled my dice:

1) Dungeons and Diesel! One of the coolest things of the past month or so was watching Vin Diesel get back to his DnD roots. I'm not a fan of the Fast & Furious franchise (nothing against it, I've just not seen the movies) but I appreciate the star power of someone like Vin Diesel. Watching him join forces with the team from Geek and Sundry and the Nerdist to roll some dice was awesome. And you can really see Vin getting back into the swing of things, the critical hits are classic!

I wasn't sure what to expect from the video but it's not too long and really entertaining. If you've not seen it yet, check it out here: Vin Diesel Plays Dungeons and Dragons Extended Version

2) Matt Mercer! Linked to the above. I wasn't familiar with the Geek and Sundry or Nerdist guys before I saw the Vin Diesel vid. I was impressed by how laid back, cool and talented they all seem to be. Matt Mercer is my new favourite DM. He joins an eclectic mix of guys including Zak Sabbath/Smith, Chris Perkins, and Mike Shea who have inspired my game. His main talent seems to be keeping the narrative flowing and in this instance, PACING. 

I heard an interview recently where he said he was hoping to get a 90 minute game with Vin D, he actually got 25 minutes. And yet he managed to cram in three encounters! He knows when to up the ante, raise the pace, and when to end an encounter at a climatic moment. There was a lot to learn for family games where everyone needs to keep their attention span up. The casual player (like my parents!) will not sit and mull tactics over a 90 minute miniatures battle - we want to cram in as much action as possible! Watching Mercer at work really inspired me to tighten my DMing chops further.

3) Halloween Special! On that note, I ran a Halloween game for my wife and parents based on Mercer's scenario about the curse of Bronnbog (sp?!) 

We only had an hour or so to play but having seen this guy run it in 25 minutes, it was no problem! I even managed to squeeze in an extra encounter with a group of nasty, warty giant toads. The player all loved it and they especially loved the faster pace I set. I will now be looking to make each encounter last 15 minutes, tops. 

4) Slaying Lolth! As I mentioned before, I also have a "real" DnD group of more hardcore gamers who try and meet up a couple of times a month. This month we managed to find time for just one session, but it was a big one. All year I've been running a version of the DnD encounter adventure War of Everlasting Darkness, expanded and converted to 5e. It culminated in a huge battle against the Demon Queen of the Drow, Lolth, deeming the Spellcaves of Eryndlyn. With my son I built a massive game board using every bit of cavern terrain I could dredge out of our shed! That was NOT a 15 minute encounter I can assure you - it lasted almost four hours, but it was pretty cool and resulted in hard-fought victory for the PCs. With the characters edging towards 12th level it marks the end of the longest campaign I've managed to sustain (yes, 11 months, but I think that's longer than most these days…)

For some reason I cannot post any pics today, but I am gonna post this blog, just to break the radio silence. Adios for now….