Play-By-Blog Review at RuleoftheDice.com

Some of my players over at the Ruins of Empire are also fellow bloggers. Joe Nelson, a writer at RuleoftheDice.com, has a post up today about his experiences playing in my play-by-blog game. Read it here! 

Play-By-Blog First Impressions

I've been neglecting this blog a bit because I've been focusing most of my D&D energy on my play-by-blog game at imperialruin.blogspot.com. So far, the game seems to be going well. The PCs are getting to know Fallcrest at the time of the Summer Festival. We've yet to make a single roll apart from character generation, but so far so good. We have a solid, well-rounded crew with a ranger, fighter, cleric, magic-user and thief. My players are all quite literate and have been writing very well. 

I am definitely looking forward to putting the Microlite74 system through its paces, as far as combat and such is concerned. The time for that is rapidly approaching, and I'm looking forward to seeing how it will play out. 

The play-by-blog format is definitely slow-moving. I'm okay with that, actually. It's radically different than running a game at the table, but I've found it gives everyone involved time to make smart, informed decisions and craft well-written posts. Character development is good, and so far, all the characters are interesting and have some depth to them, in spite of being mere level-1 mooks. 

All in all, I think the play-by-blog experiment will work pretty well. I'm looking forward to our exploration of the Nentir Vale, and I think, so far, I've dropped enough plot hooks in front of our PCs to keep us busy for a while. There are numerous threats out there, and plenty of history to reveal. 

My life is just too crazy busy, with the kids and work and my beautifully pregnant wife, to be able to run a regular table-top game. This Microlite play-by-blog experiment is scratching the gaming itch quite well for me. Many thanks to my players and anyone reading along. 

On a side note, 4E content will be slow in coming. Aside from my weekly Encounters game, I'm pretty much done with 4th Edition D&D. I will continue to mine my 4E resources for inspiration for The Ruins of Empire, but I won't be running any more 4E games. My kids' game will be rolling up new characters for Microlite soon, and that's probably the direction this blog will be taking. 

Cross-Edition Pollination

Cross-Edition Pollination

So, as I've mentioned before, I'm starting a Microlite74 campaign on my new blog, imperialruin.blogspot.com. Microlite74 is a very old-school type of system, emphasizing the exploration and do-anything feel of the original D&D editions, while utilizing a very streamlined and basic rendition of the D20 SRD. 

However, I'm setting this campaign in the out-of-the-box 4th Edition setting of the Nentir Vale (heavily tweaked, of course, to keep any players with access to 4e material on their toes), and using the 4E pantheon of gods and (if we ever get to it) the 4E planar landscape as well. I may even tweak some of my 4E modules to run in the Microlite system. 

I've seen numerous folks out there in the blogosphere updating old modules to the new systems. WotC did the Tomb of Horrors, and I've seen Temple of Elemental Evil for 4E gameplay reports as well. I was even tinkering about with Night Below and pondered giving Dragonlance a whirl. 

But my question is, anyone out there going the other way like this, and applying the new fluff and stuff to the old-school type game? I really have enjoyed a lot of the fluff, sidebar-type material that WotC has produced for 4E, the mechanics of the system have just been wearing me down. 

The Ruins of Empire

I have started a new blog for the purposes of running my play-by-blog Microlite74 campaign, and you can find it here.

It's still pretty bare-bones, but I'll be adding a lot more to it over the next few days.

That is all.