Hyrulian Adventures Begin

Hyrule has known peace for a thousand years at least, under the strong but caring leadership of the Royal Family.

All that changed last Thursday morning, when the earthquakes began. While rare, earthquakes are perfectly natural events, and certainly no cause for alarm. Until they continued. For three days. Much of Kakariko lay in ruins, only the sturdiest buildings surviving.

The next day, a boy, carrying a shield and a sword and wearing a green tunic, rode into town, and sought out the elder Sahasrahla. Within a couple hours, he was gone again. Apparently, he was the “Hero of Legend”, but you had never heard of this legend before.

Then the monsters came.

And then the darkness followed. The sun has not been seen in days. You can hear the howling of the monsters in the wilds.

A few hours ago, refugees arrived from Hyrule Castle Town. Hundreds of people, many of them injured, all of them terrified of what they had seen at the castle. Monsters had descended upon the town, undead rising up from the cobblestones, and the castle torn up from the very ground itself, and by some magic remains suspended there, transformed into a twisted, evil, Forbidden Fortress.

The refugees and other survivors have been gathered in the village temple. There are a few soldiers with them, and their primary concern is building up defenses for the village and its people. No one knows what has happened to the Royal Family. None of the survivors knows anything about the “Hero of Legend”. The Elder Sahasrahla pulls the five of you aside. He fears the worst; the Hero has fallen, and the Triforce of Courage is shattered and scattered across Hyrule. This evil, these monsters, can only come from someone wielding the Triforce of Power, and if what the refugees say is true, there is a good chance that someone has taken captive Princess Zelda, the bearer of the Triforce of Wisdom.

The Triforce of Courage must be recovered, reassembled, and wielded by someone pure of heart if there is any hope at all of returning the light to Hyrule! 

But first, Kakariko Village must be defended from attack...

Out of Hibernation and In Search of the Unknown!

Out of Hibernation and Into the Unknown!

It's been a good bit of time since we last checked in! This is due in part to a general lack of D&D-type gaming over the last few months, as our gaming focus has been primarily on Magic: the Gathering of late. 

However, the little gnolls have begun a journey In Search of the Unknown! A family friend, Jans, wanted to run a regular game of D&D for his ten-year-old (I think) daughter, which now includes my four minions and another of her friends. They are using the D&D Next playtest rules (the most recent one) for this adventure, and I'll probably have some thoughts on the playtest rules in a future post. 

My father-in-law and I stayed to watch events unfold and help keep the kids kind of on-track. The characters include a trio of elves (rogue, wizard, cleric), a pair of dwarves (cleric and fighter), and a human sorcerer. 

They made it to the Keep, and the silliness ensued in short order. The boys decided their dwarves would go over to the tavern, and the girls (the elves), whose characters were apparently abolitionists, promptly followed them, smacked them, and tried to take their ale away. 

Calmer heads prevailed, as Jans made it clear the local townsfolk were aghast at their behavior. I think sometimes my kids just have to cause drama with each other, as they all like to boss each other around. They also all like being the center of attention, and the younger ones especially will say and do silly things for that express purpose. 

Regardless, they did eventually make it to the dungeon. They didn't have too many problems with the monsters they encountered, and were doing fairly well at examining their surroundings and treading carefully...

Until they got to the room with all the various pools of liquid. By the time we called it a day, the dwarf fighter was fast asleep and unable to be awaken, the dwarf cleric was covered in neon green goo and completely intoxicated with the elf wizard and human sorcerer, the elf rogue was glowing blue and had a hand badly burned by acid, and the elf cleric was glowing orange, I believe. 

It may be a bit late to tell them how to use a ten-foot-pole...

Regardless, they all had a lot of fun, so I think this may be a once-a-month type of thing. It did light a bit of a fire under my butt to run some D&D again, though! If I work at it, we should be able to start Hyrulian Adventures in the next couple of weeks (possibly this weekend if I really bust my ass!). Hopefully I'll have some more material ready for that shortly. 

It's good to be back :)

Of Miracles and Soulbonds

So we had our little miracle of life occur on Tuesday, May 1st, at 6:46 pm Central time. Avery Timothy Linn Sullivan entered the world via c-section delivery, due to suspected (though non-existent) placental abruption. At 33 weeks gestation, he weighed five pounds, six ounces and was eighteen inches long. As I type this, he is still in the NICU, but doing better every day.

Being that early, his lungs weren't quite as developed as they ought to be, so his oxygen and CO2 levels were a bit off, and he still needs to get the hang of sucking milk, but he's making progress.

This is my second child, my wife's fifth, and the sixth child in our household. Hers, mine, and now ours. Three boys and three girls, so we're a regular geeky Brady Bunch. Both of my offspring have had to spend some time after birth in the NICU; this trip is significantly less stressful than the first. When my daughter was born two and a half years ago, her biological mother (not my beautiful amazing wife) was, unbeknownst to me, a junkie, and she was born addicted to heroin (the junkie tested positive for heroin, amphetamines, and PCP, the baby tested positive for heroin). Needless to say, I have full custody of the child. But that time in the NICU was awful, because we didn't know what was going on (the addict wasn't exactly forthcoming about her drug use), and as it was slowly figured out... well, it's a pretty awful feeling, seeing your baby go through that. All in all, it was a sixth-month process to ween her off of a regular oral liquid morphine dosage.

So, I guess if my first kid pulled through after dealing with that big mess of terrible, this kid has it easy! By the way, my daughter is doing great now. There are some concerns that she may fall somewhere on the mild end of the autistic spectrum, but she's incredibly bright and clever and I'm sure she's going to do just fine.

We haven't played D&D in months at this point. Once things normalize, and Mama and Avery come home from the hospital, we'll be in a better spot to continue the campaign. The kids and I have continued to play plenty of Magic: the Gathering, and if any of you keep current on Magic trends, you'll have noticed the title of this article is a bit trendy.

"Miracle" and "Soulbond" are the names of two new mechanics introduced in the most recent Magic expansion set, Avacyn Restored. I just thought it was quite appropriate that this new set would be released this week, just a few days after I've experienced a miracle and soulbonding of my own!

Avacyn Restored also marks the first time I attended an in-store pre-release event, on Saturday, April 28th. It was $25, and you got six packs from the new set to open up and use to build a "sealed deck" for the little tournament they had going on there. There were maybe twenty people playing at the shop I went to (the Fantasy Shop in Florissant, MO), and I brought my oldest daughter, Alex. She's 11, and was by far the youngest person there, but she had a blast and was making everyone laugh because she's damn witty. She likes Magic but hasn't gotten terribly into it (although she is more excited about it now, after having such a good time at the pre-release).

Personal side-note about Alex: She's the oldest, and she's been through a lot. She was old enough to really remember (and still has a lot of pain from) her mom and dad getting divorced, and the roller-coaster of moves and everything else that happened before I came along. While my wife's three younger kids took to me pretty quickly, she has been reluctant to really be able to trust that I'm actually going to stick around and be a real dad. Taking her (and only her) to this Magic event (that all the other kids would have loved to go to) really meant a lot to her and was an awesome little bonding experience, even though we didn't spend a lot of time together while there. Just the fact that I took her, and she was able to have fun and be herself and talk to all kinds of different people, meant the world to her.

Anyways, I really like "Limited" Magic. There's a lot to be said about a player's skill when they have to make the best of what they wind up with in the packs they open. Randomization is the great equalizer.

It's kinda like rolling your stats 3d6 in order, when you think about it. You gotta take what you get, and make the best character (deck) you can with what you've been given. Sometimes it makes a lot more sense to run a fighter (aggro deck) instead of a wizard (control deck) purely because of the roll of the dice (draw of the cards), even if you prefer one over the other.

In fact, I liked the idea of the "sealed deck" format so much I decided we'd explore it even further in-house here. Alex and I both kept our cards from the pre-release separate, and today, upon full release, I purchased 18 fresh booster packs, six each for Kanaan, Chloe, and Aiden to crack open and start building their deck for a little league play. Each of us will play each other twice (to start, we may keep it going for a while after we finish the first set of matches) (and I have a full schedule written up, due to OCD). Every time a player earns two match wins, they get a fresh booster pack to open and add to their collection to draw on for their sealed deck. I'm also going to make it interesting, by allowing the kids to "trade out" cards from their sealed pools to the general collection at a rate of two-to-one; for example, they can trade in two of their uncommons for a single uncommon from the household's general collection (Whenever we decide to end the league, all the cards they've opened up will wind up in the "general collection" anyway... Magic cards are pretty strictly supervised in this house, purely because of the terrifying amount of Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh! cards I find laying around the house all the time; I would have a come-apart if I found Magic cards under the sofa). Also, whenever they've earned a fresh booster pack, they can instead choose five commons and two uncommon cards from the general collection (so they have control, but get half the amount of cards and no rares, like they would from a booster pack). And finally, they can select a booster pack from any set currently on sale at the Florissant Fantasy Shop (which is pretty much limited to Innistrad, Dark Ascension, Avacyn Restored, and the 2012 Core Set).

So, all in all, it should be interesting. I'm really hoping I can help them build up some deck-building skills with this little league exercise, and also introduce them to the concept of the "metagame". I know "metagaming" is a bad word in D&D-speak, but in competitive Magic, it refers to the local "scene", i.e., what types of decks are likely to show up at any given constructed tournament, which ones are strongest, and, most importantly, how to build your deck to compete against those other ones. Often, it's as simple as knowing to sideboard certain cards against certain styles of deck. In this case, they'll get a taste of it because they'll be able to see every match (if they want to), so they'll be able to see each other's strategies as the season progresses and potentially make changes as they see fit (and have access to the cards they need!).

This has been a fairly lengthy post. If you made it this far, thanks! I'm not sure how much time I'll have moving forward to post D&D material, but as soon as we get a session in, you'll get a play-report. If anyone is interested in how our little in-house Limited Magic league progresses, leave a comment and I'll start posting about it as it happens!

Still Alive!

Whew, it's been a minute since last I had anything of value to say here, and that doesn't look like it's going to change anytime soon. My wife is quite pregnant and high-risk and has been in the hospital for the past two weeks. The baby's not due until early June, and we don't anticipate her being able to come home until little Avery arrives. This means I've jumped headfirst into the role of SuperDad for the five kids at home, getting them ready for school in the morning, getting the two-year-old to her babysitter each day; off to work and then back home, pick up the two-year-old, make sure kids are getting their homework done, cook dinner, shuttle one or several of them to whatever activity might be scheduled for that night, do laundry, clean the house, take care of yard work, pay bills, get the kids ready for the next day... and try to find some time in there to actually go visit my lovely wife in the hospital.

Needless to say, there hasn't been much time for gaming lately. I've been scratching my fantasy-gaming itch with some Magic: the Gathering (I try to sneak at least one game in per night with one of the kids before bedtime).

Hopefully, we'll get to play some D&D with the kids on Easter. That's gonna require me to get ready, but I bet I can wing it. We'll see. We've got a ton of board games and card games and such to fall back on if I'm not prepared by Sunday. I've got a lot of work to do around here and my brain is not currently functioning well on D&D levels due to everything else that has to run through it, so it's kind of a crap-shoot.

And that's all the news that's fit for digital ink!

I'm Tumbling Now

In an effort to keep A Pack of Gnolls focused on D&D and other RPGs, and not sully its good reputation with all that CCG silliness, I've started a little blog over on Tumblr that will be specifically about Magic: the Gathering.

You can follow me there at Mana Burns.

I'm regularly getting distracted by deck-building, but I am also still working on Hyrulian Adventures, more Microlite material, and more stuff from my kids' game to post as well.

Sentimental Sunday

I was in a fairly nostalgic mood this morning, and started flipping through my recently acquired Palladium Games Heroes Unlimited 2nd Edition. I picked it up for super cheap, along with Ninjas and Superspies, at the Fantasy Shop's Used Gaming Auction in January. 

Looking through it, I am confronted with the same thoughts I have every time I look through a Megaversal book: how the crap did we ever figure this out, or run it, or have any fun with it? Maybe these books only make sense when you're in middle school and high school. I have so many issues with lots of the system, from skills to combat, SDC vs Hit Points, that I don't even know where to begin. 

I do remember having some completely ridiculous fun with the system though. Perhaps it had more to do with the company I was keeping than the game, though. We always went completely over the top with our Supers games. 

I used to have a nice little collection of Palladium stuff: Palladium Fantasy, Systems Failure, Nightbane, and a couple other Heroes/Rifts items. I put them in the Fantasy Shop's Used Gaming Auction a couple years ago and only got ten lousy bucks for all of it; I didn't think I'd ever use any of it. I'm still pretty sure I won't ever use it, but a Microlite-type Heroes game could be pretty fun, especially with my goofball kids. 

So I'll have to ponder some kind of conversion. Yeah, I think I've got a bad case of gamer ADD at the moment, but that's par for the course. Hey, at least I'm never bored! 

My Gateway to D&D: Magic the Gathering

I've been working overtime through most of this week, including today, and along with a hectic schedule for the gnollpack, I haven't been able to make much progress on much of anything gaming related, but I have had some thoughts brewing. And hey, look at that, I didn't post for a week and just jumped up to over 100 followers here! Thanks people! 

To make up for lack of posting this week, here's a fairly rambling and long-winded one about Magic: the Gathering and D&D, with a little personal introspection to boot. 

I have been playing a little Magic: the Gathering every night lately, a couple games before bedtime with one of the minions. I find myself going further down the Magic rabbit hole these days. Don't worry, A Pack of Gnolls isn't going to morph into a Magic blog; I won't bore you with decklists or strategies or synergies here. 

However, Magic served as my gateway to fantasy gaming. Sure, I'd been playing Star Wars D6 and Palladium's Heroes Unlimited and Robotech with my buddies, but when Padre showed us Magic, my imagination really came alive. The old Dragonquest RPG was introduced to our little group soon after, and we were all hooked. 

I find Magic to be a loving homage to D&D. It is clearly drawing a lot of inspiration from its D&D roots, even to this day. There are dwarves and orcs, goblins and paladins, rogues and knights, devils, demons, skeletons, zombies, necromancers, fireballs, druids... The list goes on. If it appeared in D&D, more than likely it shows up in Magic, too. I've written about this before, but the current expansion, Innistrad, is quite clearly an homage to Ravenloft; its full of vampires and werewolves and zombies and ghosts, and is all about humanity on the brink of destruction at the hands of merciless undead and demonic overlords. And it's a lot of fun to play. A lot of the cards are awesome plays on horror tropes; one of my favorites, purely for its creepiness factor, is Village Cannibals. 

Magic was my gateway to fantasy gaming, so it will always have a place in my heart. I didn't play it for a long time; my original collection contains cards from 1994-1998. I only recently started picking up Magic cards again, when my in-laws gave the minions each a starter deck from the recent New Phyrexia and Innistrad sets. That's a good twelve years! The more I've played with the kids, the more I've gotten into it, and I started picking up boosters, deck-builder kits (220 or so cards for $20!), and Fat Packs. Now we've got a halfway decent collection going. Each of the kids has their own deck, and there are a few others I've put together that they all play with. What's really important is that we're all spending good quality time together. The kids are all pretty sharp and have challenged me on several occasions with their decks. 

I'm not a great Magic player; I'm about as good at Magic as I am at video games. I can do pretty well, but not great. I'm never going to be a pro Magic player; I'm not going to shell out ten or twenty bucks for a single card to perfect a deck. I love opening booster packs, and I'm really liking booster draft-type games. 

What's really ironic is that the things that I love about Magic are basically the same things that drove me away from 4E D&D. Character Generation for 4E is incredibly similar to building a Magic deck. You choose your role and power source, you find synergies within the various available options, and you put it all together in one package. I got sick of all that with 4E, but I'll happily spend hours doing the exact same thing for Magic, looking over the cards in our collection, finding synergies and combos and marveling at the art. 

It's weird, I know. There's just something viscerally satisfying about handling the cards. The same activity in 4E is a major chore on the computer screen with the Character Builder, and even more so with a hand-written sheet with the books open! 

Anyways, I know a lot of grognards out there can't stand Wizards of the Coast for what they've done with the modern incarnations of the D&D brand, and with the way they've treated their D&D customers through the years. I find myself in a funny position here. I thoroughly enjoy Magic, and I thoroughly enjoy old-school D&D. So I'm a bit of a contradiction in terms here, as far as my gaming is concerned. 

Actually, now that I think about it, that's how I've been my whole life. I was a gifted athlete who played at the top local levels in my chosen sports, but eschewed jock culture for sci-fi and fantasy geekiness. I was a liberal working-class kid who went to high school with a bunch of upper-class conservatives. Now I'm a union construction worker, and the people I work with all have hobbies that primarily include either firearms or automobiles, while I'm playing D&D and Magic with my kids. 

Yeah, I never made much sense to me either.