The Core Worlds

When WotC moved to fourth edition D&D, Paizo picked up the discarded remnants of 3.5 and started work on Pathfinder.

Wanting to give it a go, and feeling the urge to GM something on Tuesday Knights, I threw together a five room dungeon and roped a couple of players into giving it a try.

This was my first attempt at running a home-brew adventure for D&D, so a few hiccups were to be expected — which was one reason I wanted to try it out on willing victims before using it to kick off a proper campaign. Lessons were learned:

• Knowing what you want to happen in each area isn’t a good substitute for actually writing down the details and arranging convenient stat blocks that don’t require flipping from tab to tab on a laptop
• The power level in Pathfinder has been upped
• Many weak creatures are rubbish compared to few large creatures, especially when in a confined space without room to maneuver
• If you fail to map a dungeon out properly in advance, you will end up with the final chamber being too close to another room and ending up in a disturbingly phallic shape in order to be large enough for your plans

Despite these setbacks, the game proved to be rather fun. I just need to go away with the above lessons and tweak it somewhat.

A long time ago, I had a couple of volumes in the Dragon Warriors series. I was very impressed with the scenarios in the books, although I never got a chance to play them (thanks to a number of factors, not least of which was lacking volume one).

I was reminded of the system today by a post from Greywulf, which in turn reminded me that we have a new edition on the way. I’ve got a number of reasons for wanting to be first in line to grab a copy of this when it comes out. I know (and like) some of the people involved in the project. The last book I bought from Magnum Opus Press (The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen) was a bloody good read (and I’m eagerly awaiting my hardback edition from Mongoose). Finally, they have the original author on board with the project.

Sadly, it looks like some of the old adventures are going to fall by the wayside. Greywulf knows where to look to find them, but scans of out of print books do have some prickly legal issues. If you buy the new edition, I don’t think your conscience will hurt too much though.

I suspect I’ll be offering to run it for my Tuesday group almost as soon as the new edition is out. I hope I won’t be alone.