March 4, 2012

While today marks the ninth incarnation of GM Day, it is also the first time since I discovered this “holiday” that I happen to be playing a roleplaying game on this most hallowed of days.

Probably has something to do with it falling on a Sunday this year.

So today, over nine years since Spunk Rat deemed March fourth to be holy to roleplayers, and on the fourth anniversary of Gary Gygax’s death, I — or at least the miniature representing the fictional character I pretend to be — will March Forth (get it?) to battle dragons (probably not) in a dungeon (most certainly).

I feel like I should buy flowers for the Dungeon Master. Maybe I will.

Photo by Mr. Topp

May 27, 2010

When I was a child, most of the adventures I played were of the pre-packaged variety. I replayed the Draglonlance books through their corresponding adventures, completing the D&D campaign to novel to D&D campaign circle.

I must have sent every single one of my friends through the Isle of Dread, although I am still unsure as to why there is a Ring of Regeneration inside the guts of a dinosaur. None of the players ever found it, but it led to me to vivisect monsters for years to come.

This is to say nothing of my favourite adventure, The Egg of the Phoenix, which — when first played at the age of 12 or 13 — I was sure was the greatest adventure of all time. I still have a tendency to occasionally steal bits and pieces of it for my own games.

For my current game, I had decided that I wanted to give my players (who are all a bit new at this) a bit of an old-school adventure experience, and started looking around for a 4th Edition adventure that I could slip into my campaign.

There were none.

All the stores that sell roleplaying games have no more than two or three adventures — the same in every store — none of which slide easily into our present campaign. No problem, I thought. I’ll just check online.

The same problem.

As I have learned from last week’s look around D&D Insider that new adventures are still regularly published in Dungeon. But Dungeon has not been published in paper format since 2007, and I can hardly do “old school” from my laptop. It’s just not the same if you cannot take the cover off the adventure and use it as a DM screen.

Besides which, you need a full subscription to access Dungeon. You cannot just buy one adventure (or one issue) and then print it up. Not that I’m entirely sure of the legalities of printing an adventure sold on a subscription basis — that might be expressly forbidden.

While I was never a huge customer of pre-packaged adventures (after Egg of the Phoenix, everything turned to homemade adventures), I am quite sad to see shops devoid of them these days — particularly when I happen to be searching for one, myself.

However I did find one thing online. Wizards of the Coast will be releasing a version of Tomb of Horrors as a “Super-Adventure” this summer. Tomb of Horrors is one of those original — strike that, the original Gary Gygax dungeon crawl, where the entire setting is just trying to kill you.

Monsters, traps, the Big Bad at the end … it’s all there.

The end result is that the big traditional dungeon crawl has been delayed until such a time as I am ready to plunge my players into The Tomb of Horrors!

I can’t wait.

March 5, 2009

Since I decided to include a regular article on roleplaying in the Big Bad Blog, I have started to read other roleplaying blogs. Inspiration, you see — how else can I really expect to come up with material week after week? Imagine my surprise yesterday when I woke up to find that everybody was blogging about GM Day.

That’s right — following in the tradition of Mother’s Day, President’s Day and St. Patrick’s Day, we now have GM Day on March 4th.

My big question — no, my only question — is why? Who came up with this? How did it come to be accepted? Why have these people circled it on the calendar? I suspected some sort of Wizards of the Coast marketing plot, but then why would Steve Jackson be celebrating? Has Hallmark identified an untapped market? Even Wikipedia does not know, so I was forced to turn to her ugly (but omniscient) cousin, Google.

Google sent me to this page. Here, the wonderfully named Spunk Rat at the enworld.org bulletin board deemed March fourth to be GM’s Day back in December of 2002. And, I suppose, you do not mess with the Spunk Rat. I certainly do not want to.

As fear of the Spunk Rat has grown, so has the legend of GM’s Day. And now, if you fail to honour it, Spunk Rat will come for you. Read into that as you will — I have left common sense and decency behind somewhere around the first paragraph.

Strangely enough, Gary Gygax decided to check out on GM’s Day last year. Some day, when Hallmark has finally discovered this holiday, it will likely be said on Wikipedia (and elsewhere) that this is the source of the choice of day — to commemorate Mr. Gygax. Do not believe them — and remember the Spunk Rat.

So happy belated GM Day, GMs.