This winter’s never-ending parade of Northeastern snowstorms has played havoc with two things in my life: skiing and gaming. The storms marched through the region with exhausting regularity on Sundays and Mondays, spoiling the Sunday game and then canceling skiing.
It’s left me snowed in on multiple occasions, and caused me to turn my eye toward campaign management. I bought Hexographer and have been using it to slowly build a regional map of the Pomarj peninsula in the World of Greyhawk, where two of my D&D 5th Edition campaigns are set (Broken Land, Obsidian Frontier). My goal is to have a printed map that our heroes can point to and say “I want to go there!; hopefully I’ll have it done before the campaigns end.
I picked up a trifecta of Engine Publishing PDFs as far of Game Master’s Day:
- Never Unprepared: The Complete Game Master’s Guide to Session Prep
- Odyssey: The Complete Game Master’s Guide to Campaign Management
- Unframed: The Art of Improvisation for Game Masters
I just started reading Odyssey on my Kindle, and the thing I found amusing was how one of the author’s compared campaign management to project management … which is something I’m up to my eyeballs in at work. It’s a valid observation, and frankly it’s part of the reason why I haven’t been attacking campaign management — the XP spreadsheets, the saga write-ups, etc. — with my usual gusto.
Speaking of projects, my family’s fall initiative to clean out the basement morphed into a winter project, which will likely continue into a spring endeavor, but it has yielded some useful gaming results. I uncovered a box of old Games Workshop Lord of the Rings plastic miniatures from a game review I did for the now-defunct Science Fiction Weekly. It included a small horde of goblins and orcs, both of which are perfect for my edge-of-the-frontier, goblin-infested D&D campaigns. I plan on using them to get re-acquainted with painting minis.
I also ordered a slew of Reaper minis to serve as PCs and NPCs in my games.
- Margara (female dwarf mage)
- Valana, Forgemaiden Sergeant (female dwarf cleric)
- Dhulrekk Thulfinson, (male dwarf fighter)
- Bjorn, (male dwarf cleric/warrior)
- Sir Falkirk Nobleheart (male human nobleman adventure)
- Kiramor the Forest Shadow (male elven ranger)
- Peruhain (male elven monk)
- Khalib, Runelord Apprentice (male human wizard)
Unfortunately Reaper’s shipments have been delayed by — you guess it — the winter storms, but USPS tells me they should be here soon. Once they do I’ll have the happy problem of painting them. I haven’t seriously painted fantasy minis in a decade (I dabbled in starship painting a few years ago), so naturally all of my existing paints were dried out. Several other Blackrazors have decided to take up mini painting again as well, and I’m looking forward to getting together for a Sunday of minis, painting, and beer (assuming we don’t get any more snow storms…)