I like the players- they give me ideas.

I've noticed that taking cues from the players can lead to interesting situations, things I might not have thought about before. Not necessarily major revelations, just a different twist or two I might not have been thinking about to take things a little different way.

Last night's game, the PCs are travelling south into the kingdom of Vestonia when faced with a choice- Go around the hilly/mountainous area at the border or cut through it.
I hadn't thought of making the hill region a particular obstacle until one of the players called it out on the map. Okay, then it is the faster to cut through the hills, but it's rough and slow going, taking most of the day to cross with the horses through all the rocks.

And since one character has wings, guess what, the orcs hiding in a cave during the day see him flying about. A non-conflict encounter happens, with the PCs deciding to avoid this fight and put as much ground as possible between them and the orcs, with the ogre they have in the cave with them.

As the Pcs ride away, they hear the orcs take a long blow on a horn. "Oh crap, what does that mean?"

All this leads to it being late in the day and them thinking maybe they shouldn't camp tonight, no telling what that horn was alerting someone of. So now they're moving through a grassland area at night without a whole lot of cover and with a 70% full moon. Luckily they have two people with night vision. Hmmmm, what will happen next?

Yeah, I like the players.

Our campaign- The Legends of Avalorr.

Our Fantasy Hero campaign is based on the continent of Adon in the World of Avalorr. This is the world created by Reaper Miniatures for their old tabletop miniatures wargame Dark Heaven Apocalypse. This has been expanded on a bit in their newer game Warlord.

The rulebook for DHA is only about 25% rules with the rest of the book being fluff laying out all the major kingdoms on the continent of Adon, which is all very well written with a lot of flavor to the different kingdoms. For the most part it's standard fantasy, with humans, elves, dwarves, etc. and so forth. There's a lot written about the undead of this world though, with Reaper's own take on how they all came into being. I'll detail all that later if it comes into play at some point.

There is one race that i added, which is the Volar, borrowed from Iron Crown Enterprises game HARP, or High Adventure Role Playing. My step-son wanted to play a winged character, so POOF the Volar appear.

This is where I decided to set our game world to start. I have some ideas for what the other continents may be, one of which is a hodge-podge of my own making called Faethis. Who knows, maybe Middle Earth will be in this world too.

I've done some tweaking to the world at large, putting my own twists and ideas to parts of it. I'm a big fan of H.P. Lovecraft, so there will be some Mythos elements worked into it in places. The PCs may have to venture to the far northern reaches of the world at some point, journeying to the forgotten lands of Khadath in the Cold Waste and the Plains of Leng. The PCs have already had one hint of activity of a cult of a certain Great Old One.

Lots of idea theft going on, but hey, I'm new to this right? ;-)

Why are three dice better than one?

I used to play a lot of D&D back in high school and for a few years after, first edition AD&D to be exact. I also used to read comics, and made some friends through the comic shop I used to go to. My buddy Mike, who plays in the game I'm running now, had been playing D&D with some other guys from the shop and found fourth edition Champions to play a super hero game with. Myself and another friend Dave played in some supers games for a while with Mike as GM. I really liked the way the game played, with the Hero System's touted ability to create any character you could think of. Combat rocked, with lots of options for hand to hand and powers to do just about anything. And the 3d6 used for actions was a lot different.

In the meantime Mike had gotten some other books for Champs/Hero, one of which was Fantasy Hero for 4th ed. "You mean we can play fantasy with these rules too?! My mage can have a sword if he wants, and my fighter can do a whole lot more than 'I hit him with my sword!' ? Well sign me up."

I haven't rolled a d20 since.

Hence, three dice are better than one. Not meant as a slam on anyone's preference's, but it's catchy I guess, right?

Hmm, a blog eh?

Yup.

Why? Because I see lots of other people with them and think "I can do that." Must be the guitar player in me.

Also so I can collect my game related thoughts and hopefully get some input to help make my games better.

Games I play?

Right now I'm GMing a Fantasy Hero game, using the Hero System, with my wife, step-son, and friend Mike. Hero is really the only game I have any interest in playing since I discovered it about 15 years or so ago, and that was thanks to Mike. Actually I was introduced to it a loooong time ago, probably 6th grade, by another kid I went to school with at the time. I had discovered the world of role playing games through Marvel Super Heroes, and this classmate and I started talking games. He tried to get me to play Champions, but my 12 or 13 year old brain thought it was too complicated. Ironic, since now it's the only game I really care for.

I'm not really doing anything with the miniature wargame thing right now, so I'll go over that in another post.

Why am I GMing?

Because somebody has to start the damn game!
I've been playing with a few mini games for a few years now, probably 4 or 5, but I've been wanting to get back into some RP action for quite a while. I don't know anyone around that actively plays Hero, so I finally said heck with it, I'll get a game together my damn self!

My wife and step-son and I have fiddled with some Hero stuff, but not a lot. What little we did was their first RP experience. They were up for a real game though. I called Mike, who hadn't gamed in several years now, and he was up for it. So Yay!! a regular game. Tuesday nights at my house.

I'm a very green GM, still working on ideas and adapting on the fly. But my 13 year old step-son comes up with some very off-the-wall things to do that help me to go in different directions pretty easily a lot of times. And sometimes to get to say "Heh, heh. You walked right into that one!"

The game's going well though, 3 sessions into the campaign. Everybody's having fun. Details in a bit.