5e Grognard

Moved to my new blog here .

Moved to my new blog here .

Moved to my new blog here .

Moved to my new blog here .

Working for UPS, I fully expected for the blog to "shut down" for the month, like it often does this time of year. With the overtime that I accumulate this month usually involves me going to work, coming home, and going to bed. Life has a way of throwing unexpected twists your way. One week ago, shortly after punching in to work, I got dizzy and my heart was racing. I had trouble catching my breath. This resulted in an ambulance ride and a couple days in the hospital. The official verdict was a pulmonary embolism with deep vein thrombosis. For those of you that don't speak doctor, a blood clot had developed in my leg. Part had broken off and moved, blocking the artery to my lungs. Being generally young and in overall good health, I showed none of the warning signs, and overall the cause has my doctors stumped. Now that I'm on blood thinners, they can't run the tests that would determine if this is the result of something genetic. At least until they determine th...

So work is getting into a somewhat manageable level, for now. With Christmas around the corner, things at UPS tend to get a bit hectic, so I'll try to get some updates in while I can. I'm still behind in posting some play reports. We had a flurry of playing going on a few months ago. Game prep took some time away from the blog as well, as it should be! This blog pretty much is a Downtime Activity for me as a DM. This session we return to using Basic Fantasy Role Playing's Adventure Anthology One. You can download AAO and a bunch of other free adventures on Basic Fantasy's  download page . While they use BFRP rules, they are very easily converted to 5e, and have a nice old-school feel that I like. This time I used the Deathcrypt of Khaldun, by Scott A. Murray. Again we played this awhile ago, so many of the details are fuzzy, but I do remember this as a great session and a nice little adventure. After the near-TPK of our group during the capture of Iong, they decide...

Wow, over two months since my last blog post. Work has seriously taken a turn for the worse, with overtime taking over my free time. I'll pick back up with another play report. I've gone through some Dragon Magazines recently, but there has been few things to convert for several issues. This is from an older session, so I'll be lacking on some of the details. In our previous game, the party had tracked down the goblin Iong to Cahill Abbey . Iong had incurred some hefty gambling debts and the group was there to collect the bounty. Speaking of our group, they are all 5th level and consist of: Ash.  She's a fire genasi valor bard with the entertainer background. Tulgasora.  Originally a half orc  bull totem  barbarian with the  bounty hunter  background. Since there are no orcs on Eska, but my son liked the half orc mechanics, we reskinned him as a "savage hobgoblin", and not from one of the organized troops. Pyric.   Aasimar   celestial ...

For a variety of reasons, we haven't had a chance to sit down and play D&D at all until recently. Looking back, I see my last play report was in February. I'm sure we played once or twice shortly after that, but I didn't get a report posted. Scheduling provided the biggest setback. Our weekends have been busy. The next biggest competitor for our time has been Magic: The Gathering. My one son was looking around online and "discovered" Magic. Wanted to spend some of his allowance on getting some cards. His brother and sister had been into Pokemon, but it never really interested him. Much to his surprise, I pulled a box of Magic cards out of the closet that I had nearly forgotten about. It has been over 12 years since I last played. I have over 20 decks built and ready to go, as well as a bunch of extra cards and several "idea" decks that are nothing more than a general theme put into a pile. Magic swept through our household, with 1 on 1, 3 player an...

Moved to my new blog HERE .

I was a lapsed gamer, coming from 5e straight from 2e, though I did buy and read 3.5e. Wizards I get, and sorcerers as well. Warlocks are overall new to me, never playing in or running a game with one. While they are present on Eska, they will probably be the least fleshed-out of the options. Wizards, sorcerers and warlocks have long established histories on Eska. Wizards learn their magic either through academies or through a lone master teaching his apprentice. Warlocks gain their power through pacts with powerful entities, while sorcerers come by their magic naturally. I see them more like mutants or super heroes, whose powers manifest as spell like abilities. The elves, especially the mith'edhel have always sought to control wizardly magic. The grey elves run the traditional magical academies. In their usual haughty and arrogant views, the other races are not worthy of admission to their schools. The occasional exceptional applicant does gain admittance, however. The m...

Moved to my new blog here .

Wanting to take a break from the races of Eska (even though I only have the warforged left), I've been reading through old issues of Dragon Magazine for things to convert to 5e. While I've found plenty of cool articles and short fiction to read, (not to mention Snarf Quest and Wormy), there has been a lack of things that would port well into 5th Edition. Then I was reading issue #111. While I've barely got into the issue, the first article really caught my eye. Good Stuff, For a Spell. Magic focusing, a new dimension for possessions , by John M. Maxstadt. It provides a variant idea for powering charged magic items such as wands and staffs. The old school 81 charge wand of fireballs, for example, never struck my fancy. Players either hoarded charges and mostly forgot about them, or used them at every opportunity, blasting everything until all charges were gone. I'm not really a fan of 5th Edition's 7 charges that regenerate, either. I'm not really ...

I apologize for the lack of updates. I work for UPS, and with the Christmas season, had little time and even less energy to devote to gaming. I wanted to do the goblins last time, but wasn't feeling the inspiration, so I worked up the obsidian giants . Decided to go back to the goblins and it turned out I had them about 80% written already! A Christmas miracle! There are a few goblin as playable races for 5e already written that I liked, but that weren't really fitting my vision for Eska's goblins. I did borrow pieces and combined them into my version. Thanks to Wrath of Zombie and his blog, TheHobgoblin on EnWorld, and Samuel Van Der Wall at RPG Alchemy . The grey goblin subrace is my own. I do like the Bug Collector and Fire Breath subraces from Wrath of Zombie , and the Forest and Hill goblins from TheHobgoblin . I plan on offering these as options on Eska, with most of the wild tribes being a mix of these (and possibly other) subraces. Goblins of Eska Th...

Throughout the Kinslayer Wars, the gray elf wizards performed all manner of experiments to increase the grey elves armies without any elves having to give up either their lives or their immortality . The early centuries of the Wars saw many aberrations summoned and monstrosities created and released upon the land.  While the hobgoblins , their greatest success, came in the late stages of the Kinslayer Wars, the early centuries of the Wars saw many failures. The obsidian giants were an ingenious idea towards the beginning of the Kinslayer Wars. A sort of power armor that an elf could don and fight in, and not give up their immortality. Initially a success, the obsidian giants soon proved to be a failure. They helped win a key early battle, but the horrible truth of their fate caused much sorrow. I converted the obsidian giants from the wonderful Teratic Tome . I started with the stone giant stats as a framework and tweaked from there. Obsidian Giant Huge humanoid (elf...