D...Do They Look Like They Deserved It?

After talking with Josh today I have decided that Jeff gets a gold star of awesomesauce for that line. Jeremy gets his own star of awesomesauce for role-playing and for handling the warden. Heather gets a star of awesomesauce as well for being supportive of the gaming and keeping a straight face while listening to us (me) take geeky shit way too seriously.

We gamed Saturday from the hours of 5:30 PM to 3:00 AM on the dot. By the end we were hot and tired and just exhausted from the sheer amount of tangents. It was still glorious.

I've really got to say, I am having a metric shit ton of fun this time around. I am juiced up for the whole day when I know I am going to be gaming later. I mean, I am almost giddy with fucking nerdy delight. Then we game and it totally lives up to the expectation. Gaming has always been fun, but it has never delivered like this before. There was always something that left me in a funk afterwards. A fight not being what I thought it'd be, a plot element going totally unnoticed, a riddle that the guys literally try to shoot their way through, etc. But, gaming is totally delivering this time around. The guys are great. The tangents are great (mostly). The edition is great. Everything is just great and that is making it a joy to work on scenarios for the guys. I want to write more of them. In the past it has been like pulling teeth to produce scenarios and there has been a lot of Copy & Pasting in Word to get them done on time. Not this time. I'm bringing my fucking A game and challenging myself to do a good job and be creative and think outside the box. I am a Dogdamn raconteur and I will craft epic fucking shit for these guys to go through. Fuck. Yes.

Ok, maybe that was excessive, but I am really enjoying gaming and DMing.

There were only four fights in the scenario I ran the other day and everyone seemed to really have a good time with it. Never before has the group responded to a primarily non-combat scenario that way. I had to pull violence and insanity out of my ass and juice it up with steroids to get a response from some of our previous iterations of the group. In one scenario the group was hired to clean out some bandit caves, they did so. Then they collected the gear of the fallen, hired new guys and made the caves their raiding outpost. The final time we played The Black Claw Clan the group infiltrated and slaughtered a city of dwarves.

The third scenario sits waiting for me with two rooms to be finished. After that...Kusseth. I need to make that place Epic. I think I'll read some old Planescape stuff about Sigil for inspiration. Kusseth City really is my homage to Sigil. I mean, no city can top Sigil of course. 4th Edtion can try and make shit like the City of Brass and that one place in the Shadowfell relevant, but they're not. Call me a Grognard if you want, but Sigil = awesomesauce and nothing can compare to that place.

Kusseth City. The heart of Kusseth. Ramshackle buildings that rise story after story into the smoggy skyline. The stench of gaslights, the flicker of electrical lights, foul steam that's expelled from sewer grates, songs of bards as they kill and plunder in the night, streets whose name and direction change by the week or month, lawmen with honor as smudged and oily as the streets they tread, but no less dedicated to keeping the peace and staving off chaos. A place so packed with bodies and buildings that everything is smudged and dirty and sweaty. (Dear Readers: I went on in this vein for another paragraph or so but I realized I was making a In My Campaign, Kusseth Edition: Part 2 about Kusseth City and decided I would do that rather than continue my meandering in this post).

Back to my scenario meanderings. What I need to do is give them a brief and delicious taste of Kusseth. I want to leave them wanting more but not entice them to the point that they want to stay there instead of pursuing their professed goals of aiding/beginning an unnamed revolution on the west coast. (Protip: It has to do with goblins.) A quick taste of Kusseth and then maybe a jaunt to Hell herself for a bit. Could be a nice starting point for adventures set in the Fell Peaks. Or it could be a place they go to die.

Music: Forces of Victory - Gogol Bordello