The Emperors Legacy

Well it seems my neurotic habit of starting something and never finishing anything has kicked in full time again. After my last post I did paint a couple more guys, flocked bases, etc but that was it. I still do not have one squad finished up. Knowing your weakness is supposed to make it easier to overcome, right? Well I have not given up on my 40K IG yet. They have just been shelved once again as they were five or six years ago.

Part of my strange obsession to start something, spend a chunk of change, and then give it up has to do with my childhood. I remember trying to create my own miniatures game using those cheap green army guys that come a hundred to a pack. After a day of working on that I gave it up. Just think if I would have known about Mr. Gygax at that time he would have inspired me to continue. But no I gave it up when it got hard. Well being 9 or 10 probably had something to do with it to. At that age I had never even heard of miniatures or D&D but I knew I had something going. Maybe my idea was destined to be shot down anyway ;)

Anyway, I want to talk about my new obsession. One I hope will last the rest of my life. Wow, reading that sentence sure makes it seem like a long time. I thought about changing that sentence because well I know I never do anything longer than a few weeks or months before giving it up. So this new thing or old thing really is D&D, or should that be written as AD&D? I "played" this as well as Shadowrun a few times when I was much younger. It was in middle school, or what was known as Junior High back then. Of course my very first taste of it I remember almost like it was yesterday. We were sitting in the lunch room when I asked a couple people from my neighborhood what they were playing. One guy had a book and the others had a paper with their characters on it. He said they were playing Dungeons and Dragons. I thought wow that is cool, "Can I play"? He said no you can't because you don't have a character. Um, OK. Now here is where human nature kicked in. I lied and said I had one. He was a level 5 fighter. Well of course that got me in. It's really not that hard to make some stuff up on the spot. That lasted all of the 10 minutes that was left on lunch break. The next few endeavors in D&D I don't recall. Shadowrun was one that I had a good time with. Even enjoying the game that came out on the Sega Genesis. The thought of futuristic people with computers in their head and slinging magic was to much to resist. My first character was a Decker. I remember sitting with my friend Stephen at the time trying to figure out the rules. Such good times. It is a shame that none of those things followed me further in life. They shaped a love for Fantasy and Sci-Fi books and movies. So here I am at 33 years old trying to relive my youth as it were. My son just turned 11. He loves Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, and pretty much anything else fantasy. Here I have a building block to shape him the way I never had anyone do for me. I started a few small adventures for him to get him interested. He seems to really enjoy it but as I am pretty new to this to it is hard with rules, etc so I just wing it. I also started playing in a couple Play-by-Posts to get my feet wet. It has been about a couple months and I think I am ready for more. In the middle of January I email a couple friends, "Hey want to play some D&D with me? It will only be you two so make a couple characters each and meet up in two weeks." A couple days before one other guy wanted in. Saturday comes up, all three show up and we commence to spend 6 hours making 5 characters. Yes that is how long it took. :) We did manage to get one really small combat in which took us another hour or so. Fast forward a month to our next meet. I only planned for a couple fights because well that last one took so long against three goblins. This time things where going to get interesting. About an hour into the game my son comes downstairs with a character sheet in hand. Confused I ask him what it is. He says he just made him and wanted to know if he could play. Apparently he found my D&D basic kit I bought awhile back, pulled out the character creation sheet, found a d6 from a Clue game, and followed the 4d6 drop lowest rules. I am speechless. Needless to say his fighter Zeldax, obviously a tribute to Zelda & the Phantom Hourglass game he has been playing, is added to the group. This is what I have wanted to experience my whole life.

I will be posting up the campaign information here. None of the players know about this site so it may contain some spoilers for our game.

Setting: Golarian
Publisher: Paizo
Campaign: Rise of the Runelords