Gaming

On June 9th, 2010 I once again walked on Athas by going to the first game of season 2 of D&D Encounters entitled Dark Sun: Fury of the Wastewalker. I’ve never been that interested in gaming at these events, preferring the company of a well established group, but I couldn’t pass up a chance to play Dark Sun before the August release.

The Encounters concept is a good one and conducive to how I like to play: very structured story, short game once a week, game is on rain or shine, and an ample supply of people wanting to play. Of course, the main reason I liked it was because it was set in Dark Sun, so I’m uncertain if I will continue after the 15 week season unless there are more Dark Sun adventures available. The way Encounters is set up allows for people to be able to miss games and not be out of the loop, which is good because it’s hard to imagine being available for all 15 sessions. I also got a DCI number (formerly the RPGA number) so I can feel extra cool/foolish. I say foolish because it is a strange concept to me that playing an rpg needs an organizational structure that warrants numeric identification.

I started playing D&D again specifically because of Dark Sun being announced as a 4E campaign setting. It is my hope that these Dark Sun Encounter sessions will be an nice bridge until the main campaign setting comes, allowing players to get into the setting and bettering the chances of a regular Dark Sun group being established.

Some might recall that in the early 2000′s WotC allowed free and for-money downloads of previous Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition (2E) products. I saw all the books I used to desire so greatly. Ready. Waiting. Since 3E was the version at the time, they really didn’t have much value, but one might say it came down to the principle of the matter. That is, I wanted them so badly before, I could now satisfy that latent avarice with one fell swoop of a credit card. And swoop fell-ly I did, obtaining all manner of books in pdf form for extremely low prices (I believe it was 5 dollars or less a piece). More >