Rediscovering My Roots & Latest Update The Time of Troubles & Era of Upheaval We would like to welcome you to our homebrewed Forgotten Realms campaign setting. Inspired By Ed Greenwood

This latest post will be me putting into words how I personally feel about this wonderful game and what it means to me. I grew up pretty much most of my adult life playing D&D or just reading about it. A large part of my gaming life has revolved around D&D or things that are high fantasy - such as, novels, gaming books, online gaming, pretty much everything dealing with my personal gaming has been some form or another of high fantasy/sci fi.

Most of my Dungeons & Dragons gaming has also revolved around the World of Greyhawk but this time I think I will dive into the Forgotten Realms. I've been to many Dragon Con's and at several of them I had the pleasure of meeting Gary Gygax himself and three different times was a player in one of his games. It is safe to say Gary Gygax had a huge impact on me and my gaming. I am also the proud owner of the original 1st edition Dungeon Master Guide, Players Handbook signed by Gary Gygax and Ed Greenwood even signed my Forgotten Realms Adventures book - but regardless, Gary Gygax is a huge inspiration to me. I've been out of the game for many years but have recently returned and have settled on a "modifed" B/X & AD&D system which I absolutely love. It's a breath of fresh air from the WotC garbage.

Gary Gygax made such a huge impact on me that even today I am a classic D&D dungeon master and player. If I haven't made myself clear as to how I feel about this modern fantasy of the WotC 5th edition D&D then you haven't reading my posts lol. It all goes back to that old saying - "if it ain't broke, don't try to fix it".

I've been bouncing around many campaign settings trying to find my sweet spot and in the end I felt like I needed something different - the Forgotten Realms. No more reskinning 5th edition adventures into classic, it's time to return to my roots and fire up an epic "classic" Dungeons & Dragons campaign.

I will be using a modified B/X & AD&D for our core set of rules. I considered using Advanced Dungeons & Dragons but the more I read on the classic systems the more I fell in back love with this game system. We will also have a few house rules added to our system of rules but not a lot. I think most of these house rules will be more about quality of life rules than anything.

I have also changed up the adventure since my first one was suited more for my former players but this time I will be focusing on an adventure that I think players will enjoy playing in as well as me DMing it for my players. This campaign will be played online using Roll20 & Discord. Each session will also be locally recorded and after a bit of editing be uploaded to our Youtube channel. We may stream our games at a later date.

I am more excited about this return to the game than you know. I know this will be a lot of work especially on my part but overall I think the entire experience will be enjoyable for myself as well as my future players. Stay tuned for more news & updates because as this campaign progresses the more content will be getting posted. Once we get this campaign starts taking shape, we hope you enjoy our adventures.

The Racism Behind WotC The Time of Troubles & Era of Upheaval We would like to welcome you to our homebrewed Forgotten Realms campaign setting. Inspired By Ed Greenwood

Recently I watched this video from "Diversity & Dragons" and I never realized WotC was "this" bad. He might be a smaller content creator but he spits pure facts in this video.

This guy touched on a lot of stuff he pulled from Twitter and one thing I want to make clear, all of these people I am about to highlight are affiliated with Hasbro/WotC in one form or another . . . some are editors, writers, executives and content creators. They publically say stuff that is pure racist and WotC/Hasbro lets them get away with it, and as a matter of fact Hasbro/WotC does its best to go along with these people and what they say. It's disgusting and embarrassing. It's bad enough with how WotC/Hasbro tried to redo the OGL to screw everyone over, sure they backed down but only because the entire community rose up against them and forced them to back down. It's just sad how this game has went down the toilet.

These are just a few of the tweets that were found on Twitter. Dominique Dickey posted a couple of tweets here and here. How much of a racist can someone be?

Then you have Sadie Lowrie who assisted as a writer for Call of the Netherdeep making tweets like this. I send her a tweet asking her about her tweet and this is the reply I got from her. Instead of explaining herself, she blocks me. Typical racist hiding from what she has done. The exact same thing happened with Sarah Madsen . . . when I sent her a tweet about these tweets that she made and I got another reply just like I got from Sadie Lowry.

Lets look at Makenzie De Armas with her tweet or how the one and only Christopher Perkins tweeted this and to think, it pretty much all started with this from Kyle Brinks. Now the latest news is WotC is saying they are removing the Half Elf and Half Orc races or half ANYTHING from D&D because it's racist. It's just out of control. I have been playing Dungeons & Dragons since it was called Basic D&D, hell . . . even before Basic, back when it was called Chain Mail and I've never been this dusgusted with Wizards of the Coast & it's people than I am right now.

With that being sad, I want to make one thing perfectly clear, I'll never buy another product from Wizards of the Coast. I simply cannot handle everything that is going on with the current state of Dungeons & Dragons right now. You know . . . back when we played classic edition Dungeons & Dragons, we didn't have all this drama, it was all about the game and we had one community that stuck together. It's simply not like that anymore. This game is a mess.

Ready, Set, Go! The Time of Troubles & Era of Upheaval We would like to welcome you to our homebrewed Forgotten Realms campaign setting. Inspired By Ed Greenwood

Hello everyone ... I have some things that I would like to touch on with those of you that are first time readers on this blog. The first thing that I kind of want to get into is what many call the "Matt Mercer Effect". I think one thing we all can agree on is Matthew Mercer is ranked in the top level of Dungeon Masters. The man knows his stuff, but it isn't just about Matthew, his players bring a huge part of what makes Critical Role special to the table. To quote an old saying ... "it takes two to tango", or in this case, it takes a Dungeon Master and a group of players to make a game special.

As you can see by this blog, I plan to run my own personal Forgotten Realms campaign setting based off of a lot of ideas of my own and it's going to be set to start around the year of 1358 DR which is basically where the Forgotten Realms timeline begins. Not all of our adventures and/or campaigns will be set in 1358 DR, I'm sure we will have adventures at various points in the timeline. I don't want to focus on specific things that are canon to this setting from the past, but instead I want to focus on my own idea for a new campaign.

One thing I very much want to emphasize on is "I am not Matthew Mercer" and if you expect me as a Dungeon Master to be like Matthew Mercer then I would say "go find you another campaign to follow" because I am not on his level, nor will I even try to be and to be perfectly honest I am not sure if the world has a Dungeon Master that even comes close to his level of story telling "well maybe but I have yet to see one". I do my best to run a good game where my players have a good time (plain and simple) and in the past my players have all had a great time so I guess I am doing "something" right - although, I'm not sure that is lol.

Critical Role is a staged game, with some scripting involved - Matthew and his players are all voice actors. When you watch his campaigns, this is not what Dungeon & Dragon games are really like. His campaigns are strictly constructed to bring entertainment to his viewers.

Next thing I would like to talk about is this campaign and how it will be ran. At the time of me writing this post, I have just started working on our campaign and this blog will still be a ways down the road before it really takes off so if you plan to follow us, please be patient. We have always ran classic 1st edition AD&D up until recently when we jumped into 5th edtion "huge mistake", but . . . things have changed that have sent us back to classic, specifically . . . my own modified B/X & AD&D system that you will read about above in another post.

About this Pandemic going on ... yea, it has really screwed a lot of things up in the world and also in my life. I will not go into detail about my personal life being affected by Covid-19 "yes, I have had it twice" but it had affected my work schedule "before I medically retired", and my free time and socializing with friends and family "just like I am sure the same has happened with many of you". It's just part of life and I will find ways to work around it where my tabletop gaming is concerned.