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.