Onesie Hex Crawl

One of my players is fit to burst with a little broodling.  Today she had a co-ed babyshower that I was invited to.  It was a DIY, crafty sort of affair where all the guests were expected to decorate a onesie for the soon-to-be little feller.  I had to keep it old school by drawing a hex-map with fabric paint pens.  My hex wasn't too regular, but that's what you get when you're using scissors as improvised compass.  I traced the city silhouette from my blog on my iphone :)

Here's the work of the other guests:

Live Bear Trap

This has nothing to do with gaming, well, unless you have a pretty gonzo game I guess, but I'd never seen one of these and thought you might find it interesting:

I guess a bear has been a nuisance 'round here, trying to get into the trash cans.  I found bear scat right across from where I'm staying but that was a couple weeks ago.  They have a bait bag in the front of this that is hooked to a trigger that will close the back door.  Though, every time I've seen it the back door has a padlock on it.  Maybe they set it at night.

Player Attendance

Here is a quick draft of who has attended our sessions since summer.  I may add pre-summer later.

Fighters are red.  Divine-petitioners are green.  Magic-users are blue.  Four female players, all of them came in a couple with one of the male players. Six of these folks I work with or have worked with.

I may have 9 or 10 players tonight.  I'm a little worried about keeping them all occupied and interested at this point.  Also, we are outgrowing our apartment venue.

Update: So this is after Friday's session.  I only had 7 players, but one was a complete newbie!  I can never predict.  My hosts said they may invite another couple from work, so this may be a trial by fire for me of how to entertain large parties of mixed experience/familiarity with each other people.

A few additional thoughts I had:

1) In more than 13 sessions I've only had the exact same contingent of players show up once. That makes me think even if it were absolutely fun, and the preference of DM and all players involved, a campaign that required all players to be present each session would be almost impossible to achieve.  Of course I'm assuming adventure paths and plot heavy games might require this, but it seems it would be difficult to hand wave why the party changes so often.  Its of odd for us and we have the advantage of time-traveling-city-battling-chaos and no real end goal.

2) My balance of magic-user/fighter seems about right.  The divine practitioners are under-represented.  But they are a little more abstract in my game (you can be a shaman, witch doctor, priest, ancestor worshipper, etc.) and there is no pantheon yet (you have to roll your own).  So there might be a kind of creative player tax on DPs.  I'm hoping as players get more experienced they may try the class more.  Also I will try to flesh out some orders and gods as we go along.

Tavis makes Boing Boing

Tavis Allison just made it to Boing Boing.  If you don't read it, it's pretty big, millions of readers.  Also, one of the contributors there is editor of Make magazine which is big in DIY circles. This was the awesome D&D birthday party it's about.  Congrats!

Also, in there is the first business idea involving playing D&D that sounds like it might work (at least in a big urban area).  Hope it is wildly successful.

The Temple Awaits

The vagaries of adult schedules means two of the players from last Friday's session are unavailable while three others who weren't present for either of the last 2 sessions will be.  My imaginary world feels a little more "real," and more picaresque, because no two sessions have the same players.

If I ever get these people all in the same place at the same time I can go for a personal record of players DMed simultaneously.

This Friday I'll take my maps for the Maw in case folks want to dabble there.  This will be the first time I'm really prepared to offer the players a choice.  But I have a feeling the call of easy wealth will draw them back to the temple.

I Really like JB's way of giving players connections between their characters.  I want to try to use it this Friday, but I might edit his 100 entires down to thirty.  I'm afraid I have a bad case of NIH syndrome.  Although, in my defense, it's in modification that we truly learn the ins and outs of something.

And with the blah blah blah out of the way, have some beautiful color images of poisonous snakes.  Public domain, book here.

Update

Family duty beckons, so I might have to disappear for a few days. Anyway a few ideas of what I've been pondering:

• Dungeon maps in regards to describing them to players. ze Bulette and I had a conversation about this and he mentioned he might blog about it, so I don't want to steal his thunder, but I've been thinking about it to improve my own DMing. Do it Bulette! haha, pressure.
• Back into the fray; I made another character for 4e and played on Friday. I made a vanilla human fighter. I have sooo many more options for what my character can do in combat it should be a crime to let inexperienced players play wizards. I thought they were aiming for balance!? Anyway, being able to push, pull and maneuver in a tactical mini game is useful, also multiple daily powers that grant a bonus to hit for the duration of the battle! Would rather play something else, but this is what my friends are playing.
  
• Also haven't given up on movement rates/encumbrance, I feel like a simple, but real-like solution is just at the tip of my brain.
• Have an idea for Town Trade Templates as a way to build a campaign world but it would take some mental time and research to flesh it out.
• Started working on The Infinite Village, where I was overlaying real UK village maps on top of one another to make a stencil that you'd roll a die and trace roads/buildings. The work was tedious though, so I left it to trawl archive.org for pictures.
• Character /Record sheets-- if the digest sized rules is one task of the DIY jedi, the character sheet is the other. I want to use iconic illustrations of gear to simplify reading/recording, especially for newbies, but that requires finding appropriate images. I've found some.

Okay, peace. Don't get too hot in this weather. I'll try to have something interesting to share when I come back.