The home game

The home game is on the go again, which is a source of happiness.  Much as I love my PbPs, there is still something special about playing face to face.  It's the social aspect and the chat and the cheers and groans and general interactiveness that is so wonderful.  Nothing says D&D like rolling out the map, finding the biscuits and using random bits of tat to represent monsters.  We discovered long ago that anything edible is a bad idea.  "I'm sorry, I think I just ate kobold 7".  "Was the paperclip you or the enemy archer?".

Thanks to UK Games Expo and GenCon, we now have many more minis and paper models around.  In theory at least, it should be easier to identify who is who, but despite some serious attempts at labelling, combat is often held up while we hunt for the bag of orcs we know someone put somewhere safe last week.  After 5 minutes or so, we substitute.  "So, these kobolds are rats and the purple worm is a troll.  Everyone clear on that?"

Due to the various family commitments of the original players, the group is currently down to four (five if work permits) and son and heir is GMing it.  He's very good and the campaign is a lot of fun.  Son writes a lot of his own monsters.  I rather like this.  It adds a big element of uncertainty and makes sense of using knowledge checks.

Our group of four contains the following.  Anandor the eladrin wizard.  He lurks.  He lurks really, really well as he has a high Dex and his favourite tactic is to lean against a wall and pretend it isn't him firing magic missiles at minions.

Brian Flowerbuds the battlemind is our melee specialist.  Also, for some incomprehensible reason, our diplomat.  This makes no sense at all as his player nearly got us all killed by the Thieves Guild when we went on a polite visit and he diplomatically offered to fight them all.

Roger the skald is our healer.  As a pixie, he spends quite a lot of time riding around in backpacks, but when the dice start rolling, he charges into battle screaming warsongs.  It's terrifying.  He is clearly a feegle.

His best friend is the satyr pictured above.  Baldwin is a warlock.  His sole ambition for many years was the acquisition of a wine cellar.  Sadly, he and Roger were captured by agents of Vecna and spent some time not quite themselves.  Since their return, they have a strong interest in finding out exactly what happened to them.  They'd quite like whatever it was to not happen to anyone else either.

Thus are adventuring parties born.