I’m going to try to make this a regular Monday morning feature, where I run down all the Wizards of the Coast employee blogs that happened over the weekend. That way you can get it directly from your feed rather than having to search yourself. (I’m having some trouble getting the feed to display correctly, so my apologies if this isn’t working quite right just yet.)
Chris Perkins is making up for lost time by posting twice over the weekend, and once on Friday afternoon (where he subtly lets slip that Wizards will have some presence at Gencon).
Iomandra and the Dragon Sea (TM) ((No, I’m not joking about the TM)):
I run my 4E campaign on Monday and Wednesday evenings, for two different groups. The campaign is called “Iomandra and the Dragon Sea” (”Iomandra” for short), and I tried to incorporate as many of the core D&D conceits as possible. Here is some of the source material that I gave my players at the beginning of the campaign . . . Enjoy!
IOMANDRA AND THE DRAGON SEA™
The world of Iomandra is named after Io, the creator of dragons. The word “Iomandra” is Draconic; it means “Io’s trove” or “world of Io.”
In Dr. Jones, I presume he worries about Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull:
When all is said and done, Crystal Skull needs to be better than Temple of Doom, which wasn’t half as bad as some people claim. (Feed me some of them chilled monkey brains!) If it’s on par with Last Crusade, I’ll count my blessings and look forward to a spinoff franchise starring Shia LeBeouf. If E.T. shows up, with or without the crystal skull in hand, I am so outta there.
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Jennifer Clarke Wilkes continues to recount her trip to Winnipeg, Manitoba as a Guest at KeyCon 25. (She was invited by John Mansfield, one of the coolest game store owners you’ll ever meet.)
On the 17th (describing the 15th), she talks about a light day of tourist activities, and some local history.
Today was a fairly quiet day for us, with no programmed activities. However, it turns out that Chris’s cousin Kathleen had a birthday, so we spent some of the afternoon shopping for a gift along with his brother David. We went to the Polo Park mall and started wandering about. On the second floor was a store called the Explore Store, which I figured would be scientific hobbies along the lines of a Discover store. In fact, it is full of puzzles, toys, crafts supplies–and lots of great games, including many Eurogames. I found a copy of the currently out-of-print Race for the Galaxy by AbacusSpiele (though a new edition and expansion are due out soon), and we picked up a copy of Blokus for Kathleen. IT is a truly excellent game that is easy for a non-game hobbyist to pick up. I hope she and her family will like it.
Yesterday, she posted a placeholder entry for her first day at the con, as well as this full description of Day 2:
Today was the big day, when I would be giving a panel about 4E and running some demos in the game room. I must have been pretty nervous, because I didn’t sleep well for the first time since we got into town.
Another sunny and, yes, windy day dawned. I headed over to the Tim Horton’s for a bit of breakfast and coffee (I didn’t feel like paying $6 for an egg and $3 for a cuppa joe). Chris and I had some breakfast and went over the encounter we would be running that day. We decided to modify one of the kobold ambushes in KotS to highlight the critters’ trap tactics (traptics?) more. We took out some creatures, modified others and revised their placement, and introduced a couple of wrinkles: a snare to send a PC dangling upside down, and a bunch of punji stakes hidden in the long grass. A poorly concealed pit trap across the road would stop the party long enough for a kobold minion to yell a challenge, then dart away to lure the party into the traps.
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Ok, that’s it for now. On slow weekends I’ll probably pull in Fridays blogs as well, as Friday seems to be a busy and popular day for WotC blogs…but if you’re interested in the blogs, you probably already read Friday updates! Let me know in the comments or via email whether or not adding Friday’s designer blogs would be of service.
