TenKeep

  A fantasy map is just right to see what's out there. An isometric map shows heights, and drawing one starts with seeing a cube, like a mesa on the desert plain. That got me thinking. Up from TenKeep, low mountains rise above the crater near Tetrada. North, above the crater, h erders' paths trace the mountain ridges, past halfling burial lands, to a ridge trail that soars above the desert. Stones are smooth up there, from herders stopping for the vista.  Here's the vista - a map drawn with West at the top, and landmarks dropping away from the Old North Road (top edge), past the big mesa, and two maybe three days east to La Gama (bottom edge) , a desert town known for winter farming.   Along the map's southern edge (left side), you can see where the old mapmaker sketched-in the stony steps, from the vista-point back down to the desert. Thanks for reading.

My daughter stopped in the Brooklyn Strategist and bought me two Wizkids drow minis for my birthday, they were "less cringy" than the others. Today, I learned about drow, and painted. In the OSE "Advanced Fantasy" rules, drow are, "...slender, fey demihumans with pointed ears, skin as black as the night sky, and hair of white or silver." That's something I could work with.  As you likely know, Salvatore's Drizzt is the most renowned drow elf - a ranger of novels, and the good story, "Dark Mirror." I learned another in a game with Chris Perkins DMing. A drow agent, an NPC, was leaving the table when Paul Rothfuss' character Viari tried to pick his pocket. It happened almost too fast. Viari failed his roll and the drow poked him with a dagger. Rothfuss' character lived but took 85 hit points, from the poison. This morning, listening to YouTube's about drow, I painted 2-3 hours. Painting quickly, it was great seeing their white

There's something about the sincerity of Fritz Leiber. In 1979 I read his name in my Dungeon Master's Guide . It took me 44 years to read him - Leiber's an early dungeon master . This week I read "Lean Times in Lankhmar," a short story set in the "City of Thieves" and featuring the heroic duo, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, who've parted ways.  "Exactly what caused the tall brawling barbarian and the slim elusive Prince of Thieves to fall out, and the mighty adventuring partnership to be broken, is uncertainly known..." What's sure is they come-back together. Separated in Lankhmar, the Gray Mouser had gotten fat, drinking hard and enforcing a racketeer's exploits among priests. Fafhrd had gone completely inward, sleeping on cobblestones and inspiring the faith of an Issek priest and his followers.  The story's greatness is in the way Leiber's plot rejoins Fafhrd and the Mouser -  1950's pulp-adventure filled with wine, brut

  Sometimes a solo game is a wonderful way to explore my campaign world and to meet new characters. Tonight I'll share a game, and maybe start a story. So, meet Al Shief, a thief out near TenKeep. *** After some rough fighting near Silo Verde, the footpad Al Shief felt an emptiness in his stomach before the throbbing from an oozy place on his head. As night fell, he rose with the moon and marched several miles east, to the high dessert town "La Gama." Hunger driven, Al spied open windows in sleepy adobe house. Seemed like an easy take for something to eat. He moved into shadows to an open window.      [Al's moved silently, 25%, but he rolled a 27]. Somebody's dog came-out jawing.       [Dog's reaction roll, 2d6, rolls a 5, "unfriendly, may attack"].       [Initiative, the dog gets the jump.] Barking for everyone to hear, the damn dog lunges.     [Attack roll d20, rolled an 18, hits, damage, d3, rolled a 6].  Al tore away and ran to a hollow. Fido tur

My friend Dan and the RoUL DnD Group have been discussing thieves skills in DnD. We questioned if they were too weak in the OSE rules. Should a thief be better than others at detecting traps and sneaking around? We noted: Any character has a 1-in-6 chance to hear noises behind a door and 1-in-6 chance to find a room trap or a secret door.  Dwarfs and halflings has a 2-in-6 chance to hear noises and a dwarf has a 2-in-6 chance to detect a "room trap." A thief at level 2 has a 2-in-6 chance to hear a noise; also, less than a 1-in-6 chance to detect treasure traps and the same chance as any other character type to detect a room trap. Should we 'home brew" OSE rules to increase the skills of our thief? I studied our  notes in Roll20 and reread the OSE rules. T hieves level-up quickly. You can see it in the bar graph with black bars for a thief and blue bars for a dwarf, halfling, and fighter. A thief is 4th level at 4,000 XP and a halfling, dwarf and fighter are 4th le

To re-start the TenKeep blog, I'm keeping things simple. Here's just one 'place' in Seamus Heaney's verse translation of Beowulf, near line 1345, a "no good" place,   "...among wolves on the hills, on windswept crags  and treacherous keshes, where cold streams  pour down the mountain and disappear  under mist and moorland."    Here, country people say they've seen "creatures / prowling the moors, huge marauders / from some other world." Word has it,                                        ...A few miles from here a frost-stiffened wood waits and keeps watch above a mere; the overhanging bank is a maze of tree-roots mirrored in its surface."   People say "the mere bottom" was never "sounded." They say,   "On its bank, the heather stepper halts: the hart in flight from pursuing hounds will turn to face them with firm-set horns and die in the wood rather than dive beneath its surface."   Like that &quo