Hunting for novels

A few years back, I started collecting Dragonlance books. Well, I started collecting the books I didn’t already have. I managed to get a couple of trilogies, which was quite the project, but nonetheless a successful one.

Now that I am dipping my toes in the Forgotten Realms, I have been trying to get a hold of some the novels, including the Avatar Trilogy. Of course Wizards of the Coast has stopped publishing books, so I have no way of getting my filthy hands on actual books. Kindle and Audible versions are available, but I am old school, and I like to actually read an old fashioned book.

It is unfortunate that WotC cannot come up with a viable business model for the book segement, however, it seems that their narrow focus on gaming material for Forgotten Realms has paid off for them, at least for the past couple of years. Considering the firing rounds in December, it appears that the company is facing some serious challenges.

My search continues, so hopefully I will be able to expand my collection with some Forgotten Realms novels.

Forgotten Realms

I visited my local RPG pusher yesterday, and stumbled across an older Forgotten Realms core book, probably from the D&D 3.5 days. It was insanely expensive, but I must admit that I was really tempted. I know very little about the Forgotten Realms Lore, and none of the books are available anywhere, be it gaming books or novels. As it is, I might have a line on some of the core books, hopefully a little cheaper than the one I was drooling over yeaterday.

The troubled history of TSR

I stumbled across this video yesterday. It is made by Dave Thaumavore, who did a bang up job telling us about the book Slaying the Dragon by Ben Riggs. Anyway, no need to for me to regutitate anything here, go watch the video, it is great. Meanwhile, I will buy Ben Riggs’ book.

Getting my Forgotten Realms on

So, I have been thinking of doing a bit of DMing in my group, just to spice things up a bit. And since we are playing in the Forgetten Realms, I have delved into my collection of old school adventures, and have found three that are either set in the Realms, or can be easily adapted to it.

I have no real experience with the Forgotten Realms as a DM since we mostly played Dragonlance or Greyhawk in my younger and happier days, but I find a bit refreshing to try a new setting, even a setting that gets a lot of heat from various online gamers. Personally, I try not to think in terms of good and bad, it’s just different. And to be honest, I don’t think the Forgotten Realms setting is half bad. Sure there a lot of overpowered characters, but one can always reimagine them if need be. Or ignore them all together. It’s not that different from other settings. Imagine playing Dragonlance with Raistlin Majere running around hurling magical spells at everything and everyone.

I am looking to run the following adventures: To find a King, Baltron’s Beacon and Under Illefarn. These will be part of a greater narrative that has been built up over the last couple of years of campaigning.

Will this endeavor ever come to fruition? I doubt it. All the D&D projects I have started over the past 20 years have fizzled out even before I got going, and this will undoubtedly not be any different. However, as my lack of intelligence is evident, I will give it another shot.

Google Web stories

I am playing around with Googles Web stories plug in, and even though I enjoy messing with, I have come to realize that, I have no idea what to use it for. In a way, it’s like turning the blog into friggin’ Facebook, which by the way is so not ok.

ChatGPT as DM?

I just asked ChatGPT to write me three modules that would fit into my Dragonlance campaign, and let me tell you that was crazy stuff. It was full fledged modules, but it gave me a pretty nice synopsis for future work.

All we need now is an AI that can replicate players, and we never have to bother with RPGs ever again.

How to move Dragonlance forward?

I have been thinking about DMing in my own Dragonlance campaign for a while now. I have not sat behind the screen for about 25 years, so who knows if I can really still do it.

I have been contemplating running a Dragonlance campaign, but I have this reoccurring problem – Age of Mortals; yay or nay?

Back in the day I was not a fan of everything after Drangons of Summer Flame, but during the last couple of years, I have changed my tune a bit. Especially the Dark Disciple trilogy was pretty awesome and made for some really interesting ideas. Also, some of the other things, like the forrest around Tarsis is pretty cool to work with. However, I also think that a lot of the unique features, that made Dragonlance what it is, are gone.

The smart DM, would somehow merge the two, taking the best things from both worlds, however, I seem to struggle with the implementation with said project. Could be related to my below average intelligence.

I have kicked around a couple of ideas, and if I ever produce anything worth reading, I will publish it here for no one to read.

Getting my Goodreads on

So, I have been trying to wing myself of the brain junk known as social media, and I have done so, by starting to use a new one. Goodreads. Now, Goodreads is nothing like Facebook or Twitter, but more of a way to track your reading and share with your friends. Luckily, I have only one friend on Goodreads, so for me, it is more about seeing how much I actually read in a year as well as discovering books, I would not normally read.

Since fantasy seems be a genre I struggle with at the moment, I find it pretty nifty to get inspiration from Goodreads. And added benefit of my redisovery of reading, is my sleeping pattern. I used to fry my brain with my phone before bedtime, resulting in me not being able to sleep properly. That is a different story now. After a chapter or two, I am ready to get my beauty sleep, and I rarely wake in the middle of the night anymore.

An other added benefit, is me being able to write words and sentences again. For some odd reason I have struggled with that for a few years. Sure, I write emails and chats at my boring job, but I sitting down, and structuring a text as been far from my grasp. Now, however, it seems that I didn’t lose the abillty to do so, I was just unable to, since my brain was fried like a chicken.

So here’s to reading, writing and Goodreads.

Yes, I am the aware of the irony that I link to my Mastodon page. At least it’s not owned by a meaglomaniac.