Even though we’ve added a few more activities to our family’s already-full weekly agenda (Fencing lessons on Monday nights, regular weekend hikes, etc.), we’ve been pretty successful at keeping our burgeoning AD&D campaign going. Rebecca and Jacob have been joined by Mary Lou and my brother Jon almost every week for the past couple of months, and have progressed nicely in their character development.

It’s been pretty fun for me as well: despite the unwieldiness of the v3.5 system, I’ve been able to craft some memorable (I hope!) encounters and NPCs for them to interact with, and the world around them is really starting to take shape. As I mentioned in a previous post, I’m using the Forgotten Realms as a base world, but the lands for this campaign are set in a distant location – I’ll connect everything at some point.

The characters so far:

• Feanora: Half-Elf 4th level longsword-wielding Cleric of Corellon Larethian – Masterwork Longsword, Chain Mail – Rebecca
• Calinar: Half-Elf 4th level dual-wielding Ranger (major dps here!) – Masterwork Longsword, +1 Short Sword – Jacob
• Mantis: Human 3rd level Monk/1st level Sorceress – Quarterstaff – Mary Lou
• Fareis: Wood Elf 4th level Rogue with a haunted past – Dagger +2 (quest item), Padded Leather +1 – Jon

I’ve found some really good resources to assist me on our ‘adventure’ nights. Encounter locations are designed either by hand using Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop, or using a Map-Making Tile tool. The latter tool was a bit expensive and limited for what you get ($30) but it does allow for quick assembly of most necessary locations. I take the resulting PDF’s and modify them in Photoshop.

I bought Campaign Cartographer 3 along with the City Designer 3, but find the system very confusing and clumsy. I’m spending some time getting used to it, but it’s a tough haul. What I’d really like is an automatic town map generator, where I can specify walls, ports, gates, population, etc. and have the base map prepared for me. There are some freeware takes at this, but you’d think that a commercial product would incorporate that functionality instead of forcing you to start from scratch for every design.

I’m using PCGen for character maintenance. This tool also has its quirks, but I think some computer-based character creation system is a must for v3.5. The d20 SRD site is a must-have for in-play documentation. I keep the books handy, but have thankfully never had to refer to them during play.

Finally, as the pièce de résistance, I’ve taken an old projector and hung it on the ceiling, pointed towards a table. Real-time dungeon exploration is handled via ‘erasing’ a fog layer on top of the map in Photoshop. This is also nice in that I can swap out locations quicky and display previously prepared graphics of monsters. I started by printing tiles and using an old collection of dungeon pieces, but this was very limiting in a couple of ways. The projector-method, while it has its weaknesses, is a much more manageable solution. All the players have to do is move their miniatures on the map, and roll their dice.

Speaking of dice, I’ve been very surprised at the lack of good gaming supply stores around here. There are a bunch of R/C or model stores, but only one store in the area (The Whiz on Route 9) has any sort of selection at all. I suppose it’s understandable that the world of pen & paper gaming has been overrun by computer games and MMORPG’s, but wonder if a well-stocked specialty store couldn’t do well.