there is said to be a demi-lich who still wards his final haunt

Edits on Memories of the Future are coming along quite nicely. It’s always a good sign when I’m having fun and enjoying myself, instead of gnashing my teeth and pacing around my office listing all the reasons I suck and should never pick up a pen again in my life. (It happens more frequently than I’d like.) I’m under a lot of pressure to get this and another incredibly overdue essay finished, but it’s a good pressure that feels more like excitement than dread.

Anyway, before I dive back into those projects, I wanted to share something I came across on Reddit earlier this week: The classic D&D module The Tomb of Horrors, updated to 3.5.

If you don’t instantly know what the Tomb of Horrors is, this probably won’t mean anything to you, but I’m going to try: it’s one of the hardest, most devilish, brutal, evil, nasty, deadly, TPK delivering modules ever designed.

It’s also a hell of a lot of fun.

A very brief history of the Tomb of Horrors, from Wikipedia:

Tomb of Horrors is a 1978 adventure module for the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game, written by Gary Gygax. It was originally written for and used at the 1975 Origins 1 convention. Numbered “S1,” the module was the first in the “S” (for “special series”) series of modules.

The module’s plot revolves around the tomb of the demi-lich Acererak. The players’ characters must battle their way past a variety of monsters and traps, with the ultimate goal of destroying Acererak. Tomb of Horrors is considered one of the greatest Dungeons & Dragons modules of all time, as well as one of the most difficult.

I wouldn’t read beyond that if you’re planning to play it, because there are spoilers. Oh, and if you are planning on playing it, I’d suggest having a nice long talk with your character, making sure that you guys are okay with each other, and that there isn’t anything left unsaid or unresolved, because there’s a very good chance you won’t be seeing each other again.

This is probably old news to a lot of you, because it was released in 2005, but it’s new to me, and I thought I’d share with one final caveat. Someone jokingly suggested that I use Tomb of Horrors to introduce a new player to D&D, and I responded with something like: “Ha. Ha. Ha. The idea is to leave him wanting to play D&D again. Starting a new player out with Tomb of Horrors is like introducing someone to Rock Band with Green Grass and High Tides.”

Also: Have I ever linked to the incredible Top 10 D&D Modules I Found in Storage This Weekend at Geekdad? Well, if I haven’t, I just did. (There are several posts in that series. You can find them all right here.)

Geek in Review: As a Matter of Fact, I Have Played Atari Today

As promised yesterday, this month’s Geek in Review stands entirely on its own, but also goes well (if I do say so myself) with this week’s LA Daily.

As a matter of fact, I have played Atari today

“You’re the undisputed master of Combat,” I told my son. “As your reward, you get to watch me play Adventure.”

I flipped switches on the Flashback II, and was soon on my way to collect the various items required to complete my quest.

“What’s that?”

“Oh, that’s my sword,” I said, pushing my little box against an arrow-shaped icon.

“What do you use it for?”

“Slaying Dragons!” I said, as I entered a once-simple maze of passages that the passage of time had made as vexing as it was when I was eight.

“You realize you’ve gone into that dead end five times, right?”

“Quiet you. This is how we did it back in the 80s.”

“You ran into the same dead end over and over again?”

“Yes, it was part of Reganomics.”

I finally found my way out of the maze, and approached a castle, anxious to impress Nolan by grabbing the chalice within. That’s when the dragon showed up.

“What the hell is that?”

“It’s a dragon, of course,” I said, holding the joystick out in front of me like I always did, convinced that if I moved it around, it would help me escape faster. That’s when the dragon ate me.

“This is really what you guys did for fun?”

“Well, there was this, and we’d occasionally fend off Indian attacks when we weren’t Dinosaurizing our caves, yeah.”

I say this every time I link to my Geek in Review, but I know the one time I don’t, someone’s going to lose their shit at me: my column and the newswire are Safe For Work. The rest of the site is delightfully NOT SAFE FOR WORK. If you just stay at the news page, you don’t have to worry about encountering anything naughty, but the logs aren’t going to know that, and you may have a hard time convincing your IT guys that you were just reading it for the articles.

LA Daily: have you played atari today?

This week’s LA Daily is alive … IT’S ALIVE!

“This is how we started playing video games at home when we were kids,” I told them.

“Yeah, your uncle and I got this for Christmas in 1977,” Anne said.

“Boy, you guys are so old,” Nolan – who was 5 at the time – said.

“We are totally old,” I said, not knowing that, ten years later, he and I would have to stop playing Frisbee in front of our house because I had “hurt my Old,” when I tripped over the curb trying to catch up with one of his more powerful throws.

We looked at it together: Once-shiny silver switches jutted from the top of a sleek black body that was wrapped in faux woodgrain. Black rubber cords snaked around it, ending in the iconic joystick controllers that are woven tightly into the fabric of my youth. A cardboard box, its edges revealing the passage of time as clearly as its contents, sat on the floor beside it. Inside it, 20 game cartridges waited, keys to a time machine waited: Combat, Pitfall, Yars’ Revenge, Space Invaders, Centipede, Missile Command, and Cosmic Ark among them.

I pulled Combat out of the box and gently pressed it into the appropriate slot, just like I had hundreds (if not thousands) of times between 1979 and 1985. I felt a surge of excitement well up inside me as I turned on the television, and slid a tiny black switch from TV to GAME.

I get a lot of positive feedback from my fellow Gen-Xers when I write posts about the stuff we did in our childhood, like playing Atari, so I thought I’d do something unique this week: I wrote two different columns about playing Atari, loosely related them to each other, and sent one to the LA Weekly, and the other to Suicide Girls for this month’s Geek in Review.

I thought it was cool that, because of the way these columns are published and written, I could write two columns that stand on their own, but also work well together, and publish them about 24 hours apart. So if you liked this week’s LA Daily, I bet you’ll also enjoy this month’s Geek in Review, which goes up tomorrow.

his. name. is. AEOFEL!

It is with great sadness and a heavy heart that I announce the release of the final D&D podcast in season two:

"Here we go, folks – the final episode in our second series of podcasts with Acquisitions Inc. How will it end? The necromancer has the party on the ropes… can they hold him off? Or will they simply surrender in ignominy?"

After you've listened to the podcast, take a look at this. I believe it will amuse you as much as it amused me.

The number one FAQ about the D&D podcasts is some variation of, "Will you do more of these?" I don't have the authority to give a definitive answer, but I think it's pretty safe to say that all parties concerned are amenable to the idea.

a message for you rudy (the undead hound)

Episode ~~six~~seven of the D&D podcast is online, and it’s my favorite one, so far.

It starts with a scream. It continues with a battle standard being planted (augmented with another scream). And it ends with archers perforating Binwin… and Jim Darkmagic struggling to regain consciousness.

In this episode, Acquisitions Inc. learns the benefit of pushing undead things off ledges. And we, the audience, hear the sound of a dwarf standing up.

Does playing more D&D increase your skill with rolling dice? Does 19 work for you? Do you remember Rudy the Undead Hound? Let’s find out….

A lot of people have asked me where this adventure came from. It was designed by Chris Perkins, and I understand that it will eventually be released, probably in Dungeon.

Edited to add: You need to see the Witchalok. For the love of Rudy, you need to see the Witchalok.