Things to come (+joesky tax)

My D&D campaign is now officially paused. This is a good thing, because I'll now have the time to take a very hard look at the D&D rules and see what flinches. I did this before on this here blog and at least it helped me to fine tune my house rules and to understand better, what D&D is about (maybe...).

No D&D for my group in the near future.

About the blogging experience.

I'm really not sure I want an audience, to be honest. Of course I want to share my ideas with the OSR and all that. But I just don't think the quality of my ideas match the quality of the things already written in our small community of the web. To me at least it seems clonky at times. And that's for two good reasons: I'm neither a skilled writer nor is my level of rules transcendence very high.

So the reason to blog at all is to GET THERE. Find a voice, get the knowledge, get used to write something on a regular basis. Don't fear the trolls (or pay the bridge toll...).

And for that I might need an audience after all.

But what to do, what to do?!

My regular group will, if Ze Gods are in a good mood, engage in Witchcraft for a while now and I'll be all over D&D variations only in theory. I'll try to post two or three posts a week. Focus should be on some of the following topics:

• Futher deduction of house rules from THE GAME. My goal shall be to be able to write down rules in a few sentences (as it should be). But to get there, I have to dissect it first.
• Every aspect of the game should be open for revision. I want to go deep into the rules and make them my own (classes, experience, etc.).
• What do I need in a game? What is necessary to achieve that?
• A working setting is is as much part of the rules as anything else (at least in D&D), so before I'm going to  DM another session of the D&D Bastard of my choosing, I'll try and develop a setting, monsters, random tables, etc..

Also I'll try to be a good boy and be more active in the community. Blogging is a lot of work. Nobody mentioned that.

Shameless self promotion (skip that, gentle reader, it's hard to stomach for myself, too):

I'm so glad Jeff Rients is back and not only for the obvious reasons (his blog is one of the best out there and you know it). No, it's also the only blog list I'm on. There, I said it, I want traffic, maybe even some comments. So if you're a blogger and willing to have my blog in your list, I'd be very happy about that (and return the favour, of course, for whatever that's worth).

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JOESKY TAX

A plague nobody wants to heal with magic, because (1D8+):

1. It's justified, the gods think it's a good idea and put the lid on healing it.
2. The gods are the reason for the plague, nothing to do about it.
3. They fear to get the plague themselves. Nobody needs a dying pantheon.
4. Finding the cure another way will save the world from something more dangerous (not that anybody is telling...).
5. This is no plague, it's the transformation to something new (they say).
6. The gods are not affected, but the channels to the gods are. It taints magic.
7. To heal it makes the cleric loose faith permanently. Nobody knows why (or do they?).
8. To die from the plague transforms a victims soul to ambrosia in the netherworld. A freak accident, but the gods like ambrosia very much.
9. ...