I've added the first of my articles for Stirhauf. This one focusses on the Piemakers' Guild, a new power in the town backed by the mayor and the halflings of the town.

It has developed mostly from several one-off adventures I have run ifor WFRP involving pies and a player character known as Dieter. Possibly one of the most infamous characters to have graced our gaming table, he has now made it to the internet as well.

So I give you The Piemakers' Guild and Dieter of Marienburg.

I've added a new section to the Gaming area, a resource for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay in the form of Stirhauf.

This is the town of the Empire in which I run many of my WFRP adventures, whether it be folk running tasks for the Miller, finding pie recipes for Crumbly's Bar or searching the nearby hills for elven tombs. There is nothing particularly unique about Stirhauf, but it is a place that is uniquely mine (and my players). A blend of pie sellers, dwarfen miners, various crooks and scum from all over the place (also known as the PCs).

It can be used as a resource by players in my WFRP campaigns of any GMs who want to nick pieces of it. I'll be adding articles and information as the summer continues into autumn.

Last weekend we started a new short campaign for 4E D&D. We wanted to try out the higher levels (15th in this case) before embarking on a proper campaign (assuming we do). One of the much vaunted improvements of 4E was that it played faster at higher level and required less DM preparation.

To me, it felt and ran a lot like the lower-level games we had played. The rounds ran quickly, and although there were more of them, no-ones turn took very long and we were back around to people fairly promptly. There was some delay as people got to grip with characters and abilities which were new to them, having not played them up from 1st level. The aboleth lasher was probably the most feared monster of the day, but the party coped with the encounters without too much trouble.

In contrast to 3rd Edition, the first thing that became apparent was the lack of "buffing" spells. No mage armour, bull's strength, protection from elements, haste, hero's feast, he ...

Having done little to my site for a while, I did some reorganisation.

I added a section for dance and some more links to the comics section, moved the Troll: the Rending and DnD Ironman sections to an archive, ready for 4th Edition versions to replace the 3rd Ed versions, and reduced the number of forums in the Forums section.

Who knows what wacky things will happen next!

One of my dances is salsa, at which I'd love to be a lot better. At the moment I make most of it up as I go along, pulling moves from years of other dances and attempting them to the basic beat of salsa. I attend the odd lesson, but not enough. This is talking about the Cross body style (or New York, or LA, or...).

So when I heard someone was starting cuban salsa classes for complete beginners in Exeter, I went along to have a look.

Cuban style is a lot looser, instead of dancing in a slot, its a more circular pattern and is more about feeling the music. We've concentrated on isolating head, shoulders and chest, trying to move them in time to the cuban rhythm. We've learnt some basic steps but have yet to actually do any partner dancing. Its been hard, but lots of fun and well worth it.

If anyone wants to come along, lessons are 7.30-9 at Gino's (by the Iron Bridge) in Exeter, with a freestyle afterwards.

4th Edition D&D has arrived, and we started out with Keep on the Shadowfell, the introductory adventure. I am not always the best person to run preset adventures, often growing fairly bored partway through. I made it to the end of The Keep, however, mostly because it was a new system.

The adventure itself was nothing special, mostly showcasing the new combat mechanics of the new edition. During the course of play we saw all eight classes and races in play, with differing opinions on all of them. There were two character deaths, one party capture and one monster humiliation (goblin chief swept into the pit of rats). The traps weren't particularly well implemented and we pretty much ignored the town.

As for the game itself, after initial reservations I've warmed to it. It plays like D&D and feels like D&D. Focused mostly on combat, but with the skills and rituals (and the bits in the DMG) providing enough of a framework for outside of comb ...

Last night I went to see a band with a friend. I'm not normally a great one for going to see bands (unless you can jive or salsa to them), as I would rather spend the evening dancing or rolling dice. But a change is good [usually, but not always].

Skindred at the megacomplex known as the Phoenix Arts Centre in Exeter. Fits 300 at least . Lots of tattoos, piercings and black clothing on display.

There were three warm-up acts, which got progressively better. The lead-singer of the second band actually had a fairly good voice, at least when she stopped screaming. The third was an Exeter band, Idiom, which I quite liked too.

And then Skindred came on. I hadn't heard any of their stuff until I borrowed their albums, and they are definately better live than through an ipod. The change in atmosphere was quite noticab ...

Been a while. Busy last month or so .

Today I gave up some of my valuable blood, voluntarily. If I had known you got free biscuits for blood doning, I would have gone years ago.

The process was fairly straightforward, except for nosy questions about medical history and sex life. Suppose they have to be careful tho, what with giving the blood to other people and everything. The nurse seem surprised I had never had an operation or taken any medication. Obviously due to the very healthy lifestyle I lead .

Next blood for bisuits exchange in August. 

I finally decided to try my hand at changing the design of my site from the default skin which comes with dotnetnuke. I embarked on some tutorials and looked for some ready-made skins around the web.

What you see is the result of my tinkering. It looks ok in firefox, and a bit dodgy in internet explorer. Some more tinkering will be needed to iron out the imperfections apparent. At least my minimal css skills are getting a workout.

Duncan

So far we like what we have seen of Dark Heresy - the new roleplaying game set in the universe of Warhammer 40k. Its gritty, fast and deadly, with only a few quirks to be expected of a first edition RPG. Now that I have run two opening adventures, its time for me to do some of the playing and let someelse run the game.

We're moving to a round robin format.  This involves rotating the games masters between adventures, giving everyone a chance to influence the campaign. Sometimes this format works, othertimes it can be quite jarring to have the different GM styles and adventure formats.

Dark Heresy is a good set up for the round robin format, as it has a common background (Warhammer 40k  and the Calixis Sector), a reason for the PCs to be together (Adepts for the Inquisition), someone to tell there where to go next (their inquisitor) and different locations to let different GMs separate their adventures (or linked adventures) from others (the di ...