GENE: when atari’s ‘temple of elemental evil’ originally came out it had too many bugs and timothy warned me about playing it so it just sat there on the bookshelf. the patch came out last Wednesday so game last night so I decided to finally install the program. i had two reasons for getting the game, first was that it’s the first computer game to use the 3.5 version of d&d. the second one was that it was based on the 1st ed ad&d module of the same name. i already played the module for the table top versiona nd was interested to find out how they did for the computer version.




character creation went much the same way as thay in a normal d&d game, so to simplify, I decided to create an elven ranger (read: legolas) to test the game. after being given a quest (which I think depends on what the alignment of the character your playing) legolas was dumped on the road just outside of the village of hommlet. it was here that I was pulled into another world.


my high school gaming group spent a couple of years of our early gaming years playing around hommlet and the surrounding country side. playing toee allowed me to once more see familiar places and landscape (though in cgi this time). it was funny coz as legolas walked the dirt road, I knew which house was which and who lived there. it was like going back to a place of childhood memory. old familiar faces where also there – ostler the innkeeper (though the girl on the sign of the inn of the welcome wench had bigger boobies the last time I saw it), jaroo the druid, rufus the fighter. even the nasty trader was there (I knew he’s actually an assassin spy but legolas doesn’t know that yet). i guess the names and places stuck coz the gaming group was able to function well and had tons of great adventures during that time.




this brings me back to one of the questions asked on why my current group is thought to be unable to role-play well. one of the things that could easily be seen was that the players in the previous gaming group has been able to invest much in their characters. i’m not talking about monetary investments here but the fact that the players in the old gaming group took the time to fix and flesh out their characters by not only knowing the rules as to which would affect their characters in the game but also took time to learn about the setting they were going to play in. each player took the time to read (in the case of the toee campaign) the history of verbobonc and how their characters came about to that place. they also studied how the different factions (deities, power groups, evil factions) affected the lives of their characters and reacted to those accordingly and in a way they used this information to role-play well.




that isn't exactly what happens with the current group. whenever a campaign was established, a player would simply create a character with numbers and stats and start playing the game. during a campaign session, I think around only be around one or two players who actually know anything about the setting. for example, if a campaign was set-up in waterdeep, I doubt if any of the players would know who the ‘lords of waterdeep’ are or if they played in greyhawk, if they knew where much less what ‘furyondy’ is. in the current cos:baguio campaign, one has to wonder how many knew what the 'shadow' is. i think part of good role-playing and memorable stories come from putting a bit of more heart into the project. a good campaign isn't made of just the character one is playing with but it is also made up of the different interactions he has with the differemt pcs and npcs in the world. and how could one do that if he didn't know anything about the world they move in. does that make any sense?


maybe next time we play, we can put a bit more love into the project and maybe you'll see the rules disappear and experience the campaign in a more... ummm... glamour filled way? :P