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Recently, a friend and I started planning a 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons (“4e”) game, so my Facebook, Twitter, Mewe, and now Mastodon(!) posts have brought up 4e. It resulted in a loose commitment from an old friend to join the game, which is great, and it has me thumbing through my old material searching for the unfinished business I have with 4e.

I always wanted to roleplay a jannisary, which is a character theme (read: background) from the Player’s Option: Heroes of the Elemental Chaos. This is a character whose backstory includes time in service to a genie. In my case, I’d choose a marid as my former master — probably Ajhuu — who might justify me taking a slight twist on the Prince of Genies paragon path when the time comes. All I’m saying, Vic, is that I have a maird mini if you ever want my benefactor to make an appearance.

Mixing a jannisary theme with a melee bard (valorous bard, maybe?) could be fun, and mechanically wouldn’t be too underpowered. I have a tendency to create underpowered characters because I’m far more interested in building an intriguing character than a powerhouse.

I’m also eager to use my synDCon Dungeon Delves for side quests or when everyone’s just looking to pick some fights.

I’m extremely eager to add this game to my schedule. This shouldn’t be a big deal, but I’ve always been a slave to living campaigns, either directly or indirectly. When I returned to the game after a 23 year absence (due in large part to the Satanic Panic), I found games through the Living Greyhawk campaign, and from that formed relationships with people who were living campaign enthusiasts. As a result, most games I played were in living campaigns, but even my home games were populated with people that, because of their devotion to living campaigns, always wanted to play the current edition of the game. As a result, playing a past edition, and certainly an out-of-print game, was almost never an option.

Flash forward to today, and I’m running my first 1st Edition Dungeons & Dragons game in 40 years and am on the cusp of returning to 4th Edition. I’m actually getting to play what I want because my circumstances have changed. Not bad for someone who not too long ago left the game (willingly this time). Could the FASA Star Trek RPG be in my future?

I’ve also started working with the Masterplan application for running campaigns in 4e. If you play, check it out. I’m doing a lot of work on cleaning up the data.

By the way, this post has inspired me to change the name of my blog to Play What You Want.

You never know.

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Follow Luddite Vic @Luddite_Vic

Dungeons & Dragons is a trademark of Wizards of the Coast, LLC, who neither contributed to nor endorsed the contents of this post. (Okay, jackasses?)