Tag Archives: Follow Me And Die

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Why Follow ME, And Die!

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For those new to my blog, podcast, and YouTube channel, I wanted to explain where Follow Me, And Die! comes from.

Origins

Back in the mid 80’s my brother, Robert, started up a new campaign while I was off at my freshman year of college. Over Thanksgiving break, I rolled up a character, Griswald, a half-elf Cleric/Fighter/Magic-User. We went through four years of game time in four days.

Over the next few years, until after grad school, we played a lot. Griswald was always going off to fight and monsters and other enemies. He would hire all the mercenaries he cold find. From the first fight he did this and for many after, he would be the last one standing, or only have a couple of mercenaries left.

One day, I said in frustration to my brother, Robert, the DM, that it wasn’t fair he couldn’t find mercenaries.

Robert quickly replied, “Well it’s like this, word has gotten out and it’s like ‘Follow Me, And Die!'” That was both true and funny.

The first time most of my mercenaries lived to see victory, it was a shock to us all. That success has repeated ever since. Not always a sure thing, but Griswald has managed to hold his own.

Choosing A Name

In 2009 when I decided to start a blog, I needed a name and “Follow Me, And Die!” was the perfect name. It expressed a truth about my favorite D&D character’s experience, and meshed perfectly with my sense of humor. What better name for a social media brand than “Follow Me, And Die!”

You can here the companion podcast here, or watch the companion YouTube video here.

Here are two older articles talking about Follow Me, And Die!

Why “Follow Me And Die!”?

The Story Behind “Follow Me, And Die!”

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Point Crawl-Like Session Planning

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I tried something new with session planning for the last few sessions of my Sunday AD&D [Affiliate Link] game on Roll20. The party is traveling West across the sands of The Broken Lands. Rather than do a map of where everything is and have to measure, plan, and plot things on a map, I decided to try more of the Point Crawl method.

With a Point Crawl the focus is more of traveling point to point and not necessarily all the things in between. In my game, there are sand sailors (vikings) with ships that sail the sand. Endless miles of shifting desert terrain (dunes and the things the sands cover and uncover) is much like the endless terrain of the seas. I gloss over the boring parts, and only mention the things that stand out.

How I Did It

I’ve written about using desk pads of graph paper before, here and here. (I also backed the Dungeon Desk Pad Kickstarter.). I took one of my graph paper desk pads and figured out the distance based on how long it took the sand vikings to cross from the West. It took them three days because they had favorable winds. The party has had 3 days of unfavorable winds, so the journey is taking twice as long.

I divided the journey into groups of squares and drew lines after that many squares and determined how many of these groups there were. I numbered them from East to West. These became the “points” of the journey. I determined wind direction, weather, random encounters, adventure locations and other mechanical things that put bookends on what could happen each session.

This is a picture of the actual desk pad, but blurred to be illegible and avoid spoiling things for players. (It’s amazing the clarity and legibility of a cellphone picture. The original is very easy to read.)

These loose parameters gave me a basic outline to present to the players during each session. The party is free to choose to stop and investigate anything I explain that they see in the distance. So far, they have stopped to check out most things, or gotten close enough to check things out and kept away from danger.

I set this desk pad on a TV tray next to my chair at the computer where I run the game. I can then check off things or make notes on this check list.

I have found that I was quickly able to plan the journey across the sands and so far two sessions of play have gone very well. I expect at least three more sessions for this crossing, depending on what the players do. Players are always doing things that make travel take longer.

The players seem to be having fun, and I’m having fun as a GM. I’ve been using monsters that either I’ve never run as a GM, or never encountered at all in my years of play. I’m randomly determining treasure, including the magic that appears. Magic items I’ve never had in any game are also fund to have. They finally found some powerful ones in the last session. It will be interesting to see how that goes.

It has given me the flexibility to organize notes and think about repercussions of what they have done, and plan for what is on the other side of the desert. I find that I am planning as much as I need and less likely to go overboard writing or planning things the players will never see. I’m trying to do all the cool ideas. Even if my execution is not how I see it in my head, I’m having less stress in prep and more fun running sessions. As with all things in life the more I do this, the easier it gets. The stage fright is always there, but once I get started, I don’t have time to think about how nervous I am. Even with 4+ decades of gaming, I still have nerves before running a game.

My last podcast episode was a play summary of two weeks ago. I’ll do another summary of last weeks game. I’ll at least do summaries to get them across the sands. I’ve had some summaries of other sessions. If you like that sort of thing, let me know. I’m trying to get my momentum back after getting derailed by COVID-19 and a cancer diagnosis.

CELEBRATION

This article marks the eleventh anniversary of this blog that started on July 18, 2009 with this article. I hope to be around and blogging and gaming for many more years!

RPGs

More on Follow Me, And Die!

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If you think about it, wandering bands of homicidal vagrants seek hirelings to help guard the horses, carry lanterns and torches, fight monsters, haul loot, and most importantly, to die instead of a player character.

The enticements to follow a band of adventurers are all flowers, sunshine, and gold! Tales of success and riches, minimizing, glossing over, or ignoring foul, nasty beasts with mean, sharp teeth, undead, evil sorcerers, hungry trolls, etc.

The mumbled/whispered/assumed end result, “And Die! [So I don’t have to…]”, is never mentioned to potential hirelings, without a cost in treasure, or only the most untrustworthy and backstabby of sorts.

All adventurers do this, moreso with hirelings than with henchmen.

As for the realm of RPG bloggers, you might as well follow me, you’re going to die anyway, so do it, before it’s too late!

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Happy Jacks Podcast – Swords & Wizardry Appreciation Day

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After listening to the Drink, Spin, Run livecast and its heavy representation of Michigan residents, I hopped over to the Happy Jacks Podcast for their live broadcast for Swords & Wizardry Appreciation Day.

I was paying attention during the DSR session when they explained what the three Swords & Wizardry books are based on, and I was the first with the right answer on the Happy Jacks Podcast and I won something from +James Spahn of Barrel Rider Games. It is one of his recent White Box series of material. I wasn’t clear if it is PDF, print or both.

Once I find out what I get and have it, I will have an article about it. I think it’s the White Box Omnibus.

The winning answer: Swords & Wizardry White Box = OD&D White/Brown Box; S&W Core = “Extras”; Complete = Every Supplement.

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Working From Home

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TL/DR – I am now working from home and have an hour a day I don’t have to do the round trip to and from work Monday through Friday, and will have more time to focus on living life and preparing and playing games.

My company decided to close our local office because there are only three of us and have us work from home. Two other office are being closed, each with two employees, and having them work from home, saving the company over $100K a year in rent. Too bad I don’t get a piece of that. At least I get to save on gas and have an hour more each day for other things since I don’t have to drive to work. I really like avoiding driving in winter and saving money on gasoline and wear and tear on my car.

Last weekend, I packed up my office and hauled everything home except my desk. I will miss my desk. It is just too big for my house. We have three desks to get rid of. At least I got my desk chair. The cheap one I have from Wal-Mart is wearing out.

I spent five hours moving some things out of my home office to make room so I could move in my work office stuff. I got it all to fit. This inspired me to clean and organize. I already had three 5-shelf bookcases in here and a smaller bookcase. I moved in two 2-drawer file cabinets and put my shorter bookcase on top of them. I brought a five shelf bookcase from the office and a little rolling file cabinet with a “desk top” and a small drawer and a big file drawer.

This gave me storage space to make it all fit even better and a half-done job of organizing a few months ago. Of the three bookshelves I had in here to start, one is nearly organized the way I want it, the second is partially organized with two shelves in a holding pattern, and the third has three empty shelves and two for temporary holding. I have my AD&D manuals and some of my campaign notes on one shelf of the work bookcase. They say that you’re only supposed to touch each thing once, but the sorting of getting everything out is not so easy with cats and dogs and other people in the same house. It’s like one of those number puzzles where you shift the numbers in odd ways until you sort them in order. It may not be efficient, but I have found several things I have been looking for and I now have room to speed up the sorting. If you hadn’t seen it before I started, you wouldn’t think the way it looks now is an improvement.

I had my office at work mostly decluttered, but had a buildup of stuff to sort and toss. I look forward to having a place for everything and everything in its place. Soon I will have all my AD&D manuals, campaign information and other active game related materials together on one or more shelves of a bookcase for easy access. I am good at decluttering and sorting through files while on hold or if calls ever slow down.

If they will ever get the last few clients off a DOS based series of products, for which I am the main support tech, I can pitch 6 or 8 binders, or rather pitch their contents and re-purpose the binders for game materials.

I will also have room for my few board games so that I can keep all of that stuff together. If the bug bites, I might even sell off the stuff I don’t and realistically, won’t use.

Over the years, I have accumulated a lot of floppies, CDs, and odd bits of computer related tech that is old and obsolete. I can sit here and feed floppies to an old PC in the corner and determine if I need the data. If there is a market for used floppies, I can get something out of them. I would like to avoid the landfill…. I remember when a 1.44 MB 3.25 inch floppy was considered a lot of space. Now all these floppies would fit on one DVD with room to spare…..

As I look around and think about some of this stuff, there is a lot that I have not even touched since I divorced my wife four years ago. I’m finally able to get out some breakables and display them, like my great-grandfather’s pocket watch in a glass covered display stand.

My dog likes it because I don’t need to put her in her kennel while I’m at the office. I can also let her out multiple times throughout the day. If I get stuck and have to work through my lunch hour or work late, I have food here and don’t have to rush out and buy crap. There are not many choices in my village for a healthy lunch, so I won’t be spending money eating out for lunch very often, if at all. No more getting home at 5:30 or 6:00 and not having supper until 8:00 or 8:30.

Once it warms up, I can set up by wi-fi and work outside, or in the garage, or on the deck. I can lounge in my hammock on my lunch hour.

Life is good! The level of order I prefer in my life and living environment is rapidly coming together.

RPGs

Posting Frequency

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Now that I am past my busiest time of year at work*, my energy and enthusiasm for other things leaves brain power available to get creative. I also was busy wrapping up my hex for Tenkar’s Landing, and getting ready for Marmalade Dog 20.

I have been coming up with a lot of ideas and spreading them out to avoid having too many posts on the same day. It won’t be long until I hit post # 300! Wow! I started posting with great regularity in January, 2014 when I read that it was the 40th anniversary of D&D. March/April of 2014 was my 36th year of D&D. I started in 1978 with Holmes Blue Book Basic. So 2015 is my 37th year of gaming/RPGs.

I am now thinking about the 2015 April A to Z challenge, and think I will sign up again this year.

My thoughts are also percolating for a possible 2015 One Page Dungeon submission.

My posting frequency will vary based on my ideas and things I want to say about RPGs. Vacations, personal issues that may arise, and work commitments can all have an effect. My hope is to keep posting a few days in advance to build up a “buffer” of posts so that my missing a day is invisible to my readers.

In addition to daily or near daily articles, and other than the April 2014 A to Z Challenge, I will write about the games I play in and run, cons I attend, and ideas I have or comments & extrapolation on the ideas of others. I will also come up with tables and other game aids as the need or inspiration strikes.

The cons I plan to attend this year originally included Gary Con, but things have changed since last year, so I will have to put that off to 2016. I will definitely be at UCon 2015 in November. I am seriously considering Con On The Cob in October, since it is within a four hour drive. I will also try to attend any online cons, if those work into my schedule.

I have ideas for an adventure based on my hex in Tenkar’s Landing, so I look forward to fleshing that out.

I may also begin posting new areas of my campaign as I develop them, but those may wait until I actually have players reach them. So far, my usual players don’t follow my blog, but if I take the plunge and begin an online game, I will want to hold onto those for later.

I look forward to the rest of gaming in 2015.

Game on!!!

*(I support payroll and accounting software. This means that December and January are crazy busy with clients trying to wrap up end of year, print W-2’s and 1099’s, and deal with various state specific reports that have a deadline.)

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Marmalade Dog 20 OSR Track Handout

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I had the idea and volunteered to put it together. It is a one page, front & back listing of the GM’s for the OSR track and what games and rules systems they used, plus a listing of the websites for those rule systems and other OSR related information.

This page will be the home of that handout with a QR Code to send you here for the PDF with the clickable links.

I will also have a few handouts available at the con, with enough for each of the 6 slots in the 3 sessions I am running, plus two for each GM. The QR code should minimize the need for most to need a physical copy.

Marmalade Dog OSR Track Handout

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Musings on This Blog’s Name

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As I explained in the About and here and elsewhere, the name of this blog comes from my brother, Robert, the DM mocking my character in his game, who hired all the mercenaries he could to deal with the large hordes of orcs in his territory and all of the troops dying, making it very difficult to hire more troops. It’s a bit like “going over the top” in WWI.

It is not lost on me the irony of the term when it comes to social media, as one wants to encourage and attract followers.

But if you think about it, whether you follow my blog or not, you will die, so don’t be like all the others who die without following my blog, join the few who die valiantly (?) in the pursuit of role playing fun!

Follow me!  ….. and die!

Or as best as I can imitate the way my brother says it:

.

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Email Seeking Support for an RPG Kickstarter

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I just got an email, a follower on my Google+page, and a like on my FB page seeking a plug for a Kickstarter. It is one that has been mentioned over at the Tavern. NOTE: I am not mentioning which Kickstarter it is. I am sure Erik will have his own post about it.

Little ol’ me?

My attempts at blogging and going on about my experiences and ideas with the RPGs I play is good enough for them?

There is no offer of remuneration for my time to plug the product. It is not one that I would use, so even if they offered it to me for free, I would not use it. I find using devices, such as computers/laptops, tablets, or phones are not much use to me.

I may fire up my phone to use the calculator, if I need one.

If I am playing in the weekly Wednesday night Roll20 AD&D game, I have rarely needed my tablet, and my computer is busy with showing the Roll20 interface. I occasionally use the calculator program on my computer during play, usually to make sure I add up or divide coins or experience correctly. When I did try to use my tablet during a game, it was to display my character sheet or a map my character bought. I haven’t used my tablet in the last several weeks. This past Wednesday was session 30. We had a two week break for the DM to go on vacation, and I was late to one session due to work.

I have manuals for AD&D that I bought via DriveThru RPG and manuals for free and fee OSR style games on my computer and my tablet. I find having them on my tablet useful for reading while at work, so I don’t have to lug them all around. I also have dice rollers on my tablet so I can do adventure/game prep away from home.

If I were going to run a module, I would print out the pertinent parts.

I am a paper using guy. The one struggle is finding what I want. Even with an electronic format, I usually need to look at more than one thing at a time. If I can’t look at the player’s version of the spell and what the DMG says about it at the same time, I have to remember what the one I can’t see says. Yes, the books take up more space, but I can’t change who I am or what I am used to and most important of all, what works for me.

I am at a point in life where I should have more disposable income. My children are older, one on his own, and the other nearly on his own. Neither are going the college route. However, due to the financial condition I was left in by my ex and her love of credit cards, I still have some large bills, so I have to be selective on what gets my money and attention.

Kickstarters that I support with my money tend to be things that I will use or the geek factor is to good to pass up. For RPG stuff, something that has an option for both a PDF and a softcover or hardcover book is the most useful to me.

Kickstarters that I will support by sharing their link will be those that I find appealing and if I had more money to spare, I would pledge my dollars.

No ill will to these fellows, just not something that I can support.

Intersting….