Silver Gems & Perils

The Unga Bunga Build Fighters have been around throughout history, wargaming and most of fantasy literature. We popularly see with Tolkien's Lord of Rings, Robert E Howard's Conan The Barbarian and Kentaro Miura's Berserk with Guts 'The Black Swordsman'. Fantasy Tabletop RPGs allow us to portray these characters into our referee's campaigns.  While the Fighter became a class known amongst the community as a simple class to play. It leaves us to question the enjoyment of playing a Fighting-Man with a battle axe. In medieval wargaming, the common footsoldier, knight and archers make up the majority of an army, but once the fantasy supplement had orcs, elves and dwarves it changed the battles forever. Now I don't have experience/knowledge with OD&D and Chainmail, but regardless of what system you use. It can be achieved to make the most interesting Fighter in your group or solo campaign. Without further ado let's further discuss the class! Building a Fi...

The 50 Faith Build Class I wanted to start a 'How To' series focused on the classic D&D classes that have a long history from OD&D to the present day. I have no experience with modern editions of D&D so I can't share my input of the classes we still have today. So I'll be providing examples and discussions with this series. so without further ado let's start with the Cleric! When it comes to classic RPGs and today's video games. The White Mage, Healer, Paladins and eventually any character that performs healing and buffs can act as a support character. In OD&D and later on AD&D the cleric was born to fulfill the role of a healer, undead hunter and additional utility spells. The Cleric was the very first healer before OD&D's Greyhawk supplement introduced the Paladin. Which allowed a Fighter to essentially perform healing while having military proficiency. However, the cleric still provides most of the divine magic which doesn't ge...

The Greater Risks Comes Greater Rewards One of the things I've heard over on YouTube was Daniel Norton of Bandits Keep is introducing a way to reward players and by guiding them to the next adventure. After watching the video it made sense and it would make exploring the referee's campaign in search of the magic item that one player seeks. Lately, I've built this rut during solo play new ways of motivating myself to create an exciting adventure without wasting time. So I have a few tools to do so and at some point in time they never lived up to their use long-term.   So rather than spending money on things I didn't need. I needed that inspiration to come up with an adventure to later build a campaign from that initial dungeon. The solution is treasure maps. Exploring Is How We Find it the main reason exploration in D&D and RPGs that handle rules for traveling in the wilderness is the treasure that is left behind in the world the referee makes. Obviously if you play ...

Touching Grass For Once I think looking at my current Pits & Perils solo campaign leaving the low-level, dungeon skirmish tier of play always feels satisfying. Though if it wasn't for reading Muster It would destroy my investment into the hobby because I haven't been using the system suitable for a narrative experience. There also was a costly investment of Outdoor Survival by Avalon Hill that was worth it long term to establish a campaign setting using the same map. Though drawing your own hex map, printing out premade hex maps with terrain laid out are more practical in this day in age. Establishing Extended D&D The driving force someone must have to build a campaign beyond the scope of the dungeon is this: consistency & growth . Because motivation can only get you so far to creating a campaign only for it to crash. Believe me when I say the amount of wilderness maps were bound to become my dedicated only end up in the bin and being counter-productive to somethi...

The 15th Century & Delaying Lazy Projects When It comes to wargaming I try to go on the web and learn which system works best that is both engaging yet simple at the same time, whether or not It's historical wargaming. I played a few times with a friend of mine using By This Axe and it was very simple and fun. While by "default" it is ideal for historical war games. There are appendixes like running theater of the mind or playing fantasy battles with 1:5 or 1:20 scales options available.     Front Cover of By This Axe   I mostly know Fantasy because I've watched Lord of The Rings, Conan, Salomon Kane, Red Sonja and other media and literature to feel more at home playing. As for Historical well that is where most of that falls flat on my face. So I went ahead and found another system that focuses more on smaller battles and mostly fantasy. This game was called Songs Of Blade And Heroes .  But I played it a few times and didn't enjoy it because it was "to...

What's it all about? Silver Gems & Perils is a new blog that I will be posting and have a clearer goal. I've been playing Old-School D&D games like Basic Fantasy, Swords & Six-Siders and a little bit of White-box Fantastic Medieval Adventure Game.  Now I play Pits & Perils which is a old-school game of medieval fantasy and very simple. Most of my gaming as been solely focused on Solo play. I've been doing since 2020 and throughout the pandemic. I met some wonderful people & friends that introduced me to the OSR and started that journey of what I enjoyed most. man time flies by as I look back.  In-between the year 2023 & 2024, Pits & Perils has been my go-to for creating solo campaigns and hopefully getting a group game together that want to play this game. That is pretty much my goal in this hobby: play the system whole and reach higher levels in a campaign . I've always wanted to get further than the low-level play style of dungeon crawling ...