TMBH Returns!

Erik here, and I just wanted to make an announcement! We're back! We told you we would be!

I know there were those, even among our cast, who doubted it. Things ended poorly last season, and I personally will take responsibility for a lot of that. However, we're starting fresh and kicking things in to gear. We have our first session scheduled for April 13th, and are hoping to play bi-monthly. We've changed around when we're sitting down to play, so we won't be inflicting our tired exhausted selves upon our listeners.

Also, we've decided to branch out game wise. Last season, They Might Be Heroes had a subtitle of A Dungeons and Dragons podcast. Well, no longer! We're stepping outside the box. I personally own a number of different game systems that I've been itching to try, and we've all been wanting to step outside of the fantasy genre and in to something new. So for the near future we'll be playing short mini-campaigns of each system. We'll put some effort in to explaining the rules as we go, our goal is to put together an episode explaining the rules, and then after the story has played itself out we'll have a review of the system. We'll sit down and get everyone's thoughts on the mini-campaign, and the system as a whole.

First up on the chopping block is the Cortex Roleplaying Game, by Margaret Weis Productions. The Cortex system has the beauty of being a universal system. It's been incorporated by its parent company into games such as Serenity (which is no longer in print), Smallville, Leverage and others. It's received a fair amount of praise, and we're excited to give it a try. We'll be headed into a space opera setting, in an adventure that I've entitled "Recovering the Nefertiti."

Since each of these systems is going to be a new experience for us there will likely be some hiccups. We'll probably screw up some of the rules, but that's all part of the fun in learning a new game! We've also decided to throw another couple twists in this season. First off, Brandon is going to be taking a turn behind the GM's screen in a future game. This means I'll get a chance to sit down and assume the role of a player character. (Brandon can exact revenge for all those hard encounters!)

Our biggest twist, however, is how we're doing characters. At least for the first mini campaign (using the Cortex system) I'll be creating the characters. This will give them a chance to be instantly incorporated into the story. For Cortex I made them all gender neutral, and then we pulled names out of a hat. So each of the players got a random character to play. This will provide a fun and exciting challenge for them as role-players, and will likely bring about hilarity for our audience!

As we begin the campaign I'll post a link to our Obsidian Portal page so that you can take a look at character sheets and the like.

I think I speak for us all when I say that we're excited to be returning to gaming, and to the podcast. We hope that you as listeners will enjoy our adventures. As mentioned above, our first play session is scheduled for April 13, 2013. The first episode should be available not too long afterwards. We invite you to subscribe on iTunes, subscribe to the blog page, and follow us on Twitter (@tmbhpodcast)!

We plan to post a few more blogs between now and the first episode of the new season. Until then, stay safe, and be well, and remember you've always got a seat at our table.

Episode 2: Cue the Battle Music!

Here it comes! Its our first ever battle encounter on the podcast! The sounds of battle are in the air, literally! We'll be fighting for our lives aboard the Whippoorwill! Who lives? Who dies? What sort of antics do our would be heroes get in to when the chips are down? Find out in this episode!

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You'll find the battle maps by clicking the read more link!

Episode 1: Let it begin! Let it begin!

Our would be heroes find themselves aboard the airship "Whippoorwill."  Captain Whicket shows them around, and then they find themselves under attack! How will they react?

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Episode 0: Where it really began!

Here it is folks! Its our recap episode where Brigham, Erik, Brandon, Karen and Holly all sat down to recall and retell the most crucial parts of the genesis of our campaign! Listen! Hey listen!

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Meet the players! pt.3 (Machee Crickmore)

Machee Crickmore

Hello! My name is Machee, and I hail from good old Salt Lake Valley, Utah. I have been playing Dungeons & Dragons from the tender age of 10 when my father introduced it to me and my siblings. I learned how to play from an original First Edition Players Handbook, complete with actually rolling for characters and their abilities. We would have bi-monthly dungeons created by my father that we would try to survive, but as we got older, we began to DM for ourselves. I originally played a monk with a ranger as a second, but have branched out since starting to play with 4th Edition rules and characters.

I have been playing RPG games for most of my life, and have recently branched out to computer games by way of Starcraft 2 and Guild Wars 2 because of the influence of my husband and friends. I enjoy playing them quite a bit, but my heart will always belong to D&D because the interaction and stories that are created while playing.

You can follow Machee on Twitter: @strikanywhere

Meet Our Players pt 2 - (The Larsen Family)

Holly Larsen

Hello, all! 

My name is Holly Larsen, the beautiful amazing wonderful and extremely humble wife of Brigham. I am 25 years old and quite boring really. I work full time for an insurance company and am enrolled part time at the local university. I've been a casual gamer most of my life enjoying everything from Monopoly to Sims to World of Warcraft and so on. I enjoy board games, card games, video games, and I will play most anything once (within reason). I have very little experience with table top gaming. I was introduced to D&D back in 2007. I was a member of a large group of players who were all experienced and frankly quite obnoxious. The one who introduced me to the group chose my race, class and even rolled my character for me, so I didn't really get the full experience. I used my being a rogue as an excuse not to speak during role-play and only really participated during combat. I only attended two sessions and assumed I would never play again. But... Here I am! I'm still pretty new to the game, so I ask a lot of questions, but I'm feeling more comfortable every session. Playing with this group has really changed my mind about D&D, and I'm having a blast! I have really enjoyed the social aspect of the game and storytelling. Working together with my friends to write and experience this adventure is my main drive to continue. I also enjoy combat and the way it influences our experience. The last few sessions, I've doodled stick figure versions of our adventures and posted them to twitter. It's been a fun way for me to use the post game creative surge to sarcastically chronicle our adventures. You can follow me @thehollystar, by the way. ;)

That's about it! I hope everyone enjoys our story!

You can follow Holly on Twitter: @thehollystar

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Brigham Larsen

My name is Brigham Larsen, and I am a Dungeons and Dragons virgin. Yes, you read that right! I'm a first time player, but that's ok. As the host of our new podcast this gives me an opportunity to help bring up questions that a veteran player wouldn't bother with. Anyway, enough about that, here's more about me.

Even though I am a first time D&D player, I've been playing games since I was 4 or 5 years old. From the time I first touched a computer or game controller I was hooked on the things! It was an awesome way for me to escape from the boring reality that was rural Idaho.

Since this is my first time playing, my interests for this campaign are just learning the ropes of the game. I want to really understand the game and be able to play effectively. Also, hopefully I can improve my roleplaying skills and help hisssssssing where I should.

You can follow Brigham on Twitter: @scather

Meet Our Players! pt. 1 (The Matthews Family)

Brandon Matthews

Hi there!

My name is Brandon, one of the "would be heroes" in our lovely podcast. I play Thom, the Warlock.

I've been playing D&D since my 4th year of college, in 2004. I was introduced to it by a friend named Magness. He was starting up a new campaign which ended up having 8 players and he wanted some new folks involved. Being the sort who always loved a good Role Playing game, I started reading the Players Handbook and was instantly hooked.

I ended up making a weird character that was a Silver Dragon Sorcerer trapped in humanoid form. Magness and his then-girlfriend/now-wife were really good at homebrewing things, so they came up with a weird set of rules as to what of my Dragon abilities and Sorcerer spells I would get when. Not exactly the best way to start out a new campaign, but we had fun with it. Eventually that group imploded due to sheer size and scheduling difficulties, but over the summer we ran an ongoing weird "Everyone gets a turn at the wheel" campaign for high level characters.  The idea there was that we would have no real ongoing story, just whoever wanted to come up with a brief one-shot adventure would run it for whoever was around that could play. The players would ruthlessly optimize and twink their characters as best they could, but whoever was DMing would equally do their best to make the fights as vicious as possible in an attempt to kill off the characters. As you can imagine, we went through a lot of character creations. Good times.

I would later take part with a much smaller number of folks from that group in an acquatic campaign that lasted a semester, where I played one of my favorite characters, a Mystic Theurge who was Half-Wizard, half-Cleric, had a Pseudodragon companion, and somehow owned a sentient greatsword named Steve. Yeah.

That was my major introduction to tabletop gaming, and while I haven't played much outside of 3.5th and 4th edition D&D, I do enjoy it, especially the creative flexibility you have in telling your story. I hope you enjoy our madcap adventures!

You can follow Brandon on Twitter: @thebmatt

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Karen Matthews

Hi!

I'm Karen, and ?I first got introduced to D&D in the fall of 2007 when a guy that my friends hung out with brought my friends and I into a game. My character that I made then is the sister of the character I play now. Over Thanksgiving break the group had a session and threw my character in the dungeon. Afterward, due to group tension everything sort of imploded. We'd probably rp'd maybe a sessions worth but it was enough to get hooked. I spent a lot of time creating my half moon elf character and was sad to see her go. I'd invested a lot into her back story and it was rough to feel like that work was going down the drain. However my best friend and I decided to keep a journal of her story. In November of 2007 was the last time I played until I started dating my husband. One weekend he invited my to play on Skype with some friends and were were able to make our way through a one shot. I completely admit to being a n00b, but I enjoy playing and facepalming.

You can follow Karen on Twitter: @tanzenmitgott