ABOUT

Many years ago I had a blog about a mod I was working on for Neverwinter Nights 2, a mod that never saw the light of day—though bits of it lived on in virtual terrain I donated to a persistent world. The mod was to be based on Mysteries of the Moonsea, a Forgotten Realms campaign book by Thomas Reid, Sean Reynolds, Darrin Drader, and Will Upchurch. The Moonsea region had interested me since I played Pool of Radiance as a child, and certain things about it—the grime, the forlorn landscapes, some relative flatness—connected it in my mind with the part of Pennsylvania, near Lake Erie, where I grew up.

I made the mistake of selling off all my D&D 3.5 books after 4th Edition came out and before I made another, bigger mistake in deciding to go to law school. For a time, I mostly lost interest in tabletop D&D, becoming more interested in digital adaptations of its rulesets, tabletop miniatures, and board games. But over the last few years, I’ve discovered the joys of solo RPGing. I tried doing D&D solo with 5E for a while, but I found that 5E flattened the joys of simulation and customization. The place to go for those things, I knew, was 3.5.

Repurchasing batches of books sold years ago is a strange experience—frustrating, costly, nostalgic. One of the first of the old friends to return to my shelf was Mysteries of the Moonsea. After several abortive campaigns with other parties and modules, I created four characters to take to the Moonsea and beyond, using the old campaign book. And I decided to do more than just fully imagine them—I’d write about them and the stories that emerged, hoping this would make it harder to abandon them. I’ve decided to share their progress here, and I hope to update the blog at least once a tenday with their stories—as well as bits and pieces of gameplay, maps, solo rules, and so on.