Kingbeast's Lair

This page contains a list of some of my favorite RPG games, campaigns, and characters.

• Overall Favorite RPG System – Hero – Over the years I would grow very fond of this system and the campaigns that I created using it. Nearly all of my favorite campaigns were run with Hero. It also played a key role in my leisure time life (as described above).
• Favorite D&D Campaign – Temple Of Elemental Evil – What can I say…my players love dungeon crawls. I remember many of these session. One that comes to mind had to do with a druid NPC. The druid could cast Balance which tells the amount of good or evil in a given region. As the PC start to clear out the dungeon the amount of evil in the area starts to lessen. Yeah! Just after they start making great progress they let loose the evil demi-god and the scale jumps back to the evil side. PING!
• Favorite Heroic Hero Campaign – Star Aria – After a lot of deliberation the ballots have been collected and we have a new winner! My Star Aria campaign has now surpassed Precinct 13 as my Favorite Heroic Hero Campaign. Star Aria is a Star Hero campaign set in my own megaverse that ran for 3 years (i.e. from 2004 through 2007). There are several things that make this campaign really stand out as a winner. First is the way that the plot unfolded. There was a strong start, several great climaxes in the center, and a wonderful conclusion. I think the end of this campaign was literally the best I have ever run. Looking back I think this is because I set out from the start to have a campaign ending. That seems like a simple thing but I had really not done it to this degree in the past. Literally the entire length of the campaign I was building to the conclusion. Another reason for the success of the campaign was of course the players and their characters. Don ran the passionate cybernetic miner Mack. Mack (aka TOLARM) might be one of my favorite PC Don has ever run in one of my campaigns and he has played in a lot of them. Steve played the bio-computer enhanced teen named Stooz. Steve also introduced the NPC Gilby Toren who turned out to be a great foil for Stooz and a really fun character for me to play. Brian ran the bounty hunter/scientist/love lost character Hannibal. I think Hannibal was one of my favorite Star Aria characters because I could so easily write stories for him. Great stuff. Jim played the all business psi Lena. Great character with a past that set the tone for psi in the entire campaign. Finally there was the pilot of their ship Captain Dave. Captain Dave took his job as Captain of The Horny Hog seriously and was always there when you needed the eye shot off a gnat. If you want to get details on the campaign head over to the Star Aria site at this URL.
• Favorite Super-Heroic Hero Campaign – The Body Shop – I ran a campaign that involved a team of superheroes in the Washington DC area. The memorable PC included Vandal (a sort of superhero “tagger”), Granite (a brick with smarts), Godstalker (a MA), and G.I.M. (an electrical PC who could turn into a ball of energy). The PC decided to open up a gym that would cater to super types. The place was an instant hit and became the focal point of many adventures. Really fun games with a fantastic group of players.
• Favorite Gaming Convention – DunDraCon – Now touted as the longest running convention in the country DunDraCon is a Bay Area institution for gamers. My brother and I started going YEARS ago. We actually attended DunDraCon IV. In 2003 they are holding DunDraCon XXVII. Ouch…I think I am dating myself. 😉 This convention has a great assortment of games and a HUGE Hero presence. One of my favorite events of the entire convention is the Hero seminar. Even now all of the Hero guru meet at DunDraCon to talk about their favorite game. Fun stuff.
• Favorite Heroic Hero PC – Hank Sweet – As I mentioned above my favorite Heroic level Hero character is Hank Sweet. Here is a sheet with all the details.
• Favorite Super-Heroic Hero PC – Green Ghost – My favorite Super Heroic level Hero character is known as the Green Ghost. I used him in three different campaigns. He accumulated quite a lot of experience for a 100 Base plus 100 Disadvantages based PC. Here is the sheet.
• Favorite D&D PC – Seth O’Toole – Seth was created for a D&D campaign run by Debbie Kessler at Poly on February 10th, 1985. Seth was a magic user who specialized in summoning. Even though Seth only reached the 6th level his exploits were very memorable. He hung around with a cleric known as Jino-Ti (played by Ray Loresto). Ray and I had a blast with these PC. Although other players would change around us Seth and Jino seemed to always end up together on top. Ray and I got so into these characters that we devised code phrases that we could use to relay the results of detections between our characters during a normal conversation! Our party of specialized PC were known as “Curse Busters” because of a penchant we had for solving curses and combating undead. I also came up with a set of dungeon safety guidelines called “Seth’s Rules of Dungeoneering”. These included rules like never running blindly into a dungeon and always making sure a path out of the dungeon is available. Seth liked to hang out at a bar called The Gargoyle’s Lair in a town known as Rhoona. When he eventually died it was in the form of a goblin. Playing Seth as the goblin, Drig, was tons of fun. We assaulted a band of elvish merchants and won! It was really neat. Some of the memorable things that happened around Seth include his near permanent unseen servants, his various familiars (a monkey known as Quik and a fire bat known as Screech), and a large wraith like undead known as Ingrid. Here is a scan of one of the final sheets for Seth.