Looking for some low level brutes for your early campaign PC’s to rack up XP? Wolves and giant centipedes are a great place to start. I painted the wolf with standard Game Color Vallejo paints, then hit them with Army Painter stains. The centipede was done with Speed Paints instead. Two different styles, but both are done relatively quickly and easily with decent results.

I am in a three-week gap in my gaming right now, during which I find myself thinking about other games. But the question is, am I growing tired of fantasy gaming, of Dungeons & Dragons, or of the current campaign? I’ve been running fantasy for years, but I do not feel myself being particularly drawn to another genre. I like 5E, and I do not feel particularly excited about the new edition, not because of some rules change but the possible over-monetization that Hasboro may yet try to pull off. Plus I don’t feel terribly inclined to give them more money. I could be fairly easily talked into Pathfinder or a similarly “fantasy heartbreaker” like Castles & Crusades or Blood & Treasure. I even have some games that are a little farther afield like The Dark Eye and Ruin Masters. Different rules can point gameplay in a different direction, offer a different “universe” with new and unfamiliar elements, etc.

I might also just need to change up the campaign. The plot, such as it is, has been pretty much self-contained to my own storytelling and plots of my own creation. I cribbed the foundation of “The Hunger” from a post on the Angry DM’s blog, but went off in my own direction. But the campaign is lacking some elements, including detailed backstories and agendae for the PC’s. For the most part they are underdeveloped, and I sense that the cause of that is as much my fault as anyone else’s.

So maybe the first step is trying to see if my players are interested in exploring their own PC’s, the second is considering starting a new campaign in 5E, or finally pitch the idea of doing something totally different and doing a different kind of campaign from the jump.

We shall see. Comments welcome.