Freelance Blogging

I have started a new campaign with the release of 5th edition and in keeping with the return of the rules to its legendary roots I decided to do the campaign in The Forgotten Realms. I love Faerun and all the history and iconic feel of The Forgotten Realms. I also love the TON of source material available for running a campaign in this world. Maybe that makes me one of those “lazy” DM’s I hear about online, but that’s not how I see it. I STILL have lots of work to do to place the characters in the world and flesh out locations and NPC’s.

One of the things I decided to do as we began exploring Faerun was to provide the players with bits of information from the campaign book to give them the background, the feel, and the history of Faerun. I have been doing a series of emails with quotes taken directly from the campaign book.

This is the first one I sent out:

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So the last time I ran a campaign of any length in D&D was with 3.5 edition rules and in the Eberron campaign setting. I started the group in Sharn which is the largest city on the main continent of Khorvaire. We played for several months before we ran out of steam, but I got the group up to 3rd level. We were in the Mournland when we stopped playing having just stymied the evil plans of the Emerald Claw.

I really like the 3.5 rule set, it is skill and feat heavy with great combat rules. The Eberron campaign setting came out about the same time as the 3rd edition rules and I really liked the gritty, steam-punk feel. It had some truly epic components as well as lots of wonderful small details.

The image in this post shows a great cross section of life in Sharn at an outdoor market place.

I first played D&D in 6th grade… that was a long time ago. My buddy, Jeff Dennis, and I spent a lot of time imagining, talking about, and playing this game. After middle school I moved on to other games like Traveller, and Villains & Vigilantes. However, I keep coming back to my first love; Dungeons & Dragons. When 2nd edition came out I bought all those books, when 3.5 came out I bought all of those book too. When 4th edition came out, well, I bought a few of those books. Now here we are with 5th edition and it may be the best yet.

Another of my favorite hobbies is writing. It is just a hobby and I claim no skill at it, but I enjoy it and sometimes use what I write in the table-top role playing games I so enjoy.

I am in the midst of writing a short story based on the game Shadowrun. Shadowrun is a cyberpunk game with magic added in. This makes for a wonderful mix which allows for a lot of different play styles and stories. More information about the game can be found at Shadowrun Universe.

I’ve decided to post the first half of the story here just for the sake of getting myself published even if I am writer, editor and publisher. I guess that is the beauty if the Internet.

So here goes and please feel free to critique, criticize and comment. If you think it sucks please say so but also let me know why you think it sucks.

Thanks,

Mark

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Hi everybody!

As I continue working on learning WordPress I also wanted to point to some of my previous web development work.

This year I designed and developed a web site from scratch: http://www.munsondev.com/trav/. I designed this site mainly to test and sharpen my skills but I also wanted to use it to support a table-top RPG called Traveller (yes it has two L’s). Traveller is a far-future science fiction role playing game that has a long history. I first played this game when I was living in Houston, TX during high-school (no, I won’t say what year that was). If you want to learn more about Traveller please visit my site, there are links to the Traveller wiki and other informative sites.

When I say I developed the site from scratch what I mean is that I didn’t use any Content Management Systems like WordPress or other site building software. I wrote the code myself. I used HTML, CSS, PHP and MySQL to build the site. I am still working on more content for the site and hope to add the new pages in the next month or so.

Development takes time; imagining and designing the concepts, gathering images and information, writing and testing the code, re-writing and retesting, etc. I have no professional experience with these skills, I did learn some of the basics in college but most of what you will see on my Traveller site is self-taught.

One of the most important things I have learned over the years is that I can learn.

Mark

I am using lynda.com for their great training videos about WordPress and many other subjects.

Mark

Thanks for stopping by and welcome to my new blog!

I’ve started my education about content management software by exploring WordPress.

One of the first steps in this experience is to create a blog post and that is what I am doing now.

As I learn more about this CMS I will add more content and more posts as well . I am going to try to keep writing as much as I can since this is good practice and helps me figure out what I want to do and say with my new site.

I am going to make this first post short since I am excited to keep learning more about WordPress and CMS’s (content management systems) in general.

If you’d like to be kept updated with my posts “Like” this post or subscribe to my blog.

 

Thanks,

Mark