Regreting the Passing of M.A.R. Barker

I am a bit late with this as he passed  March 16th. One of the greats of the early years, his Empire of the Petal Throne is still a most playable game, and a lot more clearly written than original D&D which was the alternative at the time (although I never liked his let's randomly roll for spells). We have him to thank for one of the first introductions of skills to the game. His system for this is still better than a lot of implementations done today. I found the night I spent with M.A.R. Barker at a Chinese Restaurant more memorable than the game of Rail Baron I played with Gary Gygax.

A gaming session that will live in infamy (rant)

Well my character yesterday successfully proved that you can die in fourth edition D&D, if the dragon breaths on you twice in the same round. However,  more egregious than that was watching one cowardly player decided that even though he was not was not even bloodied yet it was time to run. If anyone needed an example of what morale is they only needed to watch what happened next, as with the exception of one brave dragonborn (as he pointed out, in the new Forgotten Realms dragonborn HATE dragons)  the rest of the party decided that the smart more was to run. This left the bloodied dragon holding the field with a mere 60 hit points left. The fact that the encounter ended at the map edge in typical 4 edition fashion made the running away alot more succesful than it would have been in an old school game. Even so, the wizard nearly bought the farm as well , as the cowardly player opened the portcullis the wizard had been firing magic missles from behind to make his escape. This allowed the dragon to swoop down on the next turnand nearly finish the wizard as well . If had not been for the late rememberance of a "wizards escape" power and a DM that allowed take backs the wizard would have died as well. Of course the wizard used his teleport five squares to leave the map. As my character's corpse is branded with it's new slave tattoo,  my character invokes the infernal powers of the Internet (think Servilla in the TV series ROME episode Death Mask ) to curse the cowardly player's character forever (or the next three death saving throws, which ever comes first).

Cowardice has a new name and it is "HUG BOT Mach 2"