Today we’re joined by ImmortalDM, who is in fact not the DM of Myyth Realm Legacy but a player! Read our interview to find out why we’re interviewing him and also of course to discover the pure-awesomeness that is Myyth Realm Legacy.
I should start by clarifying that I am a player in the Myyth Realm: Legacy campaign (I play Chaplain Nathanial Creed, who is awesome). MdBLimited is the Dungeon Master for this fantastic series of adventures. I had been using the Obsidian Portal for my own campaign when Legacy started up, so I asked MdBLimited if he was interested in having me webmaster a site for him. The site started off rather rudimentary; I was basically transcribing information that MdBLimited was sending out in .pdf documents and organizing it on the site. Once the custom CSS function was added to OP, I added a custom background and invited MdBLimited to take a look. From there, things just took off.
MdBLimited has an outstanding ability with graphic design, so he started sending me graphic after graphic. As we progressed, we wanted to do more and more complicated coding so I turned to the OP community for help. I am impressed by the helpfulness and kindness of the people in this community. So, thank you all for bringing our role playing experience to a whole new level! We’re through the looking glass here, people.
First off, feel free to tell us about the person behind the GM screen. Where are you from? What do you do both aside from gaming? Alter Ego’s? Wife and kids? Where can we find you on the internet? Let us know if you feel so inclined!
MdBLimited and I grew up together in a small Northern Minnesota town of less than 5,000 people. We were 8 and 9 when we started playing D&D for the first time 27 years ago. We played together until after high school when we both ended up in the military. D&D continues to be our primary hobby. Outside of D&D my favorite thing to do is spend time with my gamer wife and my 5-year-old son. Somehow, I manage to fit in a little time for Skyrim in now and then, too! MdBLimited is also a family man with a wife and two beautiful daughters with whom he spends the majority of his free time.
Tell us about Myyth Realm Legacy in a nutshell. How did it come to be?
Myyth Realm: Legacy is a follow up campaign to the original Myyth Realm campaign, which ran from 2004 to 2008. Legacy started in 2011 and continues three hundred years after the original campaign. It is a medieval-themed epic fantasy setting reminiscent of Dark Ages Europe where advances, both magical and mundane, of past generations have been lost, plunging the survivors into a time of fear, mysticism, and superstition.
How regularly do you play, and where do you play?
We play once every three months. Players converge on Milwaukee from both Minnesota and Illinois. The quality of the game play certainly makes up for the rarity of the sessions. We get a heck of a lot of bang for our buck.
You guys are playing D&D 3.5, is there any reason why you’ve not made the jump to Pathfinder?
Some of us would like to switch over to Pathfinder. In fact, one of the players is currently running Rise of the Runelords (I happen to play in that one as well). MdBLimited is just more comfortable with the 3.5 system and is not interested in buying any new materials. The storyline in Legacy is so amazing that the rule set we use is not so important to the players. When we find problems, we just make house rules to overcome them.
Do you have any interest in the upcoming D&DNext?
No. No one in the group seems interested in this. Maybe we are all just set in our ways at this point. The 3.5 or Pathfinder rules make sense to us, so I doubt we’ll ever switch again. Once THAC0 went away, we knew that we had all we would ever need!
Aside from D&D, do you play/run any other systems or settings often? How did you get into gaming?
Yes, I play in Geekdad’s Pathfinder campaign. My last D&D campaign (Blood Line) ended a year ago so now I am planning to start a World of Darkness campaign. After 27 years of D&D, I’m ready for something different. It’s going to be set in Minneapolis and will be about a monster-hunting cell that operates there. It will be interesting to see how everyone takes rolling nothing but d10s!
How long have you known your players? How long has your group been together?
MdBLimited and I have been friends for about 30 years. The rest of the group we have known for more than 20 years. We all grew up in that same small town with the exception of Bashaer. Bashaer and I served together in the Marine Corps and when I brought him home on leave one winter he fit right into our group. He’s been with us ever since. We all credit D&D with keeping us together for so long. It has truly been the catalyst for our continuing friendships. For some reason people will make more of an effort to attend a D&D session than they will for just a simple get together. It has worked for us anyway.
Are you new to Obsidian Portal? If so, what brought you to the site?
I’ve been with Obsidian Portal since 2011. I heard about it on a “DM Guys” podcast so thought I would check it out. I took my first shot at a campaign site with the Blood Line campaign which I was DMing at the time. I was immediately sold on the benefits of OP and purchased an ascendant membership soon after signing up.
How does Obsidian Portal help you the most? Do your players get involved on the wiki or is it tough to pull them in and participate?
Since we live in three different states, the Obsidian Portal has been invaluable for sharing information. Participation varies widely between players, but everyone uses it to some extent. MdBLimited gives out XP incentives for site participation so I think that helps out a lot. We also came up with a “Hidden Goblin” contest that we run between every session. I code an Easter egg into the site somewhere and then MdBLimited sends out a clue as to where it is. Whoever finds it wins an XP prize. Obviously, I am excluded from the competition but I get an XP retainer for maintaining the website between each session.
The Team Feats and skill tricks are really cool additions to the game, are those your own house rules or optional 3e rules I’ve just never seen before?
The skill tricks are from the “Complete Scoundrel” D&D 3.5 supplement. There are team feat rules in both Pathfinder and D&D 3.5, but the ones in our house rules were created by MdBLimited and Geekdad.
Your wiki is absurdly customized and awesome, is that all your handiwork?
Thank you! Everything you see on the site is something I learned from someone in the community. I had no experience with this stuff prior to Obsidian Portal. The people in this community were very helpful and so willing to share their knowledge. That is really what impressed me. Some of this coding stuff is hard to figure out, yet I never ran into anyone who was unwilling to share how they did something. In my opinion, this is the best community on the internet. I would expect no less from a bunch of role-players!
What would you say the single biggest highlight from your game has been so far?
There have been so many highlights. The way our rogue, Viktor, interacts with the dwarven knight, Moradin, is hilarious. One time our wizard, Tudor, was nearly killed by a school of tiny jellyfish- which was pretty entertaining in hindsight. But if I have to pick one thing, I would have to say that it was the time that we almost lost our halfling outrider, Rykson. We were exploring a cavern that could only be accessed by moving through a treacherous, frigid underground river. We all made it into the cavern, one at a time, using a Ring of Waterbreathing and then sent the ring back to the group via a sack tied to a rope.
To get back out of the cavern, we planned to use the same technique but we hit a snag, so to speak. Everyone was out except for Rykson. While the ring was on its way back to him, the sack got caught on a rock and the ring fell out. There was no way for us to reach Rykson and no way he could make it back without the ring. So, as players, we argued with MdBLimited that, due to the strong current, there must be some chance that the ring would would be swept into the cavern and at least a small chance that Rykson would find it. MdBLimited agreed, but it was basically a “god-call” situation. Rykson’s player, Geekdad, picked up the percentage dice, looked at each of us as if it were for the last time and then let the dice fly. That moment seemed to move in slow motion. When the dice finally stopped moving they displayed to us a double aught. Everyone just lost it at that point. It was simply awesome. Here’s the adventure log!
I see you have lots of items, do your players use them regularly?
Oh yeah, just about every item on there is in use. The Crimson Chainmail listed first is used by my own character because I lost my dang half-plate when the Albatross sunk. What I really like about the items page is that there is a history of items. Expendable items that are used, or items that are lost, are denoted by a little banner, and the description section gives more details about what happened to the item.
Okay, before we get out of here, give us some of your best GM’ing pearls of wisdom.
Since I’m speaking as a player for Myyth Realm: Legacy, here is a pearl of player wisdom: Bad things happening to your character are not necessarily bad for the game. I once had a charismatic wizard who was taken as an unholy servant to a dracolich, becoming horribly disfigured in the process (lost 5 CON as well). It was just awesome for the story, and it made that character my favorite ever. Your character’s follies can be just as memorable as your character’s successes, sometimes even more so. Embrace them and make them an epic part of the campaign!
Thank you for this great honor!
That’s it for this month! Be sure to keep the suggestions coming for Campaigns of the Month, I was contacted via email to check this one out. Send me your suggestions any way you like – twitter, facebook, forums, email, or otherwise! See you next month!
