A start and an explanation.

This is my first attempt at a blog.  This is the place were I will blog about my efforts to run a Savage Worlds: Beasts and Barbarians game and a Crypts and Things game.  In the coming weeks, I will be running a Savage Worlds: Beasts and Barbarians game and this will be were I display the details of the game and a general game log.  I really don't know what the hell I am doing but hopefully the quality of this blog will continue to grow as time goes on.  I hope to run a Crypts and Things campaign as well.

Why would I want to run Savage Worlds: Beasts and Barbarians or Crypts and Things instead of Pathfinder? Well, I like Pathfinder and I have run it.  I also own several of their supplements.  When you get right down to it, I would rather play Pathfinder than run it.  It is great game and gives the characters a HUGE amount of ways to customize and maximize your character.  That being said, I found it to cumbersome to run once you get into the higher levels.   The last time I ran, the characters were all about 9th level and we had this massive hour long (in real time) battle with a very nasty half demon/half something else with several levels of cleric and her minions.  When it was finally over, one of the players said "That was tedious."  He was right.  It was.  I had a lot more fun running my Castles and Crusades game (a D20 rules light variant) than I did running Pathfinder.  From that point on, I decided that the game that I wanted to run would use rule light systems such as Castles and Crusades, Savage Worlds and Crypts and Things.  Another reason that I decided not to use Pathfinder was that it wasn't really designed for the type of campaign that I wanted to run.  A campaign where magic wasn't common place.  Moreover, I wanted to run a campaign where magic was alien and flat out dangerous.  A typical Pathfinder game isn't like that.  Savage Worlds: Beasts and Barbarians or Crypts and Things are JUST like that.  

I just have a love of stories of Conan, Kull, Bran Mak Morn, Solomon Kane where the practitioners of magic had typically done horrible and unspeakable things to gain their powers and who were, by the very nature, irredeemably evil.  I loved Robert E. Howard's view of the universe which was both darkly romantice and grim at the same time.  I also love the stories of H.P. Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith  as well where alien beings pass as gods and mankind is just a spec of dust floating in an empty void.  I wanted combine all of this stuff into campaign where the gods, if they even existed at all, have long ago abandoned humanity.  Where life is short and brutal but a good sword arm can gain you wealth, power and, in some rare cases, honor and were magic is something not meant to be wielded by mortal men...at least not without a cost.  Hopefully I can accomplish this.