A to Z of How I Learned to Love D&D: W is for Weird War Stories

I've been role playing since 1991, my sophomore year at the College of Mount Saint Joseph.

Up until about 2008, I roleplayed at least once a week and with that came quite a bit of stress and drama.  It seemed like every month there was some no disagreement or in-fighting.  It wore me down, so I took a sabbatical.  A three year sabbatical.

Now, what I learned in those three years was very important:  1) Family has to come first--always;
2) I am fifty percent, at minimum, of any conflict that I am a part of; 3) No gaming is better than bad gaming--always.

While I didn't game for three years, I still stayed up on the industry, moved from the Story Games I had explored to the Old School Renaissance of DnD retroclones and started heavily following several OSR blogs.

In 2011, I finally went back to gaming, a Pathfinder game, and I enjoyed it.  And I decided to start Cross Planes.

My first post was brainstorming about a campaign idea I had, World War II with magic and monsters--Weirld War Stories (in homage to the DC comic series).  While I ran it for two sessions in DnD 4E, it became my first playtest of DnD Next (I was lucky enough to be and remain a Friends and Family Playtester, thanks to my WotC rep at the Store--yeah, I'm STILL playtesting 5E).

The setting featured an OSI inspired Allied group known as the Witchhammers, who fought Nazis who were importing a giant ape from Skull Island, trained velociraptors from a South American lost world and elvish mages.  They even went to the Moon, where they discovered the Gnomes of Zuriq (basically a race of humanoids with animal heads, who were featured in Egyptain Hieroglyphics), secretly manipulating the human race into a New Age of Magic and fighting an eternal war of Law and Chaos.

The game didn't catch on, but its still the impetus of starting this blog.  And something I'd still like to run.