560 – A.K.A. The Birthday Cake Maneuver

Hey, it worked against Old King Cole! No one ever talks about what happened to Old King Cole AFTER he cut open that pie. It might explain why his reign over his vaguely-Western European nation ended so soon. I think about this stuff too much.


For gamers of a certain age (mine), the following can send chills up your spine: “After being swallowed up by dense mists, you suddenly find yourself in the land of Barovia. In the distance, high on a mountain peak, sits Castle Ravenloft.” After a long absence from D&D, the gothic horror world of Ravenloft is back! I played in a Ravenloft campaign exactly once, but that one time was memorable: we were all turned into living marionettes and were later hunted by packs of werewolves. This was during 2nd Edition, and I was running a psionicist (yeah, I’m THAT player) named Rasag the Incredulous, whose personality, dependability, and speech patterns I based off of Ed Chigliak from Northern Exposure. It was a ton of fun, even though I was the only character not freaked out by being sucked into the Demiplane of Dread.

Tread carefully in the mists,

~Rob