An Introduction is in order

   Greetings and welcome all who come to peruse my random thoughts on  the OSR and RPGs in general. I am still fairly new to the community but have been an avid collector of TSR products, overall nerd,  and believer in the spirit of the OSR for as long as I have played in RPGs(rulings not rules).

    I have been a DM of 3/3.5 D&D since I was the impressionable age of 13 when I first found online the free introductory adventure on the WOTC website, Into the darkness, which I ran for some friends right out the gate modifying the few NPCs with traits of people we all knew well much to every ones delight. From that point on I was hooked and have been a DM ever since. I asked my dad to get me the introductory box to D&D 3rd edition but after he spoke with the comic book store he opted to get me the actual players guide and manual, spending more then I expected him to much to my surprise on a new hobby, knowing I would quickly out grow the simple box set and set me on my path that has lasted the rest of my life. That Christmas my parents got me the monster manual and I was set for a great many years running adventures for my friends right up until I moved away after college.

   Until recently this has worked well for me but I always felt things were more convoluted then necessary with the rules. I have home brewed and house rules that I have ran with for many years but things have still felt off. Then I had the good luck and pleasure of attending my first gaming convention with my brother in law in November, U-Con, and met Ryan Thompson of Gamers and Grognards who I had read his blog on several occasions before and introduced me to my first game of Swords & Wizardry. I finally found what was missing! This game has a simple but robust rule set but was still everything I loved of D&D. After grabbing the freely available complete rules I knew where the path was taking me and down the rabbit hole I went, and into the OSR family I was born. Since then I have had the pleasure of meeting several other like minded people with in the community who have been both very welcoming and exceptionally helpful.

   I hope this blog will serve as a useful resource to not only my growing home brew world of Aeril but to all of you who wander this way looking for charts, tables, resources, and ideas for your games as well. This will not be a blog where I get on a podium and preach about any particular rule set or complain about things within the hobby of role-playing, should I deviate from this feel free to call me on it!

   Currently my world of Aeril is in its design infancy but it has a group of players currently running through it helping to grow. It will play host to places and names some of you may be familiar with as I am a avid collector of older TSR modules as well as areas and adventures I have designed over the years but never got the chance to fully play with in my previous campaigns. So come with me on this journey as I leave behind my past as a 17 year veteran of the 3/3.5 era of gaming and travel to a simpler time of high fantasy and grand adventure.