Okay, this will be the final printing of The Scroll for this Millennium (the REAL Millennium anyways), so I thought that rather than the standard ho-hum Scroll that’s been published each month, we should end the Millennium with a bang! I mean a real eye-opener. The kind of newsletter that would bring tears to the eyes of the calloused. Filled with writing meant to inspire the common man to achieve greatness. The kind of message which would elevate all of us to the level of true heroes and win me a Pulitzer!

But in truth that seemed like an awful lot of work so here’s the December 2000 issue. There are a few BIG format changes I thought I’d point out. First of all I finally managed to change the margin settings to get rid of all the wasted sides on the left and right. Thanks to the extra space, I can now expand and expound on all the great gaming ideas and stuff that we all share via the Scroll (or will soon be hopefully). Also, I got rid of the Volume and Issue number since they seem to have no correlation to the current month and year anyway. Like I said, BIG changes.

Also, I’m including a form with this issue that I hope you’ll all be willing to take a moment to fill out. This represents the latest in our attempts to make sure our DOGS roster is complete and updated. Those of you subscribed to the dogsmail egroups list hopefully have already taken care of this online. But for you non-tech savvy folks still taking a horse and carriage to the hat brim factory you work at, you’ll have to drop this into a mailbox or bring it to the next con for us to get this important and vital information into our database.

Okay, since the election results were never officially posted anywhere, I guess it’s about time for those of you who have been holding their breaths all this time to finally learn who will be the new people leading us into the next century. As it turns out Texas Governor George Bush will in fact be the next President of the United States, Dick Cheney will be Vice-President… whoops! Wrong election.

The much more important election that you’ve been wondering about is of course the new DOGS officers. As far as I can remember, this is the first time we actually HAD an election because typically nobody wants to be one. After all it’s work that is never rewarded with anything but the unending barrage of complaining and bickering from a bunch of big crybabies. Uh, no offense.

Rick Ankney will be forging ahead of us as our new President, seconded by Wes Grant as Vice-President. Remaining treasurer and keeping us in the black will be Chris Garrison. Techno wizard extraordinaire, John Barnette, will take over duties as Webmaster. And last but not least; the voice of reason in the storm; a man whose intelligence is only dwarfed by his beauty: Matt Lau will be the editor.

I appreciate your patience in waiting for the results but we had to recount the Florida votes about sixty times. Note: This is actually quite funny because there are two DOGS members currently residing in Florida.

Some of the ideas that were brought up at our first officers meeting were the following:

Annual Adventure Proposal Contest. In order to tap into the collective imaginations and genius of our members we would like to introduce a contest (that will hopefully become an annual event for us). Start thinking of ideas now, because what we’re looking for is the Best Adventure Ideas that our members have to offer. We will select a winner, and give him or her all kinds of accolades and prizes, but the process doesn’t end there. We want to submit the idea to RPGA HQ so that we can get the idea turned into an official adventure scenario.

As part of this program, we would also like to start offering Writing Workshops at our local cons for those who need a little help fleshing out their ideas into full-fledged, ready-to-go, (hopefully) sanctioned events which the RPGA will give you CASH MONEY for! Look for complete details in January’s Scroll.

A New Name For DOGS. In the interest of expanding our club from a "local boys only" club into a giant conglomerate of gamers spreading our influence across the nation, we brought up the idea of changing the name of DOGS from:

Dedicated Oahu Gamers Society, to:

Dedicated Organized Gamers Society.

This in lieu of the fact that we have DOGS members in other states that have asked us about setting up a new chapter of DOGS in their own areas (San Diego, Florida, and possibly Vegas). The idea was met with some controversy on the dogsmail list, so the idea may never get passed. This sounds like one of those things that should be voted on in a real world setting so as not to exclude the online-challenged.

Judge Certification. We’d also like to find out if there’s any interest in conducting the RPGA Official Judge Certification Program at some of the cons, for those who would like to brush up on their DM skills. The certification is not necessary to run sanctioned events, but who couldn’t use a few pointers on how to do a distinctive Scottish accent?

Service Points. As part of the process of running a con, we will begin logging and submitting requests to HQ to award service points to those good folk who volunteer their time to help put the cons together (heck, we’ll even award the neutral and evil guys too).

Location: Hale Moku Rec Center.

Tentative schedule of events:

• Back to the Hills (LC*)
• Cold Feat (LC*)
• Dragons Deep (LC*) [Part 3 to the Dragons Cycle]
• Day of the Dwarf (Two-Round LC*)
  *these events are still using the Second Edition rules; however, the certificates have been updated and will not need conversion.
• Red Alert! Star Trek Diskwars Game (there will be Prizes)
• Andreas Cross will be starting a Babylon 5 miniature campaign.

February 10-11, March 10-11, April 14-15, May 12-13, June 16-17, July 14-15, August 25-26, September 22-23, October 13-14.

Be sure to mark your calendars with a big TBA on each of these dates as we think of really cool Con names for each of these exciting days of gaming.

Rick Ankney, President thunderforge@aol.com

Wes Grant, Vice-President wcgrant@earthlink.net

Chris Garrison, Treasurer cnc@hula.net

John Barnette, Webmaster jbarnette@hawaii.rr.com

Matt Lau, Scribe mattador5@hotmail.com

Last issue I posted a few third edition rules questions in the Scroll to give our members a chance to show off their intellect in a fierce clash of minds. Scott Hantsch was the winner of the grand (and only) prize. Here are the answers to the questions:

1. No. True, summoned creatures may attack immediately when summoned, however the casting time of the spell is "one full round," so the rat will not appear until round two.
2. +7. +1 base attack, +1 size bonus, +3 strength bonus, +1 morale bonus, +1 luck bonus. The bless spell and the bardic ability to inspire courage are both morale bonuses, so they do not stack.
3. Any inflict wound or harm spell will restore lost hit points to a skeleton (or any undead in 3E).
4. False. The only time you need to make a concentration check as a result of damage is if the damage is inflicted "…during the casting of a spell (for spells with a casting time of 1 full round or more)…" or "…by an attack of opportunity or readied attack made in response to the spell being cast (for spells with a casting time of 1 action)."
5. –8/-4. Using two weapons has a normal penalty of –4/-4 (assuming the offhand weapon is not light), however the elf in question does not (and can not) have the exotic weapon feat: bastard sword in order to fight with it one-handed, therefore he is considered non-proficient and suffers an additional –4 penalty.
6. 33. Assuming the cleric has healing as one of his spell domains and a sufficient wisdom score to give him a bonus first-level spell, he can cast 3 cure minor wounds orisons (1 hit point each), and 3 cure light wounds spells (each healing 1d8+2 points of damage).

One of the things I like about 3E is options. Fighters now possess the ability to actually attempt to sneak up on somebody. Also, there are so many cool combat options available now. Trip. Disarm. Bullrush. It’s a plethora of activity instead of the hit-miss-hit-miss-hit-dead math equation that 2E was. So to make sure you’re familiar with all the cool combat maneuvers and stuff, try your hand at this little puzzle:

Here’s the situation. Redgar is walking across a flat, barren plain. Thirty yards ahead of him, three archers with longbows spring up from hiding. Redgar has initiative. Your mission is to make yourself as hard to hit as possible using the options in the combat section of the Player’s Handbook. Assume you have no special feats (like dodge) or equipment (like a wall shield) to aid you. Have fun.

Email your answers to me, the Scribe.