The Icosahedrophilia Podcast has finally reached a number of episodes equal to the number of faces on everybody’s favorite polyhedron, and we celebrate by launching a new story arc called “Feed the Dead”! Originally scheduled for November 1, 2008 and intended as a Hallowe’en session, this adventure got pushed back (due to various scheduling conflicts) to November 15, 2008. Please listen now or subscribe via iTunes. This episode features the following segments:

• The Staging Area: I briefly introduce “Feed the Dead,” but save the recap for …
• The Weather Report: After the players recap our previous adventure for absent comrades, the PCs set sail for a small island based on a conversation Alanso overheard while sabotaging Urlglar’s ship. The journey is interrupted by a mysterious visitor who seems to bring trouble in its wake.
• The Prop Shop: I give credit where credit is due to Keith Baker and Atlas Games.

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The Staging Area

The twentieth episode of Icosahedrophilia marks the beginning of a new story arc, “Feed the Dead,” and also the first time a published adventure module has been dropped into the campaign.

The Weather Report

While most of the PCs were clashing with Urlglar the Vicious and his goblinoid pirates on Karnathi, Alanso Heslock snuck on board Urlglar’s ship and sabotaged it. While aboard, Alanso heard a rumor about an island town that Urlglar and his men might next visit, a town where old men read old books. Thinking this island might hold a clue to the whereabouts of the Book of Life, the PCs decide to visit there next. While en route to the town of Perabandahaan, the Broken Promise received an odd visitor, who identified itself as a research unit of the Qwrth Institute and seemed to bring along trouble—in the form of extradimensional monsters assaulting the boat!

The Prop Shop

The visitor from the Qwrth Institute comes directly from “15 Rounds of Fame,” a drop-in adventure by Eberron creator Keith Baker, published in En Route III: The Road Less Travelled by Atlas Games. This is the first published adventure or scenario that has appeared in the Stormhaven campaign—and so far, it’s also the last, although a few elements of other Stormhaven sessions have been kitbashed from various published adventures.

If you DM for your group and you haven’t downloaded Wizards of the Coast’s Monster Builder, you’re shortchanging yourself. This tool does require a D&D Insider subscription, but it enriches the value of that subscription significantly. Check it out! As a Macintosh user, though, I have to run the Character Builder and Adventure Tools using a Windows emulator, so I devote a short period of this episode’s Prop Shop to discussing the two leading emulators, Parallels Desktop and VMWare Fusion. I own both products; VMWare Fusion worked better on my old MacBook Pro, but Parallels works better on my new MacBook Pro. It’s all about Windows’s DirectX software playing nice with your Mac’s video processor(s).

This episode’s promo spot is for This Just in from GenCon, a podcast that can help you share some of the GenCon excitement even if, like me, you can’t be there.

Of course, we always thank Wizards of the Coast for publishing D&D, D&D Miniatures, and Dungeon Tiles; Mongoose Publishing, for the original Stormhaven setting book; and Nox Arcana and SFXsource for providing our music and special effects. If you enjoy this podcast, please support us by purchasing your D&D books and accessories through our Amazon aStore or RPGNow affiliate link. But most of all, please join us here next time for “Feed the Dead, Part 2″!