Atlas stood crouched on the launch pad, his arms holding up the bulky form of a $250 million, 1.5 ton communications satellite. He shifted the weight easily, adjusting his grip on the titanium handholds mounted on the satellite’s protective shroud, then spoke softly into his headset. “Launch Control, this is Atlas. Ready for orbital insertion.” … Read more
In the last issue of the Libertarian Gamer, I laid the ground work for a libertarian campaign set in the classic post-apocalyptic setting known as Gamma World, laying down some campaign guidelines and destroying the world. Now it’s time to rebuild it. Into the Vaults Every Gamma World (Amazon) game worth its salt has vaults — … Read more
In the distant future, Earth will be in ruins. The land will have been ravaged by a horrific assortment of doomsday weapons, from nuclear bombs to genetically engineered super-viruses to hunter-killer nanites. Mutants — both human, animal and things horribly in between — roam the Earth … and consider it home. They compete with the … Read more
In Part 1 of this column, I gave an overview of Monte Cook’s Diamond Throne (Amazon) campaign setting for Arcana Unearthed (Amazon) and talked about the sort of adventures I’d like to run there. In Part 2, I talk about the races and classes I’d use to achieve the goals set out in the first column. One … Read more
Monte Cooke’s Arcana Unearthed (Amazon) is an alternative Players Handbook for Dungeons & Dragons that ditches the game’s time-honored fantasy classes in favor of wholly new classes that contain echoes of their predecessors, but represent something entirely different. It does an excellent job of breaking the fantasy molds, and it’s surprisingly well-suited for a libertarian campaign. … Read more
Reactions to the Libertarian Gamers Project have been largely positive — in the month since I started promoting it, we’ve had 21 members join up, and a few good conversations over at the UncleBear.com forums, where people wanted to know what the heck a “libertarian” was. But there have been a few who’ve been uncomfortable … Read more
In The Libertarian Gamer: Spycraft, Part 1, I discussed the basic outline of the campaign and possible heroic organizations. But what’s a hero without a villain? The Villains Fortunately, when you’re running an espionage game, there are plenty to choose from! The traditional mad dictator, hellbent on world domination via some sort of super weapon, … Read more
I’ve been contemplating running a play-by-email campaign for a while now, and with the launch of the Libertarian Gamers Project I’ve decided to make it a campaign with a libertarian bent. Offline, I’ve got a Dungeons & Dragons campaign (set in the World of Greyhawk) so for the online game I’m looking to run something … Read more
Spycraft (Amazon) is Alderac’s d20-based game of modern espionage. It draws upon the classics of the genre — James Bond, Mission: Impossible, The A Team, Sneakers, Alias — to create a game that’s reminiscent of classic RPGs like James Bond: 007 and Top Secret. By default, the Spycraft source book assumes that the players are … Read more