Game Day

There comes a point in every expedition to Ravenloft Castle where the stalwart adventurers must seek out a certain Vistani woman for advice … and to have their "Tarokka" (a fantasy version of the Tarot) read. The cards drawn set the objectives of the expedition, and determine where certain random elements -- like the fabled sun sword -- can be found.

We have reached that point. Tonight we will visit the fortuneteller, get our futures told … and the real adventure will begin.

Board games return to the forefront this week as we prepare to play the game of Risk 2210 that got snowed out in March. Risk 2210 is a supercharged version of regular Risk that adds sea and moon colonies,special commander units that allow people to buy and play diplomacy, naval, space, land and nuke themed cards, and is played over the course of five turns. The game's been one of our group favorites since we first playtested it for one of my SCIFI.com reviews, I've already discussed Risk 2210 extensively in a previous column, so I'll refer you there for more Risky goodness.

Our brave adventurers are back in the dwarven stronghold of Khelez-Mar after nearly being consumed by a duegar-built green slime trap in the Obsidian Maze.  The group argued mightily about the retreat, with the dwarves eager to press on and the others stating that a withdrawal to the stronghold was needed to restock and perhaps seek out a trapfinder. In the end, the dwarves reluctantly agreed, with Kull assigned to seek out the potential new recruit at one of the stronghold's taverns.

It was a bitter-sweet game day on Friday as Paizo Publishing and Wizards of the Coast announced Dragon and Dungeon magazines would cease publication after Wizards pulled the license to publish the books from Paizo. Since they didn't give it to anyone else, this means that the magazines will cease publication in August with Dragon #359 and Dungeon #150.

This week's Game Day sees us returning to role-playing with Khelez-Mar: The Dwarven Imperative. If memory serves, our last adventure saw the dwarves at the cusp of entering the Obsidian Maze, a sprawling subterranean dungeon in the Drachensgrab Hills of the Pomarj in the World of Greyhawk. It's been years since our campaign ventured back into one of Greyhawk's largest death traps, and the last expedition was run by me. I'm looking forward to seeing what our current game master, Evil Genius, does with the old dungeon.

Yesterday was too frantic to write a proper Game Day column, but The Order of the Stick Adventure Game was too much fun not to write about.

Technically, there's no Game Day for me this week -- while the guys are getting together for some Battletech, I'll be joining some friends from work for a Tivo-fueled Battlestar Galactica marathon. I don't know if we can get caught up in one night … but we're going to try.

At some point I want to do a few formal "No Game Day" posts, directly inspired by Berin Kinsman's posts of the same name, for these weeks when I can't play. I've even got Paranoia XP sitting next to me as I write this, in anticipation of doing exactly that.

Despite having written Game Day columns the last two weeks, I haven't actually played much. Two weeks ago I was sidelined by pink eye, while last week a March snowstorm destroyed our plans to conquer the world with Risk 2210. This week it's raining, but unless the Delaware and Lehigh Rivers rise up to devour Easton again, we'll be gaming.

Game Day may be cancelled due to snow -- freaking Pennsylvania spring weather -- but that doesn't mean we can't still dream of what might have been.