Nuketown

Role-Playing Games

Game Day: Return to the Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth

Posted in by Kenneth Newquist on Fri, 03/05/2010 - 9:13am

After many months away from the game, my group is returning to Dungeons & Dragond 3rd Edition for an old school dungeon crawl through the Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth using the D&D 3.5 version released in 2007.

I've got mixed feelings about this.

While I owned the Lost Caverns as a kid and read through it cover to cover several times, I never had a chance to run it. Moreover, with this module we're going to continue what we started with our White Plume Mountain run by travelling back into our D&D campaign's history to the founding of the Blackrazor Guild. In White Plume Mountain, guild leader Brant Bladescream recovered the infamous soul-devouring sword Blackrazor (but lost most of his adventuring companions in the process). In The Lost Caverns, he's taking a new band of heroes into the depths of an infamous dungeon in search of even more powerful magical relics.

Fantasy Flight Games Announces Deathwatch RPG

Posted in by Kenneth Newquist on Sat, 02/27/2010 - 9:34am

Fantasy Flight Games has announced the Deathwatch Role-Playing Game, the much-anticipated third core rule book for Warhammer 40k. Players take on the role of Deathwatch Marines fighting a desperate war to restore Imperial oversight of the Jericho Reach. Space Marines are one of the most iconic aspects of the 40K universe, and I know a lot of people have been eager to get their hands on this sort of source book.

The book will use the same ruleset as Dark Heresy and Rogue Trader (so no Warhammer 3rd Edition-style-boxed sets here). It looks to be a more focused game; everyone plays some sort of Space Marine, each an elite warrior drawn from the ranks of Space Marine chapters across the galaxy.

I'm reading through Rogue Trader now, and while I think I prefer its mercantile mix of all-or-nothing trade gambles, utterly self-confident crew, and deep space horrors, Deathwatch may be a game I need to add to my library. If nothing else, I'm sure I could get my gaming group to play a one shot or two.

The Griffin's Crier Re-launched

Posted in by Kenneth Newquist on Fri, 02/26/2010 - 11:53am

The redesigned version of the Griffin's Crier, my gaming group's web site, is now up and running -- you can check it out at www.griffcrier.com. The GriffCrier has been around for more than a decade; our Blackrazor Guild gaming group first launched the site in 1998 as an archive for our World of Greyhawk campaign. Over time, our gaming group's evolved and added new web apps -- we now have a dedicated forum for in and out of game conversations, the archival D&D content has been moved to a Greyhawk wiki, and we've spawned several additional blogs and wikis in support of the other RPGs we play

Over time, the role of the Griffin's Crier diminished, and it was time to bring it back. Four of us are blogging now, and even more are using Twitter. We've got two campaign blogs and two corresponding wikis, all of which are producing RSS. In recent years, the home page of the Crier had been static as content was updated elsewhere; I wanted to change that by pulling in headlines from across the Blackrazor blogosphere.

Gamer Traveler: Games & Travel Blog Carnival Roundup

Posted in by Kenneth Newquist on Wed, 02/17/2010 - 7:28am

Games & Travel Blog CarnivalThe Gamer Traveler has posted a round up of the "Games & Travel" blog carnival from January 2010. This was a cool topic, and one I wish I'd taken the time to participate in (perhaps I will, retroactively).

While I think many campaigns tend to hand-wave away travel (perhaps after one too many random wilderness encounters during their Advanced Dungeons & Dragons days) it can make for some great adventures. Heck, one of our most memorable Star Wars campaign arcs involved our heroes bouncing out of hyperspace into a proto-star nebula. They barely escaped the nebula with their lives, the ship's outer hull having been melted into what we're now calling "star forged armor".

GameCryer.com: Star Wars: The Essential Atlas

Posted in by Kenneth Newquist on Sat, 02/06/2010 - 11:25am

The Essential AtlasMy review of Star Wars: The Essential Atlas is up at GameCryer.com. While not an official source book for Star Wars: Saga Edition, I strongly recommend that game master's at least check it out.

This book has extensive maps of the entire Star Wars galaxy, including the Deep Core, Core, Colonies, Inner Rim, Outer Rim, and other major regions, as well as time line maps depicting major events like the Mandalorian Wars, Jedi Civil War, the Clone Wars, and the plots of all six movies. Great stuff and an excellent in-game reference to give players a sense of the galaxy's scale.

Star Wars Roundup: Saga Edition Cancelled, Sniper Feat, Travel in Star Wars

Posted in by Kenneth Newquist on Wed, 02/03/2010 - 5:07pm

Without a doubt, the big news Star Wars this month is the announcement that Wizards of the Coast is not renewing its Star Wars license and is ending the Star Wars: Saga Edition RPG and Star Wars Miniatures product lines. It's a sad day for Star Wars gamers but I suspect that the game will continue to have a small but fierce following in coming years, just like West End's d6 Star Wars does.

In happier news, Galaxy of Intrigue was released in late January, and we have one more source book -- The Unknown Regions -- before the end of the line

Thoughts on the end of Star Wars: Saga Edition

Posted in by Kenneth Newquist on Sun, 01/31/2010 - 11:22am

Some suspected it, but now it's official: Wizards of the Coast is dropping the Star Wars license, and with it, the Star Wars: Saga Edition role-playing game and its counterpart, the Star Wars Miniatures Game.

It seemed likely that this would happen sooner or later once D&D 4E was released; I'm sure it's difficult for Wizards of the Coast to justify continued research and development on two rule sets (namely Star Wars and Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition). Saga Edition was a useful testbed for Wizards when they were trying out new ideas for 4E, but its clear that they've decided to go in a very different direction with D&D and future RPGs.

Star Wars just wasn't part of the picture. As a result, Galaxy of Intrigue and The Unknown Regions will be the last two books in the series.

Gamers Helping Haiti

Posted in by Kenneth Newquist on Fri, 01/29/2010 - 7:27am

OneBookShelf, the company that runs the virtual RPG storefronts DriveThruRPG and RPGNow, is offering a $20 mega bundle as a fundraiser to help the survivors of the Haiti earthquake. Donate $20 to Doctors without Borders through the web site, and you'll receive $1,500+ worth of PDFs. View complete list of products in the bundle, broken down by company. The bundle sale ends January 31, 2010.

Embrace Nature with D&D 4E's Primal Power

Posted in by Jonkga on Tue, 01/26/2010 - 5:30am

WotC’s supplement,Primal Power: Options for Barbarians, Druids, Shamans, and Wardens  presents expanded choices for each of the classes that draw power from the Primal Power Source.

It offers new possibilities for these classes in the same way that the books Divine Power, Arcane Power, andMartial Powerdid for their respective classes.

Elemental Chaos awaits in D&D 4E's The Plane Below

Posted in by Kenneth Newquist on Mon, 01/25/2010 - 6:51pm

When I ran my 4E D&D playtest campaign, I decided to make it larger than life. That meant going planer. The churning unpredictability of the planes, the potential for exotic locations, the alienness of its inhabitants calls to my imagination. The Plane Below: Secrets of the Elemental Chaos, which details 4E's churning elemental wastes, is just my cup of tea. Or it would be if it had retained more of the 3E cosmology. As is it's more like a cup of chia; worth a sip, but not as satisfying as I'd hoped.

Arthur Dent beverage metaphors aside, The Plane Below is a 159-page source book that builds on the foundation laid down by last year's The Manual of the Planes. The Elemental Chaos is 4th Edition's catch-all planar setting for D&D's traditional elemental planes, as well as the Nine Hells, the Abyss, and the rest of the rest of the D&D cosmology that isn't the Astral Plane or Ravenloft.