Games

My group's been playing Second Darkness for over a year now, and if there's one weakness we've found in the Golarion campaign setting, it's religion.

The setting is geopolitically diverse, with the same sort of kitchen-sink-of-cultures approach that made Greyhawk our go-to setting for so long. But what it lacks are gods.

Starbase Orion is a turned-based galactic exploration, colonization, and conquest game inspired the classic Masters of Orion series. It's available for iPhone and iPad, though the developer hopes to expand it to Andorid, Mac, and Windows as well.

I love Delta Green. I rarely get to run it, but Delta Green and its sequel, Countdown have more than earned their place on my game bookshelf. This is thanks to its modern horror take on the Chtulhu mythos and compelling scenarios like "The Night Floors", in which a certain play dooms an entire apartment building.

A few years ago I picked up Weird War II by Pinnacle Entertainment Group to supplement my The Day After Ragnarok book with World War II Savage Worlds rules. The rules were fine -- it helped with the demolitions skill and gave me access to an armory of guns and vehicles -- but just wasn't weird enough for my taste. The history of the weird war was pretty much the same as the history of our war; the weirdness was at the edges and never infected the larger narrative in the way that, say, Delta Green did.

My gaming group entered Book 4: Eternal Night of Paizo's Second Darkness adventure path this weekend, officially taking us past the midpoint of the campaign. All along the heroes have been battling the drow, including a massive fight to take back Celwynvian.

The release of the trailer for World War Z inspired me to read the book of the same name before the film's version could burn its way into my brain. It was well worth it; the book's a fantastic read that provides a wide-ranging, highly personal view of the Zombie Apocolypse. It also inspired me to see what the current state of Zombie RPGs is for a possible Knights of the Dinner Table column.

It was a good Christmas for my Pathfinder campaign, as I got two of the new game master-friendly books released by Paizo -- Ultimate Equipment and NPC Codex -- and one player-friendly book, the Advanced Players Guide.