Ken Newquist One of my goals this fall has been to get my calendars under control, and to do a better job of keeping track of what I’m doing (and where I’m supposed to be doing it). Somedays that works better than others (Monday, in which I forgot my wife had yoga, would be one of the … Read more
Nuketown Radio Active #72 contemplates the best way to organize a geeky bookshelf, takes another turn at chess with kids, finds out that Neutron Lad has a lot to talk about, and asks questions about Nuketown’s long-dormant RADIATIONS newsletter. Finally I review Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, the latest edition of the venerable role-playing game by … Read more
I slacked on my own game review duties at Nuketown this week (though I did pitch a review to a new market) but thankfully others remained on the ball, yielding a number of new reviews.
There are two more Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition reviews out this week. The Geek Gazette offers some initial thoughts on the Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide and rants about the necessity of buying both a campaign guide and a player’s guide. This is undoubtedly great for WotC’s bottom line, he argues, but no so great for players.
My understanding is that Wizards is scaling back its campaign offerings, so these may be the only two FR books you get this year. I have to think they’ll publish additional Forgotten Realms source books in 2009, but at the same time they’ve been pretty upfront about releasing books for one campaign setting a year (FR this year, Eberron next, maybe Dark Sun after that).
I think the bigger question could end up being not “is this too much?” but “is it enough?”
RPG.net has a favorable review of Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition. Reviewer Eric Christian Berg liked the ease of building encounters and the dynamic nature of combat.
As my group’s D&D Dark City campaign winds down, the Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic game is ramping up. This week sees the group off because of a combination of family colds and Celtic Fest (which, given the rainy weekend forecast, will likely result in more colds, but I digress) but we’ve spent … Read more
Prepping for my “Unification Day” adventure for the Serenity Role-Playing Game at Nuke(m)Con 2008 sent me wandering the web for inspiration, references and shortcuts.
Unfortunately, the official Serenity web site at http://www.serenity-rpg.com is dead, but it seems Margaret Weis Productions is working on moving material from the old site to their new one. The most important of these is the PDF of the Official Serenity Character Sheet. The site also has news on the new Serenity Adventures book, which features a number of related scenarios for the game. The PDF is available now, the print version will hopefully be out soon.
The official site is down, but the unofficial one at FireflyRPG.com may be the next best thing. It’s got a beautiful poster map of the Serenity solar system, 3D renderings of ground and air vehicles, weapon reference cards, and deck plans for 28 different ships. There are also two rules quick reference sheets, but unfortunately during the playtest I found they had too many house rules to be useful.
Like a twister carving its way through a Midwestern cornfield, Nuke(m)Con has come and gone. My gaming group held its annual (well, almost annual) home-grown convention over the weekend. In a break from previous years, which typically saw a mix of Dungeons & Dragons and board games, this year’s Nuke(m)Con had a western theme. We … Read more
NeutronLad growing up fast, and quickly leaving behind his inventive toddler speech. I decided I better jot down some of his classic terms before we forgot them in the mad rush toward preschool. Fuffy: Sofa Brrff-Brrff: Make a raspberry sound twice in quick succession, and you’ll almost have Neutron’s original name for StarGirl Brrf-ordie: NeutronLad’s new name for StarGirl Tretrow: Grandma … Read more
Last week’s surge of Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition reviews has abated, but there’s a few new ones out there. What I find interesting about the reviews that are coming out now is that folks have had a chance to digest and (more importantly) play the game. As a result, people are getting past the … Read more
Summer’s over and Nuketown Radio Active is back in the saddle as I talk about a different kind of game day, dodge a bullet with a crashed hard drive, get ready for a Western-themed Nuke(m)Con 2008. My promised review of Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition has been bumped to Radio Active #72, and instead I talk … Read more
There’s an old Star Trek acronym called “IDIC”, which stands for “Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations”. Dungeons & Dragons Third Edition was all about IDIC, with infinite combinations of characters played out across thousands of campaigns and dozens of different game systems. Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition is about FDFC — Finite Diversity in Finite … Read more