Ken Newquist In WISH 97, Ginger asked (Internet Archive): What’s your take on player bitching/venting: complaints intended to relieve player stress and not to actually change things in the game? When and where and to whom is it appropriate? How should players and GMs handle it? Most of the player bitching I see in my game has centered … Read more
I’m in the process of putting together a new music-themed feature article for Nuketown. My intention is to do something similar to the Mac RPG feature, with links to Web sites focusing on music in role-playing games, links to RPG musicians, commentary from gamers. I also plan on writing some original articles about using music … Read more
In WISH #96, Ginger asked (Internet Archive): Describe one or more occasions when a game went click for you and things fell together. Why do you think this happened? What factors made it possible? What were the consequences? It just happened this past Saturday. It was in the Scarred Lands campaign where I’m a player, … 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
A few years ago, I reviewed (Internet Archive) Avalon Hill’s then-new Risk 2210 board game (Internet Archive) for SCI-FI. Our gaming group loved it how the game took the game’s core mechanic, added a great deal of complexity and strategy to it, threw in a sci-fi theme, and still managed to retain that bizarre Risk luck factor. … Read more
CNN has a story about the growth of home schooling in the United States, which has increased by 29% since 1999. What I found interesting about the article isn’t the growth of home schooling — it’s hardly a surprise to anyone outside of liberal circles (and maybe them as well), it’s this paraphrase from Ted … Read more
The Two Towers provides gamers with a second invigorating soundtrack to augment their campaign’s audiospace, albeit one that isn’t quite as successful as its predecessor, The Fellowship of the Ring. As a movie soundtrack, The Two Towers is very enjoyable, providing an epic, cinematic score to a movie that sweeps across the vast lands of … Read more
What a weekend. It started with a fun game of Settlers of Catan, and ended with a 2 a.m. trip for StarGirl to the emergency room. It started on Thursday, when StarGirl became cranky and moody. She was drooling too, so figured she was getting another tooth. But with 16 teeth already, we were surprised … 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