Ken Newquist

Off the Bookshelf: The Lost Fleet, Storm Front, Fuller Memorandum

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A drop ship from the cover art for The Lost Fleet: Victorious

I’m in the midst of my spring reading doldrums. Between work, Cub Scouts, and baseball, most of my free time is accounted for. If I’m honest, when I do have free time I’m more likely to spend it catching up on episodes of Legion or The Flash than I am picking up one of the … Read more

Fitness Update, Spring 2017

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A baseball field in early spring. The field is green, but little else is.

It’s hard to work out in the spring. I had a great routine going all winter long, and a fantastic stretch during February and March where I got to the gym every day, hit my activity goals every day, and more or less felt like a middle-aged juggernaut. That didn’t survive contact with April, when … Read more

Into the Obsidian Maze

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A sprawling map of a dungeon; orange and yellow areas represent rooms and corridors; black represents the walls/mountain.

April 2017’s RPG Carnival topic is “Carnival of Megadungeons!”, during which the gaming blogosphere looked at this staple of fantasy (and occasionally science fiction) role-playing games. I suspect most gaming groups of a certain age have a megadungeon that they call their own — it’s a trope of Dungeons & Dragos that calls to us like dragons … Read more

Game Day: MEPACon Spring 2017

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A close-up shot of blue-grey polyhedral dice on a Shadowrun character sheet.

MEPACon is northeast Pennsylvania’s regional gaming convention and it’s one of the go-to conventions for my gaming group. It’s an event I always add to my calendar, but it also has a tendency to get removed because of family and work commitments. I really need to stop doing that. The convention is great for my … Read more

Games by Candlelight

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A close up view of the Curse of Straud cover, with a camp fire visible to the left side of the picture.

RPG Blog Carnival logoMarch 2017’s RPG Carnival is “Things in the Dark”, and for many people that’s about things that go bump in the night. For me, it’s about playing games in the dark … when there’s nothing to hold back the night save candles, lanterns, and camp fires.

Each summer my family goes to Lake Champlain to spend a week or two with our friends. It’s a rustic cabin experience — no indoor plumbing, no electric lights, and when the sun goes down, we play board and card games by kerosine lanterns and candle light. The last two summers we’ve added Dungeons & Dragons to the mix as the kids learned how to play the game and we started racing against the setting sun to get our last round of combat in.

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