Ken Newquist 
Classic Battletech is an old favorite of my gaming group. A few years ago we flirted with the idea of a Battletech campaign using a variety of possible rules (Battletech A Time of War, Risus, Savage Worlds) but it never quite took off Instead most of our games have been one-shots at Nuke(m)Con or on … Read more
One of my family’s long-standing traditions is spending time at our friends’ cabin on Butler Island on Lake Champlain. It’s rustic in the extreme (though less so than the early years) with minimal power, an outhouse, and (thankfully) no Internet. It’s a great opportunity to hang out with the family, hike, swim, and read a … Read more
It’s been four years since the last Nuketown redesign, and I don’t know how many years since I first started powering the site with Drupal. It’s time for some changes. First up, I’m moving the site from Drupal to WordPress. I’ve been on Drupal since the 4.x days, faithfully upgrading with each major release until … Read more
The Geek Tree has grown. In previous years, that meant additional ornaments. This year it truly grew higher, going from 7 feet to 9 feet as I upgraded to a new, taller tree. The goal of the new tree was to add some more surface area for ornaments and put off the day when I’ll … Read more
In prepping for my Saturday group’s D&D 5e playtest I created a dragonborn paladin of Bahamut named Bharosh Goldenscales. The group has been adventuring in the Wilderlands of High Fantasy and although this is mostly a mechanical playtest, I couldn’t resist building out a backstory. That meant figuring out how the dragonborn might fit into … Read more
After a few months of talking about the game, my monthly Saturday gaming group decided to give D&D 5th Edition a try. Rather than run a playtest campaign) like the Blackrazors, our dungeon master is running us through a series of combat encounters at different levels. This lets everyone get a feel for the combat-centric … Read more
I’m now paying to get my ass kicked. After nine months of working out on my own, I reached the plateau that I knew I’d reach. I was walking a few miles a day, running 3-5 miles a couple days a week, and doing the occasional stretching exercises in the morning. I’ve been slowly improving … Read more
The Marvel comic book multiverse collapsed in upon itself in Summer 2015. As the various worlds ended, a new one was forged by its all-powerful god, Doctor Doom. This new world — Battleworld — drove a summer’s worth of of spin-off stories as Marvel cancelled every one of their regular books and replaced them with … Read more
It’s a funny thing to sit down to write your next adventure in a campaign and realize that somewhere along the line it went from “campaign” to “long-running campaign”. That’s what happened with Obsidian Frontier, a sandbox-style campaign set in the World of Greyhawk in the early CY 500s. We launched it as a playtest … Read more
Live video streams and vidcasts are the big thing in role-playing games right now. Combined with the throwback Netflix series Stranger Things and the 80s-infused gamer novel Ready Player One the shows have helped produce a resurgence of Dungeons & Dragons and other RPGs. Unfortunately aside from Tabletop (which is more of a board game … Read more