Ken Newquist 
Another Christmas, another couple of ornaments for the Geek Tree. This year sees three new ornaments join the fleet: the U.S.S. Vengeance from Star Trek Into Darkness, the xenomorph from Alien, and the flying DeLorean from Back to the Future, Part II. There’s also a string of TARDIS Christmas tree lights; they are too bulky … Read more
Every hero’s path to glory to starts somewhere. In The Crypt of the Everflame, a 32-page, 1st-level adventure for the Pathfinder RPG, that path begins with a centuries-old crypt and an initiation ceremony gone horribly wrong.
About a year ago I became a Markdown convert. It’s a simple markup language that’s meant to make web documents readable and scannable. It’s plaintext with a few niceties added in, and I’ve been using it to write most of my work notes and Nuketown articles since Fall 2014.
Five years ago, I wrote about the dangers of the mega dungeon. Now my group has returned to Dungeons & Dragons, and I’m contemplating the role of dungeons in the campaign. Time has shown that the folks in my group aren’t big fans of mega dungeons, but I think we still enjoy the challenge of … Read more
Zombie Dice is Steve Jackson’s fast playing, push-your-luck dice game in which players take on the role of zombies hunting human prey.
The mechanics are straightforward. The game’s namesake dice represent the not-so-helpless humans and have three possible faces: brains, feet, and shotgun.
The comic book pile has grown large over the last few weeks, partly because I was busy with family and work, partly because I knew I’d have time to catch up during Christmas week. Topping it is Marvel’s crossover event Axis, in which the Red Skull (augmented by Charles Xavier’s brain … I kid you not) tries to take over the world.
Santa’s come and gone, leaving behind a small armada of games for us to try out: Zombie Dice (and Zombie Dice 2) and the Mars Attacks Dice Game, both by Steve Jackson Games, and Star Fluxx by Loony Labs.
Christmas Vacation is finally here. After long days and longer nights of working to make sure everything got done before I left the office, it’s Christmas Eve, the college is closed, and I think I can relax. I’m off from December 24 through January 4, and we’ve got all manner of family fun planned, including watching Guardians of the Galaxy with my parents (something the kids are eager to do) and some family skiing (which I’m eager to do).
It’s the night before the night before Christmas … and I have a cold. It seems to be a fast moving cold — it hit me yesterday afternoon, and made last night miserable, but today I’m half human and I expect to return to the species full tomorrow. The cold meant I crashed on the … Read more
I owe most of my esoteric knowledge of mythology, religion, art, and culture to role-playing game. Much of it was learned at the literary knee of Gary Gygax in the form of the Dungeon Master’s Guide and Monster Manual, both of which were packed with strange monster names, advanced vocabulary, and random loot tables. In … Read more