Ken Newquist 
Scavenger’s Guide to Droids is the definitive droid source book for Star Wars: Saga Edition, introducing a new chassis-based system for creating droids, a new streamlined “protocol” format that lets players run droids as equipment rather than NPCs, new droid manufacturing traits and personality quirks and a 96 page codex containing dozens of droids.
The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies is either too short, or too long … I haven’t decided which yet. Regardless it’s a movie filled with spectacular moments, tremendous visuals, and a sense that there’s a story that was some how missed. It begins with what should have been the end of the second … Read more
Consider Phlebas is a sometimes thrilling, often meandering, always morally gray novel about people caught up in a galactic war. It’s antihero is Horza, a human shape changer working for the Iridans, an alien civilization of religious zealots hell bent on breaking the galactic strength of The Culture, humanity’s own star-faring civilization.
One of the great things about Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition is the re-emergence of recommending reading lists. The new lists (Appendix E in the Player’s Handbook, Appendix D in the Dungeon Master’s Guide) are patterned after Gary Gygax’s legendary Appendix N from the original 1st edition AD&D DMG.
I’m taking the day off from posting because it’s my birthday. Look for more updates on December 18 (after I’m done playing Skyrim). And watching The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies. And playing Ingress. And working on my Dungeons & Dragons campaign. And finishing Consider Phlebas. And going to my holiday party at … Read more
I went into the fall with the informal goal of losing some weight. Over the last two years or so my weight’s been bouncing around 223 lbs. I’ve had a few stop-and-start exercise regimes but this summer I got into a solid routine of walking/running with my dog Indiana in the mornings, and I got … Read more
Basing a source book on a video game can be a risky business, particularly when that game is an uneven, occasionally gimmicky shooter like The Force Unleashed video game. You run the risk of alienating diehard Star Wars fans who scoff at the idea of Vader having a hidden student, while at the same time running out of content because of the game’s lack of depth. Fortunately The Force Unleashed Campaign Guide avoids all of this.
While researching a column for Knights of the Dinner Table I came across a small meme called “The RPG Bucket List”. Regular bucket lists are the things that people want to do before they die; and RPG bucket list is the list of games people want to play before they expire.
I’m on the quest for a bean bag chair. It a quest driven by equal parts nostalgia and practicality. Nostalgia for the red bean bag chair I had as a kid, practicality because I need a chair that’s comfortable and easily stow-able for the game room. Update 12/17/2017: I found my bean bag chair. It’s a … Read more
After 11 days of writing, and a ridiculously long and difficulty week, I was sorely tempted to make a blog post that was nothing but geeky lorem ipsum text.
And then I thought … hey, I could do a blog post about lorem ipsum text. For those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about, lorem ipsum is Latin text used by designers, web developers, and others when they want people to focus on the layout of a page rather than on the contents of the page.