Nuketown Updates, March 2013

Nuketown’s redesign launched in November 2012. It improved a lot, but there have been quite af few bugs that have cropped up since then. The redesign also caused some long-standing standing content (like the “Links” section) to disappear while I fought with how to handle it in the new design. In March I decided to sit down and knock out some of the most annoying issues … starting with the erratic header bar.

Off the Bookshelf: A Memory of Light, The Bowl of Heaven, The Way of Kings

Two warriors face off on a vast plateau. In the background there is a vast skyscape, the left side filled with a storm cloud, the right with a sunset.

It’s spring and I’ve been trying to get back in shape in anticipation of three months spent coaching my daughter’s softball team. This in turn has led to a resurgence of book reading as I download new audio books to listen to while working out at the gym or taking the dog for 45-minute walks.

Game Day: Wandering off the Adventure Path

A massive underground city -- its towers illuminated purple -- fills a blue-green cavern.

My Second Darkness Pathfinder campaign is rapidly approaching its climax. The heroes recently started Book 4: Eternal Night but, as is often the case with my group, they quickly went off the proscribed path. Far off the proscribed path.

It illustrates one of the big lessons I learned while running an adventure path.

The return of the RADIATIONS newsletter

Years ago Nuketown had a weekly newsletter called “RADIATIONS”. It was lovingly handcrafted by me and included a list of the previous week’s stories. The kids pretty much killed that one — who has time to update a web site AND maintain a newsletter? It’s something that people have asked me to bring back, and … Read more

Religion in Golarion

My group’s been playing Second Darkness for over a year now, and if there’s one weakness we’ve found in the Golarion campaign setting, it’s religion.

The setting is geopolitically diverse, with the same sort of kitchen-sink-of-cultures approach that made Greyhawk our go-to setting for so long. But what it lacks are gods.

Veronica Mars Kickstarter

I never watched the teen noir detective drama Veronica Mars when it was on the air. When it went off, friends kept discovering it and warning me about the inevitable heartbreak from knowing there would be no fourth season of the show. When it showed up on Netflix streaming, I binged on two and a … Read more

Delta Green: Eyes Only and Targets of Opportunity available as PDF

I love Delta Green. I rarely get to run it, but Delta Green and its sequel, Countdown have more than earned their place on my game bookshelf. This is thanks to its modern horror take on the Chtulhu mythos and compelling scenarios like “The Night Floors”, in which a certain play dooms an entire apartment building.

Achtung! Cthulhu Kickstarter

A few years ago I picked up Weird War II by Pinnacle Entertainment Group to supplement my The Day After Ragnarok book with World War II Savage Worlds rules. The rules were fine — it helped with the demolitions skill and gave me access to an armory of guns and vehicles — but just wasn’t weird enough for my taste. The history of the weird war was pretty much the same as the history of our war; the weirdness was at the edges and never infected the larger narrative in the way that, say, Delta Green did.