Who Are Your Mercenary Companies?: Taking 10 looks at incorporating mercenary companies into your role-playing game as a way of building depth and background for both the world and your player characters. The View-Master Slides of Our Youth Were Beautiful Works of Art: As a child of the 1980s, I have conflicted feelings about the old View-master … Read more
Crash Course Astronomy: I’m sometimes surprised how little people know about the astronomy in general and the night sky in particular. After all, half of every day is taken up by night; who could you not learn about the stars? Of course, the answer is easy enough – people aren’t interested, or at least, not interested enough … Read more
The Digital Archaeologists: How GOG.com Rescues Games From The Dustbin Of History: The modern age spawned thousands of video games, but as technology advanced and companies failed, many of these games were lost. GOG.com looks to find them. Game Informer recounts GOG.com’s decade-long quest to refurbish ancient games for modern platforms and secure the rights to said games … Read more
For years my sound systems were bifurcated. Ancient Logitech speakers, including a big, boxy subwoofer, resided in my game room/office. I used them when my computer was docked. Away from my desk, I used earbuds or whatever tinny sound my smartphone or tablet could produce. Last summer I spent a good many evenings working on … Read more
Three years after I started running, I’m returning to 5K training. Specifically, I’m re-playing Zombies, Run! 5K, which is a couch-to-5K training app that includes — you guessed it — zombies. Zombies, Run! 5K is an 8-week training course meant to take you from a low activity level (the aforementioned couch) to running a 5K. The first … Read more
My weekday morning routine is a work in progress. Always has been, always will be. I tinker with it from season to season to accommodate the changing needs of family, work, and myself. There area few constants to the routine, the most essential are (in no particular order) Wake up. Waking up is mandatory as without … Read more
The many names of spells and how to change them: Tenser’s Floating Disc. Bigby’s Crushing Hand. Mordenkainen’s Mansion. Named spells defined Dungeons & Dragons from its earliest days while hinting at a greater world. Jeremiah McCoy talks about how to bring the magic of such signature arcana to your campaign. If You’re Gonna Fail, Fail Spectacularly: Troy Taylor talks about … Read more
Bob, the third Seeing Eye puppy my family raised, is off to puppy college. Our area coordinator picked him up this morning. Bob, true to form, was happy to see her and left home without any fuss. We were sad to see him go, but (hopefully) he’s off to do great things. Bob, a male … Read more
I started a bullet journal in Spring 2018. Nine months and one completed journal later, I’m still journaling and still happy with the results. Life is busy. As I’ve joked before, my wife and I hit peak kid last year. That’s when the kids have the maximum number of activities they can be involved in and … Read more
A ton of role-playing game books found their way under the Geek Tree this year thanks to Christmas and my birthday. It was heavy on Dungeons & Dragons sourcebooks, but there’s also a touch of Cthulhu … and a swig of Hellboy Firewater to wash it all down. Creature Codex (Amazon / Website) – Kobold Publishing’s Creature Codex (Amazon) is easily the heftiest of … Read more