Game Day: Blades in the Dark

A rogue, left-side illuminated by red light, the right in shadows, stares out from the image.

Blades in the Dark is a fantasy role-playing game in which characters take on the roles of thieves in the night, planning capers and trying to survive in a ghost-haunted, ever-dark industrial city. Descended from Powered by the Apocalypse, authored by John Harper and published by Evil Hat, the game’s generated a fair amount of buzz … Read more

Game Day: Numenera Likes and Dislikes

A crystal-like monolith hovers over a river valley.

I’ve played through the first Numenra adventure as a player with my Sunday group, and we’ve just launched into our second full-blown adventure. Meanwhile I’m prepping to run the same introductory adventure for my lunchtime group. I’ve played Numenera enough to know I like it … but I don’t love it.

Game Day: Dawn Over Numenera

A sealed dome with strange alien structures inside it towers over a nearby town.

With our Second Darkness campaign on hiatus for a week my gaming group decided to try out Numenera, Monte Cook’s new game of science fantasy set 1 billion years in the future. Numenera is one of the lead contenders for our next RPG campaign, with three members of the group participating in the Kickstarter and another pre-ordering the core rule book.

First Impressions: Innsmouth Horror Expansion

The Innsmouth Horror expansion for Arkham Horror showed up under the Geek Tree this holiday season, and the day after Christmas some friends and I broke it out for a Saturday afternoon horrorfest. It’s an impressive expansion. Unlike our last expansion, The Black Goat of the Woods, this one is a full expansion with its own sideboard … Read more

Initial Thoughts about HackMaster Basic

At Origins 2009 I had the pleasure of playing in an Introduction to HackMaster Basic session run by Steve Johansson, one of the designers (Dave Kenzer, another designer, was running the other table). Full disclosure: I’m a staff writer for Knights of the Dinner Table but when it comes to HackMaster I’m as much newbie … Read more

Star Wars: Saga Edition – Annotated Playtest #1

Various scenes from the Star Wars movies cover a game master screen. In front of the screen is a small ceramic statue; behind it are several Star Wars books.

Our Star Wars: Saga Edition campaign kicked off on Friday with our first full-fledged Knights of the Old Republic session. Since my Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition Annotated Playtest went over so well  I decided to do the same for this Saga Edition. This one will work a little differently; instead of annotating a single … Read more