Follow Me to Dice.Camp!

Two rows of different-colored twenty-sided dice.

With Twitter in a state of near-constant chaos thanks to Elon Musk’s chaotic neutral leadership style, many of my online friends have migrated to Mastodon-based social media alternatives. In particular, many in the RPG community have either moved or set up outposts on, Dice.Camp. Mastodon is an open-source social media application that anyone can use … Read more

Searching for Introductory Mothership Adventures

Mothership Role-Playing Game Logo

Mothership is a rules-lite, science fiction horror RPG inspired by the likes of Alien and similar creature features. The “Zero Edition” by Tuesday Night Games was available for years; the 2021 kickstarter saw 15,699 backers pledge $1,405,569 to fund its first edition. I backed it at the deluxe level, which should yield a very impressive boxed set. The target ship … Read more

Futzing About

Three Rulebooks: Dungeon Master's Guide for D&D, Gaslands Refueled, and Cyberpunk Red

Over the last few weeks, I’ve had a growing desire to take a day and futz about with my various RPG projects. I mentioned this to a few of my friends, who looked at me quizzically. They were unfamiliar with the term “futz about” (or the alternative usage, “futz around”). The Free Dictionary gives two definitions: … Read more

Game Day: Fast, The Furious, and the Awesomely Generic with GURPS

A hand-written character sheet lays atop two GURPS rulebooks

Since Fall 2019, the Gamer Working Group (my lunch time gaming group) has been running a new action movie-style campaign. Inspired by the Fast and the Furious franchise, the campaign is about a group of freelance agents undertaking questionable jobs for fun and profit. We started with the climatic scene of our last mission: blowing a … Read more

Game Day: Chroniclers

A character sheet sits atop two D&D soucebooks for the forgotten realms

For years, we made fun of the Forgotten Realms‘ overpowered completeness. We bled grey, and the World of Greyhawk is where our heroes lived, died, and lived again. Flash forward to our own Middle Ages, and we’re actually adventuring in the Realms … and enjoying it. Our current Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition campaign is set in the … Read more

Game Day: Scales of Truth

Sometimes, you need to get a little weird … and Scales of Truth, my current lunchtime campaign, is a lot weird. Set in a post-apocalyptic future, Scales of Truth is a D&D 5e-powered game that relies heavily on the tropes of weird fantasy. It draws inspiration from Gamma World, Thundarr the Barbarian, and Numenera, though it’s still has a … Read more

Game Day: Getting Lost in a Hexcrawl

My current lunchtime game is Scales of Truth, a hexcrawl set in a post-apocalyptic science-fantasy setting. Think of a mashup of Thundarr the Barbarian, Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, and Mad Max: Fury Road, powered by Dungeons & Dragons. So what’s a hexcrawl? It’s a style of RPG campaign in which the game master populates … Read more

Game Day: Infinity Storm Retrospective

Infinity Storm, my Mutants & Masterminds 2nd Edition campaign, ran from mid-2007 through early 2008. Featuring eight issues (aka episodes), it’s notable for being the first superheroes game I ever ran and featuring the first in-character blog I ever wrote. A dozen years later, the campaign still stays with me, despite its relatively short run. Two things stand out: … Read more

Game Day: The Great Campaign Purge of 2020

Everyone keeps things. Some people keep a lot of things … and, as we learned from Fight Club, the stuff we own ends up owning us. While I’m far from a minimalist, I do think it’s possible to keep too much stuff, and it’s good to be mindful about what you keep, and what you throw … Read more