Category: Game Reviews

A masked villain holds a large gun.

Necessary Evil: Explorer’s Edition

Board Game Reviews, Game Reviews, Games, Role-Playing Games

Explorer's EditionAliens. We always knew they were out there, ready to invade our planet, enslave the population and strip mine its resources. But we also knew that if they should try it, Earth’s greatest superheroes would rise up and save us.

We were wrong.

When the V’Sori came they slaughtered our super-powered defenders just as easily as they did our armies. Now our cities are conquered, our people are terrorized, and the job of saving the world has fallen to the most unlikely of people: Earth’s super villains.

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Munchkin Level Counter

Game Reviews, Games

At its heart, Steve Jackson’s Munchkin is a simple game. Players assume the role of adventurers hacking, slashing, and looting their way through a dungeon, fighting monsters (and often each other) on a quest to reach level 10.

These power-hungry munchkins can play all manner of cards to help them, including weapons, armor and other magic items, as well as special species and class cards. It’s simple … but often devilishly hard to track. The Munchkin Level Counter app ($4.99, Steve Jackson Games) adds to the complexity, but also brings some new tools for managing it.

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Get lost in a new reality with the Inner Sea World Guide

Game Reviews, Games, Role-Playing Game Reviews, Role-Playing Games

The Inner Sea World Guide is Paizo’s third iteration of its Golarion campaign guide. The first was released when D&D 3.5 was still Wizard of the Coast’s flagship fantasy game; the second came with the release of Paizo’s own 3.5-derived Pathfinder RPG. The latest iteration reflects the growing maturity of the Pathfinder product line. Within its pages players will find that redundant material – such as class write-ups now included in the Pathfinder core rulebook – removed in favor of extended write-ups on the world itself.

And what a world it is. While evoking spirit of World of Greyhawk, Golarion excels at tweaking standard fantasy formula. Within its pages – including 64 pages of new content – you’ll find Cheliax, a kingdom that embraced devil worship in order to save its empire, as well as Galt, a country that threw off its imperial Cheliax masters and descended into a never-ending bloodthirsty revolution. There are the mountaintop citadels constructed after the dwarves completed their quest for the sky, and a frozen kingdom ruled by the daughters of Baba Yaga. It’s a setting that feels familiar and new at the same time, and like Pathfinder itself, it’s a worthy successor to the worlds of Dungeons & Dragons.

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Lose your sanity (and time) with The Wasted Land

Game Reviews, Games, Video Game Reviews

The Wasted LandRed Wasp Designs’ The Wasted Land takes Call of Cthulhu to the iPad and iPhone, transforming RPG horror into a turn-based squad game that seeks to prevent a German mythos cult from unleashing an army of undead during World War I.

The game unfolds in the No Man’s Land between the Allied and German fronts during The Great War. A team of British soldiers, led by the mystic scholar Brightmeer discover that someone is re-animating the dead. It’s a classic Call of Cthulhu storyline, ripped form the pages of H.P. Lovecraft’s own “Herbert West: Reanimator”, with classic CoC rules.

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Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom

Game Reviews, Games, Video Game Reviews

Cover: Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom

Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom is an action-adventure game set in a new fantasy setting. Typical of the genre, you’ll also solve various types of puzzles as you explore and defeat enemies.

Released about a month before Christmas, this game was quickly lost in the plethora of new games at that time. I never let it leave my radar, and eventually found some time to check out the game. It turned out to be a little different than I was expecting.

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Gnome Stew’s Eureka Offers a Multiverse of Plot Lines

Game Reviews, Games, Role-Playing Game Reviews

As a thirty-something game master, I find myself torn. As a storyteller I love hand-crafting plots and storylines for my weekly role-playing game sessions. But as a husband and dad with a full-time job, extracurricular activities, and household chores to deal with, finding the time to tell those stories is challenge.

My Three-Page Manifesto helps keep my prep times reasonable, but I can still find myself scrambling for ideas the night before the game. That’s why I’ve found the mini adventures in Star Wars: Scum and Villainy and the random adventure creation tables in The Day After Ragnarok so useful, and why I was happy to see Gnome Stew’s Eureka: 501 Adventure Plots to Inspire Game Masters arrive in my inbox.

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Han Solo and Chewbacca

Star Wars: Scum and Villainy

Game Reviews, Games, Role-Playing Game Reviews, Role-Playing Games

Scum and Villainy is an essential source book for those running a Star Wars: Saga Edition game on the fringes of galactic society, whether that’s trolling for would-be passengers in a Mos Eisley cantina, smuggling spice out of Kessel, or engaging in piracy against the Galactic Empire.

The book does for crime what the earlier Starships of the Galaxy did for starships and space combat, providing scoundrels, bounty hunters and outright criminals with a host of new game rules and options for running a campaign that interacts with the galaxy’s dark underbelly.

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