Games

Numenera 2: Time to Give Weird a Second Chance?

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Two explorers investigate a mysterious hatch in the middle of a swamp.

The Numenera 2 Kickstarter just launched. It has me thinking about my gaming groups’ own experiences with Numenera, why we stopped playing it, and how Numenera 2 might get us playing again. A few years ago I backed the Numenera kickstarter and, as my core rule book arrived, I was excited to try out this science fantasy game set in a ruined, weird world a … Read more

Game Day: Higher Level Thinking

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A view of a D&D character sheet. A red, flame-like eye appears to the left; red and grey dice appear to the right.

My gaming group, the Blackrazor Guild, formed in 1996. Over the last 20 years we’ve created hundreds of Dungeons & Dragons characters and at least a good two dozen of those reached the left heights of “high level” adventuring. These characters spanned multiple editions of the game, but the most iconic started in 2nd Edition and were … Read more

Game Day: Campaign’s End

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A close-up picture of racked and broken earth.

Broken Land, my lunchtime D&D 5th edition campaign, is ending. Begin in 2015 and consisting of 25 1-hour episodes, the campaign is about to hit it’s finale. It’s a strange sensation. I’ve run a lot of campaigns over the years, but there aren’t a lot of them that have had a true finale. Gone on … Read more

Researching Gamer Food Options

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An assortment of vegetables and fruit including carrots, squash, oranges, and strawberries.

As most gaming tables I’ve been at people arrive toting Mountain Dew, chips (usually Doritos) and maybe some kind of tip. The healthiest options I typically see are pretzels or a craft beer of some kind. My own gaming group has swung between extremes; when we’ve been on a collective health kick, veggies, hummus, and … Read more

Game Day: One Shot Death Trap

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A god reaches out to coach an adventurer inside the hidden shrine.

The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan is an Old School death trap of a dungeon. Originally released as a tournament module at Origins in 1979, the adventure was subsequently published as a module for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. In 2017 it was updated to D&D 5th Edition and released as part of the Tales from the … Read more

#RPGaDay2017

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Several RPG books fanned out across a table.

RPG-a-Day is an annual event in which bloggers spend a month talking about different aspects of role-playing games. Rather than spread this out over several blog posts, I’ve rolled up my entries into one mega-post. Day 1: What published RPG do you wish you were playing right now? Dungeon World (or one of the other … Read more

The Lost Continents and Ancient Magic of Weird Pulp

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A map of the lost continent of Mu, indicating that it is in the Pacific Ocean.

“Occult Mysteries and Magic”, is topic of the May 2017 RPG Blog Carnival. Although my gaming group has been playing Dungeons & Dragons for decades, a game that has magic as one of its corner stones, we rarely delved into mysteries of the arcane. To be sure, there was ancient magic hidden in Greyhawk’s history, … Read more

Surviving Fallout 4

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A power suited warrior explores a radioactive wasteland. A second warrior appears off to the right.

I played Fallout 4, beat the main quest, and had a pretty good time doing it. Then I went back and tried the hardcore “Survival Mode” … and had a frustratingly awesome time,.

Like the other games in the franchise, Fallout 4 takes place in a nuclear wasteland centuries after a massive war on an alternate Earth whose design aesthetic is stuck in the Atomic Age. This time around the wasteland is Boston and its environs, and you’re playing a vault dweller who’d been in cryogenic sleep for centuries.

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Game Day: Let Me Tell You About My Dwarven Battle Mage

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Black and red dice site on a game manual page. The illustration of a red-headed dwarven warrior with an axe appears to the left.

When D&D 5th Edition came out, my gaming group launched two playtest campaigns. Obsidian Frontier was a sandbox campaign set in the early days of our homegrown city, Obsidian Bay. It was focused on trying out the new rules and running a typical D&D campaign. The second campaign was Heart of Darkness, a story-driven game … Read more

Into the Obsidian Maze

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A sprawling map of a dungeon; orange and yellow areas represent rooms and corridors; black represents the walls/mountain.

April 2017’s RPG Carnival topic is “Carnival of Megadungeons!”, during which the gaming blogosphere looked at this staple of fantasy (and occasionally science fiction) role-playing games. I suspect most gaming groups of a certain age have a megadungeon that they call their own — it’s a trope of Dungeons & Dragos that calls to us like dragons … Read more