My family’s big Christmas present this year was an Xbox One. The kids and I are loving it — I’m battling my way through the Halo: Master Chiefedition, and the kids are questing for the Lonely Mountain in LEGO: The Hobbit. Unfortunately while Halo looks great and the voice controls are very 21st century, the damn thing unexpectedly turns … Read more
Every hero’s path to glory to starts somewhere. In The Crypt of the Everflame, a 32-page, 1st-level adventure for the Pathfinder RPG, that path begins with a centuries-old crypt and an initiation ceremony gone horribly wrong.
Five years ago, I wrote about the dangers of the mega dungeon. Now my group has returned to Dungeons & Dragons, and I’m contemplating the role of dungeons in the campaign. Time has shown that the folks in my group aren’t big fans of mega dungeons, but I think we still enjoy the challenge of … Read more
Zombie Dice is Steve Jackson’s fast playing, push-your-luck dice game in which players take on the role of zombies hunting human prey.
The mechanics are straightforward. The game’s namesake dice represent the not-so-helpless humans and have three possible faces: brains, feet, and shotgun.
Santa’s come and gone, leaving behind a small armada of games for us to try out: Zombie Dice (and Zombie Dice 2) and the Mars Attacks Dice Game, both by Steve Jackson Games, and Star Fluxx by Loony Labs.
I owe most of my esoteric knowledge of mythology, religion, art, and culture to role-playing game. Much of it was learned at the literary knee of Gary Gygax in the form of the Dungeon Master’s Guide and Monster Manual, both of which were packed with strange monster names, advanced vocabulary, and random loot tables. In … Read more
Scavenger’s Guide to Droids is the definitive droid source book for Star Wars: Saga Edition, introducing a new chassis-based system for creating droids, a new streamlined “protocol” format that lets players run droids as equipment rather than NPCs, new droid manufacturing traits and personality quirks and a 96 page codex containing dozens of droids.
One of the great things about Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition is the re-emergence of recommending reading lists. The new lists (Appendix E in the Player’s Handbook, Appendix D in the Dungeon Master’s Guide) are patterned after Gary Gygax’s legendary Appendix N from the original 1st edition AD&D DMG.
Basing a source book on a video game can be a risky business, particularly when that game is an uneven, occasionally gimmicky shooter like The Force Unleashed video game. You run the risk of alienating diehard Star Wars fans who scoff at the idea of Vader having a hidden student, while at the same time running out of content because of the game’s lack of depth. Fortunately The Force Unleashed Campaign Guide avoids all of this.
While researching a column for Knights of the Dinner Table I came across a small meme called “The RPG Bucket List”. Regular bucket lists are the things that people want to do before they die; and RPG bucket list is the list of games people want to play before they expire.