Games

Star Wars RPG Roundup: Dec. 2012

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It’s been a good year for Star Wars fans. Disney bought Lucasfilm, and announced that a new trilogy — with some of the original actors, but without George Lucas directing — will kick off in 2015. We also saw the return of Star Wars gaming with a slew of new releases from Fantasy Flight Games: The Star Wars card game, expansions for the X Wing miniature combat game, and finally a new Star Wars role-playing game.

Writing the Game: Pen and Paper Journaling

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RPG Blog Carnival logoThis month’s RPG Blog Carnival topic is “Writing the Game”, and it got me thinking about my own efforts to get return to “pen and paper” preparation. I say “return” because most of my game prep is digital; sure I have printed books I refer to before and during the game, but even those have PDF equivalents. Going analog with my Pathfinder campaign isn’t realistic; the game is so complex, and so many resources are digital, that writing out adventure notes and stat blocks just isn’t efficient.

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Elder Sign: Omens (App Edition)

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A tentacle-faced monster spreads its wing.

Fantasy Flight Games made its name creating huge, sprawling board games with hundreds of fiddly-bits and robust game mechanics that take hours to play. Fans who buy Arkham Horror or Mansions of Madness know they’re getting their money’s worth … and that there’s no way the game will fit in their pockets. With the Elder Sign: Omens app for iPhone ($3.99), Android ($3.99) and iPad ($6.99), they’ve taken a different approach: create a lightweight, fast-playing game that’s as atmospheric as its predecessors but can be played anywhere.

Game Day: Ragnarok Revisited

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My “Lunchtime After Ragnarok” campaign has resumed after a too-long hiatus. We had to hit pause for a variety of reasons ranging from too-busy work schedules to the birth of a baby, but as summer wound down we down we finally got back to the table. As before we’re playing over lunch in Kenneth Hite’s The Day After Ragnarok campaign setting using the Savage Worlds rules. We usually get in 1-2 games a week, each lasting 45-60 minutes.

RPG Reviews Roundup, September 2012

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One of the good things about Dungeons & Dragons next-generation inspired publishing hiatus is that it gives other games a chance to shine. While I doubt gamers are suddenly diverting all of their D&D 4th Edition buying power toward other games, I do hope (and anecdotally this seems to be the case) that it gives folks a chance to try something new.

One of those new thing’s that’s generated a fair amount of buzz has been Margaret Weis Production’s Marvel Heroic Role-Playing, which is a Cortex-infused take on the superhero genere. I bought the core rulebook early in the summer and paged through it. Based on that initial glance, I liked what I saw, particularly with how it handled the superhero tropes of particularly solo vs. duo vs. team match-ups, but I give it a more through read-through.

The Unknown Regions

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An assortment of aliens in the foreground; U-shaped spacecraft in the background.

The Unknown Regions is the final sourcebook for Wizards of the Coast’s Star Wars: Saga Edition Role-Playing Game. The book serves as a placeholder for all the books left unpublished, and promises to carry players to the unexplored corners of the Star Wars galaxy. It does this by venturing into The Unknown Regions to explore what fans know — the Chiss, the Rakata and the Sorcerers of Rhand — and plenty that they don’t.

The Unknown Regions details eight worlds created just for the book, introduces a planet generator that game masters can use to make their own, and debuts creature generation rules to populate them. Since Scouts are essential to exploring these brave new worlds, they get a variety of feats and talents, and because no final frontier should be without its dangerous challenges, the book re-envisions “Hazards” as Dungeons & Dragons Fourth Edition-style threats that require a combination of brawn and skill to defeat. The end result is a toolkit that gives players everything they need to continue their adventures beyond the last book in the Star Wars Saga Editions line.

Backing the Numenera Kickstarter

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I backed the Numenera Kickstarter today after I had a moment of panic over breakfast that I’d missed the deadline. The kickstarter for Monte Cook’s far-future science fantasy role-playing game has four days left to go, and has hit the amazing total of $338,450.

That’s just … huge. The kickstarter has broken all of Monte’s stretch goals and yielded an impressive line up of game materials. You can read about them on his web site. Of course, the question now becomes … can he deliver? Given his track record with Dungeons & Dragons, Arcana Unearthed, and Malhavoc Press in general, I’m confident he will. Or at least, I’m confident in the print materials. I’m not so sure about the character creator; that strikes me as being more complicated than he might originally have anticipated (just look at how long for D&D to get a worthwhile character creator).

Game Day: A Nice Day for a Black Wedding

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In the real world, our gaming group’s seen numerous weddings (and will see yet another this fall), but in the game world our heroes never got hitched. Until tonight. Over the last year of our Second Darkness campaign one of the characters, Skender, has been seeing a priestess of Calistria named Carlila Zalteri at the … Read more

Galaxy of Intrigue

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Skill challenges were the best thing to emerge from our Dungeons Dragons 4th Edition mini-campaign, and when we started playing Star Wars: Saga Edition, we pieced together our own version of the rules. We based them on 4E’s examples, the skill DCs established in Scum and Villainy, and personal experience. The end result created some of the most memorable moments in our campaign, including the heroes’ disastrous attempt to escape a proto-star nebula.

Galaxy of Intrigue formalizes these ad hoc rules by creating a Skill Challenge system for Saga Edition that improves the 4E iteration in every way. The source book introduces new feat and talent options for skillful characters, nine new species (including the Bith, Defel and Neimodian), an entire world dedicated to intrigue, eight mini-adventures, and the “The Perfect Storm” campaign.