Games

Game Day: Changing Times

by

One of the great challenges in running a campaign in your 30s and 40s finding the time to game. Our group’s been lucky in this regard as we’ve been able to pick schedules that worked for most of the group, and still let us game on a weekly basis.

For most of our 16 years as a group we’ve followed a weekly schedule — first Mondays, then Fridays — that was role-playing game heavy. Originally we played all Dungeons & Dragons, all the time, but as our appreciation for board games grew we split the schedule to one board game session for every three RPG sessions. Or something like that. We found it was hard to stick to that schedule because people’s time got crazy, and suddenly we were sacrificing board games in the name of advancing the campaign.

As we enter our late 30s and early 40s, we’ve found the schedule must change again. Weekly RPG sessions are no longer possible given folks work and home schedules, so we’ve switched to biweekly games. The plan is to alternate RPGs and board games on a weekly basis.

Searching for RPG Tumblr Blogs

by

Tumblr is one of those sites I find myself stumbling across time and again, but never lingering on. I suppose that’s by design; it’s meant to be a platform for quick hit updates, somewhere between the microbursts of Twitter and the full-on blogging of WordPress. With another Knights of the Dinner Table column looking, I’ve … Read more

Pandemic

by
Black and blue cubes -- representing viruses -- are stacked on a map-like game board depicting various cities. A white pawn represents the player character fighting the viruses.

Pandemic is Z-Man Games’ globe-spanning game of viral infection in which 2-4 players travel from city to city trying to prevent local outbreaks from turning into full-blown pandemics. The game is played on a map of the Earth, with major cities connected by highways and flight paths. At the start of the game, color-coded cards … Read more

Monte Cook’s Numenera Kickstarts the Distant Future

by

It didn’t take long for Monte Cook to find something to do after his much-discussed departure from the D&D Next design team. He’s launched a Kickstarter to fund Numenera, a rules-light, far future role-playing game Here’s how he describes it: I’m really excited to announce that I’m working on a new game. It’s called Numenera, … Read more

RPG Lessons from Cloverfield

by
The ruined New York skyline after being crushed by a giant monster.

CloverfieldI’ve played in a few RPG sessions, mostly one-shots, involving giant rampaging monsters. They’ve been disappointing because they focus on killing the monster, which reduces this huge lumbering horror to litte more than a 40-story sack of hit points.

At the opposite extreme are monsters who can’t be defeated (and I’ll admit to unleashing one of these in my campaign; a CR 35 horror that destroyed the city of Stoneheim in the World of Greyhawk). Those can be equally disappointing for players because characters (especially high level ones) think they can defeat anything.

Then again, maybe that’s missing the point.

Necessary Evil: Explorer’s Edition

by
A masked villain holds a large gun.

Aliens. 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 … Read more

Delve into action with Dragon Age Stunts

by

The dwarven warrior D’klar Ironforge stood on the Deep Roads bridge eying the darkspawn before him. Spittle from the creature’s mongrel face glistened in the reflected light of the lava far below. Covering its black-furred hide were the crudely-arranged castoffs of dwarven chain and planted, while its obsidian-clawed hands held a short sword wet with … Read more

Delta Green available in PDF, Print on Demand

by

Delta GreenDelta Green, the 1990s era game of espionage, intrigue, and cyclopian madness, is available in PDF and print-on-demand formats from DriveThru RPG. Released by by Pagan Publishing, the new high-quality PDFs scans of the original books. So far the sourcebooks Delta Green and Delta Green: Countdown and Delta Green have been released. Two short fiction anthologies, Alien Intelligence and Dark Theatres, are also available.

This is great news. Although it’s dated now, Delta Green remains a fantastic read, and it perfectly captures the conspiratorial/millennial anxiety that was so common in the late 1990s. The books have long been out of print, and at times have been hard to find, so it’s good to seem them back in print (or something resembling print)