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
I’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.
A year after announcing they secured the license, Fantasy Flight Games released details on their upcoming Star Wars Role-Playing Game and launched a beta test. There’s not much in the way of details about how the game is played. Based on the beta FAQ, it apparently uses custom dice like Warhammer Fantasy; the beta book … Read more
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
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, 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)
A new RPG system, a credit card and iPad are a dangerous combination. Especially when the game is Pathfinder, the company is Paizo, and the PDFs are priced at $9.99 a piece. I didn’t have this problem with Star Wars: Saga Editon. While I bought all the books in the line — 13 source books … Read more
Pinterest is a social bookmarking site for images: you find photographs, illustrations, or posters or other images that you like an “pin” them to a collection of boards. It’s like dumping a stack of art catalogs onto your desk, cutting out the illustrations you like best, and then thumbtacking them to your bulletin board.
The site’s popular with crafters, and when I was casting about for ideas for a recent “Summon WebScryer” column for Knights of the Dinner Table I decided to see if it could be used for gaming.
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.
It is a dark time for Star Wars role-playing games. There’s no official role-playing game being released, and fan-generated content for older games is tapering off. Fortunately though the Order 66 podcast continues to pump out new content for Saga Edition, there’s a new AGE-powered Rebellion Era playtest document, and an X-Wing miniatures game from … Read more