Wizards of the Coast’s Star Wars license expires in May, and their web site is going away in August, so they’re posting as much of their unpublished content as possible to the web. There’s so much, in fact, that I can’t include it all in one round up — look for another edition later this … Read more
For decades Dungeons & Dragons players have wanted the ability to play as a dragon. Any DM worth his screen knew that it was a bad idea to give a player that kind of power. Dragons were monsters after all. So other alternatives were created. The half-dragon, the dragon blooded, even the sorcerer class was … Read more
When I ran my Dungeons & Dragons/World of Greyhawk campaign, I constantly spawned new subplots, new NPCs, and new locations. It was intentional; my goal was to throw a wide net of possible plotlines, and let the players choose which ones to follow. By campaign’s end we probably had hundreds of unresolved storylines, but it wasn’t a problem because the important storylines – the defeat of the giants in the Grand Duchy of Geoff, the defeat of the orcish overlord Turrosh Mak, the liberation of Obsidian Bay – did reach their climatic ends.
“There you go Astro Boy. On your flight into space. Rocket high, through the sky. What adventures soon you will make.” ~Astro Boy theme song
After nearly 50 years what adventures could Astro Boy still make? Astro Boy the Video Game (DS, Wii, PS2, PSP) seeks to discover just that, in a fun little old-school style adventure.
Astro Boy is the story of an advanced robot, named Astro, who is created to replace the deceased son of a brilliant scientist. Unfortunately the scientist discovers his son can never be replaced and rejects Astro. Eventually he is found by another scientist who discovers Astro is more than he seems.
After many months away from the game, my group is returning to Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition for an old school dungeon crawl through the Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth using the D&D 3.5 version released in 2007. I’ve got mixed feelings about this. While I owned the Lost Caverns as a kid and read through … Read more
Fantasy Flight Games has announced the Deathwatch Role-Playing Game, the much-anticipated third core rule book for Warhammer 40k. Players take on the role of Deathwatch Marines fighting a desperate war to restore Imperial oversight of the Jericho Reach. Space Marines are one of the most iconic aspects of the 40K universe, and I know a … Read more
The redesigned version of the Griffin’s Crier, my gaming group’s web site, is now up and running — you can check it out at www.griffcrier.com. The GriffCrier has been around for more than a decade; our Blackrazor Guild gaming group first launched the site in 1998 as an archive for our World of Greyhawk campaign. Over time, our gaming group’s evolved and added new web apps — we now have a dedicated forum for in and out of game conversations, the archival D&D content has been moved to a Greyhawk wiki, and we’ve spawned several additional blogs and wikis in support of the other RPGs we play
Over time, the role of the Griffin’s Crier diminished, and it was time to bring it back. Four of us are blogging now, and even more are using Twitter. We’ve got two campaign blogs and two corresponding wikis, all of which are producing RSS. In recent years, the home page of the Crier had been static as content was updated elsewhere; I wanted to change that by pulling in headlines from across the Blackrazor blogosphere.
Ever since Chewbacca defeated R2-D2 in holochess, geeks have wanted a virtual table top for their games. Things have taken a major step in that direction with SurfaceScapes, a proof-of-concept app for Microsoft surface created by students at Carnegie Mellon University. It’s based on the D&D 4th Edition rules, and those who’ve seen it are suitably impressed:
For those who haven’t seen it before, Microsoft Surface is a sort of digital coffee table; it’s got a large, flat touch sensitive screen (kind of like an upsized and hard-to-move iPhone. SurfaceScapes puts an interactive map on the Surface, which you can interact with by moving around specially designed miniatures. All of the rules you need to run the game (e.g. movement, powers, etc.) are built into the game, and you can interact with your character through a handheld device (e.g. an iPod touch or smart phone).
The Gamer Traveler has posted a round up of the “Games & Travel” blog carnival from January 2010 (Internet Archive). This was a cool topic, and one I wish I’d taken the time to participate in (perhaps I will, retroactively). While I think many campaigns tend to hand-wave away travel (perhaps after one too many … Read more
Dragon Ball is a series well known for it’s long fight sequences. Some may say too long, and when referring to the anime they would be right.
The popularity of the manga caused the animators to fast track the series, so fast they rand out of source material. To slow down the pace of the anime the animators drew out the fighting sequences, causing the long drawn out fights the series is so infamous for. So it’s no surprise the a majority of the games created from the Dragon Ball franchise are fighting games, the latest being Dragon Ball Raging Blast.