Games

RPG Reviews Digest: 3rd Party 4E, Champions, Hero, Against the Darkness

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Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition has been getting some more reviewer love the last few weeks as another wave of third-party products hits the shelves. The two notable books are Advanced Player’s Guide (Expeditious Retreat Press) and Forgotten Heroes: Fang, Fist and Song (Goodman Games), and both are looking to fill the void left in … Read more

Star Wars: Saga Edition – Annotated Playtest #1

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Various scenes from the Star Wars movies cover a game master screen. In front of the screen is a small ceramic statue; behind it are several Star Wars books.

Our Star Wars: Saga Edition campaign kicked off on Friday with our first full-fledged Knights of the Old Republic session. Since my Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition Annotated Playtest went over so well  I decided to do the same for this Saga Edition. This one will work a little differently; instead of annotating a single … Read more

Game Day: Dawn on Zebulon

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Our first official Star Wars Game Day is upon us. After two weeks of playtesting starship combat, we’re launching into a first-level prelude campaign with about half of our regular players in attendance (the other half having family/work commitments).

Set in the time of the Knights of the Old Republic, the campaign begins on the Outer Rim binary planet of Zebulon in the Vargis Tau system. Zebulon’s comprised of two worlds: the primary, Zebulon Prime, and its sister/moon, Zebulon Beta. The later of these is home to the Jedi academy that will serve as home base for the Jedi in the campaign.

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Game Day: Shopping for a Star Wars KOTOR campaign

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Our Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic campaign is kicking off next week. That fact, combined with the timely arrival of a gift certificate to Amazon.com, has me shopping for some last-minute tools and goodies, including game master screens, battle maps, miniatures, soundtracks, and background material in the form of graphic novels and video … Read more

Radio Active #72: Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition

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Nuketown Radio Active #72 contemplates the best way to organize a geeky bookshelf, takes another turn at chess with kids, finds out that Neutron Lad has a lot to talk about, and asks questions about Nuketown’s long-dormant RADIATIONS newsletter. Finally I review Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, the latest edition of the venerable role-playing game by … Read more

RPG Reviews Digest: Monsters of Myth, Aces & Eights, True20, Dorkness Rising

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I slacked on my own game review duties at Nuketown this week (though I did pitch a review to a new market) but thankfully others remained on the ball, yielding a number of new reviews.

There are two more Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition reviews out this week. The Geek Gazette offers some initial thoughts on the Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide and rants about the necessity of buying both a campaign guide and a player’s guide. This is undoubtedly great for WotC’s bottom line, he argues, but no so great for players.

My understanding is that Wizards is scaling back its campaign offerings, so these may be the only two FR books you get this year. I have to think they’ll publish additional Forgotten Realms source books in 2009, but at the same time they’ve been pretty upfront about releasing books for one campaign setting a year (FR this year, Eberron next, maybe Dark Sun after that).

I think the bigger question could end up being not “is this too much?” but “is it enough?”

RPG.net has a favorable review of Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition. Reviewer Eric Christian Berg liked the ease of building encounters and the dynamic nature of combat.

Game Day: Setting up a KOTOR Campaign

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An armored Sith lord and a woman in brown clothing hold lightsabers aloft.

As my group’s D&D Dark City campaign winds down, the Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic game is ramping up. This week sees the group off because of a combination of family colds and Celtic Fest (which, given the rainy weekend forecast, will likely result in more colds, but I digress) but we’ve spent … Read more

Gaming in the Verse

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The cast of the movie Serenity stands in a desert, ready for battle.

Prepping for my “Unification Day” adventure for the Serenity Role-Playing Game at Nuke(m)Con 2008 sent me wandering the web for inspiration, references and shortcuts.

Unfortunately, the official Serenity web site at http://www.serenity-rpg.com is dead, but it seems Margaret Weis Productions is working on moving material from the old site to their new one. The most important of these is the PDF of the Official Serenity Character Sheet. The site also has news on the new Serenity Adventures book, which features a number of related scenarios for the game. The PDF is available now, the print version will hopefully be out soon.

The official site is down, but the unofficial one at FireflyRPG.com may be the next best thing. It’s got a beautiful poster map of the Serenity solar system, 3D renderings of ground and air vehicles, weapon reference cards, and deck plans for 28 different ships. There are also two rules quick reference sheets, but unfortunately during the playtest I found they had too many house rules to be useful.

Nuke(m)Con 2008: The Wild, Weird West

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The cast of the movie Serenity stands in a desert, ready for battle.

Like a twister carving its way through a Midwestern cornfield, Nuke(m)Con has come and gone. My gaming group held its annual (well, almost annual) home-grown convention over the weekend. In a break from previous years, which typically saw a mix of Dungeons & Dragons and board games, this year’s Nuke(m)Con had a western theme. We … Read more

RPG Review Digest: WoD, Pathfinder Dice, 4E Revisited, Castle Zagyg, Alpha Omega

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Last week’s surge of Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition reviews has abated, but there’s a few new ones out there. What I find interesting about the reviews that are coming out now is that folks have had a chance to digest and (more importantly) play the game. As a result, people are getting past the … Read more