After four years of playing Dungeons & Dragons 3.0 and its kin , poisons are old hat for most players. Depending on the situation, the rules lawyers, power gamers, and even that guy who spends most of the night exploring the nasal possibilities of his dice know what poison a Game Master is talking about … Read more
Another d20/OGL character generator has hit the Windows platform. It’s called RPG Xplorer, and it’s got a full-page ad in Dragon 331. I’m always happy to see more RPG utilities — heaven knows Game Master’s need all the help they can get — but looking over the site, I couldn’t help but think did we … Read more
The third day of MEPACon saw dozens of people walking around in that state of happy exhaustion that can only come from playing games for 48 hours straight (or at least, for what felt like 48 hours straight). Refreshed after heading to bed early (the others finished up their dungeon crawl at 4 a.m.) I … Read more
The long, brutal game of Risk: Godstorm that kept me up until 5 a.m. also kept me from hitting the 9 a.m. gaming slot at MepaCon, despite the fact that it was for a game I really, really wanted to play: InSpectres. Unfortunately, while chasing ghosts around for fun and profit is appealing, sleeping was … Read more
MEPACon is a fair-sized role-playing convention held in eastern Pennsylvania, and despite my best intentions, I’d never managed to actually attend it. This year, I decided to change that, and to help my resolve, I volunteered to run a few miniatures events. Friday was the first night of the con, and I headed up after … Read more
It’s been a long time since I did one of these columns, mostly because most of my gaming wishes came true for Christmas and I went hogwild during Bastion Press’s big January sale, buying five new source books. I’ve finally worked my way through all those books and the itch to expand my collection is … Read more
I caught this over on OgreCave: Paizo Publishing (the folks behind Dragon and Dungeon) have announced a new product line called “GameMastery” which will “help GameMasters provide a richer experience for their players while streamlining their setup and administration time.”I caught this over on OgreCave: Paizo Publishing (the folks behind Dragon and Dungeon) have announced … Read more
Games Quarterly is a print magazine covering a variety of non-electronic games; from RPGs to board games to collectable games to war games, if you’ve ever picked up a pair of six-siders, this magazine has something for you. The magazine’s content is diverse as its subject matter. It includes the expected industry news and interviews … Read more
CrystalBall is the best damn D&D RPG tool on the Mac. The fact that it’s also one of the only D&D RPG tools for the Mac is beside the point. Available as a shareware trial download (Internet Archive), the program is comprised of a dozen or so different utilities for your game that can be … Read more
The latest editions of Dungeons & Dragons went to great lengths to abstract the combat system, eliminating weapon speeds, dropping call shots, and creating area-of-effect templates. All of this abstraction comes at a price though. Some of the exceptional aspects of the game — liking being able to put an arrow through an enemy’s eye … Read more