My friends and I have a problem. We’re scattered geographically and temporally, with jobs, families and commitments that keep us from gaming as much as we’d like. We’ve tried online gaming via Windows but have been disappointed every time. Poor net connections, aging hardware, and incongruent patches foiled us time and again. But the Xbox … Read more
WISH 95 question is (Internet Archive): How many colors do you like in your gaming? Do you prefer four-color games? Or should game morality be black and white or shades of grey, and if the latter, how many? Are “evil” characters acceptable? Does your preference depend on genre? Do your preferences affect the genres you … Read more
Maure Castle is back. The setting for Mordenkainen’s Fantastic Adventure gets the “return to” treatment in Dungeon #112 in a super-adventure penned by Robert J. Kuntz and Gary Gygax. It is truly a wonder to behold. The follow-up to the classic 1st edition module details four dungeon levels, and includes two appendixes featuring new magic … Read more
The WISH #94 question (Internet Archive): How do you handle an obnoxious character who has habits that annoy other PCs? What do you do as a fellow player/GM? What has worked and not worked for you? As other respondents to this particular WISH noted, we need to differentiate between obnoxious characters and obnoxious characters. Obnoxious characters … Read more
A few months back, I bought an Xbox, fired it up, and promptly began blasting my way through the excellent first person shooter Halo. I beat the game on its “average” level, and began working my way through the next most difficult one. It’s certainly living up to its rating, and after having been stymied … Read more
Settlers of Catan is one of those games you hear people talk about for years, but somehow never get around to playing. Then when you finally do play it, you wonder why you wasted all that time on sleeping when you could have been playing Settlers. The premise of the game is simple. Two to … Read more
Master and Commander by Patrick O’Brian: Historical naval fiction set in the waning years of the 18th century, this novel follows the adventures of Captain Jack Aubrey and his enlightened ship’s surgeon, Doctor Stephen Maturin as they wages war against foes of the British Empire. This book inspired half of last year’s movie Master & … Read more
Wish 93 (Internet Archive) delves into an interesting subject: how do you deal with a campaign that has a long-running and detailed history? Here’s what Ginger asked: “Does joining a game with a lot of background thrill or intimidate you? What do you do to try to learn the background, or to compensate for not … Read more
Recently, Alderac announced they were ending the Shadowforce Archer campaign setting (Internet Archive) for their Spycraft d20 espionage game. Naturally, fans of the setting were shocked and upset by this, but personally, I was happy about the news. When Spycraft first launched, I was excited — here was a game in the spirit of James … Read more
A while back — a year ago, maybe more — I had a character I really enjoyed playing, a chaotic neutral fighter/wizard named Zilanderan who was obsessed with the planes and alternative realities. He was a fun character, but alas doomed — he died fighting the thralls of the Temple of Elemental Evil. After he … Read more