Released in 1982 by Activation, Pitfall features the adventures of Pitfall Harry as he runs, jumps, and swings his way through an alligator and scorpion-filled jungle in order to recover a variety of treasures. Pitfall sold over four million copies. It plays a minor role in Ready Player One as one of the Atori 2600 games found … Read more
Over the last few weeks, I’ve had a growing desire to take a day and futz about with my various RPG projects. I mentioned this to a few of my friends, who looked at me quizzically. They were unfamiliar with the term “futz about” (or the alternative usage, “futz around”). The Free Dictionary gives two definitions: … Read more
We’re approaching the New Year, a traditional time for resolutions. But frak that – December is my birthday month, and I’ve got some goals for my 51st year. One of them is to play four new games, some of which have been on my gaming bookshelves for years because of the pandemic. Now that the … Read more
Developed by Tomohiro Nishikado and released in 1978 by Taito in Japan and Bally (via their Midway division) in the US, Space Invaders is one of the quintessential 1980s video games. And, if I’m being honest, a little misunderstood (at least by me). I rarely played the game in the arcade; my exposure was always through the … Read more
I began playing Dungeons & Dragons in grade school, and I used Apple computers almost as long. I started writing up adventures on my Apple II and printing them on an dot matrix printer, took a brief sojourn into the world of Windows PCs during and after college, and then returned to the Mac with the release of Mac OS X.
After too many years away, I’m headed back to my regional gaming convention, MEPACon. Held in the Poconos for many years, the convention moved to the Lehigh Valley for Fall 2022. It’s now 15 minutes from my house instead of 50, which means I can easily commute back and forth. The convention runs November 11-13, 2022 … Read more
Scum & Villainy took over the Lair of Secrets podcast for six episodes in 2022 as we ran a short-run campaign of the Blades in the Dark spin-off game. This post looks at the campaign, its players, and what we learned.
Since Fall 2019, the Gamer Working Group (my lunch time gaming group) has been running a new action movie-style campaign. Inspired by the Fast and the Furious franchise, the campaign is about a group of freelance agents undertaking questionable jobs for fun and profit. We started with the climatic scene of our last mission: blowing a … Read more
Space. The Final Frontier. These are the science fiction RPGs that I’d love to play, if only I could find the time, crew, and mental bandwidth to play them: Eclipse Phase, 2nd Edition – A new, allegedly easier to play, iteration of the post-human science fiction/horror role-playing game. Paranoia – The satirical (and usually fatal) role-playing game … Read more
For years, we made fun of the Forgotten Realms‘ overpowered completeness. We bled grey, and the World of Greyhawk is where our heroes lived, died, and lived again. Flash forward to our own Middle Ages, and we’re actually adventuring in the Realms … and enjoying it. Our current Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition campaign is set in the … Read more