We ran our last D&D 4E session on Friday, concluding the playtest campaign that ran all summer. Since this was our last hurrah (at least for a while) we decided to level our characters up from 2nd to 9th level to see how they played. Here are a few random observations that popped up during … Read more
After a brief respite in Sigil, where they were attacked by a cunning band of phase gnomes, last Friday’s D&D 4E playtest campaign saw my gaming group venture back out into the wilds of the planescape. This time they traveled to the Dire Forest of Yalzerth, an alternative material plane in the midst of … Read more
We’re about halfway through our Planetorn play-test campaign, with the fourth session happening today, and perhaps another three or four to go before it runs its course. This milestone has me reflecting on where the campaign’s been, where it’s going, and what I hope to accomplish before it’s all over. Today’s adventure finds our heroes … Read more
D&D 4th Edition — particularly the Player’s Handbook — taken a lot of criticism for being 99% crunch, and 1% fluff. It’s also taken hits for the gutting of many of the role-playing aspects from earlier editions, including skills like craft, profession, and perform. All of this is true, but 4E’s saving grace is the … Read more
My gaming group held our first 4th edition playtest this week, pitting a group of first-level characters against a wandering band of goblins. The battle took place among a couple of low hills, with the adventurers surprising a band of goblins eating roasted dog around a guttering campfire. There was no role-playing component to the … Read more
Our first full-blown session of Savage Worlds took place last night as our Weird Pulp campaign got underway. The game began with the characters gathering at the Gotham Museum of Art and Antiquity as part of the National Exploration Society to learn of a planned expedition to British Honduras. As we were being briefed, German … Read more
Toybox Wars is a table-top miniatures game in which the inhabitants of your toybox rise up to fight each other to the death. The core mechanic is simple. Each toy — be it a miniature car, squad of army men, teddybear — is represented by 10 six-sided dice divided into one of three pools: Dodge … Read more
The Hellion-class heavy cruiser Cerberus took flight Friday night as my gaming group put the Battlestar Galactica RPG through its paces. As I wrote in my earlier Game Day column, the players took on the role of members of the Hellfire Aces, an elite squad of Marines and pilots attached to the Cerberus, a decommissioned … Read more
The new Battlestar Galactica RPG was a long time coming, and for a while, it seemed as legendary (and as likely to be found) as Earth is in the television series. But Margaret Weis Productions was selling the game at GenCon, and the general public should be able to get their hands on it by … Read more
The Star Wars: Saga Edition Role-Playing Game is the third Star Wars RPG released by Wizards of the Coast. Like it’s predecessors, its based on a variant of the d20 engine that drives Dungeons & Dragons. Unlike the previous editions though, this one truly feels like Star Wars. My friends and I (collectively known as … Read more