Tales of a GM is running the 12 Days of Dicember, a project dedicated to dice in all their randomized glory. The question for the first day of Dicember is “Which is your favorite set of dice?” For me, it’s my Ragnarok dice. I bought these Chessex dice at MEPACON 2010 for my The Day after Ragnarok lunchtime campaign. The smokey … Read more
The latest RPG Blog Carnival encourages us to “revisit the past”. Hosted by GameMastery, the kickoff post discusses writing a follow-up or sequel to a prior post. For me, that’s revisiting “The Three-Page Manifesto”. Written in 2008, the column saw me grappling with balancing gaming and fatherhood. At the time my kids were 6 and 3 and my … Read more
Xanathar’s Guide to Everything arrived in my mailbox last week, bringing with it a cornucopia of goodness for Dungeons & Dragons. My only complaint about the book so far is I can’t read the entire thing simultaneously. As expected the Xanathar’s Guide (Amazon) includes a ton of content that originated in Wizards of the Coast’s Unearthed Arcana columns. It’s been edited and … Read more
[… must … resist … Queen/Flash Gordon … reference…] The Flash Gordon RPG for Savage Worlds Kickstarter is live. Created by Pinnacle Entertainment Group, the Kickstarter includes the Flash Gordon RPG core rule book (192 page hardcover), the Kingdoms of Mongo campaign book (192 page hardcover), a 32-page adventure, a game master’s screen, new bennies, new dice, cool maps, and even a boxed set that … Read more
I get distracted during game sessions. Like many gamers today, I can find it hard to resist the itch to check my phone, rationalizing it with something like “oh, I’ll just look up this one thing and be done with it”. It’s never one thing, and the itch never goes away. It’s even worse with … Read more
I’m running three events at MEPACon Fall 2017, which is being held November 10-12, 2017 in Scranton, Pa. The first two are powered by Savage Worlds: SG-13, which is a Stargate adventure and The Curse of the Moaning Mists, which is a Pirates of the Spanish Main adventure. Rounding things out is Light Everlasting, an introductory adventure for Hollow Earth Expedition. SG-13: … Read more
Another Nuke(m)Con is in the bag. Held September 29-October 1, the latest Nuke(m)Con continued a reinvigorated tradition that began in 2006. Family and work emergencies played havoc with attendance this year as a broken water heater, a sick baby, and a super-sized work project kept three players away from the table. A family birthday and … Read more
Nuke(m)Con 2017 is a week away and I’m scrambling to pull together my events. My gaming group’s homegrown convention is being held September 27-30 at a friends house. We expect 10-12 people to attend over the course of the weekend, but any given slot will likely have 5-6. I’m running three games: Dungeons & Dragons, … Read more
The Numenera 2 Kickstarter just launched. It has me thinking about my gaming groups’ own experiences with Numenera, why we stopped playing it, and how Numenera 2 might get us playing again. A few years ago I backed the Numenera kickstarter and, as my core rule book arrived, I was excited to try out this science fantasy game set in a ruined, weird world a … Read more
My gaming group, the Blackrazor Guild, formed in 1996. Over the last 20 years we’ve created hundreds of Dungeons & Dragons characters and at least a good two dozen of those reached the left heights of “high level” adventuring. These characters spanned multiple editions of the game, but the most iconic started in 2nd Edition and were … Read more