A strange thing is happening in RPGs: science fiction is popular again. While there have always been science fiction RPGs, they’ve always been a distant second (or more often, a distant third) to fantasy and even horror RPGs. Right now though we have three major scifi RPGs in print: Star Wars: Saga Edition, Warhammer 40k, … Read more
Dungeons & Dragons: Tiny Adventures is that rarest of WotC digital products: one that actually delivers. Wizards of the Coast’s litany of digital failure is long. D&D Master Tools. D&D eTools. D&D Insider. Gleemax. All overhyped, and under delivered. Yet here’s Tiny Adventures for Facebook, a simple but surprisingly addictive little app that no one … Read more
In 12 years of adventuring in Greyhawk, our group built up a number of legends, told, but never experienced. The recovery of the soul-devouring sword Blackrazor is one of them. Brant Bladescream, warrior, adventurer and conman, recovered Blackrazor from the volcanic dungeon known as White Plume Mountain and used its notoriety to found the Blackrazor Guild. … Read more
I’ve decided to make the Pathfinder Role-Playing Game subject of one of my upcoming “Summon WebScryer” columns for Knights of the Dinner Table. The successor to D&D 3.5 (in spirit, if not in name) is going to be released this summer, so it seems like a good time to write about it. I’m looking for anything that has to do with the RPG; playtests of the beta, campaign web sites, you name it. If you know of one, please post it to the comments or email me at nuketown@gmail.com.
In a post about which game systems he’d love to own, my friend (and fellow Dire Paladin) Dr. Checkmate offered this throwaway line: “I would like to see more stuff in the square format of WotC’s Star Wars books and the smaller still format of SWEX. I’m not getting any younger and these books keep … Read more
Megadungeons, epic character deathtraps that have made or broken a thousand RPG campaigns, are staging a comeback. While it’s been upwards of 25-30 years since we first crawled into Castle Greyhawk and Undermountain, the Oughts saw the release of Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil, World’s Largest Dungeon, Castle Whiterock, Maure Castle and now … Read more
Wilderness of Mirrors by John Wick 17 pages MSRP: $5.00 Buy it from Indie Press Revolution A few years ago I ran a short-lived Spycraft 1.0 PBEM campaign. It barely made it out of the briefing stage, ultimately succumbing to the asynchronous maladies that doom most play-by-email games. The campaign lived on in the back … Read more
Another week, another game of Star Wars. The adventure rolls on with a special flashback episode. Last week, our band of heroes learned of 32 Belasco Division E-company (aka the Early Birds), an Old Republic Army advance assault unit that went missing on Toprawa during the Great Sith War. This week, we’ll be playing soldiers … Read more
We played our first Star Wars game since December on Friday. Prepping the session had me digging through my various web resources looking for inspiration (and new entries for the campaign blog). They’re a useful collection of tools for anyone running a Star Wars/scifi game, so I thought I’d share them. Star Wars Galaxies at … Read more
Never, ever fly a TIE Fighter. That’s the most important thing we learned during our initial playtest of the Star Wars: Saga Edition combat rules as our squadron of three TIE fighters was torn to pieces by an X-Wing and the Old Republic-era S-250 Chela starfighter. It’s as it should be — Imperial propaganda aside, … Read more