Friday’s game day was supposed to see our lower-level Dark City campaign characters’ wrap up Paizo’s Crown of the Kobold King module and then return to our home city of Obsidian Bay for some much needed down time. And then … Total Party Kill. It was our own fault. We went up against a dozen … Read more
Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition is coming, slashing and burning all that has come before to create a new game that ignores the tropes of classic sword-and-sorcery in order to embrace the always-on, always-cool mechanics of digital fantasy. We see it at every turn. The lack of a 3.x-to-4.x conversion guide. The admonishment to wrap-up … Read more
I didn’t have enough time for a full-fledged Game Day column this week, so here are some random thoughts relating to Mutants & Masterminds inspired by Friday’s session. The new Infinity Storm blog is coming along nicely. I’ve got an HTML mock-up mostly working in Safari and Firefox; Internet Explorer still has issues (but really, … Read more
The Savage Worlds: Explorer Edition game book is a slim, seductive little tome that promises to deliver “fast, fun, and furious” action for any genre and in hundreds less pages than Dungeons & Dragons takes to recreate just the fantasy genre. It’s a promise it makes good on … up to a point. This is … Read more
With the Dark City campaign back in full swing, I’m finally able to use my Book of Almost Everything. I created the Book in the waning days of the original Dark City campaign as I realized that I had a treasure trove of instant non-player characters, random encounters, and flavor text lurking in my back … Read more
On this episode of Radio Active, I discuss my daughter StarGirl’s sudden desire to learn chess and my approach to teaching her, contemplate the impending arrival of National Novel Writing Month, check out the Geek Dad Podcast and Simian Farmer blog and offer some thoughts on the 4th edition of Dungeons & Dragons. Getting the Show … Read more
It’s been a while since my last Game Day column, partly because of a crazy amount of work at home and job, but also because I haven’t been gaming as much as I’d like – I’ve missed two sessions in the last month, and will miss another next month. Haphazard schedule aside, my Mutants & … Read more
Martin Rayla has a great thread over on Treasure Tables about using music in your game. He’s not talking just about having something going on in the background, but also crafting a soundtrack that matches the expected actions, fights and drama that the players will be experiencing. I’ve used music in my games before, but … Read more
Somehow Pierce Haligarth has survived his fellow Lightbringer, Donegal, cleric of Daern. The cleric fell while Pierce and his fellow adventurers sought the Amulet of Ravenkind, which they’ll need to fight the dread Count Strahd of Castle Ravenloft. While Donegal rests in his god’s eternal fortress, he’s left the rest of the party to hunt … 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