Back when the new Fallout series debuted on Amazon Prime, the Lair of Secrets crew geeked out about how good the series was … and about the possibility of running a Fallout 2d20 campaign. That led to David Moore putting together a Fallout adventure as our next actual play for the podcast. After doing a 1st level playlets, we decided to … Read more
Rather than going for “Most Memorable Encounter” of all time, let’s talk about the most memorable encounter of the last year: “The Offer”. Chapter 2 of the Lair of Secret’s Cyberpunk RED actual play campaign saw the edge runners tasked with stealing black box corporate tech for the Maker Enclave. The Makers – whose motto is “We Aggressively Void … Read more
At this point in #RPGaDay2023, you’d probably guess my favorite game system is Savage Worlds or Dungeons & Dragons 5e, and you’d be right. So let’s talk Fate instead. Descended from the earlier Fudge role-playing game, the earliest incarnation of Fate I played was Spirit of the Century. A pulp-y game of capable people ready to … Read more
Many years ago, the Blackrazor Guild was one of the most prominent (and notorious) adventuring guilds of the Free City of Obsidian Bay. The guild’s adventurers fought in wars against the orc despot Turrosh Mak, did their best to repel the invasion of Obsidian Bay by the Scarlet Brotherhood (they failed), and accidentally flooded the … Read more
The answer to the question “Old Game You Still Play?” could go a couple of ways, but I’ll change it up to be “the oldest game you still play”. The answer had been GURPS Lite (1998) which powered our Generically Fast and Furious lunchtime game but that campaign wrapped in January 2023. D&D 5th Edition … Read more
Tennis for Two is the world’s first video game, “released” in 1958. There’s a shrine dedicated to it in Ready Player One. Quote The museum’s bottom level, located in the planet core, was a spherical room containing a shrine to the very first videogame, Tennis for Two, invented by William Higinbotham in 1958. The game ran on an … Read more
Star Wars Aracade is a vector graphics-based video game released by Atari in 1983. Additional versions were released for home consoles (albeit with inferior graphics). The game plays a minor role in Ready Player One, serving as the inspiration for the arcade museum planet of Archaide. Quote The planet’s only surface feature was a web … Read more
The RADIATIONS email newsletter is back. In olden times (circa 1999) Nuketown had a lovingly hand-edited newsletter called RADIATIONS. It had a pithy intro, thoughtful commentary, and a summary of whatever was posted to Nuketown that week. A few years — ok, a lot of years — later, RADIATIONS is back … and it’s made … Read more
Summer is coming. You’d never know it based on the cold, rainy, and generally miserable weather we’ve been having in Easton, but the area’s finally greened up and warmer weather is on the wind. With June only days away I’m now scrambling to come up with my summer reading list. So far the list looks … Read more
In this edition of Hoax Central we review hoaxes spawned by the Boston Marathon bombing, evaluate Joel Osteen’s religious identify crisis, debunk a sexually transmitted disease, and learn the true story beyond Mr. Roger’s advice to “look for the helpers” during a crisis.