It’s Game Day, meaning that in about seven hours, a horde of geeks will descend on my house and we’ll spend 4-6 hours hacking, slashing (and yes, role-playing) our way through a variety of humanoid menaces. Alternatively, we may be vying for world domination playing Risk 2210 or trying to prevent the Rise of the … Read more
Zombies are the topic of the day with Radio Active #30, which features a review of Stephen King’s zombie-novel Cell and Jonathan Coulton’s Thing a Week song “Re Your Brains”. Sites of Note looks at Joss Whedon’s Serenity re-done in LEGOS, applauds All Games Considered on their one-year anniversary, and takes a look at Geek … Read more
Looking back through the archives, I was stunned to see that I hadn’t written one of these little gaming wish lists in months, since way back in March 2005. I think that’s do to a couple of factors — for one, I got a heck of a lot of gaming stuff for Christmas, and its … Read more
When Eberron, Dungeons & Dragons’ latest campaign setting, was announced, I was less than excited. Descriptions of it — with its “lightening road” trains, airships, and various “modern” convinces powered by magic, struck me as being too much like “magepunk”, and too little like fantasy D&D. And there was the spectre of the Forgotten Realms, … Read more
Matt Snyder (of 20by20room.com fame) recently posted a RPG meme topic to his blog. In it, he poses 15 questions about people’s gaming experiences. Here are my answers. 1. What is the first RPG you ever played? Some weird combination of 1st Edition AD&D and the basic set. At the time I was in 4th … Read more
When the mainstream sees Grand Theft Auto, they see mindless violence, rampant mayhem, and destruction without purpose. When gamers look at it though, they see something different: freedom to explore. Unlike many other games (at least until the release of Grand Theft Auto 3), the mission agenda in the game is not hard coded. Players … Read more
My gaming group is contemplating our first new Greyhawk campaign in about two and a half years. It’s going to be a first-level campaign, set in our homegrown city of Obsidian Bay, and I’m going to be the primary DM. The game is still in its planning stages, but I’ve already identified a few themes. … Read more
The stirge. It is a monster whose name echoes down the halls of dungeon crawling history, evoking terror and scorn as it does so (terror for low-level characters trapped in a cavern with them, scorn for high-level adventurers all but immune to their blood-sucking attacks). This monster, whose roots date back to the dawn of … Read more
In WISH 99, Ginger asked (Internet Archive): Pick three to five genres and name the best RPG for that genre. Why do you think it’s the best? What makes it better than others? What are its downsides? Fantasy / Dungeons & Dragons: What makes Dungeons & Dragons the best fantasy game out there isn’t its … Read more
In WISH 98, Ginger asks (Internet Archive): What are three games or settings that you’ve bought or seen recently (in stores or previews) that you’d really like to try? What interests you about them and why? Eberron: At first, I wasn’t sure if I was going to like this campaign setting, but it’s grown on me … Read more