Another podcast, another Sunday spent painting. This time around I discuss Battlestar Galactica’s Season 2 cliffhanger and offer a brief review of the film version of V for Vendetta (yes, I’m behind the geek times) before launching into reviews of the turn-based strategy game FreeCiv, the podcasts Misfit Brew and Does My Geek Look Big … Read more
My gaming group is comprised of mid-twentysomething-to-mid-thirtysomething gamers who love role-playing, who enjoy delving deep into the intricacies of a plot, running down leads, fleshing out a setting, and generally immersing themselves in the campaign. Yes, there’s hacking, and yes, there’s slashing, but we’re just as likely to spend a night doing nothing but role-playing. … 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
Radio Active takes a turn into the supernatural with #10, offering a review of the F. Paul Wilson’s supernatural detective novel The Tomb as well as a review of the D&D-compatible monster source book A Maze of Minotaurs by Behemoth4. I also talk about staying up late (or rather, getting up early) with a moody … Read more
Paizo Publishing’s announced some major changes to its flagship Dragon and Dungeon magazines. The changes, apparently based on market research and feedback from readers, are pretty major. Dragon is going to become a more broad-based D&D magazine, focusing not only on the pen-and-paper RPG, but on its various electronic spawn as well. It’s also adding … Read more
The thing that Dungeons & Dragons 3.0/3.5 excels at most is its flexibility: its possible to play the same class for years and never play the same kind of character twice. Unearthed Arcana expands that flexibility by adding hundreds of new options to the game. Unearthed Arcana (Amazon) is not the sort of rulebook that … Read more
After four years of playing Dungeons & Dragons 3.0 and its kin , poisons are old hat for most players. Depending on the situation, the rules lawyers, power gamers, and even that guy who spends most of the night exploring the nasal possibilities of his dice know what poison a Game Master is talking about … 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