Christmas has come and gone. I wrote this post back in December … and then promptly forgot about it. Having remembered it, let’s see what showed up under the geek tree in 2023! Video Games Role-Playing Games Books Technology
In college, way back in 1992, a friend of mine ran the scariest session of Call of Cthulhu I’ve ever played in. Heck, the scariest session of any game. My friend – his name is Adam — is the best Call of Cthulhu game master I ever had. With candles burning low, and a mix … Read more
The games I wished I owned are the announced, but never published, supplements for The Day After Ragnorak. I loved Ken Hite’s “Conan the Barbarian: 1948” setting when it came out in 2009 (a tagline I stole from an RPGnet review at the time; it’s accurate). The basic setup is that in the waning days … Read more
For this post, I’m going to substitute “game” for “campaign”. My all-time favorite campaign is also my longest-running: The Blackrazor Guild Campaign for various editions of Dungeons & Dragons. Set in the World of Greyhawk, the initial campaign kicked off in 1996 and started in the Common Year 586 … which at the time was Greyhawk’s … Read more
I have to admit, when the various consent and safety tools started coming out for role-playing games, I was a little skeptical. After all, my group’s been together for 25 years; the issues these tools are meant to address rarely if ever, came up in our games. Playing together for 25 years means my group … Read more
It took a year, but I’m back! On this episode of Nuketown Radio Active, the Broken Ankle Saga comes to an end as the Outdoor Geek ventures into the Pennsylvania wilderness for some winter-time camping. Back in the warmer confines of the Game Room, I’ve got a ton of new role-playing games that I’m looking … Read more
A ton of role-playing game books found their way under the Geek Tree this year thanks to Christmas and my birthday. It was heavy on Dungeons & Dragons sourcebooks, but there’s also a touch of Cthulhu … and a swig of Hellboy Firewater to wash it all down. Creature Codex (Amazon / Website) – Kobold Publishing’s Creature Codex (Amazon) is easily the heftiest of … Read more
I’m contemplating a return to lunchtime gaming. It’s been on hiatus for quite a while do to an overwhelming lack of time, but I miss it and so do the rest of the Gamer Working Group. As a brief re-cap, the Gamer Working Group consists of a few RPG players at my day job and one … Read more
My answer today is very different from my answer 20 years ago. There was a time when I loved a good, crunchy RPG, with a ton of splat books and optional rules (in short, Dungeons & Dragons 3.x). Implicit in the crunchiness was a love of customization and the flexibility that came with it. Now … Read more
It’s summertime. And things are getting weird. The slipcase two-volume edition of Delta Green arrived in early June after two years of waiting for the Kickstarter to make its production run. After reading lots of positive reviews, I picked up the Tales for the Loop RPG, which features kids on bikes investigating mysteries in a … Read more