On Radio Active’s 100th episode I talk about Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands, a shoot-and-loot video game based on the Borderlands franchise, go on a solitary, geeky retreat to work on RPG and podcast projects, and contemplate the golden age of online role-playing games. Nuketown News Radio Active’s 100th Episode It finally happened – Radio Active hit … Read more
I love Bennies in Savage Worlds. Bennies, usually represented by a poker chip or some other token, allow players (and game masters) to re-roll skill checks and attacks. Players begin with a set number of bennies per session – usually 3 – and spend them throughout that session. Critically, they can earn more bennies for … Read more
The Malachite Throne of the Great Kingdom is one of the legendary artifacts of Greyhawk. The seat of power of the corrupt and collapsing kingdom of Aerdy (aka The Great Kingdom), the Fiend-Seeing Throne sets the tone for the entire region. It’s also a campaign I’ve long wanted to run. Back in the day, TSR … Read more
The Ready Player One Replay is an exploration of the games that inspired the novel Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. Quote But then, during the course of my research, I discovered an old Dungeons & Dragons supplement called Tomb of Horrors, which had been published in 1978. — Ready Player One p. 66 Game Play Originally created as a tournament … Read more
My current lunchtime game is Scales of Truth, a hexcrawl set in a post-apocalyptic science-fantasy setting. Think of a mashup of Thundarr the Barbarian, Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, and Mad Max: Fury Road, powered by Dungeons & Dragons. So what’s a hexcrawl? It’s a style of RPG campaign in which the game master populates … Read more
The Ready Player One Replay is an exploration of the games that inspired the novel Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. Quote … hundreds of polyhedral dice like those used in old tabletop role-playing games. — Ready Player One p. 10 A freeze-frame of this scene appears nearly identical to a painting by Jeff Easley that appeared on … Read more
Bullet journals are analog alternatives to printed day planners, “to-do” apps, and note-taking tools. Created by Ryder Carroll, bullet journals are a purposefully archaic approach to capturing life’s esoteric bits, from a list of today’s meetings to a quick note about that weird dream you had last night. Though typically used to organize your real-life, … Read more
Like an astronaut hurled far into deep space, Nuketown Radio Active returns to Earth a year after it left to find the planet utterly transformed. Fortunately, there are no super-intelligent apes. At least, not yet. On this episode of Nuketown Radio Active, I reintroduce folks to the podcast, catch up on the state of Nuketown, … Read more
Why smart people believe coronavirus myths talks about a phenomenon I’ve seen too many times to count: Otherwise intelligent people retweeting or re-posting questionable content without thinking it through. Case in point: people stating as fact that individuals are getting reinfected with COVID-19. There are certainly cases where people who have had the disease test … Read more
Artists Creates Floating Worlds In Test Tubes – Rosa de Jong creates tiny models of buildings, trees, and geographic features that float on sculpted, rocky islands in a test tube. Think Avatar’s floating islands meets the traditional ship-in-a-bottle models. Greyhawk CY 576 by Anna B. Myers – Thanks to funding from her Patreon, cartographer Anna B. Myers released a refreshed … Read more