Numenera – Nuketown

Game Day: Scales of Truth

January 26, 2021 Ken Newquist Game Columns, Game Day, Games

Sometimes, you need to get a little weird … and Scales of Truth, my current lunchtime campaign, is a lot weird. Set in a post-apocalyptic future, Scales of Truth is a D&D 5e-powered game that relies heavily on the tropes of[…]

Game Day: Getting Lost in a Hexcrawl

January 3, 2021 Ken Newquist Game Columns, Game Day, Games, Role-Playing Games

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[…]

Off the Bookshelf: The Unicorn Project, Bone Silence, Arcana of the Ancients

July 3, 2020 Ken Newquist Book & Print Columns, Books & Print, Off the Bookshelf

Nuketown’s summer reading list for 2020 is in full effect. In May and June, I finished two books – The Unicorn Project and Bone Silence – and picked up Arcana of the Ancients, a hefty new science fantasy RPG sourcebook for my new lunchtime[…]

Walkabout

November 28, 2018 Ken Newquist All These Worlds, Games, Projects, Role-Playing Games

Several years ago the Gamer Working Group — my lunchtime gaming crew — chose to playtest Numenera. I created the wandering town of Walkabout for what I expected to be a short campaign, but alas, the game never really clicked with the group.[…]

A close up view of the spines of numerous role-playing game books.

#RPGaDay2018 – How can we get more people playing?

August 8, 2018 Ken Newquist Games, Projects, Role-Playing Games, RPG-a-Day 2018

For those of us with kids, the answer’s easy: teach them how to play. I started teaching my son and his friends how to play three years ago during our annual summer vacation on Lake Champlain. Two years ago, our[…]

#RPGaDay2018 – What gives an RPG staying power?

August 3, 2018 Ken Newquist Games, Projects, Role-Playing Games, RPG-a-Day 2018

Imagination + good rules + group buy-in. Those are the elements that fueled our longest running games, even if the campaigns the RPGs were powering jumped from ruleset to ruleset. Our Blackrazor Guild campaign, now in its second decade, has[…]

Two explorers investigate a mysterious hatch in the middle of a swamp.

Numenera 2: Time to Give Weird a Second Chance?

September 20, 2017 Ken Newquist Games, Role-Playing Games

The Numenera 2 Kickstarter just launched. It has me thinking about my gaming groups’ own experiences with Numenera, why we stopped playing it, and how Numenera 2 might get us playing again. A few years ago I backed the Numenera kickstarter and, as my core rule book arrived, I was[…]

Several RPG books fanned out across a table.

#RPGaDay2017

August 31, 2017 Ken Newquist Games, Project Updates, Projects, Role-Playing Games

RPG-a-Day is an annual event in which bloggers spend a month talking about different aspects of role-playing games. Rather than spread this out over several blog posts, I’ve rolled up my entries into one mega-post. Day 1: What published RPG[…]

Inverted pyramid-like stone monoliths float in the ping-blue mists of a mountainous region.

Game Day: Lunchtime Numenera

March 30, 2014 Ken Newquist Game Columns, Game Day, Games, Role-Playing Games

My lunchtime campaign has transitioned from Dragon Age to Numenera. Two of us backed it in the Kickstarter, and the others were sufficiently intrigued to want to playtest the game. As I wrote before, my regular gaming group ran an[…]

2014: A Year of Transitions

January 30, 2014 Ken Newquist Game Columns, Games, RPG Blog Carnival

This month’s RPG Blog Carnival topic is “Transitions”, and it’s particularly appropriate for my group in 2014.

One of our players just took a job out of state and another welcomed his third child into the world. We’ve just started a Savage Worlds playtest, which might lead to our first non-d20 campaign … ever. Dungeons & Drgaons 5th Edition is looming over August, and I expect we’ll at least do a playtest once it’s released.