Rather than just go with my gut instinct for “favorite RPG of all time”, I decided to run the numbers. The numbers are, admittedly, a bit skewed. D&D 3rd Edition includes a bunch of d20 supplements (at least, those who survived my 3e purge) including hardcovers and splat books. I don’t have nearly as many … Read more
Blogworthy is a regular column dedicated to blog posts that I’ve read and enjoyed. It’s a direct outcome of my RPG Blogs Reading List on Feedly. Pathfinder Playtest Review: Roll for Combat looks at the new Pathfinder 2 rules and how well it does in achieving its “different, yet familiar” goal. It’s a lengthy read so you’ll want … Read more
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 seen numerous prequels, sequels, and spin-offs. It’s been run using Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition, … 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
Nuke(m)Con. It’s my gaming group’s homegrown convention which was first held in 2004 as an alternative to going to GenCon. It’s schedule was never formally defined, but for a while we had an every-other-year schedule going with conventions in 2006, 2008, and 2012. Then came the convention drought. It wasn’t for a lack of trying … Read more
Every hero’s path to glory to starts somewhere. In The Crypt of the Everflame, a 32-page, 1st-level adventure for the Pathfinder RPG, that path begins with a centuries-old crypt and an initiation ceremony gone horribly wrong.
I’m back from GenCon 2014. As always it was an exhausting-but-fun four days of gaming, preceded by a few days visiting with my wife’s relatives relatives in southern and central Indiana. Adventuring with D&D 5th Edition My Dungeons & Dragons 5e events were decent — I played a pre-gen wizard who I was able to … Read more
The kickstarter for Green Ronin’s Advanced Bestiary is in its final hours. The book, a creature compendium for the Pathfinder RPG, is funded with 901 backers and $41,000 (easily beating its goal of $20,000). The book was originally published in the waning days of D&D 3.5 and went on to provide inspiration for Paizo’s monstrous … Read more
Second Darkness is ending. Our first-ever Pathfinder adventure path campaign, began in September 2011 and is concluding about two years later. We played Pathfinder every two weeks, the exception of the occasional schedule cratering by holidays and summer vacations. We worked our way through the entirety of the first three books in the series, but … Read more
My Second Darkness Pathfinder campaign is rapidly approaching its climax. The heroes recently started Book 4: Eternal Night but, as is often the case with my group, they quickly went off the proscribed path. Far off the proscribed path.
It illustrates one of the big lessons I learned while running an adventure path.