Radio Active #92: Back from the Break

A view from the top of a ski sloop. The hills of Pennsylvania can be seen in the distance.

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

The Ghost Walk Star Cluster

The Ghost Walk Star Cluster is located at the edge of the galaxy and is known for its spectacular views of dying stars, it’s just-ignited protostar nebula, and the gossamer strands of illuminated gas that inspired its name. Approximately fifty light-years across, the Ghost Walk Cluster is composed of approximately 20 stars, most of which … Read more

Blogworthy: Conclusions, Star Trek Card Game, Grand Pyramid, Spelljammer, Floorplan Generator

Star Trek game cards laid out on a blue/black starscape.

A Satisfying Conclusion: Gnome Stew looks at strategies for ending your RPG games, be they convention one-shots or multi-year campaigns. How a Star Trek card game quietly continues, 10 years after its official end: I played a few rounds of the Star Trek Collectible Card game by Decipher back in college. Though fun, I never got into it. … Read more

Game Day: Autumn 2018 Shopping List

A cloaked figure holds a gauntlet before his face, while a rogues gallery of heroes looks on from behind.

There’s a lot of cool role-playing game material coming out this autumn. I find myself flitting from product to product, excited at the prospect of picking a new game, then realizing that my budget can only support so many purchases. Thus the shopping list. It’s largely aspirational — again, the budget can only support so … Read more

#RPGaDay2018 – Your gaming ambitions for the next year

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

My overarching ambition is to continue making time for games. It’s difficult, with the day job, marriage, one kid in high school, the other in middle school, the day job, and all of the activities that go along with them. We’ve got Boy Scouts, marching band, softball, baseball, Seeing Eye Puppy Raising … it’s a … Read more

#RPGaDay2018 – Describe your plans for your next game

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

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

Geeky Lorem Ipsum Text

A collection of Dr. Who heads, each of which can be used to create geeky lorem ipsum text.

After 11 days of writing, and a ridiculously long and difficulty week, I was sorely tempted to make a blog post that was nothing but geeky lorem ipsum text.

And then I thought … hey, I could do a blog post about lorem ipsum text. For those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about, lorem ipsum is Latin text used by designers, web developers, and others when they want people to focus on the layout of a page rather than on the contents of the page.

Starship Deck Plans Links Compendium

Starship deck plans for the U.S.S. Enterprise, rendered as line art.

One of the big differences between running a fantasy campaign and a science fiction campaign is that when playing SF, I find myself constantly looking for starship deckplans.

With a fantasy campaign, many of the maps revolved around buildings, dungeons or overland adventures, and those sorts of maps were easy to knock out over lunch. Failing that, I had plenty of maps from 20+ years of Dungeons & Dragons that I could fall back on.

With my Star Wars campaign though, the adventures are split between world-based exploration and starship- or space station-based combat. Starship based adventures represent perhaps 1/8 to 1/4 of the encounters I run, but when I do run them I often find myself scrambling for deckplans.

The big reason there is that it takes more effort to come up with a rational-seeming starship. A dungeon can be as simple as a series of rooms, but with a starship players always want to know where to find the bridge, engineering, jeffries tubes, etc.