The original Sage has pass...
Monday, 30 January 2012
Heads up, worthy readers; I was recently interviewed for the gaming podcast Jennisodes, and the episode will be posted next Monday (2/6/2012). We talked about Adventures Dark and Deep, of course, but also touched on the upcoming Castle of the Mad Archmage print volume and some other fun stuff.There is also an exclusive and exciting announcement relating to Adventures Dark and Deep in there, so be sure to tune ...
Sunday, 29 January 2012
I've been a fan of both science and science fiction as long as I can remember, but one of the things that really had a big influence on me just as I was coming into my own (and, perhaps not coincidentally, while I was deep into my discovery of Dungeons and Dragons) was Omni magazine.I was fortunate that my high school library had a subscription to Omni from the beginning in 1978. Every month I would pour through its pages, and was invariably entertained...
Saturday, 28 January 2012
From today's Upcoming Products seminar at D&DXP:Any plans to rerelease the other products for 1E and 2E and other editions, either in print or electronically? We are looking at making a lot of that older material available to you, but we want to make sure we do it right for you guys and for Wizards. We'll have more news on that....
Friday, 27 January 2012
One of the things that plagues some D&D games (my own included, on occasion) is what is known as "the fifteen minute workday problem". To wit, characters in a dungeon go through two or three rooms, find themselves down some hit points and/or spells, and then return to the surface, heal up and re-memorize spells to return on the next day. Or, alternatively, they barricade themselves in a room and camp out in the dungeon itself. It's a problem...
Thursday, 26 January 2012
For them's as is interested, do check in on the EnWorld 5E information page (linked over on the right column of this blog as well). Now that the D&D Experience Con has gotten underway, they seem to be doing live updates as new information becomes available.Update #1: A seminar transcript from the "Charting the Course: An Edition for all Editions" seminar has been posted based on liveblogging and tweets. Update #2: Geeksdreamgirl has a recap of not only the D&D Next seminar, but a (necessarily vague) account of having played a game...
I saw Star Wars 36 times in the theater in 1977. Empire Strikes Back 24 times. Return of the Jedi 12 times. Yes, I counted. Between us, my wife and I had 4 sets of the original trilogy on VHS, and we have 2 sets on DVD (the originals and the special re-edited editions). We've seen all of the prequels in the theaters, both the first time and then the second time when they were re-released. We even saw The Clone Wars when it was released. I cannot...
Tuesday, 24 January 2012
Here at long last is the complete Tamarian army for my campaign, built as a starter army using the Field of Glory rules (using "Feudal French" as the basis for the army, and the whole thing can double for that when doing historical minis). It took a lot of work, and I don't consider myself a particularly good painter, but done is done, and any painted mini on the table is better than an unpainted one, so the saying goes. For all picks, as usual,...
I've finally updated my Minifigs World of Greyhawk Picture Gallery (link also off to the right in the "free resources" section). I've been saving up various pictures that have come up on eBay over the last several months, but finally got around to integrating them into the gallery. Here's one wonderful example, "Iuz Enthroned"...
Monday, 23 January 2012
Demon Dogs! In case you missed it, Goodman Games was giving out promotional posters featuring "Hugh the Barbarian", to publicize their upcoming Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG. The art will, apparently, be featured on the back of the DCC book, and is quite nifty. I got my poster today, and just wanted to share. You can find a larger version of the artwork over in the Goodman Games forums, here:http://www.goodman-games.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=60&t=13726&start=0They're...
Only the commanders to go and then the army is done, baby, done!I stretched out with a few new colors for the knights (those two dapper chaps in the orange livery, plus some new blues and such). Once I get the commanders done, I'll have a complete starter army (either Kingdom of Tamaria for my own campaign, or Feudal French for historical minis, even if the paint job is a little ahistorica...
Sunday, 22 January 2012
I don't really have any problem with having special powers, actions, moves, etc. in a game. What I object to is when they become just things that a player can buy off a list without any sort of investment, and with no real in-game justification beyond "I want my character to be able to do cool move X".The skill system in Adventures Dark and Deep (based on that developed by Gary Gygax for Castles and Crusades, published under the OGL) allows for the...
Friday, 20 January 2012
Several (real-world) weeks of being cooped up in Ritterheim, making glacial progress towards retrieving the magic lantern that would reactivate the portal to the ruins of the dwarven city of Glitterdark, got the players more than a little antsy. So, rather than move methodically towards finding the lantern, they decided to cash in what loot hadn't been yet traded in, paid for an identify spell to be (finally) cast upon the magic dagger they retrieved in the tower of the savant, and set forth for an overland journey.They invested in a fair map of...
"The Wicker Tree", the not-a-sequel, not-a-remake of 1973's exquisite "The Wicker Man" is finally beginning its theatrical run in American theaters one week from today, on January 27. For those who haven't heard, it was directed by the same man who did the original 1973 version, Robin Hardy, and explores many of the same themes, but with a decidedly "black comedy" angle which some fans of the original find off-putting, and others love.No idea if...
Wednesday, 18 January 2012
Thinking back, the overwhelming majority of campaigns I've either played in or DMed have been home-brew campaigns.I love Greyhawk, of course, and have a vast GH collection and (at the risk of being immodest) knowledge, but even then, I've done homebrew way more often than Greyhawk. My current campaign, the world of Erseta, is a homebrew campaign.On the other hand, I was quite a fan of the Forgotten Realms up until a year or two after the gray box was released; after that, it just got overwhelming (but never actually played in or ran it). We played...
Monday, 16 January 2012
Monte Cook's first post-5E-announcement column is up, and it gives a broad view of what the folks at WotC are doing with the new version. It basically confirms the speculative chatter of the last week, that 5E will be modular. Fine, I get that. Options for simple, moderate, and complex combat, skills, etc. No problem.What I can't seem to wrap my head around is this:Second—and this sounds so crazy that you probably won't believe it right now—we're designing the game so that not every player has to choose from the same set of options. Again, imagine...
Sunday, 15 January 2012
I was watching Religion and Ethics Newsweekly tonight, where they had a story on funerals in Ghana. One of the most amazing things about the funerary customs there is the idea of "fantasy coffins". These are actual coffins, intended for real use, that are, well, fantastic. They're shaped as animals, sneakers, fish, airplanes, vegetables, or just about anything you can imagine, in order to exemplify the life of the, er, occupant.I thought this was...
Friday, 13 January 2012
The new revision of the Savage Worlds RPG has something neat that captured my imagination and inspired me to an idea that could be used in just about any game that runs on x.p. This will piss off those who think that awarding experience points for anything other than hauling back gold coins and slaying monsters is akin to signing one's soul over to Mr. Pip, but so be it ("x.p. for plot points", they will cry, and I will simply shrug). My idea is...
The New York Times has a great article about gaming, featuring The Twenty Sided Store in Brooklyn. Looks like a neat place; I'll have to check it out the next time we visit my wife's family.http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/08/nyregion/at-the-twenty-sided-store-gamers-unleash-their-alter-egos.html?src=tp&smid=fb-share (You'll probably need a free registration to read the article.)(H/T to Tavis Allis...
Thursday, 12 January 2012
One sentiment I've seen on various OSR blogs and fora this week is that which forms the title of this post. "Why bother with 5E, when I've got all my 1st Edition books, or my BECMI boxes, or my Rules Compendium, or my LBB's, or Labyrinth Lord, or whatever?" I've got to say that's a feeling I simply cannot share. One might just as easily say*..."Why bother with Diaspora, when I've got Traveler?""Why bother with Traveler, when I've got Ringworld?" "Why bother with Gamma World, when I've got Metamorphosis Alpha?" "Why bother with Marvel Super Heroes,...
I try to keep appeals to my readership to a minimum, but I saw this and thought I would share. If you are able to make a donation, I encourage you to do so. Sparky is in the local animal shelter, and needs some help.Sparky is a 6 month old wire-haired Dachshund pup who was born with a liver shunt. This is a blood vessel that's in the wrong place and keeps the liver from properly doing its many important jobs, resulting in a sick little doggie who...
Wednesday, 11 January 2012
ENWorld has a nifty page set up where they've rounded up all of the 5E information that's been put out to date. It looks like they're going to keep it updated, so I'll put a link to it over on the sidebar here, for those who want to keep up with it. Here's the link.One good thing I noticed near the bottom of the page was that the team seems to know that a more 3.x-type license is going to help a lot more than a 4E-type license. Of course, the malebranche's in the minutae, but it's a good sign that they at least seem to be acknowledging the weaknesses...
Tuesday, 10 January 2012
Lately I've seen some references to RPGs in what is (to me, anyway), a new context throughout the blogosphere. That is what I call "the family RPG". Something that is "evergreen" (i.e., has steady sales at toy and mass market stores in the same way that Monopoly and Operation do), something that you would expect to find in any house with kids, and something that gets trotted out on "family game night" with more or less equal frequency as Risk, Life,...
Monday, 9 January 2012
One of the threads spawned from EnWorld's coverage of the 5E announcement yesterday was Bet you wish your workplace looked like WotC. Go to the link; there are a bunch of neato-torpedo pictures of the WotC offices, with their props and such scattered throughout the workspace. And they are neat to me, because I don't work for WotC. One thing that struck me, though, was that all of the cool stuff was very... self-referential. It's almost insecure in tone. Like seeing the golden arches on every wall in the McDonald's corporate HQ. This is not me hating...
As I discussed before, I've felt that certain actions on the part of Wizards of the Coast (not least of which was the re-hiring of Monte Cook) presaged a 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons coming down the pike, and lo! and behold I am once more proven correct:Charting the Course for D&DTo those who doubted that I was right in saying that 5E was coming sooner rather than later, I will reply with a stately and dignified "neener, neener, neener"....
Sunday, 8 January 2012
One of the truisms about Doctor Who is that your favorite Doctor is almost always the first one you ever saw on a regular basis. So, in my case, I happen to think Tom Baker completely embodies the character, and it's no coincidence that growing up in the 1980's, his was the only version of Doctor Who I was exposed to for years on television (PBS here in the New York City area, followed eventually by Peter Davidson and Collin Baker, but not until...
Saturday, 7 January 2012
Saturday saw us venturing forth to the FLGS to give my Ogre Miniatures scenario "Raid on Frederikshavn" another test-run. We had done one playtest of it back in November, and many good lessons were learned, resulting in a much tighter set of rules for the second run-through, mostly concerning the victory points. I'm going to be running this twice at Dreamation next month, so I wanted to make sure it was solid.The basic thrust of the scenario is that...
Friday, 6 January 2012
We had a much more focused session this evening, due in large part to two new players (one the wife of one of our regulars, the other an old friend of two others, so nobody was a new newt dropped in the fishtank). This was a "caper" evening, where the players were presented with a problem that seemed pretty simple on the surface, but spent three hours planning how to pull it off.First off was a little more intelligence gathering about "The Cleavers" and their leader Osterbeck. Since the party had learned last time that the magical lantern needed...
Thursday, 5 January 2012
Recently, Ryan Dancy was quoted in an article in The Escapist where he repeated the canard that the tabletop RPG industry is "becoming a dead hobby", because it's falling into the same pattern as the model railroading industry:"Kids stopped playing with trains, and the businesses that remained dedicated to hobbyists who got more disposable income as they grew up, until the price of the hobby was out of reach of anyone except those older hobbyists. Eventually, it became a high-end hobby with very expensive products, sold to an ever-decreasing...
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