March
20
March
19
Kickstarter – Chronicles of Ramlar RPG: Pathfinder Edition
March
18
Kickstarter – Beasties & Bygones: Raunchy Comedy RPG – Dungeon World & 3.5
EU-FRIENDLY! An RPG & a guide to creating comedic, satirical adventures! Play a one shot game or run a season! South Park meets D&D!
I’m not sure if you could sustain a comedy campaign, believe me I tried back in the day when I tried running Steve Jackson games Toon.
Still at least you get the Dungeon World version of the game which is somewhat of a bonus.
March
17
Kickstarter – Storyteller’s Dictionary
March
17
Bundle of Holding – The Dying Earth
I picked up this excellent bundle of ebooks based upon the works of Jack Vance the last time it was on offer. This wasn’t the first time I had come across the book as Jonny Nexus has shown me the main book after he’d purchased the hardback edition.
After spending some time reading the main book I was very impressed by the setting and I feel it deserves the title of a forgotten classic.
https://bundleofholding.com/index/current
I tried to inform the world of this bundle the first time it appeared on an internet forum and was shocked to find my post locked and eventually deleted from the site as it broke a rule of that group; no adverts.
Since then I’ve got my own site and I can now pimp what I like 🙂
March
16
Kickstarter – Shadow of the Demon Lord
Shadow of the Demon Lord is a roleplaying game of dark fantasy—a genre that weaves elements of horror into a fantasy world. In the game, you create and play characters struggling to survive in a land sliding toward oblivion, a place infested by demons, roaming mobs of undead, strange magic, unhinged cultists, and all in the ruins of the last great empire of mankind. If you love Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, the Ravenloft and Midnight settings, Joe Abercrombie’s The First Law series, Glen Cook’s Black Company books, or heavy metal music, then this is the game is for you.
Heavy metal music and Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay? Sounds good to me!
March
15
My Nuclear War deck
A short while ago I took ownership of the Nuclear War Players Guide and I thought it would be interesting to see what the breakdown of my current playing deck is; after sorting through all the cards and counting them twice I present to you my findings:
| Total number of cards | 580 | Percentage |
| Delivery Systems | 140 | 24% |
| Warheads | 194 | 34% |
| Propaganda | 112 | 19% |
| Secrets | 37 | 6% |
| Specials | 97 | 17% |
It has been a while since I did this and my results even surprised me. I never realised I had that many special cards or warheads in the deck and I even added the special dual warhead / booster cards that came in the expansion Weapons of Mass Destruction, I added them in as as both warhead and booster.
With such a large deck I had to find a way of transporting it around and I have a large Utra-pro card carrier to house them plus it also doubles as a way of drawing cards; rather than have one or two piles of cards I allow each player to draw from any of the five wells in the carrier. It makes shuffling them back easy to, just shuffle and deal to the bottom of each well then lay the unused stacks on top.
Secrets are handled by letting someone have the chance of stealing a Secret and then they take a card from a separate Secret deck; the stolen card is then returned to the deck for another time. This way nobody knows until it is played what Secret has been taken.
Specials also include the various anti-missiles in the game, I didn’t think it would be worth counting them all out for another separate list.
When it comes to playing the game, I let each player draw two cards and choose one rather than dealing nine cards out to everyone.
If you want to know the specific breakdown of the deck let me know and I’ll see what I can do.
March
14
RPG Blog Carnival March 2015 – Best GM Ever
The subject of this months Blog Carnival is Best GM Ever and is being hosted by Creative Mountain Games
Over the years I’ve only played with a handful of gamesmasters, some of whom have been very good while one or two I haven’t got along with as we have very different ideas and playing styles. I would like to think of myself as a good gm and that is something one of my players was telling me after each session; his feedback was really good and I’ll admit is was something of an ego boost for me.
So it is hard for me to pick out one specific GM and say they are the best overall since each have had their own unique ways of doing things. One of my friends managed to create such a spellbinding atmosphere, it was almost like being hypnotised and we were rudely snapped out of this state when a door in his house suddenly slammed shut; I don’t mind admitting that I jumped out of my seat when that happened!
During the Cyberpunk 2.0.2.0 Night City Blues campaign there was one particular session that really sticks out as I managed to weave two or three sub-plots into a scenario along with the main plot for them to discover and I received some very positive feedback about that.
When it comes to crafting my own scenarios I tend to go with the three act model as this works really well for me and gives room for creation of sub-plots. This style also works if you decide to play a pulp based game and I cribbed plenty of advice from the Lester Dent Master Plot formula, if you haven’t seen it, it’s worth a read and I was able to use this advice to create a random pulp adventure generator. I’d like to share it with you all, but as it’s based upon a few commercial products I can’t as not only would it violate copyright, it could also hurt the sales of them.
March
13
Kickstarter – Blades in the Dark
Blades in the Dark is a tabletop RPG about a crew of daring scoundrels building a criminal empire in a haunted city full of thieves.
This looks like a really good idea and setting for a game with a system that lets your crew progress in the great city; what I’m certainly interested is the mechanics that govern how a heist is planned. We’ve all been there at the table when people start over-thinking things and try planning for every single contingency that may occur.
I remember the time I spent waiting for the players to plan everything before that infamous game of Cyborg Commando and being the polite sort I didn’t want to interrupt them by telling them it was all pointless.
March
12
RIP Terry Pratchett
I’ve just leanred of the passing of Sir Terry Pratchett. I remember reading the Discworld short story in White Dwarf many moons ago and that’s what got me hooked on his books.
In the first book of my Discworld series, published more than 26 years ago, I introduced Death as a character; there was nothing particularly new about this – death has featured in art and literature since medieval times, and for centuries we have had a fascination with the Grim Reaper.
Terry Pratchett
And now Death has claimed him.