I love sandbox games and urban horror, and at that intersection sits the absolutely stellar PbtA RPG Urban Shadows (paid link). I expected Urban Shadows to be good at facilitating sandbox play, but I wasn’t prepared for just how good it is. Since the proof is in the pudding, below is the brief recap of goings-on […]
Urban Shadows is fantastic for spinning up a sandbox game Read More »
Nick Abadzis‘ and Hilary Sycamore‘s Laika (paid link) is meditative, thorough, and heartbreaking. Everything I knew about Laika — the first orbital space traveler, a stray dog trained and conditioned for her one-way mission — before reading this book came from her Wikipedia entry and small exhibits about her at aerospace museums. I now know
Laika is meditative and heartbreaking Read More »
Over on G+, Karl Keesler posted about how he rebases his HeroClix minis (and sometimes adds base textures and highlighting, too), and damn if that’s not a great idea. Here’s Karl’s intro: “I am always trying to find cheap ways to make my role playing game tables look cool. I often take modern looking Heroclix
Karl Keesler on rebasing HeroClix minis Read More »
I recently stumbled across Scott Pyle’s Super Mission Force (paid link), read up on it — it’s a low-complexity superhero miniatures game that uses power suites to make character creation simple, and it supports campaign play — and thought, “That sounds totally rad! Except I don’t have any miniatures for it . . .” Enter HeroClix,
Buying bulk HeroClix to use for other supers games Read More »
The number of possible permutations for card order in a standard deck of playing cards, 52! (52 factorial, or 52x51x50x49 . . . all the way down to x1), is staggeringly large. How large? Yannay Khaikin, who created this lovely video explaining the concept, says it’s this large: Any time you pick up a well
Every well-shuffled deck of cards is in a unique order Read More »
When print + PDF RPG pricing is utter bullshit: a brief and salty anecdote in four parts. 1. I have enough DriveThruRPG credit to buy a game I’m interested in. By all accounts it’s a good game and I will probably like it. 2. I buy games in print, but like to also have the
How not to price print + PDF bundles Read More »
Back in 2015, I came across a Gary Gygax quote I hadn’t seen before — one that resonated deeply with me then, and which still resonates just as deeply 18 months later: Role-playing isn’t storytelling. If the dungeon master is directing it, it’s not a game. I love this quote. It’s a strong stance, and
A lesser-known Gary Gygax quote Read More »
Back when my group in Utah was playing The Dresden Files RPG (paid link), I wanted to try something different than my usual beads or stones for Fate points. I initially considered the official Fate coins: They’re lovely, but also not cheap, and like beads/stones they’re all the same. And then I thought, why not just
Using coins as Fate points for The Dresden Files RPG Read More »
I love getting reading recommendations, but my to-read shelves are such an embarrassment, particularly when it comes to comics, that I don’t always take them. But after a visit to Outsider Comics and Geek Boutique (which rocks!), I took one: Rat Queens (paid link). I heard about RQ when it launched, but had too much on
Rat Queens fucking rules Read More »
I quit WoW in 2011, but watching Sword Art Online (an anime series about players trapped inside a VR MMO) made me nostalgic for it. One of many things I’d forgotten how much I enjoyed about WoW was how pretty it can be; this screenshot is from Winterspring, one of my favorite zones in terms
Returning to WoW after five years away Read More »
