The Strongholds & Streaming Kickstarter, which will surely crack a million dollars and more likely wind up passing 2-3 million,[1] has convinced me that I no longer understand the RPG industry, am an old fuddy-duddy, and should immediately walk up the nearest mountain and become a hermit. For the past decade, my wife has been […]
The sky is now purple Read More »
Thanks to Bryan Shipp over on G+, I just checked out this Gary Gygax interview from 1979 on Jon Peterson’s site — and it blew my mind. Here’s Gary on game prep: “Two to three hours per hour of play is generally what the dungeon master has to prepare with. He sits down and draws
Gary Gygax on game prep, 1979 Read More »
My online group just wrapped up our second playtesting session of Brad J. Murray‘s upcoming space-fantasy RPG Elysium Flare, and I wanted to talk a little bit about it. The current public playtest draft is v4, available for free on Brad’s Patreon. Background For context: Our sessions are short, and we’re talkative; so far, we’ve
Playtesting Elysium Flare: what drew me to this game Read More »
As of this writing, there are 7,597 free and pay-what-you-want (PWYW) PDFs on DriveThruRPG, and depending on when you’re reading this there are probably many more than that. That’s a daunting number, and there’s a lot of free stuff that frankly looks like pretty weak sauce. It’s hard to know where to start.[1] I thought
Free and PWYW RPG products on DriveThruRPG that I enjoy Read More »
Recently I’ve been thinking about this Paul Bowles quote, which I first saw on Brandon Lee‘s gravestone, in relation to gaming: “Because we don’t know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number really. How
Twenty more moonrises Read More »
Reading Rappan Athuk (paid link) renewed my interest in checking out Swords & Wizardry (paid link), and it also made me curious about the differences between S&W Core and S&W Complete.[1] I searched for a simple summary of those differences and kept seeing variations on this: “Core is the 3 LBBs + Supplement I (Greyhawk); Complete
Comparing Swords & Wizardry Core vs. Complete Read More »
While prowling around for a deal on Tome of Horrors Complete I stumbled across this PDF bundle on the Frog God website — the aptly named Superbundle for Swords & Wizardry. It’s broken into 3 tiers: $5, $13, and $25. I love monster books, and in addition to ToHC this bundle includes two others that
The Frog God Swords & Wizardry Superbundle Read More »
Around the end of the year, I usually take a look back at my gaming over the previous 12 months.[1] This time around, I decided to graph my board game and RPG sessions for every year for which I have complete data: 2009-2017.[2] Here’s a graph comparing RPG and board game plays for these years,
A snapshot of my RPG and board game plays, 2009-2017 Read More »
I was noodling about RPG setting material I’ve always meant to read, and I remembered a truly excellent thing: Stephan Michael Sechi, creator of Talislanta, generously makes available virtually ever Talislanta product ever published in PDF, with permission granted to download, modify, and print for personal use only, for free. That’s over 30 PDFs spanning
Free Talislanta PDFs, and where to start Read More »
My Seattle group is coming up on a year of Ars Magica [paid link] play, using 5e — my first experience with Ars. We’ve played around 20 sessions (I’ve missed a couple, but I’ve been there for 18), covering about a year of in-game time, and I say without hyperbole that I will happily play this
Ars Magica after 18 sessions: what an amazing RPG Read More »
