Sometimes, you need to get a little weird … and Scales of Truth, my current lunchtime campaign, is a lot weird. Set in a post-apocalyptic future, Scales of Truth is a D&D 5e-powered game that relies heavily on the tropes of weird fantasy. It draws inspiration from Gamma World, Thundarr the Barbarian, and Numenera, though its still has a … Read more
At Nuketown, we love world building. Here are our top world building resources for role-playing games. Random Generators Hexcrawls Journals Word Building in Action
After the move to online gaming during the pandemic, I found that our virtual battle maps shrank. At first glance, it’s confounding – after all, it was our real-world battle maps that were constrained by either the size of our gaming tables or the size of our Chessex battle maps. Online, though, the horizons are … Read more
On Radio Active’s 100th episode I talk about Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands, a shoot-and-loot video game based on the Borderlands franchise, go on a solitary, geeky retreat to work on RPG and podcast projects, and contemplate the golden age of online role-playing games. Nuketown News Radio Active’s 100th Episode It finally happened – Radio Active hit … Read more
The Long, Dark, Winter is upon us, and in this episode, I talk about some strategies for dealing with it. I also talk about my family’s new Seeing Eye puppy, catch up on what’s been happening over the last year or so, and geek out about my new RPG campaigns.
My main gaming group, the Blackrazor Guild, are serial campaigners. We almost can’t help ourselves; if a campaign gets past the first few sessions, it’s very likely to run for for a year or two. Our biggest, most memorable campaigns were all multi-year affairs: Our namesake Blackrazor Guild campaign The Redshirts (aka Return to the Temple … Read more
I love hand-drawing maps. In the past, I hastily sketched maps longhand or spent hours attempting to render them using computer programs, but when I hit my forties I found a new appreciation for sitting down and really drawing a map. I drew a lot of inspiration from Dyson’s Dodecahedron – he draws, clean, clear … Read more
ZineQuest3 is officially over. Zines funded by the initiative are counting their cash, revising their project plans, and, in a few cases, starting to ship PDFs of their product. Going into ZineQuest3, I knew I wanted to back it at a higher level than the previous year. In 2020, I backed three zines, two digital, … Read more
My current lunchtime game is Scales of Truth, a hexcrawl set in a post-apocalyptic science-fantasy setting. Think of a mashup of Thundarr the Barbarian, Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, and Mad Max: Fury Road, powered by Dungeons & Dragons. So what’s a hexcrawl? It’s a style of RPG campaign in which the game master populates … Read more
Bullet journals are analog alternatives to printed day planners, “to-do” apps, and note-taking tools. Created by Ryder Carroll, bullet journals are a purposefully archaic approach to capturing life’s esoteric bits, from a list of today’s meetings to a quick note about that weird dream you had last night. Though typically used to organize your real-life, … Read more