The Gamer Working Group, my lunchtime gaming crew, is restarting this month with Waterdeep: Dragon Heist (Amazon), Wizards of the Coast’s new urban adventure set in the City of Splendors. It’s my first full-time campaign set in the Forgotten Realms, WotC’s signature campaign setting. Historically my group played in the World of Greyhawk, which has … Read more
There’s a lot of cool role-playing game material coming out this autumn. I find myself flitting from product to product, excited at the prospect of picking a new game, then realizing that my budget can only support so many purchases. Thus the shopping list. It’s largely aspirational — again, the budget can only support so … Read more
It’s summertime. And things are getting weird. The slipcase two-volume edition of Delta Green arrived in early June after two years of waiting for the Kickstarter to make its production run. After reading lots of positive reviews, I picked up the Tales for the Loop RPG, which features kids on bikes investigating mysteries in a … Read more
Bryce Brogan. He’s a fast-talking former journalist with impeccable fashion sense and a taste for the better things in life, both fueled by titillating stories of demons corrupting young lovers, intriguing mysteries of ghosts lost in time, and the sordid dealings of ancient cults bent on resurrecting their dead gods through rituals of blood and … Read more
Inspired by the novel Ready Player One, I offered to run my friends through the legendary module Tomb of Horrors. Converted to Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition as part of Tales from the Yawning Portal (Amazon), the module promises a lethal challenge for players both new and old. My gaming group last took a run … Read more
February’s RPG Blog Carnival topic is “Time Marches On”. Hosted by Daemons & Deathrays, the topic looks at the role of time in role-playing campaigns. Time’s very much at the heart of our two ongoing D&D 5th Edition campaigns. The campaigns were created as bookends for our 10+ year Blackrazor Guild campaign. The campaign took … Read more
Blades in the Dark is a fantasy role-playing game in which characters take on the roles of thieves in the night, planning capers and trying to survive in a ghost-haunted, ever-dark industrial city. Descended from Powered by the Apocalypse, authored by John Harper and published by Evil Hat, the game’s generated a fair amount of buzz … Read more
January’s RPG Blog topic is “Tabletop Gaming on a Budget”, hosted by Renaissance Gamer. A lot of folks equated gaming on a budget with gaming on the cheap, which is a perfectly reasonable (and entertaining) approach. For me, the hardest part of gaming on a budget is actually having a budget. Exactly what a budget … Read more
My broken ankle has forced to spend far more time on the sofa than I’d like, canceling one real-world game day and threatening others. Instead rolling dice in the real world, I’ve fallen back on my plethora of mobile devices and pen-and-paper games for my gaming fix. With Dragon Quest IX finished, Fire Emblem Fates – Birthright ( Amazon / Website) … Read more
After 170 hours of game play over 8 years … I finally finished Dragon Quest IX’s main story. I started playing the game because I’d been searching for a good portable RPG for my Nintendo DS. My friend Cory recommended it (a big Dragon Quest fan, he’d already played through much of the Japanese version) and I was intrigued … Read more