Gaming in the Round: Lessons from the Dark City

A few years ago, I decided I wanted to try a different kind of role-playing game campaign: a medieval urban fantasy that combined traditional story telling with the sort of open-ended, sandbox-like openness of games like Grand Theft Auto. The setting would be Obsidian Bay, the homegrown metropolis that my friends and I had spent … Read more

Game Day: A Dwarf by Any Other Name

Our brave adventurers are back in the dwarven stronghold of Khelez-Mar after nearly being consumed by a duegar-built green slime trap in the Obsidian Maze.  The group argued mightily about the retreat, with the dwarves eager to press on and the others stating that a withdrawal to the stronghold was needed to restock and perhaps … Read more

Game Day: Dragon’s End, Ravenloft’s Mists

It was a bitter-sweet game day on Friday as Paizo Publishing and Wizards of the Coast announced Dragon and Dungeon magazines would cease publication after Wizards pulled the license to publish the books from Paizo. Since they didn’t give it to anyone else, this means that the magazines will cease publication in August with Dragon … Read more

Game Day: Munchkin, Munchkin, Munchkin! (and a few Dwarves)

This week’s Game Day sees us returning to role-playing with Khelez-Mar: The Dwarven Imperative. If memory serves, our last adventure saw the dwarves at the cusp of entering the Obsidian Maze, a sprawling subterranean dungeon in the Drachensgrab Hills of the Pomarj in the World of Greyhawk. It’s been years since our campaign ventured back … Read more

Game Day: Order of the Stick Game, Confeat, Gamer Law, Herald of Bob

Yesterday was too frantic to write a proper Game Day column, but The Order of the Stick Adventure Game was too much fun not to write about. Published by APE Games, The Order of the Stick Adventure Game allows 2-6 players to take on the roles of the heroes (ok, adventurers) from The Order of … Read more

Risus Battletech

My gaming group is thinking about restarting our long-slumbering Battletech campaign, in which we play a group of mercenaries known as the Hellfire Aces. In the campaign’s earlier iteration, we didn’t go much deeper than that — we were the Aces, we were for hire, and we blew things up. This time around we’re looking … Read more

Game Day: Dreams of Distant GenCon

Technically, there’s no Game Day for me this week — while the guys are getting together for some Battletech, I’ll be joining some friends from work for a Tivo-fueled Battlestar Galactica marathon. I don’t know if we can get caught up in one night … but we’re going to try. At some point I want … Read more

Game Day: 5th Year Clix, Lost Dwarves, RPG Glossary, Game Widgets

Despite having written Game Day columns the last two weeks, I haven’t actually played much. Two weeks ago I was sidelined by pink eye, while last week a March snowstorm destroyed our plans to conquer the world with Risk 2210. This week it’s raining, but unless the Delaware and Lehigh Rivers rise up to devour … Read more

Game Day: Risk 2210

Game Day may be cancelled due to snow — freaking Pennsylvania spring weather — but that doesn’t mean we can’t still dream of what might have been. Tonight’s game was/is supposed to be Risk 2210 (check it out on Amazon) the science fiction re-imagining of the classic Risk board game of old. The game retains … Read more