For me, a perfect game isn’t about the rules or the game itself, it’s about the experience. It’s the dice and the story coming together to create a memorable experience – the sort of thing where everyone looks around the table after the session and collectively says, “Damn, that was fun!” I’ve had a few … Read more
My friends. As we struggle to get back to real-world gaming after the pandemic, I want to get together with all my friends who love to run games … and let them run their games!. We already did this once over the summer, when my friend George organized a small multi-day game fest and invited … Read more
Over the last two seasons of the @LairOfSecrets podcast, David Moore (@vandermore) and I’ve talked about a ton of games we’d like to play. A few consistently pop to the top of my list – Fate of Cthulhu, Monster of the Week, Kids on Bikes, Alien, Mothership , MÖRK BORG – but the one I keep coming back to is Mutant Crawl Classics. It’s the … Read more
Well, it would have been grand if people didn’t think my friends and I were devil-worshipers, but it was the early 1980s, so that wasn’t very likely. It would also have been great to have a gaming club in elementary school (prohibited because of the aforementioned Satantic influences) but again … it was Dungeons & Dragons in … Read more
Because it was the 1980s, and all the cool kids were doing it. Heh. No, because it was the 1980s and all the nerdy, geeky outcasts were doing it, at least until high school. That’s when most folks I know stopped playing, perhaps as a defensive strategy. There were few things less cool than playing Dungeons … Read more
Sigil, City of Doors, because from there, you can use its myriad magical portals to go anywhere in the Dungeons & Dragons universe. I thought of Sigl because my first answer was the City of Brass, the famed effreti city on the Elemental Plane of Fire that was featured so prominently on the back of the original Dungeon Master’s … Read more
I don’t know. I have vague recollections of running (or trying to run) B2 Keep on the Borderlands in 5th or 6th grade (so … 1983? 1984?). I ran games sporadically throughout middle school and high school, but most of what I did was world-building that never turned into an actual game. It wasn’t until I … Read more
Star Frontiers by TSR. I got the original boxed set, the Alpha Dawn reprint, the Knight Hawks space combat expansion boxed set, and finally Zebulon’s Guide to Frontier Space (a softcover rules expansion/reboot that never went anywhere) I spent hours building out my homegrown star system of Starrior, its own megacorp (Astro Mining and Freighting … Read more
The easy answer, per Day 3, is my mom. She bought me the Moldvay boxed set for basic Dungeons & Dragons, which unlocked the potential of role-playing games for me. The actual answer is probably more complicated. Truth be told, I don’t remember when I first heard about Dungeons & Dragons. Looking back, I know … Read more
I love Bennies in Savage Worlds. Bennies, usually represented by a poker chip or some other token, allow players (and game masters) to re-roll skill checks and attacks. Players begin with a set number of bennies per session – usually 3 – and spend them throughout that session. Critically, they can earn more bennies for … Read more