Friends. Comfort. Nostalgia. Great memories. New Stories. These and more are why Dungeons & Dragons stayed with me all these years. Don’t get me wrong – I love playing new and different games. One of the great things about the Lair of Secrets podcast is that it re-united me with old friends and connected me … Read more
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’m playing in three games right now, so I’ve got three answers, plus two honorable mentions. Star Wars: The Republic Zor Nabat Male Twi’lek Corporate Officer (Level 3) Background – Bankrupt Focus: Inspiring Leader The upstart corporation Cobbatha Collective Designs excelled at developing aftermarket add-ons for commercial starships. Cobbatha had its start in the slums of … Read more
The real world. Specifically, I enjoy playing in my game room because all of my books are with in arm’s reach, there’s a television for sharing visuals, and the Dice Cup of Shame is available for anyone who forgets their polyhedrals. Decals from the original vector graphic version of Asteroids cover one sloping wall, while another … Read more
For this post, I’m going to substitute “game” for “campaign”. My all-time favorite campaign is also my longest-running: The Blackrazor Guild Campaign for various editions of Dungeons & Dragons. Set in the World of Greyhawk, the initial campaign kicked off in 1996 and started in the Common Year 586 … which at the time was Greyhawk’s … Read more
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