It’s Game Day, meaning that in about seven hours, a horde of geeks will descend on my house and we’ll spend 4-6 hours hacking, slashing (and yes, role-playing) our way through a variety of humanoid menaces. Alternatively, we may be vying for world domination playing Risk 2210 or trying to prevent the Rise of the Sheeple in Settlers of Catan. Regardless of the game, you can be assured we’ll be playing something.
Game Day’s a big deal for me (and for everyone in the group), as it’s a chance to blow off steam, relax away from the family and significant others, joke with friends and generally have some fun. With that in mind, I’ve decided to start writing a weekly “Game Day” column dedicated to all things gaming and geeky as a way of ramping up for the night’s adventure.
Mistaken Death
Over at Treasure Tables, Martin Ralya’s posted “Oops Moments: You’re Not Actually Dead”, which offers advice on what to do when bad math or a forgotten modifier accidentally kills a party member or important non-player character. We usually go with the one-round rule mentioned in the post’s comments thread — if the problem happened less than one round ago, then go back and change it to the right result. If not, the results stand. It’s just too difficult to go back and retcon several rounds worth of action, let alone an entire combat.
Kull the (Dwarven) Barbarian
Hopefully, the whole dead-by-mistake thing won’t come up tonight as I start playing my new dwarven barbarian/ranger in my gaming group’s new Khelez-Mar campaign. It takes place in and around the Drachensgrab Mountains on the Pomarj, in the World of Greyhawk, and finds dwarves from the newly-liberated fortress of Khelez-Mar attempting to drive back the monstrous hordes that have overrun the surrounding lands.
My character is simply known as “Kull”, which means something like “mountain death” in the tongue of the orcs he’s been hunting for the last dozen years (and yeah, it’s the name of a Robert E. Howard barbarian … but the name just stuck with me when creating this character).
His true name is Morndin Mountaintame, but it’s been years since there were dwarves on the mountain to call him that. Now the dwarves have returned, Khelez-Mar is alive again, and Kull has allies in his personal war. But can he learn to trust them?
Constructible Star Wars
WizKids Games announced a new collectible constructible game based on Star Wars. It’s like Pirates of the Spanish Main, except it’s based on Star Wars
It looks cool, and it’s $5 price point for boosters certainly gives it an advantage over the much more expensive Star Wars Starship Battles miniatures game from Wizards of the Coast. I’m hoping to review it, but I doubt I’ll collect it as I just don’t have the time or energy to do it … and I’ve got a few cases full of HeroClix crying out for game time.
SILVER Heroes
Berin at UncleBear.com posted his house rules for SILVER Agents, his ongoing play-by-blog campaign. He’s using a customized, stripped down version of FATE for his ruleset, and I look forward to reading through them over the weekend. Someday I want to resurrect my Spycraft: Prometheus campaign; if I do it’ll follow Berin’s example.
Savage Swords
I’ve got some Amazon.com gift certificates burning a hole in my virtual pocket, and I’m wrestling with what to get with them. Tome of Battle: The Book of Nine Swords (Amazon), which has a bunch of alternative over-the-top rules for fighters, is the lead contender. They’re mean to give fighters an edge at higher levels, where wizards can incinerate entire battlefields and where clerics can evoke miracles. I’m also thinking of getting Savage Worlds (Amazon), which is a generic rule system loosely based on the old Deadlands RPG mechanics. It’d fall under the category of “neat games I’ll probably never get to play”, but I’ve heard enough good things about it that I’d at least like to give it a read. And hell, I’m going to GenCon this year, so I could always play it there.