My World of Greyhawk campaign started over 30 years ago, with the seeds being planted in my college campaign at Lock Haven University. It’s continued, on and off, ever since. During that time, it’s featured a number of unique weapons, a few of which I detailed below. Blackrazor: The legendary, soul-sucking sword inspired the name of my … Read more
Long ago, my gaming group came up with a list of tactics for the Blackrazor Guild, our notoriously chaotic adventuring company in the World of Greyhawk setting. Full frontal assault Spring the ambush, fight your way out. Party member as bait. Stake out a cow. Don’t Split up the party; you’ll just have to chase them down … Read more
When I think of scenarios, I think of conventions. I think tightly focused, 3-4 hour-long sessions, usually with pre-generated characters and flexible, but straightforward, story arc. I find scenario writing a very different exercise from prepping for my weekly campaign-style games. Most of our campaigns have been heavily serialized, with overarching stories that continue on … Read more
Tomb of Horrors is one of the most famous modules for Dungeons & Dragons and plays a major role in Ready Player One. Originally created as a tournament module for the Origins game convention, it went on to become a legendarily deadly published adventure for Dungeons & Dragons. Gary Gygax, one of the creators of D&D, created the module … Read more
My current lunchtime game is Scales of Truth, a hexcrawl set in a post-apocalyptic science-fantasy setting. Think of a mashup of Thundarr the Barbarian, Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, and Mad Max: Fury Road, powered by Dungeons & Dragons. So what’s a hexcrawl? It’s a style of RPG campaign in which the game master populates … Read more
The Ready Player One Replay is an exploration of the games that inspired the novel Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. Quote … hundreds of polyhedral dice like those used in old tabletop role-playing games. — Ready Player One p. 10 A freeze-frame of this scene appears nearly identical to a painting by Jeff Easley that appeared on … Read more
Everyone keeps things. Some people keep a lot of things … and, as we learned from Fight Club, the stuff we own ends up owning us. While I’m far from a minimalist, I do think it’s possible to keep too much stuff, and it’s good to be mindful about what you keep, and what you throw … Read more
‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ Returning To Planet-Of-The-Week Stories & TOS Optimism, Says Alex Kurtzman – Yes, please! Invisible rogue planets without stars? NASA’s new space telescope could find hundreds of them – Speaking of strange new worlds, NASA is looking for some. Racing to Stay Alive – When I run, I just run. I don’t give a … Read more
ZineQuest 2 is Kickstarter’s now-annual homage to the handcrafted print zines of yesteryear. As someone who crafted a print zine with my friends using my Commodore 64 and a dot matrix printer, I have a lot of love for the idea. For those who never experienced them, zines are fan-produced publications dedicated to any number of … Read more
Bad snow storms and extreme weather scuttled many a Game Day over the years. They throw our RPG gaming lives into chaos, and while being able to fall back to Roll20 can help the game go on … it’s useless when it comes to shoveling snow or bailing out the basement. Just as a Nor’easter … Read more