Before we start this review, firstly the copy we have was supplied to us discounted thanks to Grim Tree Games. You should go have a look at their website for awesome deals on board games!

 

 

I have personally been eyeing up Nightfall for a few weeks. It is one of those games that has always tempted me by the blurb on the back of the box.The idea of the game is that your are the denizens of the night, vying for control and you need to defeat your fellow opponents to claim the night as your own. You have all kinds [...]

In yesterday's post, I left a few things without being fleshed out. This wasn't because I haven't given them enough thought yet, but rather because I wanted to hit the major players of the Iron Coast so I could actually finish the post. If I had delved into every bit of minutia, I'd still be writing that post! Anyway, here's what yesterday's post was missing about the Iron Coast:

More PlacesThe Orphan BaroniesDuring the last wave of colonization on the Iron Coast, many nations of Men sent forth representatives to claim some small portion of the land for their parent [...]

The Reaper Bones Painting Marathon continues, this time I have a carcase of skeletons.

So far I've been pretty impressed with the PVC material the bones minis are made from.  It's much more robust than the plastic that the WotC D&D or Paizo Pathfinder plastic miniatures are made from and the sculpts have been intentionally strengthened in some areas to ensure that they don't break or bend excessively.

The skeletons are a prime example of this as during transit they tend to get a bit bent, particularly in the polearm and base/ankle areas, which means when you unbox [...]

‘Writing Postcards Home’ by bowena on Flickr

Do you have an opinion? I bet you do.

Do you have a special interest in some aspect of the tabletop hobby? Is there some bit of gaming that particularly fascinates you?

Would you like to use the Troll in the Corner site as a platform to reach thousands of other gamers?

Then come on board! We’re looking for new columnists at Troll in the Corner, and we’d love to include you. We’re particularly eager for more articles about role-playing games and card games, but we welcome anything having to do with tabletop gaming.

It’s really easy: email [...]

My moments of boredom very often result in new characters, and Ravnica is still all the rage as far as character themes go, here where I'm sitting!

My latest idea tries to "fix" the Ranger, considered by most players the weakest class in the current playtest packet.

While I'm at it, I also try to create an interesting character, using my custom "guild powers", and this time it's Gruul's turn.

The Gruul Mechanic.

I chose to give Gruul a somewhat direct "conversion" of their actual mechanic, in the form of a wild sure-critical charge which [...]

Due to the announcement of Logan's Run screen play writer, here's some Bioshock Cosplay . . .

Oh yeah. You read that right. There are yeti crab farmers. The yeti crab is a rather unique animal . . . or an animal that shows us how unique we are  . . .  as its a deep-sea, mobile, dirt farmer. First discovered in 2005 it was a highlight an of ancient world, then turned out to be more recent in its development and evolution.

This suckers, inlcuding the Hoff crab (named for its hairy chest and after David Hasselhoff's hairy chest (I kid you not)) dwell in extreme environments, usually around hydrothermal vents.

But the yeti [...]

Rumors are afloat that Logan's Run is getting a work over. This is great news! This is a classic sic-fi movie that was actually very good when it came out (some of those early films are touch and go). The setting, characters  . . . the concept of unaccountable youth . . . all done brilliantly.

Ken Levine of BIOSHOCK fame has been picked up to work on the script. He's commented before about how much Logan's Run impacted his vision of the game (which has awesome setting and eye candy in it and which kind of carries the [...]

You're probably either thinking: "duh" or "what? a beer or two at the table is no big deal."

And I agree with both assertions.


I'm a fairly sober person, really. I drink once and a while, usually for special occasions. Gaming isn't one of them. When you drink, drink. When you game, game. Don't mix the two. Why? I've got three reasons.
First, I'd like to break the drunken depressed writer stereotype (Yeah, I know, good luck with that). I ruminate enough as it is. I don't want alcohol to release my inhibitions to speak about religion, [...]

 
 
Are you excited about the upcoming release of HARP College of Magics?

 
 
You should be, here’s a brief look at what’s new:
 
 

• The Necromancer's Favored categories were rebalanced
• Minor modifications to the Song, Music and Trance casting styles
• Significant revisions to the spell creation system, namely addition of new Aspects and deletion of some duplicate Aspects, costs of Attributes now varies according to the spell type (Elemental, Attack or Utility), simpler and cheaper costing system for spells with multiple effects, PP costs for scaling options also now varies according to the spell type making Utility [...]

I've chronicled a number of my attempts to make role-playing game props over the years, but the wonderful Propnomicon site has directed me to a natty little step-by-step guide by Janet at It's A Little Like Magic on "how to make a pirate map".

The tutorial comes in two posts: part one and part two.

I shall definitely take this more methodical approach the next time I embark on a bit of map-making.

Magic Item- The Blessed Ring: Crafted from silver and usually set with a religious medal. When worn by a Cleric of Good alignment it allows its wearer to cast Cure Light Wounds once a day at their level of spell casting. Further, it grants a level-based bonus to any healing or curing spells cast by its wearer that restores hit points. This bonus is +1 at 1st level and increases by +1 for each additional 2 levels (i.e., +2 at 3rd level, +7 at 14th level). At DM's discretion a Blessed Ring may grant its healing bonus to Religious Brothers, Paladins, Rangers, or other Good-aligned classes [...]

GURPS Star Frontiers

Episode 2 - Things Get Interesting
The next several days were not much more than a mind-numbing blur. It was the Disc Blitz off-season, and Eusser Rogonz was a busy man. Mirko kept shifting back and forth on whether he liked the kid or not. One moment, he was saying or doing something completely asinine, and the next minute, he was charming and insightful.
The first week was spent on Minotaur as Ess was in meetings most of the time with agents, executives and other media specialists. He was in the process of upping his [...]

A little while back I posted the first part of the next adventure in the Come Hell and High Water series, "Retribution." I struggled with figuring out how to handle this scenario, given the open-ended nature of the one before it, but now I've finally decided how to handle it. What is more, I think I know in which direction to head with the adventure that will follow it. Rather than create a new post for it, I've added the new material to the existing post.

Retribution

Additionally, I thought I'd post an update about the forthcoming series [...]

Inspired bythisRandom Event from the award-winning rogue-like computer gameFTL, 'Large Asteroid Field', in true roguelike form, presents a risky endeavor with the potential for either great rewards or dire consequences with the tantalizing bait of an abandoned starship in a large asteroid field, ripe for the plundering.

Do you have the guts to risk the safety of your ship and crew on the whims of fate?

DESCRIPTION

You enter a new star system and long range sensors detect a single vessel of Silhouette 4 at the far end of the system.

Do you move in to investigate?

INVESTIGATE

The edge of this star system is [...]

I'm sure I've previously mentioned my interest and fascination with war and most things military in general...this despite being a real world anti-war conscientious objector type. I know...it's a weird dichotomy that some might even perceive as hypocritical. I don't. I can distinguish between doing violence to others in real life ("bad") versus historically ("bad" but not much we can do except try to learn from our mistakes) versus in fiction and gaming ("good" and "fun" so long as it doesn't carry over into real life).
Just to reiterate (from past posts): I don't [...]

Dark Darker Darkest. Dem schlurfenden Tod sei keine Atempause gegnnt. Zombies knnen ja auch nicht auer Atem sein. Queen Games nehmen sich ein Beispiel an der unendlichen Untotengeschichte. World War Z, Resident Evil, Zombicide und die sonstige beinahe alltgliche Splatterromantik sind nicht genug.
Auch die amerikanische Niederlassung des deutschen Spiel des Jahres-Herstellers (Kingdom Builder) labt sich nimmersatt an den totlosen Eingeweiden der Crowdfunding-Szene.

Worum gehts? 2-5 berlebende durchsuchen gemeinsam das Haus von Doctor Mortimer, um kooperativ die Zombie-Apokalypse abzuwenden. Voll neu und aufregend, oder? Wer beim Lesen noch nicht ermattet seine Lffel abgab oder seine kontaminierten Innereien freiwillig vor sich verteilte, [...]

http://grumpycelt.podbean.com/feed

It is odd that such a niche game could become so popular and well known. Comedy RPGs are very tough to do right. Most games have comedy in them but that is not the focus of the game like Paranoia. There was a time 15 years ago that most games I would run into would at least understand the phrase "The Computer is my friend" or "Happiness is Mandatory." I'm not sure that is the case anymore. I see less and less Paranoia being run at conventions. The yearly Paranoia LARP at Origins it appears to me attendance goes down [...]

Lately I’ve been kicking around a campaign concept that could be pretty freaking epic if I can manage to pull it off with the right group and the right story and find a time that works for everyone (pretty much impossible, I know). I also blame Gnome Stew/Engine Publishing’s Odyssey for getting me excited about running a campaign again.

The basic premise is this: you’re hopping role-playing game settings, systems, time, and space in order to try and return home after being banished or swept away from where you belong by mysterious forces. Each player creates a beginning-level character in a role-playing game of their choice and brings it to the table, and transposes the concept to whatever system of the month we’re rolling with as the characters explore that world and find the portal to advance to the next. As they go on adventures together and grow in strength, they begin to piece together clues to reveal what brought them together and why, and how their destiny may be entwined with the fate of the entire metaverse. I suppose it’s like Planescape, only you’re not limited to Dungeons & Dragons.

Although it seems like it would be a lot of work [...]

Over on Tor.com, they have put together a Read-Along group covering the storied Appendix N from Gary Gygax's 1E AD&D DMG and included a contest to win one of five sets of dice.  Read more here!

A great tutorial from Dorkadia that shows you how to make your own custom tabletop tokens for your roleplaying games. Though pawns can be just as easy; this is a great little way of making durable minis that will stay with you for a while. And such an upgrade over …

I've found myself absorbed in this game since it came out yesterday. It's fun! It's not great, it's not amazing, but it is fun. It plays like one of those nightmares fueled by 12 year olds and shoddy DMing, which can be extremely entertaining. The classes are interesting and work together well, the system for going on "adventures" is neat, and who can turn their nose up at some meta-gaming where

When I first set foot in the Valley of the Red Apes it was seeking out the Ziggurat of Rhissel the Morning Lord. However it is a good thing we set up a base of operations nearby. We got word from back home that the Hubert the Elder, the sage we had hired to get background information on the region, had made some other interesting discoveries in the libraries, and he sent along a series of letters describing the hiding places of Jen “the Rose” – one of which was almost certainly nearby. Jen “the Rose” was a human adventurer during the last great war, a freebooter who exploited the chaos to make her fortune and acquire great interesting treasures from the various worlds of the Kale – worlds that are difficult if not impossible to find now. This particular lead was to a hall of some mystical power (and possibly treasure) that she had built or found (the stories are vague and contradictory – one even indicates that the hall was brought here from another world). This exploration was deemed less dangerous than our main focus towards the Ziggurat, and thus we sent four of our companions of levels [...]

We had some good movement with our sale last weekend, so I’m going to extend it for the rest of the week! Also, for this week, I’ll throw in even more free stuff!

The Details:

Our Horse Minis and Mini Counters are by far our most popular gaming accessories. So (for this week), when you buy some, I’ll give you more!

First, if you buy 8 or 10 Horse Minis, I’ll throw in 2 more for free. What fantasy adventurer (or cowboy) doesn’t ride a horse? Tactics change and become more dynamic, since you now take up a 2×2 square and gain increased [...]

"What lairs in a maze is good hunting" - General Zaroff

Nomenclature: Minotaur, Tarus, Taurian, Bull-man, Brutal Beast

Description: Taurine humanoid, with the head of a bull

Things that are known:

• They are fond of mazes
• They are terrifically strong

Rumors and other whispers in the dark:

• It is very important that the labyrinth the minotaurs inhabit contain no furniture. They must be bare of decoration
• They are actually terrible at mazes. If they were any good, they'd all be living in sunny little villages retiring ,eh? No minotaur has ever escaped from a maze and they [...]

My next game will be called Space Wranglers. Space Wranglers is a game of starship rodeo roping brought to you by the IGSRJACRA (Intra-Galatic Space Rodeo Jamboree and Cattle Ranchers Association). We are now in initial playtest mode. This will be a cheap download from rpgnow and wgv.

A recent exchange running through a couple of other blogs I follow led me to check out the back catalog of Spells and Steel, a blog focusing on developing a version of Basic D&D that's informed by facts and experience with medieval combat.

What I like about Charles Taylor's approach: he's intent on keeping the simplicity of Basic D&D throughout, resulting in a very boiled-down system that still relies mainly on d20 hit, d6 damage logic. So, multiple opponents are tough, trained fighters have a huge advantage in ability versus civilians, skill and not hit points helps heroes survive, [...]

A bit a go Jez over at Giblet Blizzard wrote a post about the DCC funnel and how the different races didn’t fit into the philosophy that well. His post is awesome and worth a read.

For me I find that it is the case that there is too high a chance to get a demi-human race in the funnel and that having a town with 3 of X race, 2 of another and then 1 lowly human throws off the whole feel of “these villagers should be freaking the fuck out when they are in a dungeon and see a [...]

Occasionally, the Gassy Gnoll can be accused of beating a dead horse. Or poking the bear. To the point where usually the horse comes back to life long enough to exact some grotesque necromantic revenge or gets the bear to do it for him.

What the heck am I talking about? Overthinking. You might have experience with this scenario yourself. Take a concept or idea, ask one round of questions, which leads to another round of questions, and another, incessantly, until such time as you’re scraping the bottom of the barrel and can come up with no additional things to ask [...]

According to Filmclips...

• 01 - Watch more Dracula
• 02 - Watch more Jaws 
• 03 - Watch more Frankenstein
• 04 - Watch more King Kong
• 05 - Watch more The Mummy
• 06 - Watch more The Thing
• 07 - Watch more Jurassic Park 
• 08 - Watch more Ghostbusters
• 09 - Watch more Creature from Black Lagoon 
• 10 - Watch more Gremlins

There are books you own because you know you should own them. There are three such books for Cthulhu set in the modern era. These are Delta Green, Delta Green Count Down and this book. The list used to be five long and impossible to complete and then this beauty was released. It combines the three chapbooks that were released by Pagan Publishing into one book and adds two additional scenarios. The three books were of course Machinations of the Mi-Go, The Fate, and Project Rainbow. These were so hard to find copies of that they were almost in the mythical category for me. The whole problem for me of course is that this is all modern setting material. All of them need to be owned by any true fan of the game though and the compilation book made this possible. 

From the book:


"Are you cleared for this?

For eighty years your organization has fought to protect humanity by uneearthing evils older than the world itself. You violated every law to save people who'll never know you exist. You took down fanatics who worshipped horror incarnate. You dug up truths that all the powers of government and magic tried to conceal.

You're about to wish you'd left well enough alone.

Delta Green: Eyes Only digs deep into the worm-ridden heart of modern power. Uncover its secrets and you'll see why people kill to keep them hidden.

* Machinations of the Mi-Go explores the history, goals and science of the Fungi from Yuggoth, including the plot that shaped the American government for decades.
* The New York occult underground exlplodes with The Fate, an in-depth look at Stephen Alzis and his [...]

This week, my wife expressed a lot of interest inThe Awful Green Things From Outer Space. The non-occult theme and cartoonish violence meant that it didn’t trigger any negative reactions from her. That, and the kids have had their noses in books almost constantly due to library sponsored summer reading programs. Thanks to that, I have carte blanche to make the kids do just aboutanythingelse. These are the factors that lead this game to finally get “on the table.”

I tried playing this once with my son with him playing the crew. He’s ten… and communicating any sort of tactical ideas [...]

White Dwarf for September 1985 takes us to the end of the 60s with issue #69.  This one is going to be interesting to try to do because my copy is falling apart.  In fact I have it in a bag to hold it all together. When I started this I wanted to see if I could find a new copy and then forgot about it till just recently.   I am not even using my own scanned image of the cover. It is in too bad of shape. The cover is an interesting one. It looks like it could [...]

I often talk about Forgotten Asia -- the parts of Asia that don't often make it into F&SF and video games, lost in favor of China and Japan. Well, these weapons came about due to that frustration, since I couldn't find any to use in Mount and Blade. A week or so ago, during a lull between assignments, I downloaded Wings 3D and started playing around with it. Soon I was devouring tutorials like peanut butter sandwiches.  Looks like Wings is real easy to learn and use, since I was able to make these within a few days [...]

We're doing some other bits for a couple of weeks or so, while one of the players is away. For this session, we played a two-player Jurisfiction adventure, to see what that was about.

Arthur Hastings, from Agatha Christie's Poirot novels, joined forces with the new recruit Dr Abraham van Helsing, from Bram Stoker's Dracula. The Bellman never told them that it's technically a single-player mission, but hey, if you take a complete rookie and the somewhat dimwitted veteran Hastings, it sort of adds up to a single, competent player.

The mission itself was a simple matter of internal plot adjustment: making Shadow the Sheepdog by Enid Blyton have a happy ending. It should have been a simple mission that couldn't possibly go wrong, but ... alas ... they got out of a sticky situation by teaching a bunch of villagers all about S&M, in a bid to [...]

Remember Me is the first release from French studio DONTNOD and is available now for PS3, Xbox 360 and PC.

Setting

The game focuses on Nilin, a memory hunter fighting against Memorize, a corporation whose digital memory implants have transformed the lives of everybody in Neo-Paris. As you might expect from such a setup the game exists within a cyberpunk (technically neo-cyberpunk given the wireless nature of the technology employed) setting and opens with Nilin having her memory forcibly extracted. From there you take on the role of Nilin as she struggles against Memorize to recover her identity and understand why she [...]

The recent decade has seen a slew of remakes, from god awful to mildly disappointing. But if there were any remake you would want to see, what would it be?

Answers in the comments.

submitted by Al Bruno IIIThis is Kimberly Kane, adult movie actress, as featured in the io9 article on the Best Wonder Woman Outfit.

If all goes well, this Saturday night will be the final session of our 1950s WitchCraft campaign. For my group, the fact that the campaign was ending is bittersweet. While everyone is excited to see the big questions raised throughout the campaign to finally be answered and everything wrapped up, everyone at the table, including me, knows that there was a lot of life left in the campaign and don't really want to end so soon. So why are we? A little over a month ago, one member of our group announced that he was moving away. Our group is small [...]

The game group and I played our very first session of Spirit of the Century on Monday, and it was a combination of fun, awkward, fast-paced, halting, spontaneous, creative, and overwrought all at the same time, kind of like a teenager out on their very first date EVAR!

The Arctic Club ballroom as it appears today
Everyone seemed to have a really good time and I tried to drop something into the scenario for each player. Most of the awkwardness came from the fact that I had not been able to internalize the rules having never played the game, [...]

Today our hero decides to go south-west, still following the river, entering the farmlands around Weshor.

“You encounter a local Priest riding on a donkey (equivalent to a horse as a mount), with combat skill 3, endurance 3, wealth 25. He seems aloof and not disposed to conversation, but he may be afraid of you…You can let him pass, ending this encounter, or select one of the two options below” (which are fight or talk).

The prince decides to engage the priest in conversation. “You try to talk the character(s) into joining your party, as they seem sympathetic and interested. Roll one [...]

Countdown to the Bidet Shoot: Day 4
This post will be brief as I've had a hell of a day and I have to get up early tomorrow. Therefore, you get bullet points.

• Dad's car died -- suddenly, dramatically -- last week, and so he took the entire week off while it was getting looked at this. This has increased the stress level in the house significantly as dad is one of those crotchety old Jews who isn't happy unless he's miserable and complaining. 
• Also, it turns out he has Parkinson's. Yay.
• Those two points came together today when mom [...]

This one was lost. But, now it is found thanks to retrievers at Google.

Buy this awesome game here.

The post The Making of a Penny for My Thoughts with Paul Tevis and the Crew appeared first on Geeky & Genki.

A fairly common question with point-buy systems like Eclipse is “What if something is too good for it’s cost? Or what if a character buys some massively powerful ability straight off? After all, if some starting character simply invests all his points buying super-ability “X” meant for the settings major gods he or she could just slaughter / ignore / bypass / recruit / outrun / edit out of time / whatever all appropriate opponents!“

Fortunately d20 is complicated enough – unlike, say, Amber – that you can't simply spend all of your points on "Warfare" and assume that you will [...]

This one was lost. But, now it is found thanks to retrievers at Google.

Buy this awesome game here.

The post The Making of a Penny for My Thoughts with Paul Tevis and the Crew appeared first on Geeky & Genki.

Okay, life lesson time.  If you enjoy drawing - don't fuck up your hand by drawing.  Pace yourself and hold your god-damn pencil right.

So, my hand has been slowly recovering - and I've been doing exercises and working back some strength to it.  I get these odd aches in places that were not originally hurt.  I figure it's shifting muscles and stuff around.  Knitting.  Whatnot.

I've also been trying to do things with an economy of movement.  Where I might have once used like a billion scratches to evolve a line - I'm now saying FUCK IT [...]

HERE WE GO!!! Banners proclaiming your victorious entries. Awarded Third place and winning 1 PDF from the entire Earthdawn Catalog hosted at Drivethrurpg with the 'Legendary Weapons for DCC RPG': Awarded SECOND place and winning 2 PDFs from the entire Earthdawn Catalog hosted at Drivethrurpg with the story of Klim the Windling Wind Dancer/Horror Stalker Awarded FIRST place and winning

I've been wondering about including damage scales in Dead & Back for a while. It generally feels right for me to include a damage class for things bigger than humans. However, since this game is a horror and personal level game, for once I'm not too sure. Of course, if included - how would it be implemented?

The first real RPG I played was Rifts, with its infamous "Mega-Damage" (TM) -( they were always very certain to include that TM everywhere!). Rifts is certainly broken in many ways, and a lot of the material seems thrown together haphazardly - [...]

Out of curiosity, what do you do when you want to run more games than you reasonably have time for? Because lately the bug has been hitting me a lot. I love the two games I'm running, I don't want to end them, but there are so many other games out there right now that I also really want to run. It's pretty much the reason I made the "Campaign Proposals" series on here, but I'm not even sure if it's enough right now.



The sad thing is I already game a lot. Every two weeks has [...]