This was then we din’t quite get through the big string of fights that mark the end of this first chapter. We also got a new player (and thus a new character) in the party.
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Star Trek Adventures RPG Character Race: The Abh
Basically, since I watched Crest of the Stars & Banner of the Stars, I’d been thinking about how I’d incorporate the Abh into the various Star Trek RPGs. After a bunch of thought, I’ve figured out some of how to do it… and I commissioned some art to go with it from Kimberly Odessa! I’ll be focusing on the Modiphius Star Trek Adventures rules – for this post, and I’ll do write-ups for Decipher Trek and LUG Trek later, since I have the books for those as well.
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Book Review: Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground
If you know anything about me at all, I have a passion for the history of tabletop roleplaying. One of the books that helped stoke my interest was the book Heroic Worlds, which I read when I was in middle school. That book was a high level overview of the roleplaying game books that were on the market at the time – like the tabletop RPG equivalent of all those Leonard Maltin books giving an overview, one-to-two sentence of a film’s plot, and a one-to-two sentence review combined with a score. Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground provides a more close in view, covering a selection of RPG books from each decade of RPG history to date, with more involved looks at the various games.
Continue readingDragonlance: Shadows of the Dragon Queen Part 3: A Cunning Plan
This session was a shorter session than before – the big end-of-chapter series of battles is enough take a whole session, so this was handling the setup, with a little bit of combat.
Continue readingDragonlance: Shadows of the Dragon Queen: Pt 2 – Summoned to Tourney
Session 2 of the game had the same player lineup as before – I am looking for some additional players, and I do want to keep some spots available for some of our usual group members once they are able to return.
Continue readingAfter some comments about Hasbro’s CEO about AI and D&D moved in my head and started living there rent-free, I needed to get those out in the form of a comedic rant. (With apologies to Lewis Black).
Dragonlance: Shadows of the Dragon Queen: Pt 1 – Funeral For A Friend
Here we have the beginning of my Actual Play for the D&D 5e campaign, Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen, my first time running a game in several years, my first time running for people I wasn’t related to, and my first time running 5e. As I mentioned earlier, I’m running the game using Foundry VTT because my players are fairly geographically widespread.
Continue readingI Am Running A Tabletop Game!
I will be running a Tabletop campaign! For Real Humans! Who I’m Not Related To!
Starting next month I will be running a D&D 5E campaign for some friends, playing through Dragonlance: Shadows of the Dragon Queen. I’m not livestreaming it, and I’m not going to be giving the players names, but I will be giving some after-action reports here, since I haven’t run a game in a while, especially not for people who aren’t in my family.
I give my thoughts on an opinion piece by Ben Riggs (author of “Slaying the Dragon: A Secret History of Dungeons & Dragons”) about how the Golden Age of RPGs has ended by moving away from a D&D 5e focused monoculture – and argue that he’s not just a little wrong – he’s a lot wrong.
Supers RPG Experimentation: B-Ko.
Waaayyy back in August 0f 2023 I did a post experimenting on creating characters for Sentinels of the Multiverse and Marvel Multiverse RPG based on A-Ko from Project A-Ko. I intended to follow up not long later with a write-up of B-Ko, but I never got around to it. Well, it’s time to follow up. This time I’m just doing a write-up of B-Ko for Marvel Multiverse, because that was easier to work with than with Sentinels of the Multiverse, mechanically.
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Supers RPG Experimentation: A-Ko
So, with tabletop RPGs, I like to pick out a few character concepts to use for creating characters to help learn the system – often based on anime, movies, TV shows, or novels – trying to emulate those characters to help learn the system. For example, for Fantasy games I tend to go with the Heroes of Lodoss. Recently I’ve picked up a couple of supers RPGs – the Marvel Multiverse RPG and the Sentinels Comics, and I’m creating some test characters in the process of trying to learn the system. My first trial run: A-Ko.
Continue readingTRPGs: Potholes to Adoption for Powered by the Apocalypse & Forged in the Dark
It’s August, when I normally do TTRPG videos, so now is a good time for another one of those – in this case talking about a few of the things have that caused me (and my GM) to bounce off of Forged in the Dark & Powered by the Apocalypse games in the past, which you should consider if you want to move from your Dungeons & Dragons game to one of those systems (especially if your group has primarily played D&D).
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Alternative Dungeon Fantasy Games
Well, once again, Wizards of the Coast has stuck their head in it. This time, they sicced the Pinkertons on a YouTuber who had been mistakenly shipped the wrong Magic: The Gathering material – specifically a box of an epilogue expansion to March of the Machine that was due to come out later in May. Rather than just doing the more… practical thing, like leaving a voicemail or sending a certified letter, instead the Pinkertons came out, and threatened the YouTuber with felony criminal charges, in addition to having all their magic cards seized by the police.
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Editorial: Why the OGL Matters
In the wake of Wizards of the Coast announcing that they are revoking OGL V1.0a, there have been a bunch of hot takes that the OGL does not matter and it and other licenses never mattered – so I get into a few of the legal cases that made the OGL important, and which makes current open gaming licenses important.
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The Anime Appendix N: Sidebar 1
For the first Anime Appendix N Sidebar episode, I take a look at what use a “Recommended Works” section provides to an RPG, to GMs, and to Players, and how you can use one to help prepare players for your own game.
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The Anime Appendix N: Fantasy (Part 1)
This time I’m starting off talking about some Fantasy anime that are worthy of consideration, and introduce a concept I’ll be revisiting over the course of this series – the Axis of Emotional/Comedic Intensity.
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The Anime Appendix N: Introduction
This week I’m starting a new limited series, spun off from my RPG recommendations. This time I’m giving recommendations for anime by genre, based on how they spur inspiration at the gaming table, inspired by AD&D’s Appendix N. This time, I’m getting into why I’m doing this spinoff in the first place.
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Sprawlrunners: RPG Review
I like Shadowrun a lot – it was the second tabletop RPG I ever played and my first cyberpunk RPG. I also know it’s clunky in a lot of respects. So, when I learned about Sprawlrunners about a more fast-moving way to run a Shadowrun-like game, using the new edition of the Savage Worlds I decided to pick it up.
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Thoughts on the Time of the Red
I recently picked up the corebook for Cyberpunk Red, and have read through the whole book. I haven’t done anything with the rules yet, so I can’t speak to those. However, I do have some thoughts about the setting, particularly the changes in the Time of the Red.
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C1 Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan: Adventure Review
It’s been a while since I wrote my last adventure review, as I examined the GDQ adventure series (Giants, Drow/underDark, Queen of the Demonweb Pits). This time I’m taking a look at the first adventure in the Competition Series. C1: The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan.
Continue readingI’m about due for one of these Anime & RPG recommendation videos, so it’s time for another.
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Dragons of the Dwarven Depths: Book Review
Dragons of Autumn Twilight ended with the refugees from Pax Tharkas having found a refuge in a mountain pass in the hope of (possibly) making it through the winter. The second book in the Dragonlance Chronicles series begins with the Heroes of the Lance having already gone on another adventure, and having brought the refugees to the Dwarven city of Pax Tharkas. In the roleplaying game modules, your player characters would have gone through this story. However, while much of the Dragonlance modules were adapted to the original Chronicles series, not all of them were. In the late 2000s, Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman returned to Dragonlance to adapt this missing chapter into novel form.
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Video Game Review: Shadowrun Dragonfall
When I beat Shadowrun Returns: Dead Man’s Switch, I enjoyed the game but found it lacking in a lot of respects. While Dead Man’s Switch was an RPG that captured a bunch of the feel of the world of Shadowrun and invoked one of the classic adventures from the game, it was missing some of the dynamism of the RPG that other PC RPGs brought to the table. Shadowrun Dragonfall addresses these concerns and creates an RPG that is a more marked improvement over its predecessors.
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Gold Box Playthrough: Pool of Radiance Part 7 – Ruins of Adventure
This time I’m getting into something slightly different. I ordered a copy of the tabletop RPG adaptation of Pool of Radiance, titled Ruins of Adventure, and while I’m getting through the next chunk of the game, I figure this is a good time to talk about that.
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