Role Playing Games

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.

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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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Role Playing Games

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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Books, Role Playing Games

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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Role Playing Games, Video games

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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Books, Role Playing Games

RPG Book Review: Dungeoneer’s Survival Guide

Oriental Adventures was a sourcebook for AD&D 1st edition that sort of re-imagined and re-interpreted the game to fit a setting inspired by various stripes of Asian cinema, with varying degrees of success. However, two things that book did moderately well was to present a setting in microcosm that used the mechanics and the book’s non-weapon proficiency system. What it didn’t do well was to create classes and races that were conducive for adventuring, and it didn’t create a setting that a standard adventuring party could be inserted into.

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Role Playing Games

Book Review: Oriental Adventures (1e)

AD&D 1st Edition received a smattering of different settings. The longest lasting of those were the Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, and Dragonlance settings. However, a little less memorable one is Kara-Tur, which was born out of the Oriental Adventures sourcebook. While it would later be folded into the Forgotten Realms, on the outset it was very much its own thing. Continue reading

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Role Playing Games

Adventure Review: D3 – Vault of the Drow & Q1 – Queen of the Demonweb Pits

I off and on have been reviewing the parts of the first AD&D adventure path – Against the Giants (in two parts – Part 1 & Part 2), and Descent into the Depths of the Earth. Well, now the time has come to the conclusion of the Adventure Path, and while for an inventive ending, it’s kind of a rough one. Continue reading

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Role Playing Games

Adventure Review: G2 & G3 – The Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl & The Hall of the Fire Giant King

A while back, I reviewed G1: The Steading of the Hill Giant Chief, an adventure that launched AD&D’s first real adventure path, and had some really interesting adventure design concepts.  The other two adventures in the series – G2: The Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl and G3: The Hall of the Fire Giant King,  are much more conventional dungeon crawls, so they’re worth discussing together. Continue reading

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film, Role Playing Games

Documentary Review: The Dwarvennaut

Back when I was getting actively into gaming again, I started reading Knights of the Dinner Magazine, and some issues of Dragon Magazine when I could. In those issues of the magazine, I encountered ads for Dwarven Forge, a company making miniature dungeon terrain out of really durable material, what I presume is plastic resin, called Dwarvenite. It was incredibly well sculpted, beautiful to look at, and as a high school and later college student, I couldn’t even begin to hope to afford it, never mind to have space for it. But I really wanted to be able to be in a game that used it.

Fast forward to a few years ago when I finally got in a long-running game again, and much to my delight, my GM owned pretty much all of the Dwarven Forge terrain that had come out to date – so I was able to play with it and experience using it first hand – and it was great. And then I learned about a documentary on Netflix about the guy who started Dwarven Forge, and I decided I had to check that out. I didn’t know exactly what it’s tone would be. However, thus far Netflix had not steered me wrong on the documentary front, so what the hell?

The Dwarvenaut is a interesting documentary – as both an character study of Stefan Pokorny, the founder of the company and one of the sculptors of the terrain the company puts out, and a brief snapshot of what draws people to Roleplaying games. That said, the film is tends strongly more towards the former than the latter. Stefan talks about what drew him to RPGs and we get some interviews with people, often industry luminaries, about what drew them to RPGs – but while the documentary goes to GenCon and other locations we don’t get much of an opportunity to talk to newer roleplayers about why they play, and what draws them to the products that Dwarven Forge makes.

The framing “narrative” as much as there is one, is based around the launching of Dwarven Forge’s third kickstarter, for their City Terrain set, after their earlier “Dungeon” and “Cave” sets. In particular, there are some concerns that due to overpromising on the kickstarter, if they don’t raise $2 million, they will end up going bankrupt. The “will they or won’t they make the goal” part of the

The profile of Stefan is far more engrossing – getting into not only what motivates him as a person who is into roleplaying (specifically designing a product that would motivate people to play in person instead of online), but also as an artist. There’s an scene in the film where Stefan goes back to Venice, where he spent some time after he graduated from art school, and he talks about the wear on the stones and about the stories those buildings must have scene – and that speaks volumes of the artistic motivations behind the Dwarven Forge terrain.

The film also does an amazing job of presenting Dwarven Forge’s terrain, visually. We get some really well shot closeups of the terrain, with lighting and dry-ice fog that makes it look like a miniature from a fantasy movie (and that’s not a bad thing – this is a product that you can buy after all). It kinda makes for a really strong advertisement for Dwarven Forge’s products, which is not what I expected from this documentary.

It’s an engrossing film. I don’t know if it’s one that I’d necessarily add to my collection, but it was definitely worth watching. The film is currently available for streaming on Netflix, and also on Amazon on DVD and Digital.

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It’s time for another RPG Roundup video. This time I’m making my recommendations based on Anime series!

Whycalibur’s Log Horizon Actual Play

RPGs Recommended:
13th Age: Amazon, DriveThruRPG
Maid: Amazon, DriveThruRPG
Champions: Amazon, DriveThruRPG
Icons: Amazon, DriveThruRPG
Mutants & Masterminds: Amazon, DriveThruRPG
Wild World Wrestling: DriveThruRPG

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Footage Credits:

  • Sailor Moon – Toei
  • Serial Experiments Lain – Pioneer
  • Neon Genesis Evangelion – Gainax/Studio Khara
  • Armored Trooper VOTOMS – Sunrise
  • Bubblegum Crisis – Pioneer
  • Log Horizon (Season 1) – Satelite
  • Hayate the Combat Butler – Manglobe
  • Tiger & Bunny – Sunrise
  • Goseiger – Bandai
  • Tiger Mask W – Toei