Unless you have lived in a cave somewhere for the past couple of years or rabidly avoid the Fantasy genre entirely, you have heard about George RR Martin's Song of Ice and Fire fantasy series published by Bantam Books. The novels regularly reside at #1 for Sci Fi/Fantasy when they debuted in the in the early '90's and the more recent books have made the top ten bestselling lists worldwide, despite being rather dark, adult oriented and dangerous to the lives of the main characters within it. Take note, this is not Tolkien or Jordan that we're talking about here.
The Burning Wheel RPG is not another d20 clone. It is a roleplaying game designed to appeal to the narrative gamer who doesn't want to get bogged down in mechanics. While the game shows a lot of promise, I remain unconvinced that it will work at the game table. The elements of shared storytelling are broken by a number of mechanics that seem added to give the player the extra mechanisms that they expect in a roleplaying game. Tactical combat, skill advancement, character creation are expectations in a roleplaying game; and Burning Wheel addresses these in detail. But, I find these rules are arbitrarily appended to a core system that was not constructed to bear their weight. As a whole it left me wondering if the original intent was to end the rules at chapter two.
As long as we're all back here together, let's catch up on some of what makes our campaigns so great; those moments that can never be forgotten as long as we game. Recent is what I'm looking for… not pining for the days of our campaigns years ago.
Today, I boxed up all my RPGs. They're still in plain sight, they're still loved and memories cherished, but the boxing, for me, means the end of my involvement with tabletop gaming. This has literally been a long-time coming: when I first started Gamegrene back in 2000, my orbit was already slowly decaying, and I hoped that dedicating a site to my love would keep things going.
Why a 3rd edition to WFRP? Why now? "Based on recent trends in the roleplaying market and numerous discussions between Games Workshop and Fantasy Flight Games, we determined the time was right to develop and introduce a new edition, attracting more fans to the Warhammer Fantasy setting made popular by Game Workshop's tabletop miniatures game." Read all about it in this interview with Jay Little, lead designer on Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 3rd Edition.
No surprise to anyone by now: Wizards of the Coast has started another round of Christmas layoffs. This year, so far, Rob Heinsoo (D&D 4e Lead Designer), Logan Bonner (Adventurer's Vault), Chris Sims (4e Monster Manual and Dungeon Master's Guide) and Stephen Radney-McFarland have been cut.
For those of you who are gamers, you realize that there are some groups you prefer gaming with and some you don't. The same is true for MMORPG's (or any large, persistent world) - we find a group with similar goals to hang out with (or adventure with or whatever). And the same is also true of gaming groups whose focus is board games.
Two women and a man, all dressed in white jumpsuits, sit around a table with a bowl of pennies in its center. Each of them has a small stack of pennies and a printed form. In front of the older woman sits a scrap of paper with the words "a taffy stretching machine" written on it.
"... and my father looked down at me and said, 'If you don't want to ride the roller coaster, you don't have to. You can wait here in the candy shop while your brother and I go,'" says the older woman. "I was scared." As she speaks, the remembered terror creeps into her voice.
Her expression suddenly goes blank. She turns to the man. "What did I do or say then?" she asks, offering him the single penny in front of her.
The nominees for the 2009 ENnie Awards were announced today; HELLAS: Worlds of Sun & Stone (my game) was nominated twice. Voting begins on July 24 and runs through August 1. Winners will be announced at the 9th Annual ENnie Awards at GenCon on Friday, August 14. Be sure to vote for your favorites!
If there's one immutable law all GMs know, it’s that players love loot. Wizards love that uber wand of disintegration. Fighters want the +12 hackmaster. Street samurai want that move by wire 4. How do you give them what they want without losing game balance? Simple. Present it like an Evil GM.
