Reviews
Have you ever been DM'ing a 3rd edition campaign and thought you had this really great challenge in store for your players (after all they are 4th level and it is a CR 7)? Then low and behold they defeat it in one round? You are not alone.
Formed through what Anarchy Enterprises likes to call an 'open game development', Deep Sea Tycoon, their latest offering, claims to have benefited from the input of various beta testers and so provides 'far more freedom than the average tycoon game'. Having downloaded the demo of this game I can safely say that freedom is not everything.
It seems fairly obvious that White Wolf has accumulated a veritable treasure trove over the years and has informally entrenched itself as the authority on role-playing games in the modern setting. In this light, Wizards of the Coast (WotC) has decided to enter this arena with the hope of providing some useful competition. As the self-proclaimed leaders of the fantasy genre of RPGs since it took TSR under its belt, they now present: D20 Modern. The name is short, with only two words, and too lackluster compared to the other games of its genre. However, there is a reason. D20 Modern sports not one but three game settings and promises to develop each beyond the scope of the Core Rulebook. Hence, what the name reflects is its versatility.
So your player's characters are extremely powerful and all you can do is throw larger and more powerful monsters at them to slow them down, but there is really no way to stop them. Or maybe your campaign is growing stale, but you don't want to scrap all of your hard work and start over. My advice to you is to simply destroy everything and cheat while you do so! All you need is a piece of your campaign world that either is unmapped or unexplored by your players and a technologically advanced, expansion minded society to overwhelm your player's world. To illustrate this idea, we will look at a sample fantasy campaign world, design a society to overwhelm them and then look at the results.
Gaming is about, among other things, stories. Stories of heroism, stories of horror, stories of humor. . .stories of people. This is about gaming, so it is, of course, about people. Not enough people, specifically.
Let me preface this rant with one generalization: I hate generators. I feel they completely take away any creativity and planning from the GM, and quickly become a crutch to all who use them. This being said, there are a few out there that are better than others, and depending on what they are used for (and how much they are used), they can possibly help either a GM who is just getting his/her feet wet or a GM who simply has writer's block.
So: it's been a while, but I'm back with more on the "Analog" gaming front! I've just discovered a few new games and had to share!
This is for the person who has everything, but loves games and always wants more. This person will try anything new, but all the expensive board games are really just the same game repackaged - expensively.
There have been predictions of the resurgence of the anti-D&D campaigns the religious right pushed so hard back in the 80's, due mainly to the publication of this book. I gamed during that period, while living about 6 miles down the road from CBN University. It wasn't fun, and I don't ever want to have to be so secretive about my hobby again. As of this writing, the many-headed hydra of Swaggart, Falwell, Baker, Reed, Buchannan, et al has yet to arise. What has happened is that Monte Cook and WOTC have provided the players of D&D with a unique sourcebook.
Because of the response from Part 1 of this review series, I have decided to review 3 more funny standalone card games. Perhaps Joe Gamer is finally turning an ear?
