d20
It features a 6,000 square foot medieval village, complete with tavern. It's filled with intricate puzzles and monsters. Those who survive are rewarded for their efforts with treasure. It sold out last year at GenCon, and is scheduled to sell out again. And Wil Wheaton once played a bard who got killed by a giant spider. It could only be True Dungeon.
Nocturnum is a product published by Fantasy Flight Games for use with the d20 Call of Cthulhu rules system. Weighing in at 270 pages of content, not counting credits, ads and handouts, Nocturnum truly is an epic campaign. Fans of Call of Cthulhu, both d20 and Chaosium, will not be disappointed by this masterwork.
Atlas Games is probably best known to gamers as the first to have a non-WOTC d20 product available for sale (John Tynes' Three Days To Kill). But there's much more to their story, from their humble beginnings in 1990 to their recent success with Ars Magica. We talked with John Nephew, the man behind the myth, about the past, the present, the future and a little bit more.
Metal Gear Solid. Rambo. Rambo II. That other movie with the guy who fought in that one place that one time. At least one of these should flash through your mind when you think of the popular culture conception of a "mercenary." If you've ever wanted to run a mercenary campaign, The Modern: Mercenary Manual from Ronin Arts contains a plethora of rules that will have you parachuting behind enemy lines, negotiating mercenary contracts with morally bankrupt dictatorships, and, most importantly, shooting stuff. A lot. With guns.
This may come as a shock for those of you who know me or those of you who are familiar with my work, but I like horror. Horror in all its forms, with the exception of lame ass slasher flicks, is something I just really dig. When it comes to my tastes in gaming there's no difference: I just love to freak the shit out of my players.
I feel I must say it takes quite a bit to shock me, but now that I have read the entirety of The Book Of Erotic Fantasy published by Valor Project, Inc. I am shocked. What I am shocked about is not the presence of exposed breasts, the usage of the word "fuck" or the presence of devices known as cock rings (these are all things I am already pretty familiar with) but the fact that the sexual content is handled in a mature manner suitable for game use.
Imagine the adrenaline of bolting out of the bank, a gun in one hand and a bag of cash in the other only to find the police are pulling up just then. Overhead you hear a helicopter and look up to see one from the local news watching you intently, and then you are thankful you're still wearing your mask. As one of the officers steps out of the cruiser, you open up on him. You see the one cop drop in a shower of glass from the car window. His partner fires wildly but you're already on your way. Bullets rip through the air around you as you round the corner and are gone down the alleyway. You dive into the waiting car out of sight of the chopper and your buddy guns the engine. You toss your mask and the cash into the back and grab the locked and loaded M-16 on the back seat, just in case they catch up with you. Thankfully for them, they don't.
Miniatures have long been a nice enhancement option for D&D campaigns. You head down to the local hobby shop, pick out the figures that catch your eye or that you need to fill up the monster slots for your weekly campaign and voila, you have instantly clarified combat, movement, and scale. Miniatures generally are made from pewter and part of the fun is to paint your miniature however you wish. So, you want a green fire elemental or a fuchsia troll? Anything you wanted to experiment with was fine. And you can always throw your miniatures into a bucket of Pine Sol overnight and in the morning ninety percent of the paint would be stripped off giving you the opportunity to repaint particularly poorly finished or hideously ugly figs.
I admit that I'm one of those guys who don't dig the D20 rules for the 3rd Edition of D&D. See, I was weaned on D&D during the last days of 1st Edition. I'm used to everyone going up a level with varying amounts of experience points. I'm used to -7 AC being a good thing. I'm used to arguing over how you pronounce THAC0. I'm used to D&D having it's own, unique set of rules. I'm used to playing the game my way.
When I first began playing Dungeons & Dragons at the tender age of eight, I was fascinated by the alignment chart in the blue Basic Set rulebook. I did not understand it. I asked my father to explain it to me, but not being a gamer, he was unable to shed much illumination on the subject. Now, a little over twenty-four years later, I find I still have not received an explanation of the D&D alignment system to entirely satisfy my curiosity.
