50 Games in 50 Weeks: Risus
I had the good fortune to play a game using the free Risus “everything RPG system” as part of DC Gameday this year. Risus is very generic, which is its key strength. The system can be explained in two short paragraphs, which I will now attempt to do. Each character is made up of clichés, each of which gets 1 to 4 dice. Each character has a total of 10 dice […]
Cleaning Out
Spent a good chunk of last night reading It’s All Too Much, based on a recommendation from Merlin Mann on the “Back to Work” podcast. It’s an excellent, kick-in-the-butt response to having too much stuff, and guides the reader through ways of tossing out a lot of it. I was inspired by this image of Steve Jobs, way back in the day: This was his apartment. He was a millionaire at the time this photo was taken. […]
50 Games in 50 Weeks: Seven Dragons
Just finished playing a game of Seven Dragons, a strategy card game by Looney Labs. It manages to find an excellent middle ground between ease of comprehension and strategic options. The rules can be easily explained in 10 minutes (though I botched one of the rules’ aspects). After you begin playing and once you hit the game’s midpoint, your strategic options become complex and interesting. It’s something of a pattern-matching game. A silver dragon […]
50 Games in 50 Weeks: Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple
Do simulates a specific fantasy trope: adolescent temple iplgrims who travel the world, helping people and getting into trouble. As limiting as this may appear, it’s easy for folks to grasp and use to tell stories. The system is much more simple than the length of this review implies, and highly story-focused. Your character is represented by two words: an adjective or verb “banner” and a noun “avatar.” The banner represents how your character […]
Road Trip, Day 1
I’m off on the first day of my great cross-country road trip. I’ve stopped at a small Italian restaurant in Maryland.
Upcoming Project: Voidjumpers of Space
I’m careful to avoid announcing new products until they’re evolved enough that I’m sure I’ll be able to release them. I have 38 pages and over 10,000 words in this one, so I’m confident now. I’m working on a SpelljammerTM adaptation for Dungeons & DragonsTM 4th Edition. Its working title: Voidjumpers of Space. First, a few definitions: Spelljammer was a D&D 2nd Edition supplement for running D&D […]
50 Games in 50 Weeks: Fortune & Glory
Fortune & Glory is a new board game of pulp adventure. Each player is an Indiana Jones-style adventurer, traveling the world, looking for treasure, fighting Nazis and mob bosses. The board shows the world, split up into maybe two dozen zones for major countries and areas. Each player gets a specific character card to play, each of which has a couple of stats. The game includes a bunch of different card types, several […]
50 Games in 50 Weeks: Searchers of the Unknown
As part of RyvenCon, I decided to stretch myself a little and run a game in a system I’d never tried before: Searchers of the Unknown. Some background is in order: No edition of Dungeons & Dragons has ever been released for free. Moreover, copies of early versions of the game are increasingly impossible to find, except at sky-high prices. Searchers of the Unknown is one of several projects aimed at releasing a free version of the mechanics of early D&D, in this […]