Role-playing
50 Games in 50 Weeks: Dungeon World
By Brent on 9 January 2012
Dungeon World is another sword-and-sorcery tabletop RPG system aiming to recapture the purity of classic Dungeons & Dragons. The surface looks the same, including the four classes of Cleric, Fighter, Thief, and Wizard. The mechanics and approach, however, are quite different. Player-character attributes mirror D&D, except for the addition of Bond, which is used to indicate how well each character knows each other character. Moreover, at the beginning of each session, two […]
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50 Games in 50 Weeks: Fiasco
By Brent on 2 January 2012
Man, I loved Fiasco. Fiasco is a tabletop RPG that approaches die rolls from a radically unorthodox angle. The players roll the dice at the beginning of the game, and those rolls tie into various elements of the setting (the book comes with several starter settings). Once those dice are rolled, they’re never rolled again. The first half of the game involves describing and explaining the elements rolled, as well as their relations to each other. […]
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3 Dice Dungeon, A Solitaire Dungeon Crawl Game
By Brent on 29 December 2011
Nearly a year ago, Greywulf posted RPG Solitaire Challenge: 3 Dice, a simple solitaire game of dungeon exploration. In his game, you roll 3 dice for your adventurer’s stats, then for each room in the dungeon, roll 1 die to determine the room’s type, 1 die for a monster, and 1 die for a treasure. I played the game a couple of times, and while I had fun, I found two major issues: The game is very swingy. I played […]
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50 Games in 50 Weeks: InSpectres
By Brent on 26 December 2011
InSpectres is a lot of fun. It’s a tabletop role-playinggame that’s basically Ghostbusters. The lightweight system includes only four attributes per PC–Academics, Athletics, Technology, and Contact–with a focus on one of them. A total of 9 points are distributed among these attributes. The core mechanic involves rollingsix-sideddice–as many dice as you have points in the attribute that applies to the attempted action–and looking up the highest die rolled in a results table. Higher numbers provide extra […]
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One Little Tweak
By Brent on 16 December 2011
I ran a game of Searchers of the Unknown, a simplified and free original D&D rule set, at RyvenCon a while ago. ‘Twas fun, and the system worked well, but we agreed that it could use one little tweak. This way, madness lies. It’s so tempting to house-rule a system because it’s “not perfect.” Soon, a rules-light system grows into a rules-moderate system. Well, this is a minor issue, but a significant […]
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50 Games in 50 Weeks: Everyone Is John
By Brent on 16 December 2011
As part of DC Gameday, I volunteered to run a game of Everyone Is John. System basics: Each player is a voice in the head of a totally insane man named John from Minneapolis. Each voice has a few skills, an obsession (something they really want to accomplish), and a pool of Willpower tokens. Whenever John is hurt, bored, or falls asleep, the voices all wager Willpower tokens to take control of John. The winner controls John […]
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I’m in a Night in the Lonesome October
By Brent on 24 October 2011
jffdougan has kindly accepted my submission to his blog carnival A Night in the Lonesome October, “The House of Doctor Chamberlain.” Not only that, it’s the second entry! I’m honored. The other entries so far include is a “charmed hero” theme and a neat set of “cultist” themes for D&D 4th Edition, so there’s already […]
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Exploring The Lost Kingdoms
By Brent on 22 October 2011
Michael Garcia’s The Lost Kingdoms is a GM aid, meant to provide a ready-to-use framework for a typical fantasy kingdom. And that is its biggest problem. On the one hand, The Lost Kingdoms may be useful for new GMs who want a generic fantasy town with the barest bones of backstory. The setting’s background–wild kingdoms locked away behind a gate, recently re-opened for adventurers–is a great idea. The document lists a few common locations–a tavern, a weapons shop, […]
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50 Games in 50 Weeks: Risus
By Brent on 19 October 2011
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 […]
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Let’s Play an Interesting RPG: The Beginning
By Brent on 16 October 2011
I suggested on #4eDnD that we organize an online group to play different, interesting games every week. We’d focus on trying out new things, but could certainly play the same system a couple weeks in a row if we felt that was worthwhile. I’m pleased to announce the first session: When: Friday, 21 October 2011, starting at 7:00pm Eastern Time Where: Google+ Hangout. Make sure to circle me. […]
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