Author Archives: mxyzplk

State of the RPG Industry

Posted on February 12, 2008 | Leave a comment

So how is the RPG industry doing, anyway?   (Besides WotC trying to run people out of business with their ill-advised plans to eliminate the OGL in 4e with a much more restrictive scheme.)

Well, several of the companies out there like to share!  So here’s some compiled information from several gaming companies about how they did in 2007 and what they plan for 2008.

Green Ronin Publishing – http://www.greenronin.com/ – Three-part “New Year’s Message from the President” – Mutants & Masterminds, True20, Song of Ice & Fire, and Freeport.  Not too much in terms of hard numbers, though.

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Mongoose Traveller In Playtest

Posted on February 7, 2008 | 1 comment

The venerable old sci-fi game Traveller is getting a new release soon, from Mongoose Publishing.  And since they’re planning on making the rules open, they have an open playtest!  The current version of the playtest docs are linked from their Traveller product page.

I took the opportunity to do some character generation.  Like WFRP, Traveller has a random lifepathy character generation system, but in this case it takes you well into your character’s midlife.  You can even die during character generation in the “Iron Man” (classic) version.

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Feng Shui Dies of Old Age

Posted on February 2, 2008 | 3 comments

While I’m griping about things dying, I may as well lament the passing of one of my favorite RPGs of all time – Feng Shui. Atlas Games just put out the last planned supplement for it, Glimpse of the Abyss. It’s a monster book; I’ll probably submit a review of it to RPG.net soon.

Alas. The end was a long time coming, its run lasted more than a decade – Feng Shui is one of the coolest RPGs ever, by skilled game designer Robin Laws. It popularized the concept of “mook” opponents (generic bad guys who are easy to beat and less mechanically complicated than full villains) and advanced the notion of limited player authorship – in other words, don’t ask “is there a nearby pizza cutter I can pick up?” in a fight in a pizza parlor. Instead, say “I pick up a nearby pizza cutter and rake it across the gangbanger’s face!”

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Warhammer Roleplay Dies Again

Posted on February 1, 2008 | Leave a comment

The venerable Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay had, in the last couple years, been brought back to life by the skilled Black Industries, a British Games Workshop organ working in concert with ever-favorite American company Green Ronin.   They even just launched a Warhammer 40k RPG, Dark Heresy.  And now, despite that fact that it’s doing very well, Games Workshop has decided to discontinue BI including WFRP and WH40kRP and just focus on Warhammer novels.  This is a strange decision as the only reason anyone cares about WH novels is being led there either by the minis game or the RPG. 

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Savage Freeport!

Posted on January 29, 2008 | 1 comment

Pinnacle Entertainment Group and Green Ronin Publishing have made an agreement to come out with the Savage Worlds Freeport Companion.  To explain, Freeport, the City of Adventure, is the best known third party setting for D&D.  “Death in Freeport” was available at Gen Con along with the D&D 3e launch, and Green Ronin continued to support the tales of this pirate haven with many scenarios and some sourcebooks.  I introduced my Memphis gaming group to Freeport back in 2000 and we ran in it for many years.  Good times! 

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Fourth Runelords “Hook Mountain” Session Summary Posted

Posted on January 28, 2008 | Leave a comment

More hot giant killing action in Part IV of the Hook Mountain Massacre!  Well, wuss giants – ogres, trolls, and an ettin.  My character, Valgrim, is honing his summoning skills as a Malconvoker.
Next time, we hit Hook Mountain itself.  Victory or death!

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Third Runelords “Hook Mountain” Session Summary Posted

Posted on January 26, 2008 | Leave a comment

The Hook Mountain Massacre continues!  In which we slay dozens of ogres, and a hefty number of minibosses and bosses, with ferocity – but one of our heroes doesn’t walk away from it!  Prepare your Kleenex and find out which brave adventurer bit the big one in the service of…  Whatever we’re in the service of.  The plot I think.

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RPG Superstar Encounter Round

Posted on January 25, 2008 | 1 comment

Finally!  The wait between RPG Superstar rounds is getting hard to take!  The final six present a full encounter for your judgement.

As in the last round, Christine from Germany and Boomer from Illinois are my hands down favorites.  Her Chase on Charred Ground is an exciting ride down an active volcano on orc bone sleds!  Boomer’s Impartial Tribunal comes in second for me – some flaws, but fun.  Many of the rest are usable, if IMO not competitive with the others.  Check ’em out!

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New D&D PSA Posted – Part 34!

Posted on January 22, 2008 | 1 comment

There’s a new D&D PSA up, and it has my favorite characters Hennet, Lidda and Tordek in it.  If it had Regdar too it’d be the perfect PSA.  If you haven’t seen any of these, they’re a hilarious video series spoofing D&D done by some college students.  Check it out!

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Guide to Summonable Monsters

Posted on January 14, 2008 | Leave a comment

On the Wizards Character Optimization board I’ve been putting together a reference that doesn’t yet exist – a guide to all the rules-legal monsters that a wizard can summon with the Summon Monster spells.  New options are hidden away in many sourcebooks, so I’ve compiled them all and am reviewing them, especially as I get experience with them as Valgrim the dwarven summoner in our Rise of the Runelords game.  Hope someone finds it helpful!

Legal 3.5 Summonable Monster List

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RPG Superstar Monster Round

Posted on January 10, 2008 | 1 comment

Ah, finally, the monsters are up and ready to vote on in the RPG Superstar contest!   And there’s some great ones.

My picks for the two totally awesome entries are Christine’s “Mind the Machine” set and Boomer’s “The Hunger That Moves.”

Christine’s envisioning of the Dungeon Core and Complexity Golem – they’re phenomenally inventive *and* very usable!  And Boomer’s bizarre ecosystem of freakish creatures would be great to base an adventure around.   Check them out!

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The New Open Gaming License Is Revealed – Kind Of

Posted on January 9, 2008 | 1 comment

Well, I’m glad they finally got around to letting third party publishers know how they’re going to be able to stay in business.  There’s a couple unfortunate things about this, however. 

1.  The $5000 fee.  That’s a lot of money for a RPG publisher.  This effectively prices out everyone except the very largest third party companies.  I’m not sure why – I can see them wanting to keep it out of the hands of “dude in his garage” but that’s steep.  And it’s only for a couple months of lead time, so the publishers would need to be making more than $5k profit on their 4e product(s) in that time to make it worthwhile. 

2.  The community standards.  I worry about this one, especially with some of the frankly candyass things some of the Wizards have said lately, like leaving out half-orcs because of the “disturbing implications of their creation.”  Where do they plan to draw the line?  Just the Book of Erotic Fantasy (which did lose its d20 license)?  How about the d20 version of Macho Women With Guns?  Some of the recent Rise of the Runelords Adventure Path episodes have definitely been R rated.    

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