Tag Archives: gaming resources

RPG Superstar Selected!

Posted on February 20, 2008 | Leave a comment

Congratulations to Christine Scheider of Neu-Isenburg, Hessen, Germany for emerging victorious in Paizo Publishing’s RPG Superstar contest!  It’s well deserved, her entries were all bad ass!  Check ’em:

As the winner, she’ll get a GameMastery Module published by Paizo.  I’m eager to see it!  In fact, they’re already listing it as a product – S1: Clash of the Kingslayers.

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RPG Fun in Austin, TX

Posted on February 18, 2008 | Leave a comment

In or around Austin and want to know where to go and who to meet?  Here’s a quick cheat sheet for you.

Game Stores

Groups

Conventions

More as I find ’em!

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RPG Superstar Final Round is Here!

Posted on February 14, 2008 | 1 comment

Paizo Publishing’s excellent RPG Superstar contest is in its final round, and the four finalist’s complete adventure proposals are up! Read them, evaluate them, and vote!

However it turns out, compliments to all the participants and especially the final four, Christine Schnieder, Clinton Boomer, Jason Nelson, and Rob McCreary!

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RPGs for free!

Posted on February 13, 2008 | Leave a comment

I came across a couple old RPGs that had gone out of print and then been made available for free on the Web by their owners, and I asked around on RPG.net and got a lot more!  I wanted to make the list available here for two reasons.

  1. To let people know where to get some free games, especially nostalgia-triggering ones like Star Frontiers (my first RPG!), Marvel Super Heroes, and more.
  2. To give some kind of karmic credit to the companies and authors that are making these available for free once they’re not able to make money off them, as opposed to spitefully sitting on them as so many do.

Please note this is a list of legally available games only, not torrent sites or other pirate stuff (as best as I can tell).  It’s also only for games that used to be for sale and are now free; there’s plenty of other lists of “made for free” RPGs out there on the Web.  It’s also not “Lite,” “free,” or “SRD” versions of pay games, though I may post later with a list of those.

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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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