Tag Archives: gaming resources

New D&D PSA Posted – Part 34!

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!

Guide to Summonable Monsters

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

RPG Superstar Monster Round

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!

The New Open Gaming License Is Revealed – Kind Of

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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RPG Superstar!

For those who haven’t seen it, Paizo Publishing (former home of Dragon and Dungeon magazines and current producer of the Pathfinder Adventure Paths) is running a contest called “RPG Superstar.”  It’s a multiround contest being conducted in full view of the community.  It’s great stuff so far, and the “three related monsters” round is coming up.

My personal favorite in the top 8 is Clinton Boomer, also known as Hennet from the hilarious D&D PSAs on YouTube.  Go Boomer!

I submitted a wondrous item for the contest, but it was too prosaic I reckon.  Here it is, though, for your use.  It’s obviously balanced with the Necklace of Fireballs and are modeled after Zuni (and other Native American) fetish necklaces.

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Farewell to Living Greyhawk

As some of you may know, this year will be the last for Living Greyhawk.  It is being retired and the campaign will come to an end with the close of 2008. 

This is a sad thing; I was one of the original Living Greyhawk Triads that helped launch the campaign along with the advent of D&D 3e at Gen Con in 2000.  Greyhawk had always been my favorite campaign setting, and I welcomed the chance to help develop it.  I helped run the Yeomanry, which represented the real life states of TN, AR, LA, KY, AL, and MS.  The Yeomanry League is a cool nation; a proto-democratic state where military service grants citizenship.   

Even worse, it doesn’t appear that they have any plan to further Greyhawk after this point.  Many volunteers wrote hundreds of adventures and put lots of work in developing details of every region, and every indication is that work will just be lost.  That’s a shame and a waste.

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Latest Runelords “Hook Mountain” Session Summary Posted

The newest session summary from our romp through Rise of the Runelords is up!  Check it out.  Death to ogres!

New Reviews Posted on RPG.net

So, all my historical reviews are linked on the reviews page, but two of them are brand spanking new and up at RPG.net.  I review the new D&D 4e preview book Wizards Presents: Races & Classes and also an old DC Heroes 2e rulebook.

Welcome to Geek Related!

I decided to start a gaming blog dedicated to all things RPG – that is, tabletop pen-and-paper role-playing games.  I hope you find something interesting while you’re here!  I’ll be spewing forth my gamer thoughts in the blog, but also check out the pages where I’ll put original work, game reviews, session summaries, and more.