Snowy Sunday

It's a lazy, snowy Sunday here in western Nevada, so while we're waiting for the Pro Bowl (yes, some people still do watch the Pro Bowl!), we're playing King of New York and Star Wars: X-Wing. Just wish I had more takers for Zombicide and Ghostbusters.

Want!

Check out these awesome custom game tables that transform into regular tables! Or, are they regular tables that transform into game tables?

What's New?

Not much gaming news to report these days. The guys in the online group (Kevin, Scott, and Tim W) are coming to the end of their Shattered Realm mini-campaign and will be returning to Druid Cycle action thereafter. Otherwise, it's been pretty quiet. I've used the extra time to start reading up on the instruction of fencing, as I hope to get into coaching again at some point.

Dark Tower

Dark Tower was a D&D-like board game from the '80s and it totally needs to make a comeback. Don't take my word for it, though -- ask Orson Welles himself!

Heroes Have Landed!

The Amazing Heroes have landed!

Shown above are the figures in the standard packaging. The plastic is easily removed without damaging the card backs. I also received special "Artist Edition" card backs showing these classic heroes drawn by top-notch contemporary artists like Mike Allred, Sonny Liew, and Tim Seeley.

And here are the figures removed from the packaging. Back row, from left to right: Silver Streak, Captain Action, Champion of Mars, and Blank Slate. Front row, from left to right: Golden Age Daredevil (unrelated to the later Marvel character), Black Terror, Green Turtle, and Stardust. I've only included one Blank Slate figure in the images above, but I actually purchased a lot of those guys to use as villains and -- if I'm feeling brave -- to paint my own custom heroes.

Heroes Are on Their Way!

"We've been waiting for, like, a year!" Matthew tells me. It's actually been a lot longer than that, but the Amazing Heroes action figures from two successful Kickstarter campaigns are now on their way to our house. The boys -- myself included, of course! -- are excited for the action figures, but I'm also eager to introduce them to a related RPG mini-campaign (recycling the title Tales of the Ternion) that I've cooked up using these and other public domain Golden Age superheroes. The idea is to give the boys some more experience with roleplaying and cooperative storytelling outside the usual venue of D&D. I'm not sure how it will go, but it should be an interesting experiment.

Curse of Strahd

Ravenloft is back! The fan-favorite D&D setting comes to Fifth Edition in a new adventure called Curse of Strahd. Click here for details.

End of an Era

Today I cancelled my D&D Insider subscription, meaning that I'll no longer have access to the Character Builder software for Fourth Edition characters. There's no going back! In the past year I've converted the Druid Cycle campaign world to Fifth Edition -- all but the player characters, that is -- so it feels as though the brief, troubled 4e era is now over.

5e SRD!

Huge news! There's now a Systems Reference Document (SRD) and Open-Gaming License (OGL) for Fifth Edition D&D! There's also a Dungeon Master's Guild for those who want to self-publish D&D adventures!

Getting It to the Table

Every Monday evening, Matthew (and, starting in two days, Nathaniel as well) has hockey practice at the outdoor roller hockey facility up in Carson City. Yeah, outdoor...in January. It's cold. Fortunately, I can share my shivering with another hockey dad who's also a big board game fan. We chitchat through the practice, discussing our favorite games and whatnot. He's always looking for the opportunity to try out a new game with his family and/or his game group, but often laments that he has a hard time "getting it to the table."

I know how he feels. Our Tyranny of Dragons D&D campaign hasn't seen any movement since around Thanksgiving, or perhaps even earlier. We try to find time every week for some family game action, but with a growing library of games, and strongly different preferences among the four of us, I'm finding that it's hard to get any particular game to the table. I'm glad to live in a house full of game enthusiasts, but, damn, when are we going to get back to D&D?

Kits

Veteran D&D players who played Second Edition -- the edition we used during the earliest days of our Druid Cycle campaign setting -- may be familiar with the "kits" that offered customization opportunities for the core character classes. Some kits were completely and utterly broken, while others did little more than add a bit of flavor. The current D&D designers are toying around with the idea of kits for Fifth Edition. Click here to check out a draft of kits for the blade (bard), jester (bard), cavalier (fighter), and scout (fighter).

"He's an ugly little spud!"

Although the map tiles are kind of bland in comparison to the flavorful maps from Zombicide, the Ghostbusters miniatures are top notch. Each of the four Ghostbusters has his own distinct color, and the ghosts are generally translucent. Below, you can see Slimer flanked by some of his ghostly compatriots.

One of the main boss villains, of course, is the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, shown below with Peter for a size comparison.

And yes, it is possible for the Marshmallow Man to step on a Ghostbuster...

"Why worry? Each one of us is carrying an unlicensed nuclear accelerator on his back."

The boys and I tried out the Ghostbusters board game this morning, and it was a lot of fun. Here's a pic of our team as we successfully completed the first mission (by closing all the portals to the spirit world)...

Each hero has a limited number of actions per turn, and you really need to consider the most efficacious way to spend them. Do you work toward shutting the portals (the most common way of winning any given scenario) or do you try to hold down the rapidly increasing ghost population (your team loses if all available ghosts arrive on the map)? If a fellow hero gets slimed, do you spend your own precious actions to clean him up?

In our game, we ended up with three heroes (Winston, Peter, and Ray) on portal duty, while the last (Egon) was bustin' ghosts and attempting to deposit them back in Ecto-1. We had parked the car so far away, however, that Egon spent half the game trying to reach it. In the future, I think we need to do a better job of actually driving the car closer to the action. In any case, we're now ready to move on to the next scenario in this campaign.

Wow, It's 2016!

I woke up to a new year this morning, because somehow last night I had forgotten that it was New Year's Eve! I hope you all have a wonderful 2016!