D&D at Target

The new Fifth Edition starter set, Dungeons & Dragons Essentials Kit, is now available exclusively at Target for the next couple of months and then will be distributed to game stores everywhere. According to the helpful Target website, it's in stock at my local store in Carson City, so I'll head up there today over my lunch hour and pick up a copy. Reviews are extremely positive, and in addition to a new adventure authored by the incomparable Chris Perkins, the set includes rules for one-on-one play with a DM and just a single player, as well as rules for sidekick characters to help with those solo adventures as well as smaller-party play. Can't wait to take a look!

Johnny...Gameseed?

I've been on the road this week, and my reputation seems to have followed me. Yesterday, one of the folks at the plant I'm visiting heard through the grapevine that I'm into strategy games, which led to a conversation about different games on the market these days. I provided a quick overview of some of today's heavy hitters -- the Catan series, the Pandemic series, etc. -- but to give them a taste of something easy and fun, I went out to a local Target last night and picked up a copy of Exploding Kittens. This afternoon, I got a bunch of colleagues together in a conference room and we played through a single game of Kittens, which they all enjoyed immensely. The laughter could be heard through the walls of the conference room, and although we might have disturbed some nearby meetings, it was well worth it. I left the game for them to enjoy and share with others. I have no doubt they'll play it again, and I hope it encourages them to look into some of the other games I mentioned. I think I ought to leave a game at every plant I visit, spreading gaming goodness across America!

BattleTech Beginnings

I may be on a business trip this week, but that doesn't stop me from poking my head into game stores! I discovered that the new BattleTech Beginner Box is only twenty bucks!

I've never played any of the BattleTech family of games, but at this price, why not give it a shot? I look forward to painting these 'Mechs when I get home!

Today!

Don't forget: Free RPG Day 2019 is today!

Free RPG Day 2019

Be sure to visit your local game store this Saturday because Free RPG Day 2019 looks like it's going to be a good one! There's a crazy amount of cool stuff, including a nifty Starfinder adventure.

Big Finish

The second phase of our transcontinental Shattered Realm campaign came to an epic yet zany conclusion today. I won't attempt to summarize the convoluted plot that got us to this point, but in today's session the heroes needed to jury-rig a mind-control device to fit a purple worm so that it could safely dig out a spaceship that's been trapped underground for eons -- all while being attacked by the angry ogres that worshiped and fed the purple worm. Thanks to great teamwork and some clever thinking by the PCs, the worm was distracted by rancidly delicious troglo-treats (patent pending!) long enough for the heroes to defeat the ogres, rework the mind-control device, and enact their plan to harness the worm's expert excavating prowess. Once the spaceship was free, most of the PCs and NPCs elected to remain on terra firma, while two gnomes (including Matt's PC), the last kobold in the underdark, a quasit disguised as a cat, and the aforementioned purple worm all piled into the ship for a journey into the vastness of space. I'm sure we'll see all these delightful characters again in the future, but next up we'll  have new characters ready to check out a sleepy little town in Greyhawk called Saltmarsh...

History Lesson

Nathaniel wanted to play the wargame Tanks this evening, but since today was the 75th anniversary of D-Day, the boys got an impromptu history lesson first. When we got into the game, Nathaniel's American forces hunkered down in the woods while my German armored units pulled up and formed a semicircle around them. Despite taking withering fire from the German tanks, the Yanks withstood the storm and came out victorious, with Nathaniel's beloved Super Pershing obliterating a hefty Tiger to win the game.

BG3!

TAKE MY MONEY!!!!!

MTG TV

So...a Magic: The Gathering television series is coming to Netflix. What do we think about that? Good sign: The Russo brothers are developing!

Detour to Catan

Our oft-delayed futuristic Shattered Realm campaign took a back seat this weekend to Matthew's swim meet. While his brother was swimming, Nathaniel perused the Starfinder Beginner Box. He created an android mechanic -- going straight to the online Starfinder SRD when the Beginner Box
character creation rules weren't comprehensive enough for him! -- and then proceeded to badger us incessantly about playing. Matthew drafted a (an?) ysoki soldier and, because I had the day off today, we had planned on running through the adventure that's included in the Beginner Box. I woke up with a splitting headache and upset stomach, however, which kept me in bed for most of the day. Amy came to the rescue by joining the boys for a rousing game of Settlers of Catan, which lasted for much of the afternoon while I rested. Still looking forward to giving Starfinder a whirl, once I finally succeed on that Fortitude save...

So they finally got home after all...

...but they speak Portuguese now.

And Venger coming through the portal disguised as a mounted police officer? That was damn cool. We need to see more of this!

KOTOR the Movie!

I've become a bit disillusioned with Star Wars films in recent years. Although I loved the mad dash to get the Death Star plans to Leia -- with a no-holds-barred Vader in hot pursuit! -- at the end of Rogue One, that film and (especially) The Last Jedi left me cold. "Silly fanboy, you're stuck in the un-woke past! We're making grown-up Star Wars films now!" Got the message.

I was genuinely excited, though, to hear that the Knights of the Old Republic video game will be adapted as a movie. It's one of my top five favorite video game RPGs of all time, and likewise one of my favorite Star Wars narratives in any medium. I can't wait to see this story unfold on the big screen. And I may just have to play through the game one more time beforehand!

Essential Images

Click here for some images of the upcoming D&D Essentials Kit. It sure does look nice...

Character Building

I've had some fun building characters using the slimmed-down rules in the Starfinder Beginner Box. I'm sure the full game has a lot more options for feats and whatnot, but the intro set seems to give a pretty good overview of the core classes and how they play. Thus far, I've built a vesk (kind of like the lizardfolk in D&D) soldier (i.e., fighter) patterned after Solomon Kane, as well as a nefarious android technomancer (i.e., wizard). I'll play through the adventure included in the box to get a better feel for the rules and then I'll give the boys an opportunity to play as well. They're already poring over the long list of weapon stats!

Essentials

Click here for some info on upcoming D&D products. One of them is the D&D Essentials Kit. I have to admit, the name brings back some unpleasant memories of Fourth Edition. Late in the run of that ill-fated edition, the D&D design team released a series of books and game aids that constituted the "Essentials" product line. The centerpiece was a pair of digest-sized Player's Handbook-style rulebooks with new builds for core character classes. Fourth Edition had already become so broken that new characters built using only the PHB were woefully underpowered compared to characters built using all of the available materials -- conveniently collated within the D&D Insider app. The Essentials builds were jacked-up so that new or casual players could bring simple but powerful characters to the table. My memory of this line is, essentially (pun intended), the last gasp of a failed experiment. I sincerely hope the new D&D Essentials Kit is a great new introductory set (akin to Paizo's Pathfinder Beginner Box and the super-cool new Starfinder Beginner Box) and not an attempt to monkey around with the beautiful Fifth Edition ruleset.

Artificer Unearthed

A new iteration of the artificer class for Fifth Edition is available for playtesting. I really can't wait to see the final version appear in an official product!

Wonky Hockey

I watched some YouTube clips of Strat-O-Matic's hockey game to get a feel for the rules. Specifically, I was trying to ascertain if the game would function properly with the smaller-than-normal teams that would be necessitated by the limited number of pre-NHL guys in the Hall of Fame. It turns out that the team size is probably not an issue, but I was underwhelmed by the game mechanics. It would be awesome to see legends like Cyclone Taylor and Hobey Baker in action, but the game just doesn't seem as fun, streamlined, and intuitive as Strat-O-Matic's baseball products.

Fantasy Hockey?

Strat-O-Matic is having a sale on their hockey game. As you know, I'm a huge fan of the original (baseball) Strat-O-Matic, so I got to thinking about the prospect of creating an old timers' league using pre-NHL players -- along the lines of my nineteenth-century baseball league. The Strat-O-Matic Hockey All-Time Greats Game includes players I could draw from, but I was curious about whether the Hockey Hall of Fame has enough early players to put at least three full(ish) teams on the ice. I figured that goaltenders would be the limiting factor, but my initial assessment is that the game would include four pre-NHL goalies, as well as perhaps a couple more who spent the majority of their careers in the pre-NHL era. I counted thirty forwards but only nine defensemen. Again, I might get a few more if I elected to include some players who were not exclusively pre-NHL, but I'm not sure exactly how many players I would need for a full team. Today's NHL teams have eighteen skaters and two goaltenders, but teams in much earlier times would have had fewer players. Do the game mechanics, however, require a larger number of players to sequence the line changes and such? That, I don't know...

Starfinder Beginner Box

The Pathfinder Beginner Box is one of the best RPG products I've ever seen, and even though it failed to lure me away from D&D -- Fifth Edition put paid to that prospect -- I have very fond memories of poring over all the gorgeous components of that epic boxed set. Today the Starfinder Beginner Box is available for purchase and I've already placed my order. The boys will probably enjoy trying out a new game system and setting, and at the very least I'll end up with a Flip-Mat and other components that will fit nicely with our sci-fi Shattered Realm campaign.

Tablet Terminated

In May of 2017, the boys and I started up a new Shattered Realm campaign, the first chapter of which was titled "The Lay of the Lost Horn." After that relatively brief introduction to this campaign world, we shifted into the primary storyline, "The Lay of the Emerald Tablet." That narrative wrapped up in August of last year when the heroes managed to reassemble a fabled artifact known as the Emerald Tablet, only to learn that it was a terribe blight upon the world. Destroying the tablet turned out to be no easy task, and was the subject of our most recent storyline, "The Lay of the Five Penitents," which wrapped up this afternoon. It was a conclusion two years in the making! Now we'll shift back (forward?) to our sci-fi Shattered Realm heroes, who have been waiting patiently for the next chapter of their own tale to be told.