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While sailing through the RPG blogosphere a couple months ago, I ran across a writer who expressed the opinion that the Edition Wars and WotC’s “stumble” with D&D 4E was actually good for the gaming community. I was a bit taken aback by this as I’d always felt the Edition Wars was rather hurtful...

There are few who would argue with the assertion that the role-playing game fan-base is a very inclusive group. RPG fans come from all walks of life, from nearly every age bracket, and from a diverse range of racial, political, and societal groups. The only criteria that really applies to...

When I was back in college, we had a very active gaming club, and even had enough members to staff a fairly successful gaming convention once a year. During one convention, the local newspaper sent a writer over to talk to the con coordinators, but predictably, we were all busy running around...

Like many other GMs out there, who have run a fantasy role-playing game long term, I’ve tried my hand at creating a world setting. It’s just something I think that all game masters are compelled to try building at some point in their gaming careers, and invariably there is many degrees of...

For those gamers out there who are also fans of what might be called Appendix N fantasy novels, they will probably all agree that there is one creature type seems to show up as the foe of the heroic protagonist time and time again: Serpents. Whether it’s a horrid spawn of Set threatening to...

When I was a lad, I used to beg my parents to let me stay up late and watch the “Creature Feature” movies now and again. I recall that these black-and-white or vista-color movies from the 50s and 60s had a tendency to start playing about the time I was being ordered to go to bed. While some of...

There seems to be more and more SciFa settings coming out these days. And no, SciFa is not a typo, because I am referring to those games and settings which blend elements of Science-Fiction and High Fantasy into one really mind-blowing package –Science-Fantasy seems the only way to describe the...

There seems to be more and more SciFa settings coming out these days. And no, SciFa is not a typo, because I am referring to those games and settings which blend elements of Science-Fiction and High Fantasy into one really mind-blowing package –Science-Fantasy seems the only way to describe the...

Swashbuckling Heroic Fantasy, gritty Science-Fiction, and creepy Horror genres tend to dominate a great swath of the role-playing game market, and regardless of which genre is favored, offer gamers a chance to save the world (or the galaxy, or multiverse) from certain doom time and time again...

Swashbuckling Heroic Fantasy, gritty Science-Fiction, and creepy Horror genres tend to dominate a great swath of the role-playing game market, and regardless of which genre is favored, offer gamers a chance to save the world (or the galaxy, or multiverse) from certain doom time and time again...

Fantasy role-playing games have seen many changes over the years, but none so profound as what is now occurring within the past several years. There has been a real revolution of new FRPGs breaking into the market, many of them using indie design parameters, as well as a number that have...

Fantasy role-playing games have seen many changes over the years, but none so profound as what is now occurring within the past several years. There has been a real revolution of new FRPGs breaking into the market, many of them using indie design parameters, as well as a number that have...

One of the features I think makes D&D 4E a very exciting game to play is the expanded use of terrain in the building of combat encounters. When characters and monsters possess a wide range of powers which can push, pull, or slide their opponents around the battlefield, adding dangerous terrain...

There are so many hooks that are used to convince a band of heroes into taking part in an adventure. Sometimes it is the lure of a powerful artifact, sometimes the lure of a dragon’s hoard, and sometimes it is out of a sense of fealty and honor to one’s king or queen or land. But possibly the...

There are so many hooks that are used to convince a band of heroes into taking part in an adventure. Sometimes it is the lure of a powerful artifact, sometimes the lure of a dragon’s hoard, and sometimes it is out of a sense of fealty and honor to one’s king or queen or land. But possibly the...

There seems to be one publishing axiom which holds true to all editions of Dungeons & Dragons: you can never have too many monsters! Monster supplement books seem to proliferate in each edition, renewing the monster statistics for the rules of each edition so that no one’s favorite fiend is...

Last week, I posted the Part 1 of a review of the Mistborn Adventure Game, a role-playing game based on Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn Trilogy of fantasy novels. Crafty Games has used an indie style game system to translate the novels into a fantasy role-playing game with a unique character...

Last week, I posted the Part 1 of a review of the Mistborn Adventure Game, a role-playing game based on Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn Trilogy of fantasy novels. Crafty Games has used an indie style game system to translate the novels into a fantasy role-playing game with a unique character...