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Italy has no shortage of Churches, Wine and Italian Food.

All the travel has shifted my gaming to more mobile pastimes. I've spent some time working on my 4E Eberron campaign, and I'm really excited to get back to playing. I was one of the great holdouts on moving to fourth edition, but now that I've made the switch, I'm absolutely hooked. They have put so much thought into making the game easy to run while making it your own. In 3.5, it was almost impossible to come up with custom creatures or items without worrying that you were going to break the balance of the game. 4E has made all of that so much easier that it's actually a lot of fun to come up with your own custom stuff (not to mention that digital tools like the Adventure Tools help a ton).

Speaking of digital tools - if you run a D&D game, you have to check out Masterplan. It is an amazing free application that lets you map out your entire campaign. You can build it out in flowchart mode, map out all of your encounters and experience (so you can see at any point how much XP your party will have earned, making planning level progression a breeze), and keep track of all those little details with the encyclopedia function. It also integrates with WotC's D&D Compendium, so you have all of that information at your fingertips from within the application, making encounter building fast. You can even export handouts or even entire modules at the click of a button. It is by far the best roleplaying tool I have found.

Other than that, I've been playing a ton of Tomb Raider: Anniversary on the PSP. I picked it up to play on the long plane rides, and I've found it completely addicting. Normally, I have a hard time getting into portable games, but I can't seem to put this one down. In fact I've spent the last few nights at home playing that instead of Mass Effect 2. Weird, I know.

Instead of playing Mass Effect 2 on a 42' HD LCD, I'm playing this.

I think I'm back in town for a while now, so I hoping to get back to at least a little more of a routine. I dug out my Warmachine stuff last night and started working on a Khador Decimator. I know this isn't a secret to anyone, but red is really hard to paint well. It just looks so obnoxiously bright while you are working on it, and those Khador 'jacks have such big flat spaces. If I get him done tonight, I'll post some pics. My FLGS is having a 15 point highlander (1-1-1-1) format event in a few weeks, and I'm thinking about playing the Reds in that... I like the occasional small point event - it makes trying out new factions very feasible. I'll keep you posted.

Labels: Dungeons and Dragons, Eberron, miniatures, roleplaying, RPGs, video games, Warmachine

I finally got my Precursor Knights completely painted and sealed today. They have been sitting on my painting table and taunting me for over a month now, and it's good to have them finally finished. They are a unit I really enjoy playing, and I think I'm going to be using them even more frequently now in MKII with the reduced power of the Sword Knight.

The gang's all here. Zombies everywhere be a'feared.

For my color scheme, I went with a GW shadow grey and P3 Menoth White Highlight. I wanted them to fit well with my Cygnar army, and yet still stand apart as something different, and I think I've accomplished that. I made liberal use of a Menoth White Base-colored wash to give the whites a very antique ivory look. The white stripe across the bottom of the robes was an afterthought, but I thought it tied the whole scheme together nicely.

The unit leader and the UA. Nice models.

And that pretty much wraps up Christmas vacation for me. I'm planning on setting a new painting and playing goal this year, and hopefully I will do better than last. After taking on a whole unit, I want to take a break and paint some single models - I'm behind on epic warcasters and I need to get my Thunderhead (and soon a Cyclone) painted. Once I've recovered I'll probably tackle the Long Gunners or the Gun Mages. I'd like to get caught up on what I already have before the new wave of trencher stuff hits.

Of course, to acomplish any of this will mean that I have to shake the horrible Dragon Age addiction that current has a hold of me. I loved Mass Effect, and I had high hopes for Dragon Age as well - and I'm happy to say that so far it is living up to those expectations. I'm about 30 hours in and well on my way to saving Ferelden from the Darkspawn hordes. Of course, Mass Effect 2 drops at the end of January, so I'd like to have saved the world by then. At least January won't be boring!

Labels: miniatures, roleplaying, RPGs, video games, wargaming, Warmachine, XBOX

With PAX only four days away, my preparations have kicked into overdrive. I've have a ton of office work to get done before can I go, and I still have a bunch of painting I'd like to get done as well. Given that, my free time this weekend was all about speed painting.

First off, I'm signed up to play in a couple of different Living Forgotten Realms RPGA sessions. I'm not usually a Realms fan (I'd rather play Eberron or Pathfinder), so I wanted to play something straightforward that I had a good sense for the lore - which for me means dwarves. I can't quite decide what class to play yet (I'm torn between Paladin, Warlord or Cleric) but I knew I wanted a good-looking mini to put on the table.

I was surprised how hard it was to find a good dwarf model (especially considering that I was limited to what I could find locally - as I have no time left to order anything.) I finally settled on one of the Warhammer Fantasy Runelord models. Warhammer dwarves are a little shorter than I'd like, so I mounted him on a fancy Micro Art Studio resin base. I painted him up in just under a couple of hours. Now that I see it in the photo, there are a few little details that I need to touch up, but all in all, I like him, and I think he'll serve me well on the table - especially when put up against the cheap plastic WotC miniatures.

I also put the finishing touches on a lance of battlemechs I've been working on from the BattleTech Introductory Boxed Set. I'd like to have all of the mechs needed the three introductory missions painted up for PAX, but we'll see how far I get. This group represents the mechs required for one side to play the first couple of missions. I'd like to get the opponent mechs painted as well (red, of course, so we can have some iconic Red vs. Blue action.)


On an unrelated note: Thursday night some folks at my local game store were playing a demo copy of the new Space Hulk, and I have to admit, I was impressed. The game has some nice production values and really great "table appeal." I never played the original, but watching them play this one, I found myself really wanting to pick it up. It might just be able to scratch the 40K itch without having to actually play 40K! Just what I need - another game.

The new Space Hulk. The minis look really great.

Labels: BattleTech, Board Games, Dungeons and Dragons, miniatures, RPGs, Warhammer 40K, Warhammer Fantasy

It's almost time for PAX! Last year was my first time at the show (PAX Cherry!) but this year I plan to be back with a vengence. For me, PAX is a chance to hang out until 3 in the morning and play games with a lot of like-minded folks, and play some games that I might otherwise not get around to playing. So what's on tap this year? I'm rolling in with a suitcase full of gaming goodness! Here's what is coming with me:

Living Forgotten Realms: I'm going to be playing in my first RPGA event while at PAX, and a buddy and I are signed up for a couple of different sessions. I've been running a game of D&D on-and-off for the last few years, but I haven't been on the player's side of the DM screen in almost 20 years. I'm realtively new to 4E, having just switched over about a month back, but I think I have a good enough handle on it for this kind of deal. Other than that, I have no idea what to expect from this format, but it should be a good time.




BattleLore: I picked this game up a good while back, but I haven't really had a chance to put through it's paces. It's a nice balance of board game and war game, with a slick card mechanic for orders and tactics and a simple dice mechanic for resolving combat. It really seems like a great "in between" game to play with friends who have some interest in pushing around little men, but not the patience or inclination for full-fledged miniature gaming. You can check out my first impression way back here.


Cutthroat Caverns: "Without teamwork, you will never survive. Without betrayal, you’ll never win." A simple card game that puts the players in the role of an adventuring party that has discovered the "Sacred Item of Unimaginable Marvel" - and of course, you each want it for your own. Unfortunately, nine monsters (randomly drawn from an encounter deck) stand between you and the exit to the dungeon. If you don't work as a team, you won't have the horsepower to make it out, but if you don't backstab the others at just the right moment, you can't claim the prize for yourself. It's straightforward screw-thy-neighbor gaming at it's best.


Infernal Contraption: This is a game I bought at PAX last year in the Privateer Press booth. It's definately a beer and pretzels affair, but is surprisingly fun to play. Another card game, this one has you trying to assemble an "infernal contraption" with the goal of forcing your opponent to consume all of his resources (cards) before you run out of cards yourself. This quickly became our go-to game inbetween events.






Battletech: An old favorite that I haven't played since I was a teenager. This is the granddaddy of big, stompy robot games, and is an interesting mix of board game, wargame and RPG. The game itself has had some rough years, passing from FASA to FanPro, and ultimately to Catalyst Games Labs. The good news is that Catalyst seems to be doing well by the series, and has put out a Introductory Boxed Set that is a great introduction to the game. (You you read my impressions the boxed set, along with my glowing fanboyism here)




And that's about it - and that should be plenty. I think it's going to be a great geek party - they have already sold out all of the three day passes (something like 75,000 passes!) and the daily passes are going fast.

9 days until PAX.

Labels: BattleTech, Board Games, Dungeons and Dragons, PAX, PAX09, RPGs

I made it back from my vacation with a pocket full of pesos, a second-degree sunburn and the flu as a souvenirs. The trip itself was phenomenal, but the week since has been hell. It hasn't been until the last few days that I've started to feel better. Also, I'm watching the Super Bowl halftime show as I write this, trying to figure out how the hell Bruce Springsteen got so famous. I just don't get it.

I'm going to be a little a heretical today, and in a couple of different ways. First, I'm going to put my fanboyism aside to talk some shit about Privateer Press, and then I'm going to show off my latest painting project - and it's Games Workshop. Before we jump to conclusions, I'm not giving up on Warmachine or anything, but every so often I need to switch things up and paint something different. When you are working on an army, you tend to paint the same kinds of things with the same colors over and over again. Eventually, my enthusiasm starts to wane and I find that I've gone several weeks without painting at all... when that happens, I usually go pick up something not Warmachine just to "cleanse the palette." Think of it as a sorbet for the painter's mind.

But before that, I just have to ask... what the hell is up with consistency of the Privateer Press range lately? I came back from my trip excited to see what was new on the PP preview pages... I found Molik Karn and the Shadowhorn Saytr. I don't know what it is, but the quality of the sculpts seems to be getting spotty lately. The Shadowhorn isn't terrible, but it's also kind of cartoony and posed horribly. And Molik Karn's face... I'm not sure what to think. The armor looks great, but that face... that mouth... it just looks ridiculous. Maybe I'm still bitter from my 2-dimensional Black 13th models, but it sure feels like they are slipping. I hope they get a handle on the sculpt quality - I got into the game because I had never seen a range of miniatures as consistently beautiful as the Warmachine/Hordes line. I'd hate to see that slide.

Now on to my weekend project. I just haven't had the will to get back to my Sword Knight UA, and so I decided I'd like to paint something other than Cygnar just to get the juices flowing again. I ended up playing quite a bit of Warhammer Online while I wasn't feeling well, and I really think the mounted dark elves in the game look cool, so I decided to try my hand on a unit of Cold One Knights.

They are really nice models with quite a bit of detail. Paining scales is always a lot of fun, and the dinos were definitely the high point. With my Warmachine painting, I don't get to do much drybrushing these days, and I kind of forget what an effective technique it can be.

For all the concern about Privateer Press going to plastic, this just cemented in my mind that not only do I not care - I welcome it. Assembly was easier, I dropped him twice while painting him and my heart didn't jump into my chest, and best of all: I got an entire unit of five cavalry models for $20. That’s not too bad when you compare that to $100 for a full unit of Storm Lances.

I'm still working on my sci-fi RPG plans. I've got some ideas, but I'm probably going to set up a separate site to put all that information on, so I don't overwhelm Gamehole with it. More on that soon.

Labels: miniatures, MMORPGs, RPGs, wargaming, Warhammer Fantasy, Warmachine

I’ve written a lot about Warmachine over the last year, mostly because I’ve been spending a lot of time painting over the last year, and it works well for a blog because it’s a very visual thing - people seem to like looking at pictures of minis, as they tend to get a lot of hits. Still, the truth is that I’m really a roleplayer at my core, and worse, I’m a sucker for roleplaying source books. The problem is that I’m always finding new things that I would really like to play, but I never want to derail us from the game-in-progress.

Over the past few months, we have debated whether or not we should stay with 3.5, move to fourth edition, or switch over and try out the Pathfinder RPG, all of which is good discussion, but at the end of the day, it’s still just D&D. We tend to play fairly character- and story-centric games, which tend to come off just as well in any of those systems.

Lately, my real itch it to try something completely different – to get a break from high, heroic fantasy and all of the worn-out tropes that go with it. Don't get me wrong - I love me some Pathfinder - but the adventure paths end up being really long, taking us literally years to get through. There so many other things I'd like to at least try, that we are going to try an inject some "one-off" between major sections of the Pathfinder campaign. I’ve really been itching to play something more contemporary – a modern game, or even some sci-fi. The good news is that there are plenty of options of there to choose from. Time seems to be the enemy here, although I’m warming up to running some “one-offs” just to scratch the itch. Looking through my game shelf, here are the main contenders for stuff I own that I need to get around to playing:

“A mind without purpose will wander in dark places.”

Dark Heresy is roleplaying set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe. The game puts you in the role of an acolyte of the Holy Imperial Inquisition, searching out heresy wherever it may take root. I’m a huge fan of the Horus Heresy series of novels put out by the black library, and the chance to play in that universe sound great. The game has taken some criticisms for setting you as a weakling in a universe full of space marines, but as a fan of low-powered games, I think I’m okay with that. I’ve also heard that the system itself is both very mechanical and table-driven, and often quite fatal for characters. This probably limits its attractiveness as a long term campaign for us, but it seems like it could be a lot of fun for a one shot –especially one with a gruesome ending…

“I want to believe.”

D20 Modern. Last year we did a one-shot game of d20 Modern (you can read about that here) and it was amazingly fun – I was hooked. I would love to get back to it and explore some more ideas. Not really a single setting, d20 Modern is really a toolkit for running modern campaigns, and could cover just about anything you can think of in the modern world like military-based games or detective stories. It is, however, especially well suited to running “X-Files” style paranormal/alien/occult investigation games. If you are interested in that type of thing, I would recommend the excellent “Dark Matter” supplement. As the name implies, it is d20-based, making it an easy transition for those coming from D&D.

“In space, nobody can hear you scream.”

D20 future is really just an expansion book for d20 Modern, but it adds so much significant content that it makes it feel like an entirely new game. As gaming supplements go, d20 Future is especially impressive, with rules for almost everything you might need to play in a sci-fi setting, from power armor and alien races to spaceships and giant fighting robots. (For those that are truly old school, you will also find all of the old Star Frontiers races here as well!) I’ve even considered running a 40K-setting game with this system to take advantage of the approachability and flexibility it offers – I really can’t think of one sci-fi setting that you couldn’t easily adapt to d20 Future.

“Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You’re my only hope.”

Star Wars. As a child of the 70’s and 80s, Star Wars virtually defined science fiction for me growing up. I grew up eating and breathing Star Wars, and I still say my best Christmas ever was the one where I got the death star play set (with the working trash compactor - complete with bits foam trash and a tentacle trash monster!) Wizards of the Coast seems to have shown renewed interest in the Star Wars line, and we saw a number titles come out at the end of last year, and a strong lineup set for 2009. Soon we will have setting books for the Old Republic, the Clone Wars, the Rebellion and the Legacy Era – rest assured that no matter which slice of the Star Wars timeline is your favorite, it should be well supported. Star Wars is another game that while I don’t know if I would want to play an entire extended campaign, I think it would be great material for one off games. Like d20 Modern, this one has its roots in the d20 system it should be easy enough for most D&D players to make the switch.

“I Aim to misbehave."

Serenity. The newest game book in my collection, I received the Serenity RPG as a Christmas present last year. I haven’t had a chance to read the book in detail, but it seems to be a lightweight system that should keep the game focused on the characters rather than complicated mechanics. It also does a great job communicating the feel of the Firefly universe, as most of the book is written in the distinctive “verse speak” that made the dialog of the television series so much fun. The setting can feel a little thin with only 12 TV episodes and a movie to back it up - I think I would have to work a little to fill in the grey space. Firefly was popular because of its amazing characters – I worry that there is enough “world fluff” to carry the setting without its iconic characters, and yet the lightweight character-driven system might just make it all worthwhile. Plus, I have certain appreciation any game that calls its highest-tier of character the “Big Damn Hero.”

I'll let you know what I end up with, and maybe talk through the game I develop. I've been running mostly published stuff for the last few years. It's been a long time since I've created something from whole cloth - it should be fun!

Labels: Dungeons and Dragons, RPGs

Over the holiday break we managed to re-start our ongoing D&D campaign. We are currently running through Paizo’s Rise of the Runelords adventure path, and if you want, you can read as I gush about it here. We are just wrapping up the first book in the adventure path, and the good news is the enthusiasm is high to keep plowing ahead.

Paizo Publishing has done a great job making Golarion (the Pathfinder setting world) a really compelling place, and we are having a lot of fun playing in it. At this point, thePathfinder line is really starting to fill out nicely, and many of the more interesting locales are getting their own sourcebooks, adding to the depth and richness the world. Plus, it gives you mountains of fluff to sift through and keep you engaged between sessions.

Getting back to our pen and paper game has left me pretty much itching for D&D around the clock, so I picked up the new Neverwinter Nights 2 expansion “Storm of Zehir.” It’s an interesting game, and a worthy effort, but my review is somewhat mixed. On the bright side, it seems like there has been some much-needed performance tuning done, and the game now actually runs fairly smooth. NWN2 has always been a bit of a performance pig considering its middle-of-the-road graphics.

The game also re-introduces the party system, a feature I’ve been missing since the first Neverwinter Nights. In this expansion you get to create and control you entire party, which is half the fun. One of the things I really missed since the old Black Isle Studios days was the ability to roll up your entire party at the start of a game. For me, party creation is almost a satisfying game on its own. The game also does about the best job yet of capturing the entirely of the 3.5 rule set, and reproduces them as faithfully as is probably possible without going to a turn-based game (which I actually wish it was). In addition to all the core classes and pile of prestige classes, you will find a full lineup of spells, feats, items and a crafting system to keep you very busy. Storm of Zehir also does an excellent job translating skills – usually in a videogame you can sink all your points into the combat skills like tumble, parry, etc. without worrying about gimping your character. This time around they managed to make everything count, and you suddenly find yourself valuing those ranks in knowledge, intimidate or diplomacy.

An overland travel map has been added, which is kind of a “macro” travel mode where you cross large stretches of terrain. Random monsters encounters will spawn on the overland map, setting up ad-hoc battles. In fact, your skills even come into play here, allowing you to sneak past monsters, intimidate them before combat begins, or parlay with them to avoid conflict altogether. Unfortunately, these random encounters will pop up with a little too much frequency and tend to get annoying (the same way that random encounters popped up constantly in FFX), and left me wishing there was an option to control both the frequency and the difficulty of the encounters.

The story is weak to nonexistent – this is not the game to look to for an epic storyline or deep character development – it certainly isn’t a Baldur’s Gate (we will have to wait for Dragon Age for that), but it is a great combat-focused romp through the Forgotten Realms, somewhat akin to the old Icewind Dale games.

In all, it’s not a great game as a total package, and even pretty weak as a stand-alone story, but if you are itching for some faithful D&D hack-and-slash goodness, it’s worth a look. It also adds a ton of new game content that NWN2’s very active mod community should be able to do some very cool things with. This is definitely a game for the D&D fan (I actually had my Players Handbook open next to me while I created my characters!) On the other hand, if you aren’t really a D&D player, and you are just looking for some good CRPG fun, you would probably be better off passing on Storm of Zehir and picking up Fable 2 or waiting for Dragon Age.

Labels: Dungeons and Dragons, PC games, RPGs

The Cygnar Case - the Black 13th in front, and Thorn in the background.

While I was in PP's booth, I also got a demo of the Infernal Contraption card game, which was a lot of fun. So much fun, in fact, that I bought it, and we ended up playing it late into the night on Saturday, actually cutting into time we had planned to play minis. It's non-collectable, really quick to learn, and definitely worth a look if you also like casual games. Monterpocalypse was also there, and generating quite a bit of interest - unfortunately not from me.

The Cryx Nightmare. Muhahahaha!

Wizard's had a booth that was basically Magic on one side and D&D on the other. The big news here is that they had several computers running the D&Di character generation and visualization tools, both of which appear to be coming along nicely. The models and textures in the character visualizer are still a bit rough, but at least it looks like the necessary tech is coming together. Now they just have to polish it up. I was disappointed that the map editor or Virtual Tabletop were nowhere to be found, making me wonder if we aren't still a long ways off.

Folks rolling 20s right in WotC's booth.

Upper Deck was there, showing off the World of Warcraft miniatures game and the WoW TCG. The Wow miniatures look nice, but somehow the game just doesn't seem that appealing to me. Very small scale and skirmishy. I didn't demo the game, but probably should have (That is one of my resolutions for next year: I'm going to demo more stuff...)

The World of Warcraft CMG

Notably absent was Paizo Publishing, which made me a sad panda. I love those guys, and Seattle is their home town, so I had hoped they would have some presence, either in the expo hall or running their new Pathfinder Society organized play in the tabletop hall. I'm a huge fan of everything they are doing right now, and would have liked the opportunity to get closer too it.

Now, as promised, here are my (admittedly poor) pictures of the killer Warmachine diorama from the PP booth (click on any one of them for a better look):

Labels: Dungeons and Dragons, miniatures, RPGs, video games, Warmachine

This post is a bit time delayed. I wrote it a while back, but it sat in drafts. Then I ended up out of town for a week... Anyway, here it is. More to come on D&D 4E and a campaign update.

I mentioned briefly in my last post that I had recently started running a new D&D campaign set in Paizo’s Pathfinder setting. I’m running the Rise of the Runelords adventure path, their first in the Pathfinder Adventures series. We play weekly, but because of work and family obligations we can usually only get two-and-a-half to three-hour sessions in. We also play a roleplaying-heavy game, so we tend to take a lot longer to move through the content than a hack-and-slash group might.

Labels: Dungeons and Dragons, podcasts, RPGs

I'm a huge, huge fan of Paizo Publishing. I'm just going to get that out up front, so we can skip the accusations of bias that will no doubt follow this post. Yes, I am biased. My fanboyism for Paizo is undisputed.

I didn't even really became aware of them as a publisher until early in 2007 when WotC pulled the licenses back in house for Dungeon and Dragon magazines. Realistically, this move should have sounded the death knell for a small game company like Paizo, but instead, they harnessed that event and used it as the catalyst to go forth and do bold (and damn smart) things. Being a person who believes that, in general that it is important to financially support things that are bold and smart - both of which are increasingly rare commodities these days - I immediately signed up as a charter member for their Pathfinder Adventures subscription, sight unseen.

Now, as I await issue #8, I will admit that Paizo has yet to disappoint. The writing, artwork and production values are all top notch, and even more importantly (at least to me), Paizo has chosen to focus on rich stories and settings, giving us whole towns full of memorable characters and brimming with roleplaying opportunities - something that WotC seems to have forgotten in their ever accelerating spiral towards combat encounters and tactical battle map-focused products built to sell booster packs of pre-painted minis. I'm not saying that there is anything wrong with playing in a game where the whole point is to kill the monster and take the its loot - if that is your thing, more power to you. I am saying that it's not the game for me. These days many of my best game sessions go off without a combat encounter.

So, I was thrilled this week to hear that Paizo is cutting the cord between their products and D&D. In its place, they will be releasing their own core rulebook, logically called the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. The game will be an based on the existing 3.5 OGL rule set, but they also will also be expanding and improving on those rules in many ways. I'm sure they share many of the same goals that 4th Ed. overhaul touts: Cleaning up yucky rules like grapple, making each class stand out and matter, speeding up combat, etc... In addition to these glaring issues, I'm hoping Paizo really takes a hard look at helping us to run the kind of story-based games they seem fond of writing. Please, give us some cool non-combat feats that wire our characters deeper into the game world. Give us more usable skills and some better guidelines for "social combat." Keep the combat rules fast and light so instead of counting squares and debating line of sight rules, we can run fast and cinematic combats that fit seamlessly into our bigger narrative. Nothing is worse that stopping you great story to run what basically constitutes an hour-long miniatures wargame. If I want to play really precise tactical battles, I'll play Warmachine.

Frankly, I hope this kind of thing catches on. The Iron Kingdoms RPG books are getting scarce, and from what I have been able to gather, the first printing is finally selling out, and it sounds like Privateer Press is leery to print more with the specter of 4th Ed. on the horizon. Maybe it is time from Privateer to declare their Independence Day. I'd love to see them do the same thing as Paizo - heck, I'd love to see them do it with Paizo. It would be awesome.

Either way, it's worth checking out. Paizo intends to make the design and development process very open and transparent, and available to the public to playtest and provide feedback at each stage of the game's development - again, something they chose to do very different that WotC. Just as soon as they post the second draft of the Alpha (with all of the new class rules), I intend to join in on the playtesting with my local game. If you want to take a look for yourself, Paizo has posted their first "Alpha" version of the Pathfinder RPG rules, and you can find it here (for free!).

Oh - and bonus points for not making the making the Alpha some ratty word document, but giving us a fully laid-out, high quality PDF. Only the best from Paizo.

Labels: Dungeons and Dragons, RPGs

I had a chance to do some old fashioned, face-to-face role playing gaming earlier this week. My wife was out of town with the kids to visit some family on the other side of the state, so I decided to take advantage of an empty house to get a game together. Normally, my RPG gaming happens online over Fantasy Grounds, a “virtual tabletop” built for playing pen and paper over the Web. This would be the first time I’ve played face-to-face at the kitchen table in probably 15 years (which, also marks about the same amount of time I’ve been married… odd coincidence, that.)

Rather than dive into our ongoing Eberron campaign, we decided to run something completely new, almost as a one off convention-style game. We settled on trying out d20 Modern – we already owned the rule books, and we’ve been itching to try something “not fantasy” for awhile. Plus, I’ve developed a horrible addiction to Supernatural, and liked the idea of a paranormal, occult hunter style of game.

To keep prep times down, I decided to run the “Exit 23” mini-adventure published in the back of the Dark Matter source book. To keep things simple, we went out to coffee one afternoon and worked through the group template, with the idea that I (as the GM) would then pre-generate the characters based on what we came up with. The setup goes something like this: a group of people from all walks of life end up stranded at a small gas station by a horrible snow storm off a remote blue highway in Idaho. At first, it just seems like bad luck, until a couple of corpses show up, and you realize that something horrible is waiting out in the storm…

We ended up landing on the following core characters:

• Sheriff Roy Higgins (dedicated hero), the 62-year old county sheriff who has spent his night pulling wayward travelers from the storm and bringing them back to the truck stop to weather the storm.


• Troy Walsh (tough hero), a 28 year-old mechanic, fix-it man, and local tough guy. He was repairing a bad compressor on one of the café’s coolers when the storm hit.


• Jason Beckett (charismatic hero), a DEA agent who just finished a two-year long under cover assignment in Salt Lake City to bring down the biggest meth trafficking operations in the mountain west. He is driving to a cabin in Montana to meet his high-schools sweetheart after a reconnecting with her through the internet when he is caught by the storm.


• Private First Class Brian Sparks (fast hero) has recently finished his tour in the army and is returning from a tour in Baghdad. He feels like a stranger in a strange land now, and is struggling to find his place back in the real world. He is driving north, returning to his hometown in northern Montana.

On top of these characters, there were a number of other NPCs (with less heroic proficiency) for the characters to interact with. The game itself was built to be a survival horror story, with the party trapped in the gas station, trying to weather a storm while something evil hunts them. Weapons and ammo are limited, and the party will be forced to get creative if they want to survive.

Once we started rolling dice, the game came off great – there was just the right mix of paranoia, desperation and fear to set the mood. Three of the four characters survived the night’s events (the poor sheriff didn’t make it) and the DEA agent was hanging by a thread in the end. We lost a few civilians in the process, nine cars suffered massive depreciation, and every window in the gas station was blown out. Total play time was about 4 hours. A good night’s work.

I’m a firm believer that miniatures really help to visualize the action… But, I’m not a huge fan of really tactical combat rules (I prefer to keep my miniatures games and RPGs separate). I do like being able to “see” what is going on, and a few minis on the table can go a long way to clearing up confusion. For our game, I drew out the entire gas station on a big vinyl game mat. Then I started looking around for miniatures, but unfortunately couldn’t find much that worked well. I considered just using plastic army men, by then I stumbled across the Cardboard Heroes: Modern product from Steve Jackson Games. These little guys were awesome, and the offered us the full variety of what we needed: cops, guys in suits, dirty truckers, a teenage girl and a matronly waitress. Sure, they aren’t quite as cool a real miniatures, but they were a lot cheaper and a lot faster to get on the table – not to mention finding good miniatures for real-world Modern games is a challenging proposition in the first place.

In the end, I would have to say that our first outing with d20 Modern was a smashing success – I had a great time, and now I think we are going to try and extend it out into a full blow campaign, or at least pick it up more frequently as a "fill in" game. Playing around a table again was a lot of fun as well, but it did make for a very different game. Collaborative things like combat were a lot easier and went much faster. As a GM I had the benefit of being able to read my player's faces and quickly see when they didn’t really understand what I was describing to them. At the same time, the RP suffered quite a bit compared to what we do online. When we play online, we play almost exclusively with text chat, which makes talking and emoting in character much less… well, embarrassing, I guess.

Labels: Dungeons and Dragons, RPGs

I picked up Lost Odyssey about a week ago, and I have to admit, I’ve been more than pleasantly surprised with the amount of enjoyment I’m getting out of it. I wasn't sure what to think at first, as it is only putting up scores in the mid-70s on MetaCrititc, which isn’t usually a good indicator. But, after finishing Mass Effect I found myself still very much in the mood for good, story-driven gameplay, so I decided to give it a shot.

I’m about 11 hours into the game, and judging on the fact that I just finished disk 1 of 4, I’ll estimate that I’m only about a quarter of the way through it. So, keep in mind that whatever opinions I have, they are based on that much exposure. The game might go completely to hell from here, and I just don’t know it yet. That being said, I like what I’ve played so far very much – so much in fact that I find the reviews the game is getting a little bit bewildering… I have some theories as to why we are seeing the scores that we are, and I’ll touch on them as I go.

At its core, Lost Odyssey is a Japanese-style RPG very much in the vein of Final Fantasy X – not surprising considering that the game’s developer, Mistwalker was founded by Hironobu Sakaguchi, the creator of the Final Fantasy series. The game follows all of the conventions of a solid, old-school J-RPG: a turn based battle system with an emphasis on special class skill and leveraging elemental strengths and weaknesses, a large cast of characters that grows as you move through the game, and a deep, plot full of politics and intrigue that drives the game along. For me, this was fantastic, because I haven’t particularly been a fan of the shift to the real-time combat systems we’ve seen in the more recent j-RPGs, still preferring the tried and true turn-based combat and all of the rock-paper-scissors gameplay inherent to it. At the same time, my guess is that the game is losing point in reviews for not doing enough “innovation” inside the genre. Too bad really, because what Mistwalker did create is very well executed for what it is trying to be.

Graphically, the game looks great. Built on Unreal Engine technology, the world is well detailed, with the kind of striking panoramas we have all come to expect from the genre. The game world is in the middle of an industrial-magical revolution, and “magic engines” are the foundation of technology in the world. It gives the game an everpresent mystical steam-punk flavor that I find really cool.

I wasn’t too sure how I felt about the character designs at first, but they began to grow on me almost immediately, thanks to their expressive animations and the excellent voice acting. The characters are distinctively Asian-flavored, both in dress and facial features, and have a more “mature” bent to them than past J-RPGs. It is definitely nice to play a leading character that isn’t either effeminate, pre-pubescent or has spiky blonde hair (or in the case of FFX and FFXII, all three.)

As you can tell, I really like the game at this point. I’m a little disappointed at the lukewarm reception it’s getting, but at least it seems to be selling well. If you’ve been on the fence about picking it up, I’d say it’s definitely worth the play time, and there is enough solid gameplay there that you will definitely get your money out of it, especially if you are a fan of the older-style turned based combat systems.

Labels: consoles, RPGs, video games, XBOX

I've been wrapping up games like crazy on the XBOX over the last week. Nothing like a couple of snow-bound sick days to help a guy finish off games.

I finished Mass Effect, which only seemed to pick up momentum all the way to the end. It's been a long time since I have finished a game and immediately found myself wanting more. It's a great game - it just doesn't get any better for me. I'm glad to see that rumors of a sequel are already boiling.

With Mass Effect done, I turned my attention back to Bioshock. I picked it up back in September, and I have been working my way steadily through it for the last few months. For a shooter, this game has more story and setting than most roleplaying games. The decision to set the game at the bottom of the ocean in the 1940's was a brilliant move, giving the game a look and feel that is completely new - something we don't get enough of these days. In a time of cookie-cutter settings and licensed crap, it was a breath of fresh air. It makes me happy to see a developer take a risk and have it pay off.

I picked up The Orange Box right after Christmas, and ended up killing an afternoon playing Portal. Part of the Orange Box collection, Portal is basically a mini-game based around a gun that allows you to open portals all over the environment. You play the role of an andriod who is guided through a series of test chambers by an insane artificial intellegence. You are forced to use this portal technology to defeat a series of puzzle-rooms, each requiring more clever and complicated thinking than the last. The game itself is amazing, and despite being very short, it still manages to tell quite an intriguing story. The AI, GLaDos, ends up being the star of the game, with some fantastic dialog that manages to be both humorous and ominous. The game is worth finishing for the end song alone.

If Portal was a great appetizer, for me, the main course has been Team Fortress 2. I'm not a huge fan of online shooters, but TF2's class and objective-based system is a lot of fun, and you don't necessarily have to be a great twitch-gamer to be successful in the game. Classes like the medic, engineer and heavy gunner all make a good alternative choices for those of us who are "twitch-impared." The gameplay is well tuned, and the game has a great, campy style that makes it all the more fun. For a taste of what I'm talking about, check this out:

You can find all of the game's trailers here. The "Meet the.... " entries are all hillarious.

A friend from work just loaned me Assassin's Creed and Call of Duty 4, so the parade of A-list games doesn't look to be ending soon. I also really want to finish Final Fantasy XII, but after months of playing the XBOX 360 in HD, going back to the PS2 is like leaving the new hotness to go back to the old and busted.

Labels: consoles, RPGs, video games, XBOX

I’ve been completely sucked into Mass Effect. To be honest, it has been a time since a video game has this kind of effect on me – in fact, it you may have to go back to the original Baldur’s Gate to find a single player game that sucked me in like this one has. I only got the game just under a week ago, and I have already put almost twenty hours into it, which is unheard of for me.




After you complete the first of the three missions, you are introduced to the idea that the galaxy is really a pretty big place, and you can roam all over, surveying worlds and taking on side missions. These are typically far less intense than the plot missions, and they help to advance your charter, both in terms of level and equipment. They also make for great short session if you only have a half-an-hour to play. After you bulk your party up a little bit in these side missions, everything starts getting quite a bit easier. It’s almost a shame that the game design doesn’t do a better job easing you into the combat portions by introducing you to the side missions earlier. A little attention up front would have saved me a lot of frustration later on.

Labels: consoles, RPGs, video games, XBOX

A late Merry Christmas to everyone out there!

Every year around this time, I take a bunch of time off from work. It is one of my favorite breaks – not a lot is going on at the office, so I’m not worried about getting behind, and it’s the only time that I get to take time off and just stay home and just relax. We had company for the first half of the week, but the last of them went home this morning, leaving me next five days to relax and revel in geekish pleasures.

Knowing the break is coming, I laid out a laundry list of dorky activities I wanted to get accomplished. Of course, I wouldn’t be a true hobbyist if that list wasn’t several times larger than anything I could reasonably to hope to accomplish in the time allotted. Still, it’s my intention to give it a good effort. Here’s what I’ve got:

Wargaming: Warmachine Army

Since I got hooked on Warmachine over Thanksgiving, I’ve decided to put my Chaos Space Marine army on hold for a bit and focus on getting a full-fledged Warmachine army painted up. I have a significant amount of both Cryx and Cygnar pewter, but for now I decided to focus on Cygnar. I want to:

Finish my Trenchers. I’ve got three of ten trenchers painted now, and so far they look great. I think for the rest of them I’m going to experiment with a quasi-production line approach. I’m going to lay down the base color coats on all of them at the same time, and them probably shade and highlight them individually. As far as the models themselves, they are really beautiful and just ooze character. I am constantly amazed at the amount of detail Privateer Press puts into each model.

Finish my Stormblades. Okay, to be fair, the Stormblade unit is actually all finished, but I’m also working on the unit attachment. The Captain is done, but I still need finish the standard bearer. I’d love to leave the holiday break with two fully painted units.

Assemble my Sword Knights. I bought the Sword Knights unit boxed set along with an extra blister a while back, and then promptly stowed them away in the closet. After listening to the Pod Thralls list their “500 pts for 100 bucks” Cygnar list, I pulled them back out and decided they would be next up. Then I open the blister and looked at all the little parts. And then I puked a little in my mouth.

Roleplaying: Eberron Campaign

In my last post I talked a little bit about how much I like the Freeport setting. Over the last few weeks, I’ve spent a bunch of hours working on integrating it into my Eberron game, as our party will be spending a great deal of time in the Lhazaar Principalities. If there is any interest in seeing how I’m tying that all together, let me know, and I’ll post it. Beyond that, I’m “redeveloping” a significant portion of the Eyes of the Lich Queen to better fit our campaign and play style, so I’ve got a lot of work to do.

Video Games: A Cornucopia of XBOX Goodness

There is so much good stuff out on XBOX 360 right now that it is almost mind-numbing. I’ve been working through BioShock and Oblivion: The GOTY Edition, all the while playing through the Halo 3 campaign co-op over XBOX Live. To add to that already impressive list, my wife bought me Mass Effect for Christmas, and I used some Best Buy gift certificates to pick up The Orange Box. How I’m going to get through these and still take care of everything on the list above, I’m not sure, but it should be fun trying. That many A-List games at one time is truly remarkable, and that list still leaves CoD4: Modern Warfare and Assassin’s Creed waiting in the wings.

We live good lives.

Labels: consoles, Dungeons and Dragons, Eberron, miniatures, podcasts, RPGs, video games, wargaming, Warhammer 40K, Warmachine, XBOX

It's been a busy week at work once again, leaving me very little time for endulging in geekish pleasures. My visiting friend and I did manage to sqeeze in one last game of Warmachine before he left town, bringing an end to our best-of-three tournament. He won in the end, but the last game was our best yet. The final turn could have went either way, and ultimately came down to the luck of the dice. The big learning breaktrough in this game was when my friend discovered the joys of two-handed throwing my arc node around the battlefield with his Slayer, inventing the sport of 'Jack Bowling.

With him gone again, I've been moving back into developing my D&D campaign. I run an Eberron game about once a week, and we're in the middle of running a heavily-modified version of the Eyes of the Lich Queen module. We are just wrapping up the first act, about to head off and explore the Lhazaar Principalities. It just happens that one of our characters is also a Lhazaaran, and has quite a few unresolved "issues" lurking in her backstory. We are going to take advantage situation and make a few little side excursions to bring some of these to closure.

If you aren't familiar with Eberron, the Lhazaar principalities are pirate islands, and considering we were going to be spending some time there, I wanted to take full advantage of such a fun setting. Unfortunately, there isn't a lot of background on Lhazaar in the sourcebooks, so I went looking elsewhere for pirate-y goodness. Eventually I came across Green Ronin's Pirate's Guide to Freeport. I'd heard about Freeport here and there, and the reviews had all been good, so I took a chance and ordered a copy.

The book showed up earlier this week, and I've got to say, it's awesome. It's by far one of the best "flavor" books I own. It covers the pirate city of Freeport, and is built in such a way that you could play it as a stand-alone campaign setting, or drop it into any existing campaign with very little work. The world they create is rich and intriguing, and does an great job of blending swashbuckling pirate fiction with the classic high-fantasy of D&D. On top of that, it has a bunch of really nice art from Wayne Reynolds, who is my absolute favorite.

I assume because of the looming threat that is Fourth Edition, Green Ronin took a little different approach with The Pirate's Guide to Freeport - they made it system-less. That right - it's a great big book with nary a stat block in sight. Instead, they focused on just giving us the historical and descriptive stuff in this book, and they plan on releasing additional books with system-specific information later (the first two being a True20 and a d20 companion.)

Truth be told, I like this approach to producing game books much better. I'm pretty balanced in my appreciation of crunch vs. fluff, but I realized that I don't particularly like them mixed up together. I found myself wishing that more gaming books were built this way - setting books full of fluff and rich descriptions while the cruchy books could just be reference tomes of prestige classes, feats and spells. Iron Kingdoms did a very similar thing with their Character Guide and World Guide, and I really like how they turned out.

It also made me realize how stale the WotC stuff is becoming. It seems that WotC has been taken over by the rule designers, and the imagination of the products is suffering. Even the new modules focus heavily on providing a string of detailed tactical encounters rather than engaging plots with facinating charcters. As I've read through Freeport and the first four installments of Paizo's Pathfinder series, it makes me remember what I enjoyed about running games in the first place.

Labels: Dungeons and Dragons, Eberron, miniatures, RPGs, Warmachine

Well, it sounds like the other shoe has finally dropped, and Wizards has announced Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition. Like some Cthulhuian beast clad in only in a shroud of black malice, it slithers forth from the darkest corners of my mind, its wet tentacles grasping, reaching. It is a shapeless dread, a formless fear, but I can feel dark eyes upon me, hungry and loathing. The malevolence is palpable.

If you haven’t read the news, stop now, and check out the official announcement, then bounce over to YouTube and watch the GenCon presentation videos, parts one, two and three. Finally, check out this Gamer Radio Zero podcast tries to tackle what this all means.

Honestly, I don't have a particularly good barometer of the general anxiety level that surrounds fourth edition, but I do know this – I am not excited. I agree that there is a lot wrong with the tired old workhorse that is D&D 3.5, but at this point I find the familiar brokenness of third edition akin to the comforting familiarity of a horribly dysfunctional marriage. The fourth edition might be better looking, have a great smile and a perky rack, but the gal I already have will cook me dinner.

What is the old saying? A bird in the hand is better than two in the bush?

Heh, he said bush.

There is also the very real financial investment I have already dumped into building my 3.5 library. I’ll be the first to admit that when it comes to my geekish hobbies I can become somewhat… compulsive. When D&D found its way back into my life after a fifteen-year hiatus, my investment in the hobby was fairly significant. I began with the Forgotten Realms, but when Eberron showed up on the scene I was hooked deep. At this point, I’ve own almost every hardcover they’ve put out on both campaign settings, plus a smattering of core books. That’s the kind of investment you don’t want to see just wash away - unfortunately, the early word makes it sound like cross-version rules compatibility is not in the cards.

Theoretically, it's easy enough to just say “I'll stick with 3.5 then,” but I think this is going to be a lot harder to do in practice. From a core rules standpoint, it’s not a huge issue, but it really hurts in terms of setting books. Eberron is only about half-documented at this point in its short life, so what now? Is campaign setting is going to be split across two different versions of rules? Am I expected to re-buy books?

If you follow that idea it leads to the next logical question: What does a fourth edition mean for the third party d20 licensees like the Iron Kingdoms or World of Warcraft? I'm not sure smaller presses (like Privateer Press) have the resources to turn out new versions of their core books...

At this point, I may end up one of those curmudgeony players that doggedly sticks with what he already has even though better alternatives clearly exist. Or maybe the time has come to go off the proverbial reservation and try running Eberron using on of the new-fangled small press system like Savage Worlds or Sprit of the Century?

There's a lot more to talk about, but at this point I've been caught flat-footed - now I get to spend the next few rounds stunned. When my head clears, maybe I'll have a better sense of the gravity of the announcement. In the mean time, I’d be curious to know what anyone else thinks… Is a fourth edition a good thing? Drop me a comment and let me know what you think.

Labels: Dungeons and Dragons, Eberron, podcasts, RPGs

If you haven’t seen the news yet, both Dragon and Dungeon magazine will be coming to an end. A couple of days back Wizards of the Coast announced that the magazine would cease publication after the next 3-4 issues. The magazines were actually published by Paizo publishing, who put them out under license from WotC. Now it seems that WotC is choosing to end that licensing agreement, bringing the magazine to a close, at least in it's current form. Pulp Gamer had a podcast interview with Phil Lacefield Jr., the sales manager of Pazio Publishing, where he talked openly about the events that transpired. Unfortunately, the link seems to have gone dead – leaving me wondering if it wasn’t just a little too open.

I never subscribed to either magazine, but I have picked them up on occasion (usually when they had some kind of expanded Eberron content) and I have always enjoyed flipping through them at the bookstore with my Sunday morning coffee. I think Paizo has done a nice job with the magazine over the last few years, and it will be sad to see them go… It’s just another piece of role-playing that is falling away from the mainstream. At the same time, I’ve got to imagine that selling D&D content magazines isn’t exactly huge business… It’s almost a niche market within a niche market.

So, after a thirty year run of Dragon, why pull the plug now? My guess is that we are seeing the next steps toward making the D&D Insider concept a reality. Rumors of D&D Insider first surfaced last year, describing an online, subscription-based model for expanded D&D content and services. I’m sure the ideas presented were all pretty hypothetical at the time – I would guess they were more aspirational than concrete. Still, if you look back over WotC’s course for the last year, it becomes pretty clear that they are actively moving in that direction:

In November of last year they reeled in their licensing for electronic rule sets from Code Monkey Publishing. Being a micro-market player, this didn’t make many waves, but I would guess they were beginning to prepare for the online play component of D&D Insider. I think making D&D easily (and enjoyably) playable online is a huge opportunity for WotC. When I say that, I don’t mean a video game style representation like NWN2 or DDO… I mean a true virtual tabletop where you bring your books to the PC, and play with friends all over the world just like you were sitting at the kitchen table. The best example I’ve found in the space is Fantasy Grounds, which almost perfectly recreates the feeling of being together at the gaming table. If it wasn't for Fantasy Grounds, I can safely say I wouldn’t be playing D&D at all in my adult life.

Next, back in the end of January, WotC posted a slew of job openings to support a “digial initiative,” with a fairly heavy push on the main page of their site and mentions in their monthly podcasts. At this point, we know without a doubt that something electronic is in the pipeline.

Finally, we see this week’s move to cease publishing both Dungeon and Dragon magazines. My guess is that all of the content that used to come to you via the two magazines will now be re-purposed to whatever subscription-based Web service they are brewing up. It will be interesting to see where this is all going, and if any of my prognostications are on the mark.

The real question is how will it be received by the community? Personally, I’m feeling cautiously optimistic. I would be willing to subscribe if the content and services warranted the price, which is something that I was never willing to do with the magazines (I didn’t need to explain yet another nerd-ish compulsion to my wife as a magazine showed up every month).

For something like D&D Insider to work, I think WotC will have to figure out how to walk the fine line of value proposition… As a community, we already get tons of content for free on the Web… so why should be pay? The internet has created an entitlement culture when it comes to information. How do you pitch paying for something that used to be free? I think pulling back the magazines and re-launching them as online properties really can help them win that battle. Both magazines represent an already established value proposition that people are used to paying for. Paying to get that recognized brand in an online format is an easier sell that just saying “we want you to pay for content now.”

The part I’m most interested in is where they will go with the online play piece. Some of the details in the initially came out were a little frightenting to me. I won’t accept any model for online play that is less functional than Fantasy Grounds, which represents the high-water mark in online clients in my mind. I also don’t want to pay for things I think they already owe me. For example, they mention providing a master index – I shouldn’t pay for this! I have already invested hundreds of dollars in source books (most of which don’t have indexes – which they should), and I don’t think I should pay yet again just to be able to cross-reference them. (I also think that by not having a master index online, they are missing a sales oppotunity – if I found out that other books touched on a topic I’m trying to work into a campaign, there is a good chance I’d buy it.)

I think if they can sort out the value proposition, it could actually be a pretty cool service. It would also create a more consistent revenue stream for the D&D line, which I’m sure is a point of frustration for a company that is used to the type of constant revenues generated by collectable card and miniatures games. Clearly, World of Warcraft has taught us all the financial power of the subscription model, and WotC is smart to try to get a piece of that. For us as players, anything that makes D&D more financially attractive means more support and stability for our hobby in the future.

Labels: Dungeons and Dragons, Eberron, podcasts, RPGs