Rise of Tiamat finally arrived here in Ballarat, and my initial impressions are very favourable. It requires even more of the DM than Hoard of the Dragon Queen, as the adventure opens up and permits a lot of expansion in addition to what is on the page. Some DMs are going to love it, others are going to hate it.
The other new arrival is the pdf of 7th edition Call of Cthulhu. This is the first major revision to the rules since the 1st to 2nd edition change. There are some big mechanical changes, but mostly it’s the same system. I’ll write a bit more of it in the near future. Interestingly, it has a new system in it that really reminds me of D&D’s Advantage and Disadvantage systems. (They call it bonus and penalty dice, but it works pretty much the same). And the degrees of success and chase rules(!) remind me of James Bond 007.
The latest session of Hoard of the Dragon Queen went well, with the group proceeding into Episode 5. More on that tomorrow, I hope!
And we played Paranoia. It was fine. There were moments of hilarity, but it’s really interesting how moving away from the Cold War era hurts the assumption of the proper Paranoid style and setting. The new kickstarter may have the right idea by linking it to terrorism.