Lords of Waterdeep is a really good game. Caylus meets Ticket to Ride. Two of the best parts of Caylus, the worker placement and the ability to construct buildings for more actions and a varied board, are married with the “ticket” mechanism, which provides structure to the game and allows new players to quickly pick up the flow of the game. And now it has … Continue reading Review of Scoundrels of Skullport
Only four players were at my table this week for Murder in Baldur's Gate: Lee was back, but Harry and Rich had other commitments. Paul's 4E table had five players. We were playing through Stage 4 of the adventure; this stage is fairly light on actual incident involving the players. The two major events were Rilsa Rael manoeuvring the garbage collectors to go on strike, … Continue reading Murder in Baldur’s Gate – The Lumber Affair
I began this session of Murder in Baldur’s Gate began with some material from the previous stage; members of the Flaming Fist harassing workmen from the Outer City. Jonas Valerian (Tim) had been in the Lower City causing trouble and so witnessed this; he and his friends persuaded the Flaming Fist to back off. This earned them a summons from Ulder Ravengard, who was impressed … Continue reading Murder in Baldur’s Gate – The Hands of Fate
The fourth session of Murder in Baldur's Gate saw my D&D Next table having eight players whilst Paul's 4E table had five players. I would have much preferred to have fewer players, but I wasn't willing to turn people away. Thankfully, I'm not unused to running such large tables – the last year of my AD&D campaign has made me quite familiar with those numbers … Continue reading Murder in Baldur’s Gate – Unrest Rising
An explanatory note: Ultimate Campaign is a relatively recent release from Paizo Publishing for their Pathfinder Game, a 256-page hardcover book. It's not the first supplement to the system they've done, but I personally think it's the most significant, as it really extends the system into areas that most Fantasy RPGs often don't cover, or don't cover well. This makes it particularly interesting, as it … Continue reading Ultimate Campaign – Character Backgrounds
We returned to my AD&D campaign last Saturday after a break of four weeks. In some ways, the break was even longer because I’ve run a lot of session for the new players recently; this was the first session where Paul and Jesse were able to play their high-level characters, which are 7th and 9th level respectively. The rest of the group ranged from 3rd … Continue reading A funhouse dungeon session in my AD&D Viking campaign
We’ve finally reached Stage 1 of the Murder in Baldur’s Gate adventure; it only took us three sessions! The first two were consumed by the introductory material as expanded by the Launch event. We had two tables of six players and a DM for this session, with Paul running 4E and me running Next. The table composition was slightly different from last week with Callan … Continue reading Murder in Baldur’s Gate: Stage 1 report
Fangwood Keep is a stand-alone Pathfinder adventure for 4th level characters by Alex Greenshields. It uses the tried-and-true approach of presenting what initially appears to be a standard adventure which transforms into something else in its second half. The adventure begins with the characters charged to recover a contested keep on the border between Molthune and Nirmathas, which has been seized by a rebel soldier, … Continue reading Review of Fangwood Keep (Pathfinder adventure)
Quests & Campaigns is a 32-page book in Pathfinder’s Player Companion series, which expands on a number of concepts first explored in the Ultimate Campaign book that look at options for detailing the background and goals of player characters. In theory, a book containing a lot of background and goal-related options for a character is a good idea. However, the book fumbles the ideas badly. … Continue reading Review of Quests & Campaigns (Pathfinder supplement)
Every so often, I go through a phase of buying old D&D adventures I don't have yet; I've now got most of the 1st edition releases, along with a lot of the Basic/Expert line, but my 2nd edition AD&D collection is very poor indeed. My last spasm of purchasing found me picking up the three Marco Volo adventures: Departure, Journey and Arrival. (Journey hasn't actually … Continue reading Review of Marco Volo: Departure (1994 AD&D 2E adventure)
