I spent some of my free time today looking over my recently acquired copy of Edge of the Empire, the newest Star Wars RPG from Fantasy Flight Games. I haven’t picked up all that many of the rules yet, as I really didn’t have that long to look at it. Oh, that and I was rather frustrated by the awful state of much of the … Continue reading Edge of the Empire woes
I write a lot about D&D, but that game is actually a fairly late love in my life; I didn't get bitten by the bug until 1982. Well, obviously – given that I was born in 1972 – that's still pretty early on. However, there's one thing that I've been following for even longer. That thing is Doctor Who. As far as I can gather, … Continue reading Review of The First Doctor Sourcebook (Cubicle 7)
I find that as I get older, I get a lot less tolerant of having large rulebooks with lots of rules. This isn’t to say that I’m against all rules, but I much prefer, as a DM, to need to remember as few rules as possible. It’s one of the reasons I’ve enjoyed 4E so much: it’s actually a very light system at heart, with … Continue reading Rules and my Roleplaying
I find that as I get older, I get a lot less tolerant of having large rulebooks with lots of rules. This isn't to say that I'm against all rules, but I much prefer, as a DM, to need to remember as few rules as possible. It's one of the reasons I've enjoyed 4E so much: it's actually a very light system at heart, with … Continue reading Rules and my current roleplaying games
The Assassin’s Knot is the second adventure in Lenard Lakofka’s Lendore Isle series. It is also a mystery adventure: the Baron of Resternford has been assassinated, and the players need to find out who did it! This type of investigation was still new to D&D at this stage, so Lakofka had little in the way of previous examples to guide him. It should not be surprising to anyone … Continue reading Review of L2: The Assassin’s Knot
I reviewed 1983’s The Final Enemy immediately after reviewing 1982’s Pharaoh. The 1983 product looks like a much earlier product than the 1982 one. I rather suspect it’s because it was: there are 1981 dates on some of the illustrations. The Final Enemy is the third part of the series that began with The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh and continued through Danger at Dunwater. Although Saltmarsh is highly regarded, it’s never … Continue reading Review of U3: The Final Enemy
The early days of adventures at TSR had provided us with a lot of converted tournament adventures; indeed, most of the classics from this era (Giants, Drow and Slavelords) are of this type. By 1982, we were getting adventures specifically written for the purpose of being run at home rather than at conventions. Tracy Hickman and his wife, Laura, had self-published two D&D adventures in … Continue reading Review of I3: Pharaoh
A little while ago I wrote about the problems facing the Golden Geek awards in the RPG category, and I’m reminded of them now that we’ve hit the voting for the ENnie awards. In a nutshell, those problems are: Too many products which not enough people have seen. Role-playing games are time-intensive to play. The most popular games play in campaign styles, where you could … Continue reading RPG Award Problems – again
This weekend saw my regular gaming habits continue: D&D on Friday night and Saturday, and boardgaming to fill out the holes. I feel quite fortunate to be able to regularly play games with my friends, and it was really good to have Adam join us again on Friday night. Yes, after a gap of a few months, Adam has rejoined my 4E Greyhawk game, as … Continue reading A regular weekend’s gaming
The Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun is the first adventure module of the “WG” (World of Greyhawk) series. Unusually, it has the code of WG4! Others have discovered that the original bearers of WG1 though WG3 were Village of Hommlet, Temple of Elemental Evil , and Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth. Tharizdun is a companion adventure to Tsojcanth. Its map shows the mountains to the east of … Continue reading AD&D Adventure Review: The Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun
