Looking back at the early years of my role-playing and general gaming, there were a number of games that I wanted to play and never got a chance to. Amongst those games were such titles as Rolemaster, RuneQuest, Traveller, Call of Cthulhu, Car Wars and BattleTech. At this stage of my life, I have found myself able to dabble in a few of these older … Continue reading Games of my youth… and Rolemaster Express
The release of The World of Greyhawk in 1980 was an event that I didn’t mark. At that point, it was still a year before I would get my first introduction to Dungeons and Dragons. Eventually I was introduced to the World of Greyhawk through the first real AD&D campaign I played in the mid- to late-eighties, and that was using the later World of Greyhawk (2nd Edition) 1983 boxed setting. It … Continue reading The World of Greyhawk – 1980 folio edition
I attended our local Scars of Mirrodin prerelease yesterday – well, one or two of them. The real enthusiasts had started at midnight, but I opted to play D&D yesterday and then play a prerelease in the morning after I’d gotten some sleep. I went 3-1 in the prerelease, with a deck I’d describe as rather average. It was a White/Blue deck which had some … Continue reading Scars of Mirrodin prerelease musings
Balance… is tremendously important to any RPG. If you don’t think it is, then you don’t understand what balance is. It doesn’t help discussions that there are actually two types of balance with regard to playing RPG, both of which get confused for the other if the discussion isn’t precise enough or the idea isn’t understood well enough. To help everyone, here are the two … Continue reading Understanding Game Balance is Important
The third season of D&D Encounters began today, and so a few players gathered with me, my DM, as we played the first session of the newest version of The Keep on the Borderlands. I have very fond memories of Keep. It was one of the very first adventure modules I tried to DM (badly, I might add), and I used it again as the … Continue reading Back to the Keep on the Borderlands
There are quite a few games I’ve picked up recently that I’d like to get the chance to play sometime in the next few months. It hasn’t helped that there’s a lot of Other Games interfering at the moment – for instance, a big Magic tournament on Saturday, and then the BattleTech league I’m running. Mind you, BattleTech will consume my attention for only a … Continue reading Games to play…
Well, it’s finally gotten to Ballarat: the 4e Dark Sun Campaign Setting, and both Josh and I have our copies. Unfortunately, there’s no sign of the Creature Catalogue yet. I hope that it isn’t too far behind. Tell me again why we had the Dark Sun Game Day a week-and-a-half ago when there was no Dark Sun product available in Australia? In any case, the … Continue reading Dark Sun Campaign Setting… at last!
Last Friday’s D&D session saw Martin run the best session of the campaign so far… all three sessions of it. The most glorious moment was when my character declared that he was arresting an NPC for war crimes (who we’d been chasing for most of the previous session), and the NPC exclaimed “it’s a fair cop, guv!” and surrendered. Well, perhaps he didn’t use those … Continue reading My ardent is 2nd level!
I’ve just ordered some Game Science Precision dice from MilSims. With any luck, they’ll arrive early next week, and for the first time I’ll have dice that are properly random, rather than weighted. Heh. Dice are interesting things. As a DM, I tend not to worry about the randomness of dice too much – I roll so many, and the PCs are there or not … Continue reading Dice! and other stuff
One of the EN World regulars (Festivus) has posted pictures of the new D&D Basic Game – you can see them here. One of the slides show a few powers. So, transcribed for your entertainment… here they are! Hypnotism – Wizard Attack 1, at will, Ranged 10, Int vs. Will. Target: 1 creature Hit: Choose one of the following effects: * The target uses a free … Continue reading A few Red Box Powers
