» 2004 » October
Saturday, October 30, 2004
Sports Gamebooks Reach the UK
It’s not often that a new gamebook series hits the market these days, but Fighting Fantasy publisher Wizard Books has just launched a new product likely to bring page-flipping to a different demographic. The Football Fantasy Gamebooks allow players to control the actions of football (i.e. soccer) teams, playing either solo or against a human opponent. Each book represents a different team and features a design by gamebook veteran Jon Sutherland and extensive visuals by Lone Wolf illustrator Gary Chalk. It’s hard to say whether these will get an American release in the immediate future, but British collectors can find them in stores everywhere while Americans can get them shipped in via amazon.co.uk or the overseas bookseller of their choice.
Eldritch Horror: The New Alternative to Red Meat
If you need some Halloween excitement and you don’t have time for one of our RPG suggestions, all is not lost. Thanks to the wonders of Invisible City’s latest free Game of the Month, you can participate in a Cthulbeque. That’s right — if you have the strength and sanity to battle indescribable horrors from beyond, it turns out that they make mighty good eatin’. What better way to spend the evening?
Wednesday, October 27, 2004
HeroScape plans boosters, possibly less hobby-channel screwage
This ICv2 report taught me a couple of things I didn’t know: 1) that Hasbro had planned to ship its new gamers’ Milton Bradley game HeroScape to small game retailers a month or two ahead of the mass market, but shipping snafus forced them to go straight to the big boys, and 2) upcoming HeroScape expansion packs may ship first to the hobby market to make up for it. A date for those packs hasn’t even been announced that I can find, so I guess wait-and-see is the order of the day. And no, we still don’t have a copy. Dammit.
Warhammer RPG release schedule set
In a sort of publisher-developer deal thingie, Games Workshop’s new roleplaying imprint Black Industries will release Green Ronin’s new edition of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay in February of ‘05, at a price point of roughly 15 cents a page. No, I don’t think you’ll be able to buy pages a la carte. A character pack, GM pack, monster book, and set of scenarios will follow it over 60 days or so.
Saturday, October 23, 2004
Night of the Living Gamer: 13 Halloween RPGs
In just over a week, dressing in funny costumes without being in a LARP will be socially accepted (for the day, at least). To accompany our pumpkin-toting adventurer up there in the corner, Chris Morgan has provided us with his suggestions for a roleplayer’s Halloween. Have a read through Night of the Living Gamer for his creepy RPG selections.
Wednesday, October 20, 2004
Blue Rose opens the kimono, so to speak
(That’s a tech-business expression. Seriously, it is.) Up until today, Green Ronin’s website for the upcoming “romantic fantasy” RPG Blue Rose was a little frustrating, unless you like game fiction. This column from developer Steve Kenson, however, brings some details: an even more stripped-down d20 system than Mutants and Masterminds, an idiosyncratic magic system custom-tailored for the shoujo-ish setting, and a focus on new RPGers.
Tuesday, October 19, 2004
Rio Grande Picks Up the Pace
Since the last update I posted, Rio Grande Games has produced not one but two newsletters. They’re fairly similar, though, both previewing the same new titles. We now have photos and descriptions of the forthcoming Carcassonne releases, plus there are first looks at Niagara, a gem-collecting canoe-racing game with a 3-D board; Heart of Africa, a simulation of 19th-century colonial trading companies; and Naval Battles, a World War II game which will presumably appeal to more than just the pure simulationists (unless its publisher has decided to head in a new direction, of course).
Monday, October 18, 2004
A distant deathknell heard
A news update on the WotC website reveals that production samples of the next D&D Miniatures expansion, Deathknell, have reached the WotC offices. According to the story, “ettins, gold dragons, and a host of undead” are heaped on someone’s desk, as well as a mention of juggling big beholders (I’d imagine those are like petrified Koosh balls, at least where the eyestalks are). We won’t have a chance to check them out in person for a while yet, as Deathknell will be along in March 2005.
Warrior bugs ready to scuttle. Pixar not involved
Mongoose Publishing has pictures of the Arachnid Warrior Bug for the upcoming Starship Troopers miniatures game and RPG. Coming in a number of poses and pieces, minis enthusiasts can be sure their 30mm scale bugs won’t all be identical. The game is still on course for an early 2005 release.
A rose by any other dice
Today Green Ronin launched a new website for the upcoming Blue Rose: The Roleplaying Game of Romantic Fantasy. Expect fiction, PDF downloads, beautiful artwork, some rules variations brought in from Mutants & Masterminds, and male gamers shying away in hopes of maintaining (obtaining?) a masculine image.
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