» 2005 » July
Sunday, July 31, 2005
Tomorrow Knights RPG, today
After a bit more delay than expected, Z-Man Games has shipped a completed Tomorrow Knights RPG. The 128-page rulebook is based on the comic series, which I haven’t read, but sounds somewhat similar in concept to Bubblegum Crisis, or at least in the same ballpark. Spectrum Games developed the game, which should be in stores any minute now.
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Warmachine: The Card Game (note: lies)
1) Wow, we really haven’t posted since the podcast.
2) New podcast will be up Monday night probably.
3) The Warmachine Faction Decks are the best product Privateer has ever made. They comprise one (or, in the case of warjacks commonly fielded in groups, more) of each character card for all the units in the first two sets of Warmachine (that is, Prime and Escalation), grouped by faction. Each faction will run you about $12.99 for all the cards, which are just like the ones that come in the figure packages, only in color (maybe those are in color now, I don’t know). You can then put these cards in little plastic sleeves, so you can use grease pencils to check off all their little checkboxes during play, and pair them with your D&D minis, old MechWarrior figs you picked up from the discount rack, chess pieces, whatever. You might even just get those little plastic stands for Cardboard Heroes or somesuch, stand the cards in them and play that way… inconvenient, but great for style points. You’ll need the rules, of course, but the quick start is a giveaway poster at most stores. I don’t know why this appeals to me so much more than playing out of the books, but it really does. These cards are cool.
4) Josh Kornbluth, noted monologist and star of the films Haiku Tunnel and Red Diaper Baby, is sitting and typing at the table out in front of this cafe. His ergonomics are terrible.
Tuesday, July 26, 2005
Introducing the OgreCave Audio Report
So, Chris wanted to podcast, and I said, “Okay.” The OgreCave Audio Report is a weekly half-hour-or-less on the gaming industry topics of the week, plus what we are playing and liking. We figure we spend enough time just kind of Waldorfing about gaming stuff that we may as well record it and put it up. It’s got an iTunes-ready feed and everything, although it needs a nicer template (also some links to other gaming podcasts would be lovely - I know GeekSpeak and Boardgames To Go, but please post links to others in the comments). There are some sound troubles which we’ll have ironed out by next week, hopefully - I don’t think they detract from the current program’s enjoyability. This week we discuss the Rackham news, as well as the WizKids announcements and sundry other goings-on. Hope you enjoy it.
Monday, July 25, 2005
Games Expo 2007: beginning of the end of GTS?
As you might expect, the announcement of the vaguely Games Quarterly-affilliated Games Expo 2007 is wreckin’ all kinds of shop out there. GAMA loyalists are calling it unprofessional, divisive, et cetera; those less than happy with GTS as an industry trade show claim that GTS wasn’t super likely to go on in 2007 anyway. (Games Expo is scheduled for GTS’ traditional March weekend.) Me, I think competition is good and while GAMA is decent at running a consumer-oriented show at Origins, their performance with GTS shows a lot of room for improvement. Also, the thumbnail cover on Games Quarterly’s site looks like it has a headline of “City of Herpes” if you squint.
Computer-based paper magazine on computer-based paper games
On one level it’s a shame about Escapist magazine’s relentless insistence on the forms and tropes of paper magazines in a digital medium… but on the other, at least they do it well. And check out this talk with Greg Gorden, designer of the original James Bond 007 and, yes, Torg RPGs, on how that early work informs his work in mobile games today. (Oh, and Allen Varney’s the interviewer!)
Any excuse for a haiku contest is a good one
And a Knizia board game with John Howe art about Beowulf is an especially good excuse. To wit:
No, it’s not co-op.
It comes out in October.
Here’s the contest link.
Friday, July 22, 2005
Chris Pramas on WFRP sales and the industry’s info-poverty
The new edition of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay sold better than anything else GR has done lately, but you wouldn’t know it from Comics and Games Retailer, which most of the retailers I’ve talked to cite as the only entity actually trying to deliver sales rankings. Well, apparently there’s another now, and that’s great, because all my retailer contacts agree with Pramas that C’n'GR does an iffy job at best. I mean, how hard should it have to be for retailers - and publishers, and press for that matter - to know what’s selling?
D&D Minis - Angelfire: First look
As both a roleplayer and a miniatures gamer, I was excited to receive some Angelfire figs to fiddle with. The selection assembled for the set seems to have a wide range of heroic individuals, menacing beasts, and staples of fantasy miniatures (kobolds and skeletons? Check). I even managed to get my hands on a 124 point CG commander, Ghaele Eladrin, who gives extra activations to followers that roll a 19 or 20 while attacking. As game mechanics go, the new set looks to push the game’s envelope in new directions. Thus far nothing jumps out at me as a figure with a broken, dominating ability.
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Thursday, July 21, 2005
Confrontation publishers plan pre-painted, non-collectible mech game for ‘06
Just yesterday I was complaining to Chris that there hadn’t been any really good miniatures games that went with pre-painted figures but were non-collectible, or at least sold on the same a la carte basis as Warmachine and others. I would love to be playing more Warmachine, but I can’t bring myself to play with an unpainted army - and there is no way I can make the time to paint them. I’m a gamer, and that’s my hobby; I’m not looking for games that come with a whole other hobby stapled to them.
So. Minis fans know French publishers Rackham for their beautiful sculpts and solid games such as Confrontation. It would seem that in the latter half of next year, they aim to bring out a sci-fi themed game, with mecha, done to their usual standards, but pre-painted - also to their usual standards. You can see an early (unpainted, plastic) model here. Confirmation is available on their English-language forums here and here.
I have no idea what the economics of this are going to be - plastic models are cheap, but only if you do enough of them, and that kind of scale means a lot of hard painting to be done - but man, am I ever looking forward to finding out.
Wednesday, July 20, 2005
Etherscope coming from Sword & Sorcery and Goodman
White Wolf (or rather, its Sword & Sorcery arm) will bring us more Goodman Games goodness in the form of Etherscope, a standalone “Cyberpunk Victoriana” RPG spun off from d20 Modern under the Open Gaming License. Developed by the guys at Malladins Gate Press, Etherscope will join the rapidly growing list of second party products published under the Sword & Sorcery banner. The 240-page hardcover rulebook will arrive in November, followed by quarterly support products. The full press release is below.
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