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Friday, October 31, 2008
OgreCave reviews – Secrets of Morocco
The last few Screams from the Cave are coming into the light – Demian closes out this week’s new reviews for us with his evaluation of Secrets of Morocco for Chaosium’s Call of Cthulhu. Was he as happy with this sourcebook as with others he’s reviewed for us? Um… no. Click through to find out why. We’ll have the Halloween episode of the OgreCave Audio Report up shortly – an ftp client was misbehaving, so we’ve had some delays.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Penny Arcade, both rain-slick and exploring Arkham
Since the second episode of Penny Arcade: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness just became available yesterday from Hothead Games, we thought it prudent to double-check that you’ve done your research. You do recall the Penny Arcade Gabe and Tycho Investigators available for Arkham Horror at the FFG site, yes? Very good, then – you may proceed.
Random Encounter – Harley Stroh of Goodman Games
The talk of fearful things continues with the first of OgreCave’s new Random Encounter interviews, in which we roll up a few questions to ask Harley Stroh of Goodman Games. The Cave Dwellers simply must know more about the upcoming Age of Cthulhu line for Call of Cthulhu, and Harley confesses enough of what he knows that we allowed him to escape again back to his lair. We’ll be prowling the corridors of the game industry for more Random Encounters in the weeks ahead, so stay tuned.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
OgreCave reviews – Secrets of Los Angeles
The cries of fear and horror keep coming at OgreCave this week, with something new for our Screams from the Cave event each weekday. For midweek, Steve’s offering up his review of Chaosium’s Secrets of Los Angeles for Call of Cthulhu. Is it worth picking up this regional guidebook for the investigators of your campaign? Read on and find out.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
OgreCave reviews – Where the Deep Ones Are
To keep our Screams from the Cave going, I’ve posted my review of Where the Deep Ones Are, the Lovecraftian children’s book parody. Face it, someone had to publish this book – it simply begs to be summoned into being – and thankfully Atlas Games got the job done. Have a look at my thoughts on the demented little book, and don’t worry where they are. Unless it’s behind you.
Monday, October 27, 2008
OgreCave reviews – Character and Secrets
A pair of fresh reviews get things started today. First up, Lee gives us his thoughts on the Character Codex from Goodman Games. Then Demian adds to our Screams from the Cave event with his review of Secrets of San Francisco from Chaosium. We’ll have more horror- and monster-themed goodies all week long to finish out our Screams event, so be sure to check back with us.
Sunday, October 26, 2008
It’s the Great Cthulhu, Charlie Brown
If your Halloween gaming plans need a last-minute shot in the arm, Super Genius Games may have what you need with its latest Call of Cthulhu adventure, Midnight Harvest. Author Owen K.C. Stephens designed the Halloween-themed New England adventure for an evening or two of gaming, and provides pre-generated characters as well. Here’s the plot summary:
The Autumnal Costume Fete fills sleepy Five Lanterns, RI with outlandish garb sewn by the country’s best costumers. This year, some of the outfits seem a little too real… and their designer will go to any length to keep his identity secret. A rash of missing children, the discovery of unholy texts, and gibbering lunatics wandering the streets, hide the true menace as it reaches for its blasphemous goal.
Recently released in PDF form, you can currently grab this creepy adventure for $7.99.
Friday, October 24, 2008
Charity money befouled by D&D
At least that’s how the Christian Children’s Fund feels about it. Gen Con raised over $17,000 at its annual charity auction this year, held in honor of Gary Gygax, but the Christian Children’s Fund turned the money down when it learned that sales of Dungeons & Dragons materials were part of the auction. The late Gary Gygax himself had cited the CCF as his favorite charity, and was likely a frequent donor, so this makes even less sense than your average prejudiced stupidity. The money went to the Fisher House Foundation instead, which had no such qualms about the filthy D&D charity money.
Wizards officially ending D&D Minis skirmish game
Since our post on Wednesday (see D&D Miniatures becoming less random in 2009), word has come down from Dungeons & Dragons Senior Brand Manager Scott Rouse at Wizards of the Coast clarifying the company’s plans for D&D Miniatures. Citing “sharp increases [...] in manufacturing costs over the last 12 months” and a steady decline in skirmish players, Rouse confirmed that “November’s release of Demonweb will be the last new set that includes skirmish statistics. [...] At this point, we can no longer justify the design, development, and production resources required to support the skirmish game.” This move will make WotC’s D&D Miniatures releases purely accessories for the roleplaying game – which is apparently what most D&D gamers were using them for anyway.
Read More…
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Download free board game, kill your friends
It’s been a while since we’ve reported on an Invisible City Free Game of the Month, but that hasn’t stopped them from continuing to roll out. In case you haven’t been paying attention, you might want to check out this month’s offering in time for Halloween. In Haunted Destinies, an original tile-based board game, one player is secretly trying to wipe out the others in order to perform an evil ritual on the Scottish moors. It’s up to everyone else to prevent this, and thanks to a ghostly afterlife, even murdered players have a chance at victory…. If that’s not enough free horror for you, there’s also last month’s madness: a revised edition of Cthul-B-Que.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Fantasy Flight ends its distribution of Rackham lines
In case you missed it at the end of last week, Fantasy Flight announced it would no longer be handling distribution for Rackham. So far, no plan has been announced for handling the AT-43 and Confrontation product lines going forward, but retailers and gamers alike don’t seem to care much anymore – they’ve been burned by Rackham too many times already, with delays, price changes, and more delays. FFG may have been burned too many times as well. FFG will continue to fill orders of its backstock while they last.
D&D Miniatures becoming less random in 2009
Anyone watching the collectible games market over the past year has noticed a distinct trend toward reducing the randomness (note our lack of a Best Collectible Game in this year’s Ogre’s Choice Awards). Now, as has been speculated since the game’s inception, Wizards of the Coast plans to release some fixed sets and mostly-randomized sets for D&D Miniatures starting next year. According to an announcement yesterday on the WotC website (also copied below), the current format of fully randomized boosters will end after next month’s Demonweb expansion, and be replaced by lines of D&D Heroes and D&D Monsters. Each D&D Heroes pack will sell for $10.99, and contain 3 figures, all visible in the package, and 3 unique power cards with new class powers. The first D&D Heroes releases will be six different Player’s Handbook Heroes packs – “iconic player character races and classes described in the Player’s Handbook and Player’s Handbook 2 core rulebooks.” The D&D Monsters line will start with Monster Manual: Dangerous Delves. Starting at $14.99, D&D Monsters packs will offer 5 figures at a time – 1 visible and 4 others, plus stat cards – drawing from a 40 figure set. Both lines will launch Spring 2009. Currently, the lack of any stat card mentioned with the Heroes sets has D&D Miniatures skirmish game players worried WotC might not continue supporting those rules, but even if this is true, it would be a simple matter to post a free download to remedy the problem. Read the full announcement below for more details.
Read More…
Friday, October 17, 2008
OgreCave reviews – Malleus Monstrorum, and Tim
Continuing our Screams from the Cave event, Demian has provided us with a pair of game reviews for the discerning horror gamer. First, he tells us a bit about the massive Call of Cthulhu creature book Malleus Monstrorum from Chaosium. Then we get his thoughts on the Cthulhu-inspired CD The Shadow Out of Tim (no, that’s not a typo) by The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets. OgreCave will continue peering into the abyss throughout October, so keep checking back to see what seizes control of us next.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
First look: Monty Python Fluxx
We just received our copy of Monty Python Fluxx from Looney Labs today, and I had a quick look through the cards. Despite what I saw in a prototype deck at GTS ’08, it appears the card selection has been de-spammed – as in, no cards with the word “Spam” on them. The cards favor Monty Python and the Holy Grail over all other Pythonisms (with a few other references sneaking in), which isn’t a bad idea when trying to appeal to the gamer market. In addition to the Creeper mechanic from Zombie Fluxx (winner of Best Card Game in our 2008 Ogre’s Choice Awards), some of the cards seem to have dual purposes – certain situations that cause them to function differently, or allow them to be sacrificed for an effect. In all, just from this early glance at what Monty Python Fluxx has to offer, this may be another Keeper. (*ahem*) We’ll post a full review to our reviews section in the days ahead, once I’ve rallied some players.
Saturday, October 11, 2008
OgreCave reviews – Stunning Eldritch Tales
Okay, let’s get this show on the road: our Screams from the Cave event, highlighting goodies of fear and creepiness, starts off with Lee’s in-depth review of Stunning Eldritch Tales from Pelgrane Press. The collection of pulp horror adventures for Trail of Cthulhu gets high marks from Lee, and he gives us the skinny on why this supplement rocks so hard. We’ll be adding more screams to this year’s Screams from the Cave, including more reviews in the days ahead, so stay tuned.
Monday, October 6, 2008
True Dungeon going big, spreading to whole Realm
We’ve said all along that the convention event True Dungeon is a cool activity, but that it needs one thing to make it work: big conventions – without the hardcore gamer audience coming out to a convention ready to consume, the company’s profit model would crash. Well, next April, True Dungeon will hold its own convention of sorts, True Realm. Touted as a “gamer theme park that is open only two days a year”, True Realm will transform a 40,000 sq. ft. warehouse in Herrin, Illinois into multiple fantasy dungeons and a medieval city area. Tickets for the event go on sale October 18th, so anyone interested in living the dungeon-delving life for longer than a couple hours at Gen Con should visit the website and get the particulars.
Thursday, October 2, 2008
FATEsters and IPR-ists present… $3 PDFs of D&D content??
It’s true. A mix of principals from Evil Hat and IPR, plus an all-star cast, is doing a couple lines of PDF material for 4E (I thought we still didn’t get to do that? Shows you what I know). And, uh, the $3 figure is inexact; it’s a good-enough descriptor of the market segment, though, albeit perhaps too suggestive of the half-assed feat dumps and item lists that all too often sit at that price point. One Bad Egg’s PDF product looks to be well-done, well-packaged, and most importantly well-articulated – the hobby has been calling supplements with actual adventure content “modules” from the beginning, but they aren’t actually truly modular very often, unless you share their assumptions about the base world and context. The challenge of overcoming the expectation of this is all about marketing; the WorldSeeds line announces its modular intentions thoroughly enough that it doesn’t even really need to succeed at them 100% (adapting content to your game world isn’t that hard, is it?), although early indications are pretty positive (and ape PCs are cool).
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