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Wednesday,arch 17, 2010
Spycraft Third Edition announced for 2011
Crafty Games, having just gone rogue from Mongoose’s Flaming Cobra imprint and moving to Studio2, is planning several new releases over the coming months. Primary among the company’s announced projects is Spycraft: Third Edition, due Spring 2011. According to Crafty Games’ Patrick Kapera, “Updating Spycraft gives us the chance not only to synchronize rules across all our core games but also lets us bring the focus of the Spycraft brand back to espionage.” The new edition will make use of the Mastercraft system, and allow for increased customization and gamemaster tools. See the full press release below for more details.
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Tuesday, February 16, 2010
DunDraCon 34: Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG in development
Though Goodman Games hasn’t announced it yet, and Joseph Goodman’s only given vague hints of “something fun in the works”, a few of us at DunDraCon 34 this past weekend got a taste of this secret RPG project. Goodman was playtesting an early version of the Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG, which was exactly what fans of the DCC adventures would imagine – a streamlined, deadly, 1st Edition D&D throwback with some D&D 3.5e influences. As already mentioned, no release date or details have been announced as yet, but I’d wager we may see it in stores early 2011, possibly sooner. In the session I joined, character building took less than five minutes, and cast each of us as not one, not two, but three 0-level peasants out to strike it rich as glamorous adventurers. You can probably guess why we made so many characters – yes, the mortality rate caused comparisons to a session of Paranoia, but we had some truly horrible luck as well. We’ll talk more about my preview of the Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG in the OgreCave Audio Report (which the Ogre shamans are casting resurrection on as I write this) sometime next week.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Kobold Quarterly offers free issue download
The crew at Kobold Quarterly just let us know about the special offer they launched today. From now through January 31, gamers can go to the KQ Store and use the coupon code “KQ10Free” to download a free PDF copy of Kobold Quarterly #10. Released just prior to Gen Con ‘09, KQ #10 features an interview with Paizo’s Jason Bulmahn, an Ecology of the Hill Giant article, and contributions from John Wick, Monte Cook, Ed Greenwood, and more. If your download doesn’t work – the kobolds tell me their website’s already getting slammed by demand – send ‘em an email, and they’ll sort it out for you. In any case, don’t pass up the opportunity for a free taste of what the industry needs more of: a great gaming magazine.
Friday, December 11, 2009
OgreCave’s Christmas Gift Guide 2009, part 2
Another weekend of holiday shopping is here, and you’ve probably formed some ideas of the larger-cost items you’ll be picking up (or requesting from others). In case your mind’s not quite made up yet, the OgreCave Christmas Gift Guide 2009 continues with its second section, Twelve Days of Roleplaying. This list of gift suggestions is entirely RPG related, and the Cave dwellers have chosen a range of roleplaying goodies that would make great gifts.
Our board game list will be up shortly (work and sickness have caused delays), followed by our traditionally last-minute downloadable product list. So listen closely each night – those bells might be a jolly Ogre… or more likely, an Ogre stepping some other jolly critter.
Monday, October 5, 2009
OgreCave review – Points of Light II
Gamemasters can never have too much inspiring resource material, and Gerald has selected a potential resource to examine for us. His thoughts on Points of Light II: The Sunrise Sea may tell you whether you need to track down a copy of this fantasy setting sourcebook for yourself… or for your DM, perhaps.
Monday, August 3, 2009
Pathfinder RPG sells out in preorders
As expected, the demand for the upcoming Pathfinder RPG is high – even higher than Paizo Publishing may have anticipated. According to a press release Paizo sent out today (see below), the initial print run of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook is sold out through distribution. The 576-page RPG will be on sale at Gen Con ten days from now, but even at $49.99, news of its preorder blow-out is sure to drive brisk sales at the show. Of course, those who don’t mind electronic files can still grab the $9.99 PDF version at paizo.com, but purists who need the physical product should act fast and find a copy at their local stores, or risk waiting for the reprint around November.
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Thursday, July 2, 2009
Paizo celebrates number 7
It can’t be seven years already, can it? Paizo Publishing is holding a little celebration sale in honor of the company’s seventh anniversary: seven products are on sale for seven days at $7 apiece – the 7-7-7 sale. The Harrow Deck, our selection for Best Accessory in last year’s Ogre’s Choice Awards, is among the discounted products, as are some Pathfinder and Game Mastery materials and The Anubis Murders by the late Gary Gygax. Paizo’s sale ends on the 7th, so your time to strike is now.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
2009 Origins Award winners
We’ve known the nominees for a while now, and resisted judging too harshly for having a t-shirt in the “Game Accessory” category. This year’s winners were awarded in a ceremony overseen by James Ernest last night at Origins. A notable winner was the Mouseguard RPG for Best RPG, despite being up against the Dungeons & Dragons Fourth Edition Player’s Handbook and Trail of Cthulhu. (I could say it “eeked” out a win, but then I’d feel ashamed.) Serenity Adventures won for Best RPG Supplement, and Magic: The Gathering – Shards of Alara was named Best CCG Supplement. As many expected, Dominion took the title as Best Card Game, while Pandemic got he nod as Best Board Game. Click below for the full list of nominees and winners.
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Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Dave Arneson passes away at 61
Though some sites posted news of this prematurely, it is now confirmed: Dave Arneson, co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons, passed away today after a long battle with cancer. Arneson was the creator of Blackmoor, a game of medieval miniatures exploring creature-filled dungeons, which had profound influence on the original D&D game, and later became a D&D setting. Ever since a series of lawsuits he filed against Gary Gygax and TSR back in the early ’80s, Arneson was given royalties and proper credit as a “co-creator” of D&D.
I met Dave Arneson when he was part of a panel on game design at DragonCon in 2000, while he was working at Full Sail University as a professor of computer game design. Dave was a fun guy with a big heart. Our thoughts are with his family.
Thanks for everything, Dave.
Friday, March 6, 2009
Paizo releases Pathfinder Compatibility License
Hear that? It’s the call to battle between editions of Dungeons & Dragons, and Paizo Publishing has sounded the horn. Late yesterday, Paizo released a pair of licenses: the Pathfinder Compatibility License and the Paizo Community Use Policy. As the press release states, and as you probably guessed, the Pathfinder Compatibility License is Paizo’s version of the d20 License – it will let established and aspiring publishers alike sell game products for use with the upcoming Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. The Paizo Community Use Policy will allow non-commercial users (read: fans) to create and share Pathfinder compatible material. Paizo will maintain a link registry for all community use content. Yeah, this relatively civil war is so on.
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Goodman Games sounds last call for 3.5
Goodman Games has reminded us that the end of the year, December 31, is also the end of their 3.5 product sales. If you want any of those Dungeon Crawl Classics that you’re missing, you have two weeks left to get them direct from the source – in print at 50% off, or PDF for $2 each. Grab ‘em while you can, ’cause no one wants to hear your whining later.
Monday, December 1, 2008
State of the Mongoose 2008 report posted
Still a significant publisher in tabletop gaming, Mongoose Publishing has just given its fans a status update in the form of its annual State of the Mongoose report (also copied below). Points of interest include plans for Hammers Slammers, a full color Traveller-powered game based on David Drake’s classic sci-fi series; a 25th Anniversary edition of Paranoia; the end of the Babylon 5 line and license; new supplements for Wraith Recon; a multiplayer Lone Wolf gamebook; and plenty more. Add in an overview of what Mongoose went through in its (ultimately failed) attempt to set up its own printing facility, and I’d say the current state of the Mongoose is “surly and determined”.
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Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Paizo looking for another RPG Superstar
Now in its second year, Paizo Publishing is firing up its RPG Superstar contest again. Last time, the multi-round contest asked budding game authors to submit progressively longer and more elaborate RPG projects, eventually whittling 32 selected entrants down to a final four and their competing adventure proposals. Starting on December 5th (which is the Day of the Ninja – more on that soon), aspiring RPG designers can send in their RPG Superstar submission and vie for the title. In the first round, that entry should be a wondrous item, described in 200 words or less, designed for use with the Pathfinder RPG. Judges Wolfgang Baur of Kobold Quarterly, Necromancer Games co-owner Clark Peterson, and Paizo’s Sean K Reynolds will oversee the proceedings, along with special guest judge appearances by Ed Greenwood and Monte Cook. The full press release below has the details.
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Monday, November 17, 2008
Piñata Games wants to be filled with HeroClix
Its website is little more than a placeholder so far, but Piñata Games intends to be the new owner of HeroClix. As one of the most notable game lines left up in the air by Topps deciding to close WizKids, it was only a matter of time before someone made a play for it. Founded by two WizKids employees, Brand Manager Jake Theis and Director of Brand Management and Marketing Justin Ziran, Piñata is working on getting the rights to HeroClix, using sites like SaveHeroClix.com to rally the gaming community. We’ll have more as it develops. [UPDATE: Catalyst Game Labs has approached Topps as well. Full story over here]
Friday, November 7, 2008
OgreCave interview – Stan!
You’ve seen his name floating around the industry for years now, at companies like TSR and Wizards of the Coast, to recent ventures like The Game Mechanics and Super Genius Games, and even in Kobold Quarterly – the man, the myth, the Stan! From Star Wars and Ravenloft to d20 Modern and Call of Cthulhu, Stan! gets around. We’ve posed a few questions to the man-of-one-name to learn of his work, his play, and whether he’s a game designer or a cartoonist at heart.
Friday, October 24, 2008
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.
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Wednesday, October 22, 2008
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.
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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).
Saturday, September 27, 2008
Audio Report: Ogre’s Choice 2008, and prizes!
It’s time once again – okay, fine, it’s a bit overdue – for our annual Ogre’s Choice Awards show, wherein all the Cave Dwellers have contributed to the final award nominee and winner selections. Mike, Steve, and I discuss what we liked this past year, which you can read along with on our Ogre’s Choice page. Be sure to listen carefully, and you’ll be rewarded with the details on the Secret Code Contest we’ve put together with the help of four other friendly neighborhood podcasters. Yes, you can win stuff! Click on our new podcast logo, or right here, to peruse the episode index.
Friday, September 12, 2008
Fourth Edition GSL revision still “weeks off”
Links to this Gleemax post, by Dungeons & Dragons Senior Brand Manager Scott Rouse, are currently floating all over the web, wherein Rouse asserts that the 4e GSL revision promised a month ago “has not been shelved”. Rouse stated that “The draft is done. The changes are approved and it just needs to get pushed to a final document.” He mentioned that other work will be required before the GSL can be released back into the wild, such as clarifications of the SRD and FAQ, plus a “statement of rejection” form to allow third party publishers to opt out of the license when it gets revised. After mentioning another WotC employee, Licensing Manager Linnae Foster, who would’ve been helping with the GSL had she not been laid off, Rouse ended by saying “this is still weeks off being done.” Someone get a pool going on this – I’ll take the first day of Winter Fantasy.
Monday, September 8, 2008
Order of the Stick rolls out rumble at Azure City
Order of the Stick fans should already know (or even have a preorder or Gen Con copy in-hand) but in case you missed it, there’s news. The third compliation book (and fourth book overall) of Rich Burlew’s popular online comic strip, titled Order of the Stick: War and XPs, has shipped to stores, and is also available directly from APE Games. The 288-page book covers strips #302-484, as well as over 15 bonus strips and extra features. So, in a few days, you’ll have no excuse not to pick up your copy – other than the resulting “wallet shrinkage”. (aw! So cute!)
Thursday, September 4, 2008
Paizo to publish Book of Experimental Might compilation
Again with the smart moves: Paizo Publishing has plans to release a print version of Monte Cook’s Book of Experimental Might before the end of this year, according to a post today from the man himself. Previously only in print through Lulu’s POD, the new edition will combine BoEM volumes 1 and 2 into one book for sale at game stores everywhere. That’s right, Paizo’s actively supporting the products that will in turn end up complementing and supporting the Pathfinder RPG – or at least making more fans in the D&D 3.5 community.
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
WotC amends D&D4 GSL in soon-to-be-specified ways
One of the big complaints about the Game System License for D&D 4 has been the clause that says they can change it without notification; well, apparently they have every intention of at least getting word to people who read the web, and here’s us doing our part. Changes to the GSL, as yet unspecified but relating to third-party publisher feedback and fan-site policy, will be announced in the “very near future,” which presumably means a Gen Con announcement event (and its attendant website meltdown). One wonders if the fan-site-related aspects were necessitated by the suspension of development work on Gleemax, which was vaguely posited at one point as the intended home for fan-contributed material. (Like they could ever stuff that genie back in the bottle.)
Friday, July 18, 2008
OgreCave Reviews: D&D 4e Player’s Handbook
Lee has been hacking and slashing his way through Dungeons & Dragons Fourth Edition, and after much consideration, has provided us with his take on the 4e Player’s Handbook. Prepare yourself – the thorough review lays it all out for you, but provides insight into what may either frustrate or delight you about the game’s latest incarnation. Have a read, or peruse our other reviews at your leisure.
Monday, May 12, 2008
Monte Cook to help with Pathfinder RPG
The title pretty much says it all – Monte Cook, possibly the most respected name in the d20 System industry, will be lending his advice and developmental assistance to Paizo Publishing’s Pathfinder RPG as a Rules Consultant. Now technically, Cook is going back on his decision to retire from the RPG field by signing on to help with Pathfinder, but I doubt anyone will mind. Paizo and Malhavoc Press, Cook’s d20 company, have worked together in the past, so it seems logical they’d come together for something as potentially-major as the next “bedrock for the Open Game movement” (as Erik Mona of Paizo put it in our recent Audio Report interview). Click through to the full announcement, which makes it sound like Cook has been involved for a while now.
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