» Roleplaying Games
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Grey Ranks and Wolfgang Baur’s Open Design project tie for Diana Jones Award
MAKE THEM FIGHT FOR IT
Read all about it at Baur’s LJ. Diana Jones Award info here.
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.)
Thursday, July 31, 2008
A passing thought about RPG systems and conversion
So, my sleeping shadow army, riddle me this: how might one go about designing an RPG system that wasn’t necessarily meant to be played in and of itself, but was designed instead for easy and consistent conversion to any reasonably traditional RPG system?
I don’t even know if there’s any good writing out there on the main concerns, generically speaking, in doing conversions. So throw us a link if you’ve got one.
Reaper puts the lead back in leads
Not in all of them, granted - just the new P-65 Heavy Metal miniatures line. Apparently, real, honest-to-Orcus lead is perfectly legal in miniatures! That tidbit and a bunch of fascinating other ones are available on the linked FAQ. Kudos to Reaper for finding a way to turn economic necessity (the newly high cost of tin solder) into an excuse to take it back to the old school, a marketing move that core gamers always love.
Saturday, July 26, 2008
Hârn creator passes away
A few days ago, the man who created the highly-detailed fantasy world of Hârn, N. Robin Crossby, passed away after a two year battle with cancer. Yesterday, Tom Dalgliesh of Columbia Games, the original publisher of Hârn, issued a statement (below) that highlights the importance of Crossby’s influence on the RPG setting. Crossby had been continuing to expand Hârn through Kelestia Publications. OgreCave wishes his family the best, and asks the world in general, “Can we stop losing great tabletop gaming names now, please?”
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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.
Sunday, July 6, 2008
Yay, we’re all insiders! Or something
Dragon #364 is, for the moment at least, a free download. You do have to log in if you want to read articles as plain HTML, plus the links will go for-pay eventually, or else I’d link you straight to top-billed DMG author James Wyatt’s commentary on the design of that book, or the “Class Acts” article that adds two pages of the interesting wizardy stuff that should have been in the PHB. (Did y’all really need those two pages for something else that badly, WotC?) Oh, and the searchable rules database (aka D&D Compendium) is also free, for now. I wonder if taking these back behind a paywall eventually is gonna really backfire on Wizards - we have a bit of talk on that subject in the next Audio Report, but… yeah.
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Today’s RPG Zen koan, with oregano on the side
“If geeks talked about cookbooks the way they talk about RPG books.” The question, grasshopper: if this makes you laugh instead of cry, have you been spending too much time on RPG forum sites, or too little?
Friday, June 6, 2008
D&D 4th Edition ships without the thing everyone thinks it is
Well, okay, what everyone seemed to think it would be, back when 4E was first announced with all the tantalizing screenshots and online play noise. I guess we can give WotC PR due credit for successfully reassuring the world that D&D would, in fact, continue to be playable on un-augmented, analog tabletops… of course, it helps that the online playtable still doesn’t exist. Nor any of the other D&D Insider components besides the online Dragon & Dungeon magazines. D&D Insider News has this to say on its scheduling, and nothing more: “In April, the creators of the 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game traveled to various cities across the United States to meet with reporters, talk about the new game, and unveil the suite of online tools that will be available to D&D Insider subscribers later this year.” (Emphasis mine.) Hate to say it, but my Master Tools sense is tingling. To be fair, I’m looking around for past promises that the playtable would be ready for 4E’s release and I can’t actually find one right now (help would be appreciated - by me, not WotC, I’m sure), but this strengthens my conviction that the main flaw in the playtable plan is they got too ambitious. A 2D product would likely have shipped quicker and cheaper, and wouldn’t have introduced as much OMG-it’s-a-video-game confusion early on.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Wizards to attend Gen Con Indy 2008
The question on everyone’s mind, and making many folks nervous lately - will Wizards of the Coast attend Gen Con 2008 - has been answered, finally, with a resounding “yes”. As gamers and industry members hoped, the details seem to have been sorted out, and Wizards will indeed attend, and be a co-sponsor of, Gen Con’s 41st year this August. The press release (below) mentions that WotC will be “celebrating the newly released D&D 4th Edition by debuting the new Living Forgotten Realms campaign”, as well as enjoying the 20th anniversary of R.A. Salvatore’s Drizzt stories. Now the question becomes, once the WotC events are finally posted for prereg (they’re promised later this week), will they fill instantly, or just crash the website entirely? Either way, this is great news for the show that hasn’t had much to smile about for a while. Update: the Gen Con schedule will be updated tomorrow. See the comments below for details. - ed
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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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Thursday, April 24, 2008
Seen and heard at GAMA Trade Show 2008
Since I’m borrowing a machine yet again – man, I need a laptop – I’ll give you a quick braindump of things seen and heard at the GAMA Trade Show ’08 this year. I’ll post more when I can sit down longer, and we’ll discuss everything in detail next time we record an Audio Report episode.
Many of the show’s exhibitors and attendees missed the show schedule addendum, which explained room costs had been negotiated lower for next year (yay!) by agreeing to hold both 2009 and 2010 starting on and during the week immediately following Easter Sunday (What?!?). Nearly everyone I spoke with thought the move was beyond a bad idea – doesn’t anyone remember the final nail in Gen Con UK’s coffin a couple years ago? Reportedly, GAMA is now rapidly backpedaling on this announcement.
Now on to the games:
- James Ernest and Mike Selinker have their fingerprints all over the show this year. Steve Jackson Games is bringing out Lord of the Fries: Third Edition, a boxed version which has a minor rules tweak and a new menu. Paizo Publishing was showing off a new version of Falling featuring the popular goblins from Pathfinder products. Paizo also plans a card game called Yetisburg, a comedic historical-ish design for two players by Mike Selinker and Joshua Frost, and yes, it has yetis wearing Civil War uniforms. Duncan Toys is working on finalizing Warball, another Selinker design. Not the game you played during PE in grade school, it’s a cross between Marbles and a CCG, with metal miniatures cast inside certain rare marbles. There’s at least two other Ernest and/or Selinker titles I’m forgetting, too.
- Yes, Upper Deck’s World of Warcraft CMG looks outstanding. Especially the dragon. My players had better watch their backs, as I’ll be springing some of these goodies on them eventually.
- Looney Labs will have Monty Python Fluxx this fall. Yes, it will use Creeper cards - including a lot of spam. Done deal.
- Twilight Creations, the Zombies!!! folks, will bring us Humans!!! in July. The game will be playable alone or in combination with Zombies!!, which should be sweet.
- Steve Jackson Games should have the Munchkin boardgame ready by Origins. Though I’m not a Munchkin fan, I’m cautiously optimistic.
- Privateer Press’ Monsterpocalypse looks great, nearly ready for its fall release – two big monster figures and their powered-up versions, multiple buildings and support units, all in each collectible one player starter for $29.99. Kinda wish they were two player starters, but the game’s enjoyable enough that I might buy in anyway.
- Fantasy Flight, quite possibly the show’s MVP, was showing off all sorts of lovely figures from Dust Tactics, while giving away starter sets of the Mutant Chronicles CMG - frighteningly gorgeous figures. Amidst other announcements, the company has plans for both a Battlestar Galactica boardgame and a Gears of War boardgame. The Anima RPG is finally due out this summer, after being delayed again to catch up with Spain, which just released the game’s second edition. As predicted, Talisman: Fourth Edition will be designed to receive expansion sets, which may not be a bad thing – after all, the game’s best version, Talisman: Second Edition, had plenty of expansion sets.
- This fall, Flying Frog Productions will release A Touch of Evil, a boardgame with the same style as Last Night on Earth, that can be played competitively or cooperatively. An original CD soundtrack will come with the game, and the supernatural beast is randomly determined each session.
- Yes, Valley Games had a pre-production version of Titan. Production value on this one is great, and will have some added reference charts to speed gameplay.
- Margaret Weis Productions, Ltd has scheduled three books each for Serenity and Battlestar Galactica. Serenity Adventures comes in June, followed in August by Six Shooters & Spaceships, and the Big Damn Heroes Handbook in September. BSG fans will get Colonial Military in September, Ships of the Fleet in November, and Battlestar Galactica Adventures in January ’09. A new Tom Wham boardgame, Dragon Lairds, arrives next month, and the Demon Hunters RPG, based on the film by Dead Gentlemen Productions, will ship any day now.
- D&D 4e is here. But since we all knew it would be, even Wizards of the Coast doesn’t seem to be making a big production out of it. Odd, that.
I’ll get more posted when I can, though at this rate, it may have to wait until after the trip home.
Monday, April 21, 2008
Long review, average-length Audio Report
First, if it escaped your attention, Lee Valentine has an exhaustively thorough look at Ken Hite’s new Trail of Cthulhu RPG. If you’ve got questions about whether this latest complete game on the Mythos is the one for you, Lee probably has answers.
Second, our post-DunDraCon podcast is finally ready for your ears. Enjoy, and post your comments.
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Because you weren’t confused enough: WotC modifies the D&D 4 license deal
Announcement. The upshot as far as I can tell is that the SRD will now be free, to someone anyway, and the go date for publishing 4E GSL-licensed material will be October, not January 2009 or whatever it was. That is, the associated SRD will be free for download on 6/6, and a few hand-picked folks are getting it early. And guess what: something called a D20 license (in this case, a D20 GSL) will be coming back, for the benefit of third parties who’d like to do non-fantasy material. Still no word, from what I can tell, on what either GSL’s terms actually are.
Sunday, April 13, 2008
Traveller previews done, game imminent
The final preview of the new Traveller rulebook is up at Mongoose Publishing’s website, giving fans an early peek at a Scout ship. Despite the company’s aborted attempt at an in-house printing facility, the new edition arrives at the end of the month, so it’s almost time to try out the latest incarnation of the RPG that has had more versions than any other (by my unofficial count, at least). Due to the line on the Character Generation Checklist that prompts players to “Roll for survival on this career”, it sounds like Mongoose was trying for the spirit of the original character creation process, wherein a character could die before ever being played (which seems ridiculous when you first hear it, but not everyone has a happy backstory, ya know?). Mongoose promises to employ the Traveller system to power updates of titles that include Judge Dredd, Strontium Dog, and Starship Troopers, so fans of those lines may want to get onboard for this month’s release as well. We’ll soon see how well the new version is received, and whether third party support will rally - either under its OGL or more defined Traveller Logo license.
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
April Fool’s Day at Wizards
Normally, I wouldn’t comment on the April Fool’s Day wackiness - other than to say “duck and cover”, perhaps - but Wizards of the Coast managed to be fairly amusing with this year’s round of pranks. The day’s wackiness has been archived, but be sure to check out the mock 4E character sheet preview, where alignment has one checkbox each for Autobot or Decepticon. It doesn’t get any geekier than that.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Paizo using Pathfinder RPG to stick with 3.5
Paizo Publishing, former publisher of Dragon and Dungeon and the company behind the Pathfinder d20 product line, announced today its plan to produce the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, due to release August 2009. Perhaps more significant was the company’s decision to stick with the D&D 3.5 ruleset as its foundation. Paizo intends for the game to be “designed with backward compatibility as one of its primary goals, so players will continue to enjoy their lifelong fantasy gaming hobby without invalidating their entire game library.” This move could be designed to help Paizo absorb any D&D fans who end up dissatisfied with 4th Edition once it arrives, and additional thunder-stealing is on the horizon - Paizo already has a free 65-page preview PDF available, and plans to release a full-color softcover Pathfinder RPG Beta release book this August for $24.99.
Multiple announcements accompanied the press release (below), including a statement from Paizo CEO Lisa Stevens. Stevens elaborated on the decision to stick with 3.5: “After careful evaluation of our options, we believe that the 3.5 core will continue to be the best system to tell the stories we’ve got planned for Pathfinder. [...] We’re sure that lots of roleplayers are going to be thrilled with Wizards of the Coast’s upcoming 4th Edition, and we’re also looking forward to the 4th Edition products that our partner Necromancer Games will be creating. Paizo may also publish 4th Edition products in the future, but if we do, they won’t cross over with our Pathfinder products.”
Paizo publisher Erik Mona cut right to the heart of the matter in his statement: “Basing the Pathfinder RPG on 3.5 also allows Paizo more control over our destiny than simply following along with the latest edition and the newest licensing changes.” Beyond merely taking control of its ruleset, Paizo may be establishing an in-print system that other publishers can adapt for their needs. Interesting developments in the D&D upgrade shake-out, to be sure.
[UPDATE: A follow-up press release, added here, states the free Pathfinder Alpha PDF has already been downloaded 10,000 times]
Saturday, March 15, 2008
Audio Report - Them’s heretical words!
Round two of today’s catch-up episodes, this early February show muses on the future of the Dark Heresy RPG (which became clearer soon after show time), upcoming con season, the WoW CMG, and more. Mike also gives us a primer on Vincent Baker’s latest game, In a Wicked Age, and we’ve all been keeping busy playing things. Again, thanks to everyone who emailed asking when we’d be back - the answer is, now.
A periodic hour of awesome with editors Allan and Mike. Subscribe!
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