Game designer S. John Ross recently posted two game design tidbits — more aimed at RPG evaluation than design, but applicable to either — that are just too good not to share. RRIP is — as I see it — a quick-and-dirty way to assess a game’s crunchiness, and the Videogame Rule is an axiom […]
Two handy S. John Ross game evaluation metrics Read More »
Thanks to a G+ post by Greg Gorgonmilk, I checked out the weird, colorful world of The Astralnauts over the weekend. Created by artists Alex Pardee and Matt Richie, the Astralnauts are a team of spacefaring ghost-hunters who track down extraterrestrial spooks. If you read that and immediately thought “campaign setting!” then I like the
The Astralnauts roam the galaxy hunting alien ghosts Read More »
I wrapped up my second 2016 Hugo Awards finalist novel, N.K. Jemisin‘s The Fifth Season (paid link), yesterday, and it was awesome. The Fifth Season is post-apocalyptic fantasy, which is unusual enough to pique my interest, but it’s doubly unusual: Its setting, The Stillness, experiences recurring apocalypses — Seasons — that can be decades or centuries
The Fifth Season’s recurrent apocalypse Read More »
I’m going to be playing Exemplars & Eidolons (paid link) next week, so I figured I’d better pick up a copy. Because Kevin Crawford is a mensch, it’s free in PDF and cheap in POD. In a nutshell, it’s designed to mash up godlike heroes and old-school D&D adventures. Grab a D&D module, read a
Exemplars & Eidolons: an OSR Swiss Army Knife Read More »
Yesterday I was thinking about Kickstarter and how happy I am with some of the stuff that’s come in the mail this year, and I realized I should revisit a post I made on Google+ back in January — one that prompted some great discussion — and see if it still applied. It does, so
5 years, 82 projects: My Kickstarter sniff test Read More »
I don’t usually buy single issues of comics (I much prefer TPBs), but I backed Paradox Girl on Kickstarter because it looked like a lot of fun, and I wanted to support its creators. It delivered on time, and I finished reading all three issues over the weekend. It’s every bit as fun as I’d
Paradox Girl is a hoot Read More »
I’ve had the pleasure of playing two sessions of Ian Williams‘ Action Movie World (paid link), and this game fucking delivers on every front. It’s designed to play like a cheesy action movie made from the mid-1970s through the mid-1990s, and it does exactly what it says on the tin. The two movies we’ve played were
Action Movie World delivers Read More »
My booty from the Rippers Resurrected Kickstarter came in on Tuesday, and I’ve had a chance to spend a bit of time with all three books. As is so often the case, my first thought was, “How well would Rippers work as a sandbox?” All of the ingredients are there, and the hook is so
The ripperbox: Rippers Resurrected as a sandbox campaign Read More »
I’ve never heard of a solitaire LARP before, but that’s exactly what Caitlynn Belle‘s mr. gracie used to live here offers up. What a neat idea! There’s a twist, too — and it sounds creepy as hell. Based on the game’s introduction (“don’t read ahead”), and the excellent — spoiler-free — RPGGeek review that led
mr. gracie used to live here: a solitaire LARP Read More »
On Saturday night, the kiddo and I slept aboard the Arthur Foss, an 1889 tugboat moored on Seattle’s Lake Union. We shared a tiny cabin, toured the ship, and had an absolutely marvelous time. It’s a deceptively large ship — at least as much of it is below the waterline as above it. It weighs
