Marvelous Phile: Darkness in Marvel Super Heroes RPG
Hey, guys, Professor Bill of Comic Book University (where tuition is always free) and I’m bringing you the fourth article of the Marvelous Phile, an homage to the excerpt in Dragon Magazine back in the ’80s.
Marvelous Phile: Fire and Flame in Marvel Super Heroes RPG
Hey, guys, Professor Bill of Comic Book University (where tuition is always free) and I’m bringing you the third article of the Marvelous Phile, an homage to the excerpt in Dragon Magazine back in the ’80s.
Marvelous Phile: Marvel Super Heroes RPG Game Mechanics and Using Karma
Hey, guys, Professor Bill of Comic Book University (where tuition is always free) and I’m bringing you the second article of the Marvelous Phile, an homage to the excerpt in Dragon Magazine back in the 80’s.
Mists of Ravenloft Engulf D&D Online
Mark your calendar for Dec. 5, 2017 and stock up on garlic and wooden stakes – Dungeons & Dragons Online delves into darkness with the Mists of Ravenloft expansion release! Featuring 12 new quests, a new raid, new wilderness area, two new public areas, a brand new saga and more, Mists of Ravenloft has been a long-rumored addition to DDO players will finally be able to enjoy…if they dare.
Count Strahd von Zarovich casts his shadow over the lands of Barovia from Castle Ravenloft. Are you brave enough to face him?
Marvelous Phile: Marvel Super Heroes RPG Live Game Play Chat is Good Karma
Hey, guys, Professor Bill here and it’s time to start off the Marvel Super Heroes Roleplaying Game the right way by revamping the old Marvel Philes that used to run out of Dragon Magazine. We’re going to call this the Marvelous Phile (to avoid copyright).
So let’s talk chat participation (because my editor, Doug, is the boss and he promised torture if I didn’t obey. (Do you think he reads these?) [EDITOR’S NOTE: Yes, Prof. He does ;)]
Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realms is Free to Play Dungeons and Dragons in Early Access on Steam and it’s Awesome
Salutations, nerds! And good news for fans of idle games like Cookie Clicker and AdventureQuest Dragons. Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realms is a Dungeons and Dragons game in early access on Steam right now, free to play, and I have to say it’s exactly what I needed.
It’s an idle game, and if you’re not already aware of what that means I’ll give you the run down: you don’t have to do a whole lot for the game to do what it does. You click a couple of times and get it started and then watch the numbers go up and get ridiculously high as the story progresses and in this case, as your heroes do more damage.
Chartopia, Part 4: Rollable lists
Unique results with Chartopia lists, tables and charts
Any of these and more sewer encounters could take place in a setting just like this. [Art by Alexlinde from deviantart.com]
[they mistakenly believe you’re hostile/cultists/etc; they attack because they think you’re after the same treasure they’re searching for; they’ve been hired by an enemy to kill the party]
So what else can you do with a rollable list?
Chartopia talks random tables and RPG charts with Nerdarchy
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBm_bmFBsUQ&w=560&h=315]
A hallmark of roleplaying games, charts and tables are woven into the fabric of Dungeons & Dragons and every other tabletop RPG. They’re a way to inject spontaneity and randomness into adventures. Thanks to diligent work by Scott Beccard and Glenn McCord in developing Chartopia, GMs have a quick and easy way to create and access charts for anything they can imagine.
‘Dice, Camera, Action’ never waffles on D&D fun
How can your game go wrong when the lead story designer for the team behind creating Dungeons & Dragons runs the campaign? In “Dice, Camera, Action,” Wizards of the Coast’s Chris Perkins leads a core party of adventurers along with several guest players through a live streaming season of the official published campaign Curse of Strahd in season one. The second season continues the party’s adventures with Storm King’s Thunder.
The TitansGrave role-playing game show is a top-notch production
Returning readers might make me eat crow for the RPG encounter planned for this session. D&D is hiding in shadows and moving silently this week while the Fantasy Adventure Game Engine sets the stage for Geek & Sundry’s TitansGrave: The Ashes of Valkana. There is a huge variety of live streamed and recorded RPG play sessions out there. The merits, value and impact are debatable among many, but not me – I enjoy them as entertainment and believe they add value to the hobby. For those reasons, I’m taking a closer look at my favorite programs and sharing not only what makes each program fun to watch, but what gamers can take away and bring back to their gaming tables.
The C Team innovates live streaming roleplaying games
As promised last week, I’ll be taking a closer look at the myriad online roleplaying game programs that I enjoy to offer some reviews and analysis as well as any tips or pitfalls therein. The criteria for me as a gamer, fan, audience member and for the purposes of this series are the entertainment value and the takeaways I can bring back to my own game group.
Most of these shows (okay, all of them on my initial list) are Dungeons & Dragons games. In keeping with that spirit, I’ll rate where each program has a Success or Failure along with where it scores a Critical Hit or a Critical Fail, and wrap up with a Perception Check for miscellaneous observations and standouts as a viewer.
The art of collaborative adventure design
Taking a break from the usual musings on nurturing a tabletop gaming habit amidst the time demands of busy adult lives, this week I’d like to share some insider thoughts on a Nerdarchy project I’m involved with. “Floshar’s Fate” (title subject to change) is a free Dungeons & Dragons 5E one-shot adventure in the works from several Nerdarchy writers in honor of Geek & Sunday’s International Tabletop Day 2017 on April 29. Don’t worry – there’s no spoilers here, so whether you’re a DM looking forward to running this adventure or a player hoping to experience it at your table, there’s no secrets or details here that will sully it for you.
Free fiction from Ty Johnston
As some of you might know, after 20 years as a newspaper journalist, nowadays I make my living as a fiction writer, mostly in fantasy and horror though I occasionally dip into other genres. Over the last decade or so some of my short stories have become available to read on one website or another, and a number of my shorter e-books are currently free to read. For those who might be interested, I thought I would provide a brief guide along with links to the stories or e-books.
Concerning the e-books, where available I will provide a link to the Amazon page for those of you with a Kindle or who use a Kindle app, but I will also provide a link to a site called Smashwords where you can download the free e-book in whatever format you desire.
Let’s get going.
Free e-books from Ty Johnston
Mage Hunter: Episode 1: Blooded Snow
A hunt for raiding barbarians turns upon the hunters. But far worse is to come for the sleepy villages of northern Ursia and the soldiers who protect the villagers. The Dartague barbarians have had enough of the Ursians encroaching upon their mountainous borders, and the raids are but a feint to draw out soldiers while a much larger attack is in the works. His squad mates slain, Sergeant Guthrie Hackett finds himself alone in the winter wilderness on the border between his homeland and the nation of barbarians. He discovers the Dartague have a new leader, a wyrd woman who is behind the border assault. Worse yet for the sergeant, he has fallen under the attention of an ice witch, an inhuman creature with secret goals of her own. Seeking to survive, Hackett tries to make it back to his own countrymen, only to find there is relatively little safety for him anywhere in the northern regions.
This e-book is serial fiction, the first in a five-part series that tells the tale of Guthrie Hackett and how he comes to learn a few things about himself while trying to survive an approaching war with outlanders.
Review: Challenger, a free role-playing game
The cover of the Challenger RPG.
In the early days of tabletop role-playing games, mainly meaning the early days of Dungeons & Dragons, there was a certain amateur charm and excitement to the products. The artwork was decent, but not quite up to professional levels. The writing was personal, not full of corporate speak, with the occasional error. Even the rules were somewhat questionable, fairly simple but not always making sense.
The Challenger free role-playing game reminds of those days.
Obviously an amateur work, though a work of love, the Challenger game is written as if one of your gaming buddies was sitting across a table from you while excitedly telling you about his or her latest creation. The rules are simple, especially by modern standards, but they still seem to get the job done. The focus is upon rolling fewer dice so the role-playing aspects of the game can shine through, all while working hard to present a
