At high levels in dnd and Pathfinder and similar games, combat takes literal hours to get through. If you only play for a few hours at a time, then there are some game sessions that you're not playing a roleplaying game, but a wargame. You may be roleplaying in the sense that you are using your char...
Me and my players used to wonder about why numbers get so big in Pathfinder. Any Pathfinder player knows that rolls of 35 and 45 aren't uncommon at high levels. It's tempting to fall into the assumption that any big number is the same as a small number once you've found the lowest common denominator...
I was excited about Kobold Press's Labyrinth release. I thought that if anybody was going to come up with a compelling alternative to Planescape, it would be Kobold Press. I was, and still am, intrigued by some of the concepts from Labyrinth Worldbook, but ultimately I felt that it was oddly dis...
The Call of Cthulhu scenarios I've been running have all been one-shots because I've basically been mimicking the Mansions of Madness board game, or using short adventures I find online. It's been working well because my gaming groups are all currently locked into Pathfinder or Tales of the V...
This is my final review of my read-through of the Armageddon Crusade book for Warhammer 40,000. For me, it's kinda useless to write a "review" of something I've not experienced in a game, but I think the Armageddon rules are worth looking at, even if only academically (until I try them, as in...
The third chapter in the Armageddon Crusade book is Assault on the Fire Wastes. It's about the assault on the Fire Wastes (no surprise there), and marks the end of the Third Armageddon war. This is my review of the chapter and, because this is the final lore chapter, of the narrative portion of...
In the previous chapter of Amageddon Crusade: The Red Angel's Gate, we were introduced to the major players of the latest in a history of conflict on the planet of Armageddon. The greatest threat of all, it seemed, was the Red Angel's Gate, a hole in reality and blatant invitation for the arrival...
I bought Crusade: Armageddon for Warhammer 40,000 10th edition. Having finally finished my Pariah Nexus campaign, I'm reading Armageddon chapter by chapter. This is my review of the first chapter, War without end.
I haven't played any of the missions yet, so this is just a review of the...
If you're a player in a roleplaying game, you're pretty happy when you get to add a number to your character's attribute or skill. Your character becomes [potentially] more powerful, which is nice because the fantasy of being infallibly good at something is one of the fun things about most roleplayi...
I bought the Call of Cthulhu adventure collection Mansions of Madness, Volume 1: Behind Closed Doors, and this is my review of the second scenario, called The Crack'd and Crook'd Manse. I also reviewed the first scenario, Mister Corbitt. I'm avoiding spoilers beyond what you'd read in the in...
I enjoy Call of Cthulhu and I enjoy the Mansions of Madness board game, so I finally bought the Call of Cthulhu adventure collection called Mansions of Madness, Volume 1: Behind Closed Doors. I've run all of these adventures at least once, and this is my review of the first scenario, called...
It's become a tradition of mine to fly up to Wellington for the annual KapCon RPG convention, and I did that again this year. This is my review of the event and the games I ran and played.
Convention culture
One of the best things about the conference is the people who attend. They make gaming...
For most of my life, a "game master" was the person who ran a game of a roleplaying game. Specifically, it was the "generic" and legally-distinct version of the D&D term "dungeon master." Once I really started playing tabletop games however, I discovered that many games had a kind of game master r...
For many people, there was a singular gateway into the tabletop roleplaying hobby. Regardless of whether you started tabletop roleplaying games after playing a solo game book, a cRPG, as a graduation from board games, after watching live plays, or by being inducted into somebody's gaming group, it a...
I needed some generic monsters for a campaign I was running. I was running campaigns back to back, and I wanted to make them feel distinct from one another. I didn't want to re-use the same 2 enemy armies I'd already used, and I'd already used an army that normally is an ally as an opposing force. I...
I've been running a Tales of the Valiant game for about a year, and it's been a lot of fun. I've thrown all kinds of surprises at the group, and they've certainly surprised me in return. As many of my RPG campaigns are, this one has been a highly unfocused one, with most of my hints at a plot goin...