A few more than 365 days (the first article exclusive to the site went live 12/14/16). An article total of 179 by the end of the month, 104 of which are completely new to the site. Adventures were logged, systems were split, things got wonky, parties were met, games were reviewed, and a few oddball topics were thrown into the mix. With the holidays upon us, with a new year looming and a second cycle around the sun with Cannibal Halfling Gaming beginning, I though it might be fun to look back at a year’s worth of bringing games and gamers together before looking forward to new adventures.
Tag Archives: Gaming
The Independents: Micro Games
Walk into your average gaming store and you’ll probably find a fair number of tabletop roleplaying game books for sale, ranging from the relatively slim like Fate Accelerated to mighty tomes that a bard could use as a last-resort weapon such as Numenera. What you probably won’t find, unless someone is hosting a game, are RPGs whose page count is in the single digits, often even only 1 or 2 pages long. While they probably existed beforehand these games are now mostly children of the internet, born on websites and blogs and in competitions and tweets. Sometimes they’re called ‘one page RPGs’, or ‘one page dungeons’. Sometimes they’re referred to as ‘nano games’. I know them mostly as ‘micro games’, and just because they’re short doesn’t mean they aren’t sweet.
Adventure Log: Living on Borrowed Time Part 21
Cole Strutter coughed and spit, grimacing. Almost miracle-grade healing aside, the taste of bacta in the back of one’s throat after needing to heal internal injuries was nastier than the worst rotgut he’d ever had, and that said something. Plus, he still had one less leg than he remembered. But the real reason for the grimace was that Verjylla, Nak, and Caleb had been there to greet him when he got out of the tank in the Rabblerouser One‘s infirmary, and the Bothan had handed him a bottle of the finest Whyren’s Reserve the second he’d been sat down by the medical droids. He eyed the bottle and his comrades suspiciously before taking a swig, and then asked the obvious question. What had gone wrong while he was out?
Continue reading Adventure Log: Living on Borrowed Time Part 21
Level One Wonk: There Can Be Only One (GM)
Welcome back to Level One Wonk, where together we will wonk out on various and sundry gaming topics! Now that you’ve finished gorging yourself on turkey (and maybe checking out some Burning Wheel characters), it’s time to look down that home stretch of the year, get ready for the holiday season, and maybe even make some New Year’s Resolutions. Instead of thinking about the game today, let’s think about the gaming group. While playstyle, system, and campaign all play into a gaming group having fun, there are even more basic structural elements that are key, and it all comes down to who’s doing what.
A PAX Unplugged Review
I was fortunate enough to attend the inaugural PAX Unplugged with my wife this past weekend, and while I (quite wisely, we needed a vacation darn it) wasn’t attending in any sort of official CHG capacity I was still viewing the convention as a whole with a critic’s eye. So what worked, what didn’t, and would going yourself next year be worth it?
Adventure Log: Living on Borrowed Time Pt. 20
The Last Ditch docked with the newly captured and newly rechristened Time Sink as the CR-90, Interdictor cruiser, and the rest of the rebel task force hurtled through hyperspace towards a rendezvous with Rabblerouser One. Patience came aboard, the last of the Borrowed Time crew to do so, eager to take command of an even larger flagship for the Rabblerouser Fleet. He arrived on the bridge to find a skeleton crew of former Imperials who had been convinced to join the Rebellion and his fellow Borrowed Timers all a flutter; while they’d made their escape into hyperspace, they were going to have to repel some boarders.
Continue reading Adventure Log: Living on Borrowed Time Pt. 20
Meet the Party: Legend of the Five Rings Beta
An honorable bushi sworn to stand against the Shadowlands but longing to follow her heart. A wily courtier keeping the Emerald Empire together with his eye straying towards wealth. A ninja disguised as a magistrate, working in the shadows but dreaming of standing in the light. A shugenja tasked with keeping the people of Rokugan pure, even while corruption eats at her mind. Meet the Party travels to a land of samurai, bushidō, giri, and ninjō to create a party of ready-to-play characters living and struggling in the Emerald Empire of Rokugan, playing with Fantasy Flight Games’s Legend of the Five Rings Beta!
Continue reading Meet the Party: Legend of the Five Rings Beta
Legend of the Five Rings Beta Review
Fantasy Flight Games is at it again with their open beta tests, this time for the Legend of the Five Rings RPG! L5R, as it is often abbreviated as, was originally published back in ’95 by Alderac Entertainment Group, and is set in the feudal-pseudo-Japan setting of Rokugan, a land of samurai, shugenja, and courtiers fulfilling their duties and struggling amongst themselves in the Emerald Empire. The roleplaying game got through four editions under AEG before the property was sold to FFG in late 2015, and fans have been waiting to see what FFG would make of it since. Now that the beta version is in our hands (for free, thankfully), let’s see what they’ve put together!
Level One Wonk: Don’t Rest Your Head
Welcome to a special and spooky edition of Level One Wonk! Here on Halloween Eve, we’re going to take a look at horror in RPGs: how it’s different than most genres, why it’s so tough to pull off, and how Don’t Rest Your Head manages to do so. Don’t Rest Your Head was published by Evil Hat in 2006, and both serves as a great precursor to the player-facing narrative tools developed for Fate Core, and a creepy tale of downward spiral into madness as your insomnia awakens you to the true nightmares in the world.
Masks: Halcyon City Herald Collection Review
Keandra Hunt spent a long time working the journalism beat in Halcyon City, eventually rising to Editor-in-Chief of the Halcyon City Herald and its many associated publications. Nobody can stay in this business forever though, tracking down the truth of the City and its many superpowered events. Hunt is finally moving on, but she’s got one last bit of editing to do. She’s leaving behind a portfolio of interviews, articles, reports, and pictures all selected from her time as Editor-in-Chief. Her successor will get it as an inspiration, a challenge, and a warning. We get it as the Halcyon City Herald Collection, the first supplement for Masks: A New Generation!
Continue reading Masks: Halcyon City Herald Collection Review
Cannibal Halfling Gaming 