Welcome back to Adventure Log! Our heroes have scoured the city of Glebhavern, and are turning their attention to underground, where opportunity awaits. However, mysterious crypts and undead foes give characters plenty of chances to really step in it, and the Glebhavern Crypt is no exception. When things go south, do the characters breathe their last, or does the DM step in to keep the party going?
Continue reading Adventure Log: Dungeons and Dragons, Part 3
Welcome to this month’s edition of Kickstarter Wonk! As Kickstarter season has well and truly kicked off, it has become more clear to me that trying to write up every single new RPG project on Kickstarter is a fool’s errand. I have a day job, after all! Therefore, I have decided that Kickstarter Wonk will represent the Level One Wonk’s top ten RPG Kickstarters of the month. These are all new games, though some of them use existing rulesets. There were a ton of interesting supplements this month also, but that at least doubles the material to choose from and I have to draw the line somewhere! Like before, I’ve noted if I’ve funded the project already or have saved it to potentially fund later. Though I most likely will not fund all of these (my day job doesn’t pay *that* well), I believe that all of them are worthy of your consideration.
I’m on the lookout for games you can play with kids. Yes, my own is still measuring his age in weeks, and the nature of this sort of thing means that he’ll probably end up a football player or something and hew to the associated stereotype of not wanting anything to do with geeky things, but still. The instinct is there. Got to plan ahead. I thus found it very good fortune to find a game meant just for that landing in my To Be Reviewed inbox. Today The Independents are taking a look at a game built specifically with parents and their children in mind, a superhero world not quite our own, with Power Outage by Bebarce El-Tayib!
Style Over Substance. Attitude is Everything. Take it to the Edge. Break the Rules. I’m the Level One Wonk, and today we’re going to the hairy edge, the space between real and digital where high tech and low life mix into a dark future where it’s always raining and everyone wears their mirrorshades at night. That’s right, choombas, we’re going Cyberpunk.
Different genres of role-playing game have different implied stories. Thanks to D&D the most common implied story of a fantasy game is one of adventurers growing into heroes as they make their way across a treacherous land of monsters and dungeons. Thanks to Cyberpunk 2020, the implied story of a Cyberpunk game is one of operators from the fringes of society alternating between struggling to survive and pushing back against the forces which control them. What if you took the story mode of Cyberpunk and placed it, whole-cloth, into a fantasy setting? Then you’d have Spire, a game which takes setting notes from D&D and Steampunk, story notes from Cyberpunk, and mechanical notes from Apocalypse World and blends them all into something wholly unique.
I have a confession to make: I am a massive fanboy for the Dresden Files. A few years ago, I was having a rough summer: I had broken up with a long term girlfriend, I was finding out that my degree was worth less than I thought it was worth, and I was preparing to move to Philadelphia, a city where I knew absolutely no one. And in that time, I finally had the chance to read a book series that I had heard fellow nerds go on about. As I visited a new city with crammed together townhouses, a decidedly different attitude, and loads of history, it became fun to look for ogres under train trestles, secret societies in Independence Hall, and ways to dig into a city where strange but wonderful things lurked.
Boer the dwarf awoke under musty blankets. He had remembered leaving with the smugglers, and remembered the storm, but that was it. Now, as his other adventuring companions gently kicked the dwarf-shaped lump he was making in the old bed, he found himself in a large bedroom in a castle somewhere, with no recollection of how he got there. There was a vivid dream, with tall trees, thick bushes, and a woman laughing . . . but then he awoke in a strange place.
This message will self-destruct in five seconds.
Wait, sorry, I’m out of practice. Hey, at least it’s not like the time when I put the detonation before the message. Boy, did I get chewed out for that one. Anyway, we have successfully deployed our recruiting tool, releasing it through this new “independent gaming website”. Christ, sometimes I really do think the Reds won. Anyway, we made it Pay What You Want (dirty, dirty socialism is what it is!), so potential Agents will be able to easily pick up the basics of what joining The Agency entails without getting off their welfare-loving asses. It also includes the basics of the Field Agent Inserts. I again register my grievance for the identifier: Mindset Stuck in the Fifties. Stuck implies that I would have ever wanted to leave.
Anyway, mission update complete. Now, this message with self destruct in five seconds.
….
The Agent is explaining to me what this “Internet” is.
Oh no.
Welcome to this month’s edition of Kickstarter Wonk! There is tons going on in March, so strap in. We have a baker’s dozen of games on tap right now, and I couldn’t cover every game being offered! In addition to that, there’s a game that squeaked in under the wire (their campaign ends the afternoon of the post date, March 7th), but was too neat to ignore. Let’s check out the wealth of new games we have on tap this month.
The Empire reigns across the galaxy even as an alliance of resistance fighters and rebels begins to form to overthrow Imperial oppression. A space station with the power to kill worlds is still being constructed near Scarif. A group known as the Spectres still fights to free the planet Lothal. The Imperial Senate stands impotent, but certain members secretly resist. A boy on Tatooine still has no idea what his future has in store. It’s a new era in galactic history, and you can find what you need to play in it within the pages of Dawn of Rebellion, the newest Star Wars Roleplaying supplement from Fantasy Flight Games!
Cannibal Halfling Gaming 