You awaken, cold and in the dark. Fumbling around by low blue lights in a coffin shaped pod. You pull yourself out of the box, and in the dark see the faces of others. You are all wearing loose fitting white clothing and laceless shoes. Hospital patients? You peer into the dark, seeing little but hearing the sound of dripping, running water and distant machinery. You gather what you can, knowing that something is hunting you. It will be here soon.
“Think about screenplays and films, or the final episode of a television show that you know will not be renewed. Think about saying goodbye to friends who are moving away. Think about the last day of summer vacation. Think about funerals. Think about the restaurant that closed all those years ago, and the noodles they used to serve. Think about the best birthday party you ever had. Think about putting off the last chapter of a book until tomorrow. Think about grief, and relief. Think about the end of a world. Think about the feeling of emerging from a movie theater into a dark parking lot, under the stars.” Longtime readers might recall I’ve written about saying goodbye to characters before, but that was largely in a ‘how to remember and treasure them’ way. The reasoning behind that article is, however, the same one that drew me to check out the subject of this one: the attachment to characters that we’ve created and a desire for closure as we leave them, and the snapshot of their lives that we played out, behind. This is a look at World Ending Game by Everest Pipkin.
Welcome to the Cannibal Halfling Weekend Update! Start your weekend with a chunk of RPG news from the past week. We have the week’s top sellers, industry news stories, something from the archives, and discussions from elsewhere online.
If you want to catch a tabletop game in one of its more interesting stages, it’s always a good idea to swing by theUnpublished Game Network. The ‘Unpub’ Network provides, well, networking for unpublished games that are still in development and at a convention gives them a place to put their game through its paces. It’s notable that the signage says ‘looking for playtesters’ instead of just ‘looking for players.’ While not quite as rich in traditional CHG content as its Unplugged sibling PAX East offers the advantage of being right in my own stomping grounds, and getting to attend its ’23 iteration for all four days meant I was able to swing by the Unpub tables multiple times.
The sun starts to go down, dusk begins to fall, and the stars start to come out. As true night begins, the star begin to flicker . . . and if you’re lucky and have a sharp eye, you just might spot a shooting star! Sounds like a pretty great night, right? Well it’s also a pretty great board game, where the first person to spot five shooting stars wins! This is The Stars Align, designed by Matthew Radcliffe and Sean Fenemore and published by Breaking Games! Continue reading A Glimpse Into The Vault: The Stars Align→
A nefarious Black Dragon has imprisoned six innocent magical creatures deep in its cavernous lair, trapping them with its crystal magic. You are their only hope: you must explore the caverns, find the creatures, and free them by using the Dragon’s own crystal magic against it. Along the way you might find treasure to aid you in your efforts, but beware. Even if you free all of the creatures, you’ll still have to deal with the Black Dragon itself, and it won’t go down without a fight. Brought to us by Light Heart Games and Zafty Games, this is the single player puzzle and card game of fantastical creatures and crystal magic, Crystallo!
Having a con ‘season’ of sorts is a new experience for me, with PAX East 2020 following close on the heels of PAX Unplugged 2019 (thank goodness attending South wasn’t remotely an option), meaning that I’m going into this work week pretty darn exhausted . . . and with oodles, noodles, and toaster strudels of new content to write about! Let’s talk a bit about the con at large, and then get down to the details with some games.
Sometimes you just want a tasty treat, and you’ve got to make it yourself. You’re going to need ingredients, some sort of container, and maybe some utensils to get the job done, though. That might sound simple enough, and even on Newfoundland it should be that simple on paper . . . except the pages of your Recipe Book keep getting torn out by storms, and just when you’ve got the right amount of blueberries one of those goddamn mainlander raccoons shows up and eats some of them. Ah well, you’ll just have to unpack some more groceries. Let’s make some friggin’ jam with Newfoundland Jam, the ‘colourful jam making game with flavourful cuss words’ from Jason Anarchy Games!
Being a ghost is a tough gig, even if you’re ‘lucky’ enough to be hanging around with a bunch of other ghosts. I mean, there you are all definitely deceased but not passing on, and you’ve got no idea how you got there. Passing on to the other side seems like a definite improvement, but you really want to figure out how your life ended first, right? So how does one do that? Well, you and your fellow ghosts will have to tell the story of your demise to one another, plucking fragments of words and memories from the aether and stringing them together. Such is the tale to be told with the storytelling game from Emma Larkins … and then we died. Continue reading PAX Independents: … and then we died→
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