Tag Archives: RPG

Articles, Level One Wonk

The intent of RPG reviews

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It’s another new year, and I am once again asking, in one form or another, the same question I’ve asked myself in January for several years now: Why am I here? Why do I want to be here, writing about roleplaying games? Now, I’m not asking this question because the spark is gone or it feels futile (it does some of the time, but hell if that’s going to stop me). Instead, I’m checking in on myself. What am I trying to do? Am I succeeding in that?

This year, I’m also asking: Why are you here? I don’t necessarily mean at this site specifically, but why are you reading about RPGs online? More specifically, why are you reading RPG reviews? I know for a fact that the reason many go to read reviews is not exactly aligned with the reason I write them, and that’s likely why I felt the need to discuss the intent of RPG reviews.

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Articles, Crowdfunding Carnival

Crowdfunding Carnival: January, 2025

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Welcome to the first Crowdfunding Carnival of the year! No way around it, it’s a slow January, like many that have come before. Indie designers are often holding their cards until ZineQuest (formally announced in December), and major publishers are focused on closing out the year, which often means entering the new year with no projects on the slate (lest there be liabilities with no revenue recognition). As such, coming out of the New Year’s holiday there is often a small slate of projects, if any worth reading at all.

But fear not! This month’s update will be short but sweet, with three projects that are certainly worth looking at. While there are no major publisher campaigns active at the moment, there are two small format games tackling ambitious topics: Civilization building and mashing up time travel and giant robots. Then, we have a large-format labor of love which, though it follows in the footsteps of those before it, is still worth some consideration.

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Articles, Editorial

Role-Playing Games in Psychotherapy: A Non-Therapist’s Review

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While roleplaying games can certainly allow players to explore certain things and work through some stuff, an important axiom to remember is that your GM is not your therapist. Therapy is a serious business, and you shouldn’t be unloading your psychiatric needs on someone who is not trained to handle it (or try taking on those needs yourself, if you’re the GM), for their good and your own. Unless, one supposes, they were your therapist first, and are now running a game for you as part of your usual appointment.  Such is the purpose behind Role-Playing Games in Psychotherapy: A Practitioner’s Guide by Daniel Hand.

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Articles, Level One Wonk

Level One Wonk Holiday Special: 2024

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Happy holidays to gamers here and around the world! It’s that time again where I settle in at the end of the year, make a comforting hot beverage and review what’s gone on in the last twelve months. And, to be completely honest, it’s been a doozy. In the gaming world, 2024 was a year of D&D, the game’s 50th anniversary being a banner event that led to the release of the new 2024 version of the 5e handbooks (I guess we’re not supposed to call them 5.5e, but come on). At the same time, the goliath that is D&D has taken some licks; the self-inflicted wound that was the OGL fiasco led to significant fragmentation in the high fantasy subgenre defined by, well, D&Ds. Daggerheart, Draw Steel, and Tales of the Valiant all brought forth new takes on the 5e formula, and were a double-edged sword in terms of D&D’s monopoly: On one hand, that version of fantasy, the swords and sorcery slash Tolkien mashup that existed nowhere except D&D in 1974 and now exists everywhere, is still the most popular RPG genre in the world. On the other hand, a wide range of 5e players took a look at other games, and if D&D didn’t end up being their first choice for D&D things, they definitely ended up looking at other games for other genres.

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Articles, Indie Frontiers

When The Walls Fall Review – Fallen Cities and Falling Dice

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The ancient city was originally founded as a place of study; a great library was its first building, and it remained ever its heart. However, the city grew to form the core of an unspeakable ritual, powered by harnessing a long forgotten god. Eventually, its distant neighbors could not tolerate the ideas it was spreading, and they attacked. That was when the walls fell, leaving a ruined city with a defaced statue at its heart… and broken roads, spreading corruption, and fanatics of that forgotten god bleeding out of it into the countryside…

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Articles, Solitaire Storytelling

Solitaire Storytelling: Koriko: A Magical Year part 2

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Check out part 1 of this Solitaire Storytelling here.

After more writing and more adventures, I’ve concluded my playthrough of Koriko: A Magical Year. The story I created, of Lapis, a witch-in-training who thinks she’s boring, ends up telling a pretty fascinating coming-of-age story. Lapis discovers how much bigger the world is than her village, how much deeper magic is than what her grandmother taught her, and how weird, wonderful, and sometimes terrible other people can be. All of those experiences and trials are filtered down from 65 pages of handwritten entries into seven letters home. Just like before, what the letters don’t tell is often as important as what they do…as the confession in the last letter so clearly broadcasts.

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