This weekend I sat down in the player's chair again. After an extended and glorious fight two weeks ago, the D&D game reached a "chapter break" and we picked a new game to play for a few months while my brain recovers from high level D&D 3.5 prep. The game we selected is Aces and Eights. We have played around with it a couple of times in the past-- ...

No, you're not all gnomes named Myers Briggs... Myers Briggs is a classification system that's popular in high school sociology classes and business books. Quizzes to determine your personality type were also frequently passed around in email from my friends and relatives; this quiz classifies various Harry Potter characters and tells you who you overlap. (For this set of phrasings, I'm Harry Potter, strangely. To skip the ...

My wife and I are enjoying a free trial of the Star Trek Online game this week. So far, the game is fun: you get the feel of the universe, the uniforms you know and love, plus all of the technology, aliens, ship combat and a good mix of away missions. So far, it feels like a new Star Trek TV series, with your character as the ...

Over the last couple of years, I have been lucky to play in two linked series of Star Wars Saga games. My experience with the system has been as a player, but my GM and I have discussed the system quite a bit. He'll chime in with comments in italics throughout the article. Katana Geldar wrote a nice post about the recent announcement by Wizards of the ...

I recently volunteered to run a couple of sessions for the new con in town this upcoming weekend on Saturday and Sunday. I already know the organizers from their previous efforts, where they coordinated game days at local library. In many ways this is just a bigger version of their library game days- though much more ambitious, including an attendance fee, five time slots with six games apiece ...

The Desire is a full color 57 page PDF for Fourth Edition D&D by Nevermet Press (www.nevermetpress.com). (Also included was a grayscale PDF, oriented in Portrait, intended for easy printing. That's a nice feature, though one I didn't take advantage of.) Please note that the PDFs were freely provided by the publisher for review purposes. Structure The PDF begins with a blurb about Nevermet Press followed by A Message ...

Character Visions and DesignsThere are many approaches to developing characters. Some authors talk about characters who leap into their mind, fully formed and in the middle of an iconic scene, while others talk about characters who "take on a life of their own" as they write. Visual players may imagine their character in a pose and start by sketching their badass hero. System often suggests characters-- a Holy ...

You know that excited feeling on Christmas morning, when you wake up to see what Santa's elves gnomes helpers have made for you this year? GMs are lucky-- they get to experience that joy several times per session! Just the glimmer in their eyes when a PC finally hefts the shiny new +2 Keen Icy Burst Axe... I get a lump in my throat just thinking about it. Of ...

One of the things that brings characters to life is a realistic culture that they're embedded in. There are many ways to create vibrant cultures; if you are playing in a pre-existing setting, many of the cultures will be defined in the rulebook or supplements. Unfortunately, players often don't know that much about the cultures of the world- some don't own the book or have the specific references, ...

I've been a wandering these plains, searching high and low for fine posts to bring to market. Check out the teeth on these fellers. Tools: Want to whip up a monster style NPC for 4e in a minute? Check out the flash based NPChimera (beta). It uses PB1 races and classes so far. Hate the math of encumbrance, but don't want characters to carry 20,000 copper in their pockets? Take a ...

Sometimes the journey ends painfully: a character falls to the evil overlord, the fall that no one could survive winds up being surprisingly accurately titled. In those cases, you can turn to your system and start working in a new character. It's a common event that most GMs learn to handle. Other times, it isn't the character that leaves the journey, but a player around the table. That ...

There is a very easy way to return from a casino with a small fortune: go there with a large one. -- Jack Yelton Gambling works for just about every game world. In our world, gambling was so popular in the renaissance that kings and popes banned playing cards. There's something iconic about Han and Lando playing sabbac for the Millenium Falcon, Croaker's admonishing the Black Company watchmen ...

In many ways, level drain is one of the most devastating attacks in D&D and has been from the very beginning. Fighting an Orc and dying can be a chance to try out a new character, being raised from the dead has few consequences in recent editions (if you pay enough), but level drain is still terrifying. A bad saving throw or two can undo months of adventuring. I'm ...

Dogs in the Vineyard is a popular roleplaying game, published by Vincent Baker's Lumpley Games. It won the Indie RPG of the Year and Most Innovative Game awards way back in the 2004 Indie RPG Awards. I'll tell you all about it-- but if you're looking for multiple opinions, other gnome comments are scattered throughout. So what are Dogs and what do they do? The characters that the players make ...

Matt Cruikshank has a long, passionate article request in the Suggestion Pot. Hop over and read it in full if you like. One element I'll seize on is discussing open source/creative commons games. John Kim maintains links to a vast number of free RPGs. Among them are a subset of open and licensed games, conveniently gathered together as open gaming examples. Eleven open games are highlighted at that link, ...