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Dungeons and Shadows
Eric L. Boyd
Wizards of the Coast
$29.95, 160 pages
Waterdeep is one of the largest cities on the Sword Coast, the western shore of the continent known as Faerun. Ed Greenwood's Forgotten Realms setting for Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) is the most popular setting supported by Wizards of the Coast (WotC). Stretching back more than a decade, it has an enormous backstory that can be somewhat intimidating to dive into. Waterdeep attempts to allay the fears of a Dungeon Master (DM) looking to set a campaign in the most well known city of the setting. The book offers up political intrigue, mercantile callousness, and an endless parade of Non-Player Characters (NPCs). Unfortunately, Mr. Boyd's effort to capture the richness of the setting falls somewhat short. The issue at hand is a complaint I have about several WotC products. Waterdeep is a mere 157 pages and retails for $29.95. Within those pages, the book is packed tight with information. A history of the city, notable NPC guilds and organizations, and important personages flesh out the bulk of the book's front-end. As with most D&D books there are new prestige classes, monsters, and spells. This stems from WotC's determination that every book has something for both players and DMs. At the center of the 157 pages is a mere 20 pages worth of localities within the city. It seems to me that describing the city would be the primary purpose of the book, but almost as much time is spent on prestige classes as in providing an understanding of the city's layout. At $30 a pop it's imperative that a tome either be focused on DMs, focused on players, or have good integration of the two types of content. While City of Splendors provides copious details, the inclusion of relatively weak player-oriented content dilutes the purpose and impact of the book. Players will be severely under-served by this offering, and DMs should only consider purchasing it if they know they're going to be running a long-term campaign in this particular corner of the Realms.
Weapons of Legacy
Bruce R. Cordell, Kolja Raven Liquette, Travis Stout
Wizards of the Coast
$34.95, 224 pages
Weapons of Legacy is an 'options' book that provides players and DMs with something that every gamer wants in droves: crunchy stuff. The pages of this book are filled with descriptions of noteworthy items with sometimes sordid but always interesting histories. As a result of the weight of history around the items in this book, not only are they magical but powerful to boot. Each item, whether weapon, armor, or amulet, has a detailed history associated with it. When found by a player character it appears to be a simple (usually underpowered) magical crafting, but detailed study and rituals can unlock the potential within. The enhanced features of the item are only available to someone who has followed specific rituals that directly relate to the item's history. Additionally, they must take feats to allow them access to the unlocked power. Requiring characters to invest themselves in order to get the most out of an item ensures balance. Whereas Waterdeep's diluted focus resulted in a mediocre offering, Weapons of Legacy offers plenty for both DMs and players by integrating the content for both groups into a cohesive whole. While there are classes and spells, they tie directly into the overall legacy item theme of the book and do not seem the least bit out of place. The mechanics for using the weapons are sound and DMs can chortle with glee, as the in-depth backstories associated with each item are tremendous hooks to hang adventures on. Above and beyond simply moving a campaign's plot forward, the specific rituals associated with the item provide a sense of history to the gameworld and willingly have players insinuating themselves into a campaign's plot. For folks that just need to tweak, there are even rules provided for creating new Weapons of Legacy. This book isn't for everyone, of course. Legacy items are a neat idea and the book's ideas are executed very well, but not every campaign or character is going to benefit from this tome. Despite that, if the idea intrigues you'll find a well-integrated sourcebook with interesting ideas and a lot of backstory just waiting to get your gears moving.
Five Nations
Bill Slavicsek, David Noonan, Chris Perkins
Wizards of the Coast
$29.95, 160 pages
The newest campaign setting that Wizards of the Coasts supports is Eberron. Developed after an exhaustive search through thousands of proposals, Eberron is a unique style of D&D play. Incorporating elements of pulp mystery, Indiana Jones, and gritty war stories, Eberron is very different than the high fantasy nature of the Forgotten Realms or Greyhawk. Five Nations is the first sourcebook for the setting which details the world at large. It describes the nations that once made up the ancient kingdom of Galifar. At war for over a hundred years, they've only recently found peace. Each nation has a dedicated chapter and provides a host of details for both players that might want to know about a character's homeland, and for DMs looking to set an adventure there. Besides basic histories and geography, there are some great fiddly bits strewn throughout the book. Sidebars in each of the chapters details five things that every countryman knows, for example, and there are 'daily life' examples for each nation. Each chapter also contains prestige classes and adventure hooks, the occasional monster or spell, and wraps all of these elements together into a detailed overview. The book conveys a lot of information in a surprisingly thin pagecount, and is well worth the pricetag. Simply put, this is a must-have for anyone planning on running a game in Eberron. It fills in many of the gaps the core book leaves open and offers a bevy of opportunities for adventure and intrigue. Players will find it extremely enjoyable as well, with lots of crunchy elements to empower characters and a satisfying amount of detail about a PC's homeland. Every chapter is a mini-sourcebook, and taken together Five Nations is a solid reference for every Eberron campaign.
Explorer's Handbook
David Noonan, Prank Brunner, Rich Burlew
Wizards of the Coast
$29.95, 160 pages
Where Five Nations acts as a reference to the world of Eberron, the Explorer's Handbook is a DM-specific tome that allows for intuitive mix-and-match adventuring. Most of the book is made up of locations, self-contained areas that can be dropped into an ongoing campaign or strung together to form an adventure. In addition to the adventure locales, the Handbook begins by offering extensive details on the act of traveling within Eberron. An emphasis is placed on the idiosyncrasies of airship, rail, and sea travel. Explorer organizations, prestige classes, and some equipment is also detailed, all with the idea of preparing and provisioning an expedition to a far-off place. While this section nominally offers content for players, the rest of the book is completely focused on the needs of the Dungeon Master. The adventure locations are divided into 'Points of Origin', 'Midpoints', and 'Destinations'. Each chapter collects a handful of places grouped together around a theme. Each 'Point of Origin' is a place to find or set off for adventure, such as a nightclub or train station. NPCs to staff the location, some flavour to interest player characters, and several possible adventure hooks are offered to provide a DM with everything he needs to run the locale. 'Midpoints', in turn, are more exotic places that can offer up more clues and draw characters further into the plot. An elven city populated by good-aligned undead is one such location, a trove of knowledge held by benign beings with a truly alien outlook. 'Destinations' are all obscure or hidden locations typically fraught with danger. They're the endpoints to an adventure, allowing characters answers to their questions and opponents to defeat. A variety of end-points are offered, from a dragon's astrological observatory to an abandoned city of giants. Explorer's Handbook does a competent job of guiding the DM's hand. In addition to concrete localities, the examples hand an Eberron DM blueprints for constructing the kind of pulp high adventure the setting is known for. It's essentially of no use for the average player, but a DM looking for assistance in creating an Eberron campaign could find much worse than this particular bag of tricks.
Loose Alliances
Malik Toms, Peter Taylor, et. al.
FanPro
$24.99, 128 pages
The world of Shadowrun is a complicated place. Just over fifteen years of publications with the Shadowrun (SR) name attached makes for a phenomenally rich backstory for this cyberpunk-meets-Tolkien gameworld. Loose Alliances is a tool for Game Masters (GMs) and players to understand the heavyweights of the world more fully. With an ever-increasing number of books detailing the Shadowrun world outside the city of Seattle (the traditional setting for an SR game), there are ever more opportunities to go running around the globe. Loose Alliances breaks down the movers and shakers outside of the corporate set. In Shadowrun even political movements, religious groups and the idle rich have a use for 'deniable assets', and where there's money and interest there's a hook for a GM. As with most 'background' sourcebooks, Loose Alliances is presented as a series of electronic documents on the network of pirate Matrix (a world spanning virtual reality) sites called Shadowland. Numerous commentaries from the peanut gallery should make most Slashdot readers right at home, given the wide range of opinion and bias that run through the observations. Between the posted text and the comments, Loose Alliances gives a reader a better feel for the ways in which groups of like-minded people affect the SR world. While most Shadowrun games involve characters doing illegal things for and against world-girding corporations, the metahuman rights organization down the street or a religious group is just as likely to have dirty deeds that need doing. The best sourcebooks for this setting open up the world beyond the cookie-cutter expectations some games can fall prey to, and Loose Alliances does an admirable job of exposing GMs and players to new possibilities.
Shadows of Asia
John Szeto, Jason Levine, et. al.
FanPro
$29.99, 231 pages
The 'Shadows of' series of Shadowrun books are geographical guides. Already published Shadows of North America and Shadows of Europe are joined by this guide to the east. Besides the war-torn microcountries of China and the Japanese Imperialist state, the book goes into detail on nearby areas such as the Indian subcontinent, Pakistan, Iran, Israel, and the Philippines. Though some previous sourcebooks have touched on this area of the world (specifically the Philippine's fight for freedom against the occupying Japanese), there has never before been a dedicated look at the region for the setting. The most geopolitically active areas of the region, such as China and Japan, receive long treatments discussing local history, important cities, and general trends in the country. Smaller nations receive one to two page summaries of the most important elements a runner is likely to need to know. It's difficult for me to separate my appreciation for the pure flavour information within the setting from what might be useful to the average player or GM. These types of books offer the most insight into the backstory of the gameworld, and Shadows of Asia provides GMs hundreds of little plot hooks, for localities from Neo-Tokyo to Jerusalem. They are fantastic resources for the Game Master, essentially making this book required reading if you ever plan on running a game set east of Poland and west of Seattle. For a player, though, there isn't a great reason to pick up the book. There aren't any character options and the book has more detail than most players would probably want for their backstory. If deep background is what you're after, though, both GMs and players will find that Shadows of Asia fills in a large gap in your Shadowrun worldview.
System Failure
Drew Curtis, Jason Levine, et. al.
FanPro
$29.99, 128 pages
One of the most enjoyable aspects of the Shadowrun world is that it is far from a static place. Just as time, politics, and technology move forward in real life, so too does the reality of the Shadowrun setting. Every few years setting publisher FanPro releases a sourcebook that has serious ramifications for the world at large. One classic sourcebook turned the city of Chicago into a post-apocalyptic nightmare of gang lords and killer insect spirits. Another discussed the birth of an Artificial Intelligence in the midst of a crisis situation. System Failure does more than just provide interesting color; it wipes the slate clean on the Shadowrun universe's computational otherworld called the Matrix. A terrorist attack by a group of anti-technological fanatics, combined with the machinations of the aforementioned AI manages to corrupt and destroy most of the world's communications and informational systems. The book provides the background needed to understand the players involved and the scope of the events. It's not a traditional adventure per se, but instead provides a number of tools for creating adventures. GMs can use provided adventure hooks to bring player characters into the momentous events detailed in the book, either working for or against the forces planning the destruction of a fundamental element of the Shadowrun world. System Failure is Shadowrun at its absolute best, bringing together numerous plot threads that in some cases have been brewing for over a decade. Even without the plot significance, the sheer cool factor of the events described will make for amazing campaigns with a vaguely end-of-days feel. Definitely not a book for players, GMs of the setting can use it to craft an entire campaign or just use it to fully understand the world-reshaping events that lead to the newest edition of the setting.
Articles like this are why we should have a Games section, and a dedicated Games editor.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
I won't be impressed until WotC brings back Alternity. That was a blatant FOX move, pulling a line because it isn't generating the revenues of your juggernaut.
Every year someone complains that tabletop roleplaying is going to go under because of different causes. Religious nut jobs, PC games, console games, live action roleplaying. Guess what, as long as there are nerds there will be roleplaying. Too many DMs have invested too much cash to just stop.
I kinda think there already is one.....
all of my Friendly Local Gaming Stores seem to keep going out of business :(
Sword of the Phoenix was sort of the Mecca for All Things Gaming here in Atlanta for...as long as I can remember. They just closed up permanently this year. The game shops (I think they were actually called The Game Shoppe) in the local malls closed up two or three years ago. About the only places I can find locally are either used bookstores with varied wares (and rarely anything new), or stores dedicated mainly to comic books or collectible card games. Other than the slim pickings there, the only option is mail-order.
I think MMO's are replacing most table top games, I don't think table top games will ever die but, people want to experience and see and feel "real" things, instead of just imagining them.
Just look at the kinds of PC games and video games being released, we don't want overcomplex table top games, we want simple fun, easy to get into games because of the massive constraints now on our time.
Check out The Open Source Math Project! Help out
All of these are great games, and I recommend that newbie role players talk to your local hobby-shop owner and get a sense of the options at your disposal, and what would fit your group best.
Um, OK:
There is certainly a role for supplementary material and pre-packaged campaigns and adventures (I refuse the to use the "M" word). They can help stoke a GM's imagination and if they're really good they can set standards for home brew campaign settings and adventures.
But the RPG hobby has become seriously consumerrhoidic.
Playing the game should be the point of the hobby . . . not collecting books.
If only there were a way to purchase gaming books without going to a used bookstore or using a mail-order catalogue? This sounds like ... a quest!!!
...
First, we will need to bring this old bucket to the ancient witch by the village well. She will then tell us of a strange, spider-like beast lurking nearby in the woods, known only to the local inhabitants "The Interweb."
DUN DUN DUN
I used to play GURPS about 10 years ago. Also dabbled in GURPS Cyberpunk a little bit. Very cool stuff. I liked the flexibility much more than D&D
I'm not a table-topper, is Doom: The Boardgame considered a roleplaying game? Still interesting to read the rules posted on their site (they even have setups for DM and CTF?!)
It's been quite an interesting year for table-top games in general, not just roleplaying.
I don't think table top games will ever die but, people want to experience and see and feel "real" things, instead of just imagining them.
Wrong. I'd give anything to play D&D again.
The problem simply is, that as an adult, with a job and a family, if I were to play D&D again, I might... MIGHT be able to play twice a month. And that's assuming that the other people in my group were as dedicated as I was. Which is never the case.
In reality, we've gotten together twice in the last 6 months.
On the other hand, I can log on to WoW and play two hours a night after the kids are asleep.
People play MMOs because they like actually being able to PLAY, instead of schedule coordinate and then get disappointed when no one shows up.
I don't have to worry about THAT until MC.
IF this is true, its just sad. MMO's are just dumb and mindless for the most part. Its not that they aren't fun for a quick fix of gaming pleasure, but to really be competitive in the game you have to put hours and hours of grind into your character. Click on things, kill things, get experience, sell your stuff on ebay. Table top games are fun because you actually get together with your friends in meatspace, you get the interaction, and you work the mind by imagining your surroundings and trying to figure out problems as a group. Maybe this is why the current generation seems to be lacking in basic problem solving skills
I valued my time playing table top games all night long either at the local game store or at someone's house. I think its sad that this is something my future children may not get to experience.
I got nothin'
The campaigns I used to DM, we used the first edition rules as a loose framework and then integrated loads of our own rules. Especially pertaining to combat, critical hits, spells, psionics, etc;
By the time WotC had taken over D&D, we essentially had our own game system...
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
I was just idly hitting alt-x (random article) on Wikipedia last week and I came across this great page.
It reminded me why I got into computer programming in the first place. D&D modules were the 'software' of games.
I'm not sure kids playing today have this same experience. It seemed to me for a long time that modern D&D adventures were played in cheap card games (Magic The Gathering) and in RPG computer/console games.
It's great to hear that far from being dead and gone D&D is actually still a great pastime. Now if we could just get WOTC to hire Gary Gygax...
std::disclaimer<std::legalese> sig=new std::disclaimer; sig->dump(); delete sig;
Anybody remember the fantastically easy 2D6 system that Traveller used.
Man, I miss that game.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
Playing D&D, Runequest, Melee/Wizard/The Fantasy Trip back oh so many years ago. Hell, my friends even had a Wargaming company going for a while (Jersey Devil Game Company/Centurion). Early 1980's Origins conferences at Widner College...
Ah, the memories...
I am hoping turnout this year is good; I'd hate to see the west coast version of the conference die from lack of interest. However, it is only 3 months or so after GenCon Indy, so it might be too-much-too-soon for the gaming population at large.
Hunt your preferred prey at Aliens vs Predator MUD. Join the war at avpmud.com port 4000
www.awakenedworlds.net Its a MUD usind 3rd ed Shadowrun rules and it rocks. Flat out the best SR based game on the net.
Nicely put.
The recent success of MMORPGs like WoW have been proven to have expanded the market.
This gives a greater chance that some of the neophytes to the genre will jump over into tabletop gaming to diversify their entertainment. Many of them are younger and have less demands on their time, thus can afford 9-hour runs in MC (and the like). Once they grow bored of the limitations inherent to computer-mediated games like WoW, it may bode well for tabletop fantasy RPG games.
Just a thought...
Of course, nothing prevents you from playing any tabletop game on-line...chat rooms, IRC, etc. People have been doing this for a long time.
Advice: on VPS providers
You have nothing to lose but your four dozen expansion rulebooks for Shadowrun.
"On the other hand, I can log on to WoW and play two hours a night after the kids are asleep."
You actually have the self-control to stop at two hours? I'm impressed. Every time I log in for "two hours" I look up 5 hours later and realize I have to got work tomorrow.
I know people always say this in response to gaming posts or other seeming kids' past-times. So, how about posting what a life is? Just some generalities would be nice...
-----
Chaosium, Call of Cthulhu.
Love that game. Good for beginners too. Simple system, and it teaches you something that I consider to be very important to a good gaming group: Never become too attached to your characters.
And it's lots of fun. You already know you're doomed, so why not have a little fun with it? You know you gotta love a game where bragging sounds like this: "I had an investigator survive three whole games!
Disclaimer: I don't work for Chaosium, YMMV, etc.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
There are two gaming shops just North of atlanta that I recommend: Dr. No's which is just north of marietta http://www.drnos.com/ - run by a friend - Tell Buck/BJ that Andy sent you. And the war room is in the gwinnett area, which is north on 85 http://www.thewarroom.com/index.asp happy gaming!!
Amen. I *love* Shadowrun, but the exact phenomenon you describe pretty much restricted my playing of it to using a MUD (AwakenedWorlds, a pretty nice recreation of the milieu telnet://awakenedworlds.net:4000 iirc), and even that I haven't had time to log into for over a month due to a killer project at work.
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
Hmm...... I know for a fact that my Barnes and Noble actually carries Dungeon and Dragons game books. I don't know how many but I do know for a fact that since I opened up one of them and started reading it.
Ooo man the floppy drive is broken. No wait. The computer is just upside down.
Try NBOS's Screen Monkey [http://www.nbos.com./ It helps alot with the scheduling :)
Huh. The B&N by me quite specifically does NOT carry any D&D books.
I agree... though clearly the poster is in a strange situation... since being into D&D usually guarantees that you will not end up encumbered too much by things like a wife and kids....
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
That is unusual, as all of the B&N near me (Southern California) have at least 1 shelf full of role-playing books (mostly D&D). Local Borders also stocks a variety of RPG texts, as well.
A good friend of mine writes RPG books, and I figured I'd mention some of them here. He's written some great D20 based SciFi stuff, Dead Stars, and the followup Universial Decay. I helped playtest these, and they're great fun. The item creation system is a lot of fun, you can customize pretty much any of you gear. In the two campains I played in, I played a hacker/technogeek in the first, and a tough gun-toting cyborg. It was a lot of fun, I enjoyed it more then any other RPG i've played in. The Dead Stars rulebook is free, and Universial Decay is inexpensive. Please check it out if you have a chance, it's worth your time.
I own retail stores focused on "toys" for guys 13-31: skateboarding, paintball, surf, etc. As a tabletop gamer in my youth, I never looked at gaming as a business.
My stores are "kindly" placed in towns without a nearby mall.
For those who go to gamer stores, what attracts you to a store over buying online?
I can't believe gaming is experiencing a rebirth. Another geeky lifestyle to piss off the broads.
Now there is a game. I started out playing D&D at the Role-Players Guild at Henry Ford Community College, and then one of guys asked if I wanted to try RIFTS.
I was instantly hooked. A post-apacalyptic world filled with magic, Anime inspired high-tech weapons and magic combined with technoogy, demons, an oppressive goverment that makes Hitler's Nazi Germany look like a paradise, a nation of vampires, and Atlantis ruled by trans-dimensional overlords. The average lifesapn of character in most games was about an hour, though one guy usually got killed within the first ten mintues. I'm one of the few who managed to survive the many skirmishs we had with black marketeers and the dreaded CS, and our DM had crafty and cunning (not to mention excessively disfiguring) ways to try and kill us all off.
With the concept of multiple dimensions, magic coupled with science, and using rifts to tranvel from one world to another RIFTS would make an excellent MMORPG.
Michael "TheZorch" Haney
thezorch@gmail.com
http://thezorch.googlepages.com/home
See those ads:
= BAC-DNDGAMENIGHT
http://craphound.com/images/wowdanddad.jpg
and the ensuing website from Wizards...
http://www.wizards.com/gamenight/default.asp?dcmp
Lex
1)
I think MMO's are replacing most table top games...
Which, to me, is very strange. The thing I love most about tabletop RPGs is the way that the game world can (depending on the way your GM likes to run) mold itself to be appropriate to the players and their characters, and the way that characters tend to be exceptional (again, depending on how your GM runs). Our GM made it very clear that adventurers were special -- the dozen or so people born to be the world-shakers of their generation. In most of the MMO games I've heard about (I confess I haven't played any, so this impression may be entirely uninformed), you have tons and tons of "special" people. Which is fine, obviously, if that's what you like, but I wouldn't think the two kinds of play would appeal to the same kinds of players.
I know the feeling. I'm lucky in that I have 5-6 friends who also have jobs, family, etc., but who genuinely enjoy D&D. We live near the same city (Cincinnati), so our host puts out a schedule of 4-5 dates when he and his wife can host the game over the next 2 months, and then we all reply to say which dates work for us and which don't. By process of elimination, we usually end up with 1 date where we can all make it, and we agree to get together then ("then" always being 2-6 weeks in advance). It takes a little work, but we all get together about once every 6-7 weeks while working our way through the campaign.
FWIW, we've already worked through several chapters of a big campaign over the last 14 months now, and my PC has grown from level 5 to level 14. Since it's all for fun (and we're all in our 30s or late 30s), we really look forward to that 6-8 hour night of gaming to eat, bullshit, blow off steam, and disconnect from the real world for a little bit with our friends.
Peace,
Chuck
I hear ya Evangelion!
Last year a few friends and I started "poker night". It was every other Wednesday. We started off for a few months with MTG, but then decided we'd try a D&D campaign. There were four guys and one girl (unbelievable I know...she's stripper-hot too). We are all in our thirties and some are married and/or have kids. We were going pretty strong for a couple of months, but there are always things that eventually have to come first: working late, can't get a sitter, dinner party, in-laws are in town, host is selling his house, etc., etc., etc.
Eventually we had to abandon the whole thing. We've talked about trying again, and I'd like to do a Shadowrun campaign. It's just SO hard to everybody on the same schedule.
That's the appealing thing about MMORPG's. We still have a game night (Tuesdays) for Guildwars, but you don't need everyone there to have fun. We use Skype or TeamSpeak instead of typing which helps make the experience a little more interactive. And we can game with friends who live across the country, and in once case, in another country.
Yours in the bond.
I'm sorry, but your opinion seems to be wrong.
As a long time Shadowrun enthusiast, I guess I'll mention that the three books listed in this article are already available both at FLGS and online in pay-for-download PDF format. Expect more books for that line to be released in the coming months to expand on the core rules for Shadowrun Fourth Edition including books detailing magic and spirits, cyberware, weapons, melee skills, vehicles, and hacking -- which replaces decking and rigging in fourth edition.
(Note: ###'s are used in place of name of a company)
I've purchased a few things from my local Comic Book Store, but unfortunately our unfriendly neighborhood huge book chain (########.######.ca) have them cheaper, and in fact, their online store is cheaper than their retail store (and by a considerable amount!). For example...
On the Wizards.com website, the Dungeon Masters Guide II: Price $39.95 ; C$55.95
Our local gaming shop? Just a bit over $56.
Our local huge book store? $55.95
Our local huge book online store? $37.48
i####### Member Price: $35.61 (i####### is $20 for a year)
So you can save $20 ($17 USD for those who still think Canadian currency is equivalent to monopoly money) on ONE BOOK! Free shipping for orders over $39.
Here's an even better one: Special Edition Dungeon Master Guide
List Price: $105.00
Our Price: $70.35
i####### Member Price: $66.83
So just by purchasing online you can buy another book essentially for free and still pay a few dollars less, and have it all shipped to your house.
Comic Book stores need to figure out a way to either get more involved with their gaming community in order to have customer loyalty, or just go online, because saving $20 CDN($17 USD) on each book is just too much to give up for keeping the little guy in business.
all dorks need to dork up on Palladium and Rifts, http://www.palladiumbooks.com/
go ahead, dork it up
not an ad, really, i just really enjoy the Palladium world and i never see it mentioned anywhere, but as some others have posted already, getting x number of people together for a night is more difficult when you are in your 30's and don't have the time while it is so much easier to jump online and track down people with xfire and play whatever they are playing.
Finally, something that's not listed, but gets mentioned on Slashdot every day: Don't copy other people's copyrighted works. And if you do anyway, at least give them credit.
--Short Circuit (Only anonymous 'cause this is offtopic.)
I don't really consider MMOs (or single player RPGs) to be exactly a replacement for tabletop gaming. I also no longer have the time or circle of friends to play D&D (forget the play sessions, a good DM has to spend a lot of time on prep). When I used to play pen and paper RPGs the focus was on the roleplaying and story less so on the mechanics. An MMO is heavily mechanical and rigid - there is no DM to bend the rules. I know a lot of people like to play on role playing servers but it just feels silly to me, the game structure is too obvious for me to want to play pretend. "Milady, please come forth and take the head of Van Cleef, after you I will take his head as well seeing as he appears to have one for everyone in the group."
I like MMOs and they are a social form of gaming but they are pretty far removed from D&D.
Sometimes my arms bend back.
http://www.pvponline.com/rants_dd.php3
Years ago Scott Kurtz posted this on his website PVP.
I have since played DnD with my little brother and his friends. While they have not become gamers they really enjoyed it.
It seems like all of those people who say they can't play DnD or other table top RPGs because they have kids and families ought to be playing with thier kids and families. It gets them away from the video games and the TV.
Mikey
I've always been the kinda guy to fall for the girl dressed like an eskimo.
In other news, this is also a good year for hamburgers, as both McDonalds and Burger King have introduced new products!
To me, the introduction of new WotC products is as about as exciting as new hamburgers at McDonalds. In other words, "yawn." To me, much more exciting news would have been the release of the new "Tekumel". Or those juicy rumours in the RQ world. And surely there must be news from the Steve Jackson corner of the market?
Frankly, if I can buy the game at a mainstream bookstore, I'm not interested. If the game had a booth larger than 200 square feet at GenCon, I'm not interested. If it says d20, WotC or Hasbro anywhere on the cover, I'm not interested. And for the same reasons I'm not interested in McDonald's hamburgers, Budweiser beer, or Microsoft Windows.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
You could reasonably argue that tabletop RPG's would be going away if there was a 100% replacement for them. I don't play RPG's as much anymore because they are way too time consuming, but I've found that they provide a lot of unique things that I don't get from other sources.
:).
MMORPG's that I've played are, in essence, all the dull parts of RPG'ing with good graphics. Lots of hacking and slashing of NPC's (dice rolls), and that's the bulk of it. There's a social element to it, but frequently the social element is hindered by all of the leveling, etc. In a well run RPG campaign, the GM/DM can adjust the level of the enemies and the party's characters to suit. Leveling a character was always of secondary concern in tabletop RPG's.
MUD's are like MMORPG's minus the good graphics
Card games are fun and fast, but are not really the same thing as an RPG. Generally the same groups of people would play MTG as would play D&D, Rifts, etc. But what people got out of it were quite different.
Now, if there was an on-line system that gave the same sense of presence as a table-top game and gave control of everything to a skilled GM, then you might have a table-top killer. On-line automated systems can never quite provide the same thing.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Of the group I game with (mid thirties / early forties in age) 1 is divorced, 5 are married, 2 never married.
The 2 children (1 year and 4-5 years) are either put in a bedroom in their crib (the 1 year old) or put in front of a Movie of their choice for the evening. When they get old enough to understand the concepts, they will be invited to participate.
The trick is to insure that the game does not interfere with real life. We have a set schedule of Saturday afternoons and evenings for one DM and Monday night after work for the other. If something critical comes up, the person with the issue just lets the DM know and the game goes on. It helps that we all live within 10 minutes of each other.
I wanted to start a different kind of D&D game, but never had the time. But I did lay out the ground rules.
The idea was to make email-based games practical. Instead of relying on face-to-face interaction between PCs and a bunch of NPCs, the PC interacts with his lieutenant (me), and his lieutenant interacts with other NPCs. This has a side-effect of putting the PCs in positions of power, wielding mighty kingdoms and/or business empires.
It ought to be fun, but I haven't had the time to set it up and run it. College+Work does that to a guy.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
We have had a campaign going for years now. We are currently using the most awesome setup ever and I am going to be taking some pictures soon to prove it. Till then, heres a link to the flash based software I developed to project onto the table. http://www.r4nge.com/fm/
Don't worry about it. People who post stuff like that are just disappointed that they haven't done anything in their own lives, so they jump on everyone else who reminds them of this.
Mewonders if this is the same Drew Curtis of FARK infame?
jes' curious...
I cannot, but my daughter is about 1 year old and is still staying up until about 10 pm, and waking up around 6 most days.
On the other hand, I can occasionally schedule a night to be out and play with friends.
Yeah. It only seems to work for game books though if Im going through Barnes and Noble. They list an additional 20% discount for their books. I wonder why. (Yes it wasn't that hard to figure out which company you were talking about. The $20 discount card gave it away.)
Ooo man the floppy drive is broken. No wait. The computer is just upside down.
But unless you're looking for the core books, the chances of them having the specific book you're looking for is pretty low. You have to weigh whether it's worth going to the store for the chance of picking up the book and supporting your local store, or just buying online where you know it's available.
It is so refreshing to see some Shadowrun content on slashdot. Shadowrun is so well put together and fun to play (and relatively easy to pick up). A few years after not getting to role-play I got into D&D to get my fix but hated the dice rules. They have since grown on me, but all in all I will always miss the SR dice system and the universe is so much darker and more fulfilling. Check it out if you can.
========
77 77 77 2e 6d 65 6c 76 69 6e 73 2e 63 6f 6d
*HUGE YAWN*
I was At Gencon, and from this article I'd assume that the convention was solely made up of of Wizards of the Coast, and FanPro and their "revitalizations" of older systems they bough out from TSR and FASA, but the dozens of others of game writers for the tabletop world arn't apparetly worth a word..
How about something might pass as new, like Privateer Press's Iron Kingdoms setting, they did so well after GenCon they're in a delivery crunch because they only expected orders to double..
Waterdeep is mentioned heavily in Neverwinter Nights. In fact, the entire first chapter is based on Waterdhavian creatures.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
While I personally prefer hardcover, softcover, or real paper, you can get the Shadowrun PDF at http://battlecorps.com/catalog/product_info.php?pr oducts_id=1617 for $25.
As well as a lot of other books coming to PDF(including older stuff). I got both the PDF and the hardcover because with a PDF you can search, and with a book my eyes don't bleed. =)
Shows that the RPG industry is heading the way to e-books faster than the more traditional publishers though.
D&D is certainly going strong and chugging along, but I've been most excited about the huge boom in small press RPGs over the past 5 or so year, much of which is fueled by the internet. When game authors can market and sell directly via the web, many things become possible.
Some really good stuff to check out:
Burning Wheel:
Dogs in the Vineyard
With Great Power
The Shadow of Yesterday
Primetime Adventures
I agree with a number of the comments above. There does seem to be fewer shops, or I've noticed that new ones open that close almost as quickly. The one that I (used) to buy from is still going strong and has been for almost 20 years. I suppose they offer something more to their customers - range, service - that makes them a success, and they're just getting bigger all the time. I can totally relate to the time constraints. Before kids, I used to play AD&D every Sunday, plus I played two or three Play by Mail games, and MERP, Palladium, and the one where you create super-heroes..the name slips my mind for the moment...The PBM's fell by the wayside..then AD&D became fortnightly...monthly..occasionally....now its been about 3 years or so. The good news is though, I'm breeding a whole new generation of players. My 6yo son found my AD&D books and asked what they where, and when I told him, he wanted to play. So out came the original red box Dungeons and Dragons set! He loves playing and I'm sure that his brother will as well when he's older. So WotC - I'm creating future markets for you. Long Live AD&D!
Well it certainly makes *me* happy!
Sword of the Phoenix was sort of the Mecca for All Things Gaming here in Atlanta for...as long as I can remember. They just closed up permanently this year.
I hear your pain, man. Sword of the Phoenix was a great little shop, and its death is part and parcel of the continuing polarization of the industry into two camps -- the small indy game industry and the far more familiar mass-market supplement factories.
Neither of these camps really support the local game store anymore.
The former category relies on the internet for distribution. The cost gap between on-line publishing and paper publishing is a blessing and a curse for this group. Distribution on-line is wider and cheaper and it encourages single book RPGs that don't require twenty supplements a year just to keep the business alive. On the other hand, the disappearance of this market from retail distribution has drained small gaming stores of a vital market for interesting content unavailable in mainstream stores.
That brings me to the latter category -- the mass market machine RPGs. WotC, White Wolf, etc. no longer need small game stores to push their product. They have Barnes & Noble, Borders, Amazon.com, etc. to push their endless churn of products.
The only games that don't fall into either of these two categories today that you can find in game stores are the games that no one wanted to buy in the 90s (or even the 80s!) that are still sitting on the shelves. This isn't exactly quality product, people. That's why it's still sitting on the shelves years later.
Game stores are dying because publishers don't need them anymore. That's the cold, hard truth, and it's sad to see.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Articles like this are why we should have a [Slashvertisement] section, and a dedicated [Slashvertisement] editor.
Here ya' go. I fixed a couple of typoes in your post.
Seriously, though, this is nothing more than a list of the latest crap churned out of the supplement factories with a short blurb about why you should buy them all. This isn't a review; this is a catalog. To be honest, this is the most disappointed I've been in Zonk since his first dupe a couple of months ago. He's kind of been my benchmark for a what a good Slashdot editor should be.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
As Game a Writer/Playtester/and player who is also friends with a number of people who work in the industry (from writing to owning bookstores), I can say that Table-top Roleplaying has NOT had a big year. Wizards of the Coast and some of the larger game companies have faired alright, but have not had that great of sales. Overall, the industry has had a mediocure year at best. Yes the larger companies have released a few books. But the books mentione in the story are by no means "important" to most gamers. Sales and turnout from August's Gen Con Indianapolis were not that great, and there were few products released, let alone many signifigant ones. The new Mage game from White Wolf was a flop at GenCon, as were most the games premiered. The Serenity RPG (which you could have signed by Ron Glass) sold out and has done well. This article looks liek nothign more than another advertisement for Wizards of teh Coast. The earlier /. article on GenCon was also nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt to kiss Wizard's ass.
The industry is still seeing hard times. People are playing as much if not more than they ever were, but are purchasing less.
From a player/GM perspective it is hard to incorperate a new book a month into your game. For a GM with a life, you may not have time even read a book a month.
OK my rant over.
Ghost Orb is a tool that I've found useful for helping get back in touch with the 'old crew' even though we've all moved away. There are even 'pick up' professional games available, but I've never played any.
The big thing about Play By Emails is that, to a large degree, mechanics have to take a back seat. There's simply no reasonable way to run a combat session with the delays that come with email, and online dice servers are only one more thing to add to it. Generally I encourage my players to think cinematically, to think of the game in terms of story, rather than in mechanics.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I have the same dilemma. While I'd love to support my local gaming store, I find it really hard to justify paying 35% or more in additional cost on almost all products. There have been lots of times where I've seen new WoTC D20 releases listed on E-Bay for $9.99 as well.
Big empire online sales are killing the revenue model of the local reseller. I'm not sure if anything can be done to save them, because Hasbro is not going to quit distributing to huge volume channels like Amazon or B&N.
In many ways, it's the machanics that broke our game up. Some of the players simply HAVE to game the system, rather than let the GM be the GM. Then you sit there for 2 hours arguing how many people can fit in a door, or the "I wasn't there, I was over here" issues, etc.
With the MMOs, the DM is the game itself, and all you see arguments about now are ninja looters. You can "WTF I didn't do that!" all you want, but the game says you did, and the mobs pounced. No do overs, time to move on. Call it a bug if you want.
Anything you know you want to buy before you get to the store is doomed to die out unless it has a compelling reason to be in a retail space. It's time for those stores to adapt their business model to a new reality. That reality is: people can buy books cheaply online.
What does a local game store offer which is unique?
Personally, if I were looking to do that sort of thing, I'd be interested in doing a sort of modular nerd paradise. Here's what I'd want to offer:
(1) Food. Food is high margin and if someone is there already, you have a captive audience. Sell pizza, hot dogs, nachos, coffee, ice cream, etc. Perhaps do periodic pickups from takeout places, and offer your customers menus and add on a delivery charge. Take this an extra step and you can potentially get a license and start offering alcoholic drinks. Beers+pool is old school. How about beer+D&D?
(2) Gaming. Offer LAN gaming by the hour with some sort of "club discount". I think I'd want to try to ensure the computers were mostly used by having X computers at a profitable $Y/hr charge. Then you also sell a "club card" for unlimited play (free or perhaps super discounted) that could be used; but those gamers would be limited to a certain percentage of the systems (first come first serve) and would have to renew their lease every so often (say, each 30 minutes). At such time as the pay-only PCs got close to filling up, the number of "club" PCs would shrink automatically. In other words, hourly rate customers get priority.
(3) RPG sessions. Interview independant contractor GMs. Here's what you do: you have for-pay GM sessions where you supply a library of books, a table to play at, a clean, well-lit environment, etc. You charge to be in the game, and you share the revenue with the GM, and you get the best people playing. I can't speak for everyone, but I know that I've played with GMs where when our game ended, I would gladly have paid money to play. Now, this isn't likely to be a mainstay income, but I think the idea of picking up some extra money while playing with some very dedicated players would appeal to the would-be GMs and provide a revenue stream. RPG sessions come with a discount at the food area.
(4) Video games? I think I'd want one wall full of classics people would still pay to play - well maintained copies of stuff like Street Fighter II (maybe super, or Super:turbo), Race Drivin, Ms. Pac-Man, etc - classics new and old.
In other words - Nerd Heaven.
And meanwhile, you'd situate the whole thing away from town in a cheap-rent area. Why? Because frankly, your money is going to come from people willing to spend hours and hours there, and those people won't mind a bit of a drive. The quick-stop people won't give you the business you need.
Would it work? I don't know. It would be cool, certainly.
Those are by far not the hottest thing coming out. The only thing I want for Christmas is A Game of Thrones RPG. (Yes, I am going to drop $100 bucks for the Deluxe Edition.)
The only suckness is that it is based on D20 OGL (it would have been so much better if it ran on AEG's 7th Sea engine but I can live through it). But any suckness is overcome by the greatness that is George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire world.
I guess I don't mind D20 but I do mind the crappy magic items (my +10 beats your Epic Damage Reduction... wtf). Give me AGoT with very little magic whatsoever and replace it with character development, drama and politics any day of the week.
ChozSun
ChozSun.com
-->Stand by for SHAMELESS SEGMENT OF DOOM.
I'm sorry, citizen, but knowledge of diplomacy, parties, or level are above your security clearance.
Perhaps you are referring to NASTY EVIL COMMIE MUTANT TRAITOROUS SCUM?
This infraction has been noted on your permanent record.
Please stand by for IntSec pickup for re-education and termination.
Have a nice day.
PARANOIA is fun because The Computer says it's fun. Stop playing non-fun RPGs! Play PARANOIA!
-->SHAMELESS SEGMENT CONCLUDED. THE COMPUTER IS YOUR FRIEND.
If you have a chance to crack the core rulebook for PARANOIA, seriously, do so. There's the End Citizen License Agreement (7. TERMINATION. You may be terminated.) and a great segment called, "If Popular Fantasy RPG worked like PARANOIA ("Wait! Did you almost call us 'Comrades'? That's a Commie word!")
And it's a blast getting players to stab each other's backs so many times they just gush.. blood....
If you don't believe me.. visit this site: http://www.poet.caligrean.com/ and see the Bush team playing it!
I used to be someone else. Now I'm someone better.
Real life is underrated.
My favourite system is High Adventure RolePlaying (HARP) (http://www.harphq.com/ . It is a relatively new fantasy system based on rolemaster, with all the complexity stripped out. I know of a couple D&D GM's who switched their campigns to HARP in the middle just because they loved harp so much.
Do they smell better?
I drank what? -- Socrates
Whoops, it would of course be the one review I didn't... err, I mean, couldn't read. It's all due to a rare form of selective glaucoma that makes my eyes go all blurry whenever the words Faerun or Elminster comes up in text.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Palladium Books.
:-)
www.palladiumbooks.com
The simple fact that they've done nothing but RPGs and survived to this very day earn my greatest respect. And they still have all the cool stuff and are regularly publishing new books. Very cool and a nice suprise for Xmas.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
www.dndonlinegames.com - play by post gaming.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
if you want to play table top D&D but don't want to be bogged down by all the rules and time required, check out Heroscape! It really is an awesome and quick game to play which isn't overwhelming.
Meh.
"Milady, please come forth and take the head of Van Cleef, after you I will take his head as well seeing as he appears to have one for everyone in the group."
There are volunteer-run free RP MUDs that have solved that problem, if you go seek them out. None of them have graphics, but if you're into table-top games you probably don't mind reading a lot of scrolling text.
I recommend The Eternal Struggle. http://www.esmud.com/
Comment of the year
Absolutely, the MUD world is often much closer to tabletop roleplaying than any MMOs I've played.
Sometimes my arms bend back.
TSR was selling books at a lose from about the mid eighties until their demise. That is why those books were cheaper then the WotC books. It is expensive to publish a hard cover book.
Only, Shadowrun's been totally gutted (Deckers are now "hackers") and transformed beyond my liking. I was a big fan of this game since the original version came out many moons ago, but I can't buy the new edition. Oh well. Nice knowin' ya, Shadowrun.
The problem simply is, that as an adult, with a job and a family, if I were to play D&D again, I might... MIGHT be able to play twice a month.
I have a semi-solution to this: I play with my family. It's a different sort of experience than playing with adults, or even near-adults, but it's still quite a lot of fun. I had to learn a different sort of DMing, one that worries less about balance and challenging the players because kids (mine are ages 12, 10 and 8) like being powerful more than they like being clever -- and they aren't very good at being clever. My wife plays, too, and she helps keep them from doing really stupid things, but she was never really a gamer and still doesn't quite get the idea of the immersive story. Still, she keeps them from doing things that are so nonsensical that I would simply *have* to kill them off.
Besides being fun, in my role as the all-powerful DM, I can also sneak in some "fatherly" lessons about life and morality. Some are obvious, like the fact that they get more experience points for resolving a problem without violence (though there are plenty that absolutely require the traditional swords 'n sorcery approach), and some are more subtle (to kids, anyway), but I can shape the flow any way I see useful.
We don't play that often, perhaps once a month on average, and rarely more than about three hours (I'm amazed the youngest one stays interested that long). It's enough to get my fix, though, and seeing my kids plowing through the Monster Manual really makes me chuckle.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
I couldn't disagree more. I think as MMOs spread, you will see more tabletop gaming. WoW is a very poor replacement for D&D, but it gets people over that "nerd" barrier which seems to exist for tabletop games, which are inherantly more fun (as there does not need to be anything you don't want to do). As for simplicity, there are plenty of very, very simple tabletop games out there, you probably just have not seen them. Personally, I relish the opportunity to get into very complicated game mechanics.
One of the best parts of getting together to play P&P games is just that...getting together. Even when not much gaming is done, the night is still a success.
What, the tabletop gaming or the being gay?
Playing via IRC is an especially good idea if you're stuck somewhere where you can't find players. It's not too far-fetched to have a game with two people in Australia, one in the UK and a GM in the US.
Enworld is probably the biggest D&D-focused forum out there. I can't vouch for its quality, though, as I'm not into D&D and don't hang out there.
that's how I refer to D&D. It's fun to play, like it may be fun to watch well done hollywood action movies - just don't start to think it too thoroughly. Latest D&D editions pretty much popularized roleplaying - we've even got D&D for dummies!
Ah, truth be told, I haven't played any tabletop RPGs in a good long while, but Palladium ranks among the worst RPG companies out there.
Way back in the early 90's they told all the gaming magazines that they couldn't publish any info for Palladium games. There were some mags at the time that had standard fare such as adventures for different game systems. Kevin Siembieda at Palladium just couldn't stand the notion that someone else might put out a scenario meant to be used for one of his games. (As far as I know no other companies had problems like this at that time...) I recall one editorial saying that they weren't even going to review Palladium products so that they could make sure to stay clear of Palldium's laywers.
Also around that time, before Magic: The Gathering came out, Wizards of the Coast were a tiny little company. They put out a very well written book called _The Primal Order_. It detailed how to use gods in an RPG. In an appendix, it had conversion rules for using The Primal Order with a large number of different game systems, including (you guessed it) Palladium. Guess who the only game company to call in their lawyers was? (Hint: it was Palladium.)
I won't go on, but from everything I understand, Kevin Siembieda is something of a lawyer-happy jackass.
-- dR.fuZZo
Never Winter Nights. Sure it did not hold true to the ruleset but someone has made the effort with a MOD.
Bonds of Blood, a RPG server (although not strict) that can be found on GameSpy in RPG section or direct connect to 24.17.57.241:5121
Please give it a try.. but be warned, life is hard under the Dictator.
+~Princess~+
I know a lot of people like to play on role playing servers but it just feels silly to me, the game structure is too obvious for me to want to play pretend.
Yes, you cannot get rid of that element of play simply through a bit of role-playing. What you can do, though, is lay down a policy of staying in-character so that people who want to role-play won't be distracted by everyone else talking about what was on television last night.
The RP servers don't make it more of a role-playing game as such, but it can make it less of a mechanical system, as people are more likely to spend time talking in-character than on other servers. I have found the RP aspect has enlivened the game beyond simply pressing buttons on many occasions.
Secret Service affair
Hey, it's Rich Burlew, kids! Author of one of my favorite webcomics, Order of the Stick. D&D oriented comic with stick figures that are more expressive than most wecomics full figured drawin's. Share and Enjoy. Umm, that's all.
I agree there has been many a time when my Troubleshooter team and I have gathered to drink Bouncy Bubble Beverage, eat Cold Fun, and carry out our Mandatory Bonus Duties. Always remember; there are Traitors everywhere and you have 6 colnes for a reason.
He effected a bored affect.