Rule of the Dice

Last week, I talked a little bit about Woodland Warriors , a fun rules-lite adaption of Brian Jacques animal adventure novels. Today, I'm going to look at two of the expansions available for that game. Each expansion is written by Simon Washbourne with art by Darrel Miller. The first is called Greyrock Isle. It's a short, 19 page, book that details a new setting and several new classes. The main meat in this supplement comes in the form of a new island, new map, and new locale: A Robin Hood-esque England where the inhabitants are terrorized by a big bad bandit king. It's a bit weak overall and not that different from the original Alder Vale setting. And there's no sample adventure, which hurts the overall product. No matter how many plot seeds you provide, you can't beat a full-grown adventure to help a GM get a feel for a setting. You also, however, get two new races to play as: hares and otters. Neither provides a wildly new experience, though both are welcome add...

It might seem a little hard to fathom that the creator of Barbarians of Lemuria, one of the most unapologetically sword & sorcery games I can recall, would also craft a game based around the idea of medieval animal adventures, in the same vein as the late Brian Jacques and his Redwall series of novels, but here it is. Woodland Warriors, the 114-page core rulebook by Simon Washbourne, is a game that tries to emulate Jacques light-hearted yet serious setting with a trimmed down D&D ruleset. Or, more specifically, the 0E retroclone Swords & Wizardry . Except it does away with most of the S&W base to create something that seems a lot like D&D, but using only d6s and simplifying virtually everything. Instead of your usual fantasy races you have hedgehogs, squirrels, moles, mice, and badgers. Each has interesting abilities, from a Badger's Rage attack, to the Hedgehog's natural armor. As for classes, well it's pretty much standard D&D with some name change...

As you may have heard (and if you didn't, welcome to the Internet fellow gamer!), the 5th Edition of the World's Most Famous Roleplaying game is definitely in progress. At least according to Wizards website . And everyone has an opinion about it, with a lot feeling that Wizards didn't give enough support to 5E, a lot feeling that this will be just as bungled unless they do this or that. I have thoughts and opinions on it as well, but why add to the mess of sound when it would just be redundant? Instead I had to ask myself, what does this mean for me, a gamer who got into roleplaying well after 4E had come out? I mean, I'm a spring chicken compared to most gamers. I didn't cut my teeth with 1st or 2nd Edition rules. Heck, I only had a passing knowledge of 3rd Edition thanks to the D&D PC games. And though I got into roleplaying at what might be called the height of 4E's popularity I never really took to the 4th edition ruleset. I suppose that's why I'...

One of the greatest things about our hobby is its progressive nature. And I'm not talking about elven politics or any such malarkey. No, I'm talking about how the hobby thrives as more and more options to play are made available. Whether you play face-to-face, or via email or forum , or even through a service like Google+, there are more ways to get your roleplaying fix than ever before. And now you can add play-by-blog to that growing list. For the last couple months, I've been in a play-by-blog game run by the packmaster of the blog A Pack of Gnolls , called The Ruins of Empire and running Microlite74 in 4E's Nentir Vale setting. Playing by blog means setting up a blog specifically dedicated to the game in question; the gamemaster makes the main posts that drives the game forward, then players post their actions in the comments section of the blog, and generally it acts a lot like play-by-forum. It's slow, but since it doesn't require a massive time sink, it...

In case you missed it, it's Teach your Kid to Game week, an idea that I 100% approve of, even if the idea of an entire week to it seems a bit unnecessary. What's next? A week to remind us to breathe? However, on its intended purpose, I can lavish nothing but praise. I've had the opportunity to run games for young kids before and, let me just say, that it was highly rewarding and actually quite fun. Very imaginative children will think of solutions to problems that no rational adult could ever conceive, whether or not said solution is physically possible. There are plenty of tips and advice out there for running games with kids, but let me just reiterate a couple of points I feel need mentioning as often as possible. #1: Don't play for hours. Kids get tired, have shorter attention spans, and basically will burn out faster than you will. Limit the game time to two hours at the max, maybe even cut it short to an hour-and-a-half. You can get in a little adventuring and try ...

When I was fourteen or so, I discovered my dad's old collection of paperback men's action novels and spent an entire summer reading them, from the adventures of American super spy Nick Carter, to the sardonic violence of the Destroyer, I devoured them all with a fresh zeal, with my favorite being the violent adventures of the Executioner, who would later serve as the basis for Marvel's Punisher. Soon I'd continued on to classic pulp adventure series like Doc Savage and the Shadow, but the men's adventure novels of the 70s and 80s have always held a special place in my heart and on my bookshelf. So to find a game supposedly patterned after those novels filled me with excited trepidation. Dogs of WAR , by Simon Washbourne, is based around the Bolanverse series (the long running series consisting of the Executioner, Mack Bolan, Pheonix Force, Able Team, and Stony Man, three series of which are still being published as of today: www.mackbolan.com ) though any actual kn...

Everyone seems to have enjoyed the free map I posted a while back. It's made the rounds, been awesomed up and found a place in the Dragonsfoot forums . So I decided I may as well post another one. I was going for a kind of comic book style with this map. It was an experiment, mostly hand drawn on a wacom tablet in photoshop. It turned out pretty good. You could pretty easily use it for some northern wilderness setting thing, at least that's the vibe I was going for, but feel free to use it for whatever you want. If you use the map let me know. Both of the maps are free for anyone's personal use at the game table or for anyone's free DIY RPG products - I only ask for a link back or a credit as the maps creator.   ......................................... Several people have inquired whether they could my maps in their commercial (for profit) projects. The answer is: No, you cannot use these maps for any commercial project. Read the creative commons c...

Microlite20 , the ultra slim version of the d20 SRD, has been available for some time now, and it has been modded up and down so many ways that you can find a hundred different games using the same basic ideas, from westerns to space operas. It's nice, I've played it, but it wasn't until I sat down this last weekend and gave a version called Microlite74 a try that I truly appreciated its flexibility. Designed by Randall Stukey, Microlite74 is a game with the familiar d20 conventions, but with an old-school flavor. Coming in three distinct booklets, each with a small overall page count, you can enjoy Microlite74 Basic, Standard, or Extended, each playing under different assumptions. In Basic, you can play as Humans or the classic three Demi-Humans (Elves, Dwarves, Halflings) and there are three character classes, the Fighter, Cleric, and Magic-User. That's right, no thief (or rogue for those politically correct 3e players). Or Bruce Campbell, as my players like to say. ...

I love bad action movies. Big explosions, loads of inconceivably impossible gunplay, one-liners galore...what's not to love? I also love free. Free as in beer. What do you get when you combine the two? Badass , the game of pure, unadulterated action. Designed by Jay Steven Anyong (of the blog Life and Times of a Philippine Gamer ), I first noticed this little game thanks to Michael Wolf and Stargazer Games. Michael did the editing and layout and if was willing to take the time for this game, so was I. And I'm glad I did! It's readily apparent that Anyong knows and loves his badass cinema and he does his best to fill the game with that special sort of style you can only get when the dust has lifted and the room is filled with dead bodies, shell casings, and flying doves. Not pictured: Shell casings, doves, or dead bodies. But it's awesome anyway. Overview... The basics behind the 2d6 system is a simple roll-over affair. Roll 2d6, get higher th...

I've never just sat back and not participated in a game. I'm always either a player or, more likely, the gamemaster. It just wouldn't be fun to sit around while everyone else got in on the gaming, right? So why have I found myself spending a disturbing amount of time listening to live-play roleplaying podcasts of games I have literally no stake in? I have no idea. And yet I can't stop myself. Whenever I'm doodling up another map for the next game, or just jotting down some salient plot points for possible games, I find myself more and more turning to game session podcasts (my current favorites being those at www.gamershavenpodcast.com ) for background noise. What I can't figure out is why, exactly, listening to total strangers play their chosen games is entertaining to me. I mean, the majority of them are what you would expect; a lot of laughing, goofing around, the lovely sound of dice rolling, and some colorful profanity. Sounds not unfamiliar to anyone who ga...