Game accoutrements take center stage this week. But don’t worry, we’ve got games, too!
Brant Guillory, 21 August 2015
Carolina Game Tables (Clint & Jodi Black) $19k of $15k, ends 10 September 2015
Gorgeous, hand-crafted, drop-center game tables that pull double-duty as your dining room table are perfect for your gaming clan, uh… family. Carolina Game Tables are a startup from a family that’s been in the furniture business for a few generations, and they’re putting that expertise to work for your benefit. More affordable than the giant Geek Chic tables, Carolina Game Tables will hook you up with a great addition to your gaming life, but only in CONUS. Sorry, Hawaii. Drop your pledge on their Kickstarter campaign and then post the pics in our forums when it gets delivered and make us all jealous.
Freeblades: Creatures of Faelon (DGS Games) $2800 of $8500, ends 21 July 2015
The guys from DGS Games are back with some new toys for their Freeblades minis collection. These are wilder creatures that sport all manner of fangs, scales, claws, and… well, bark. Their last Kickstarter campaign dropped some jaws with their final sculpts, and their fantasy world is high fantasy with nice interesting twists. Hit their campaign page and drop your coin to get these minis funded.
An RPG book you could show off on an academic bookshelf. But what’s the payoff?
click images to enlarge
The front cover is gorgeous.
Digging through my boxes of game books (if you ever want to know exactly how much game stuff you really have, pack up and move a few times) I found this old treasure.
I can remember when I bought it – it looked like what all of us gamers had been holding our breath for all these years: A serious intellectual take on role-playing, which addressed an adult audience in an adult fashion.
It succeeded on that level.
Aria Worlds addressed world design from the ground up, and you could do it in any one of a dozen different ways. You could first design the planet and the ecology and build up from there; adventurers expanding their world through their travels could start small and get bigger as they went; you could even (very easily) pick an historical period and adapt it to game term (Bronze Age, Iron Age, etc.)
The book did not address much beyond the initial age of gunpowder. It was intended as a fantasy game supplement. And it did this very well. Continue reading →
Please note that this review covers the old 2d edition book for Fantasy Hero. The book has been significantly revised in the 15+ years since this review was originally written, and we have no idea if this material is still present or not in the newer versions.
First, a confession: I don’t play the Hero system. I’ve never played the Hero system. I don’t foresee myself ever playing the Hero system. Yet, this book has one of the most prominent places in my gaming library, and would probably be in the top 5-10 gaming items I would recommend for the any new player, and in the top 3-5 for any new GM.
Why? The back half of this book is one of the best sourcebooks I’ve ever seen.
I’ve been role-playing since 1981. I’ve been collecting since about 1983. I have yet to see a better overall sourcebook than the one included in Fantasy Hero.
I bought the game without knowing you needed the Hero system to play (yes, I missed the big warning on the back cover) but that didn’t stop me from using it over and over.
And over.
From pages 100 to 202, the book tackles, in order: creating scenarios, running scenarios, fantasy genres and their conventions, setting up campaigns, and worldbuilding. That’s just the game-mastering section. The Sourcebook offers sample character archetypes, a sample campaign described in simple but sufficient detail to play, two extended scenarios, 5 mini-scenarios, and two of best sections I’ve ever seen on designing monsters and magic items. Oh, and the last 50 pages of the book (202-252) are one of the best collections of spell-books I’ve seen in years.
The section on creating scenarios leads right in to how to run them, and the brief advice is exactly what you’d want in “Everything I Need to Know About GMing I Learned in Kindergarten.” Individualizing the NPCs; Cinematic fight scenes; Pacing, Climax & Rewards; Foreshadowing; and Cash Flow are all addressed in ways that beginners can easily grasp and veterans will love to be reminded of. Continue reading →
