New Year, New Outlook

Happy New Year RPGBN!
After taking a break from the blogging world to reassess some things, I have decided to return to the fold. 

When I last posted I was aggravated and considered not only leaving the RPGBN but to close down this blog all together.Things that were happening here, in my personal life and in the comic and gaming industries were simply getting on my nerves. I took my dissatisfaction to heart and pretty much left this blog sitting cold. Looking back that was a bit of a drastic move to make.

I enjoy blogging, though I admit I'm not as active as many of the other member, and I do like writing about things which interest me. Namely comics, movies, books and of course gaming. So I figured it was about time for me to quit pouting and get to posting.

This year I'd like to try posting more than just reviews and opinion pieces, though those will still be posted just because I like them. I plan to post summaries of the games I run. Granted most of them will be Pathfinder, but I am going to try to fit in a few Mutants & Masterminds, Silver Age Sentinels, AD&D, Hollow Earth Expedition or Rifts adventures during 2010 as I try to coerce my group into genres other than straight fantasy as well as other systems. In a way everyone that reads my blog will be right there with me. Following my group through the ups and downs of our gaming experience. For some this may be helpful or to others it may just be humorous. Either way this will allow and hopefully encourage something I am very fond of, discussion.

You will see posts about adventure ideas I come up with, settings I am working on, how I try to convince my group to try a new system, whether it worked, and then how things went. If you have suggestions for my failed attempts, comments on my successes or even just wanna say hi, feel free to jump right in.  Everyone is welcome.


One thing I may explore this year is my experience trying to learn and relearn various systems. You see during my hiatus I went back and read many of my old game books. Doing so caused me to realize something, I don't know my favorite systems as well as I thought I did. I've been gaming for at least 20 years and honestly found out that I still have a few things to learn, even about old systems.

I've taken a great many of the things I know about my favorite games for granted. Assuming that I knew what I was talking about, until took the time to really read the books and found that sometimes my way of doing things wasn't exactly correct. I blame this on my tendency to throw out things I don't like upon first reading a rule book. Generally, as I've stated here before, I take the parts I like and run the game the way I want. So one of my goals this year, call it a resolution if you like, is to not only thoroughly learn some new systems but to relearn some many of my older games.

I've even decided to go back and relearn AD&D. Partially because of the old school resurgence, and partially out of nostalgia. Only one member of my group  has stuck around since or was even gaming when we made the switch from 2e to 3e nearly a decade ago. To the younger guys it will seem like a whole new system. I'll let you guys know how well I think the system held up or whether nostalgia has made me remember the game more fondly that it deserves.Plus I'll give you the new kids' opinion of the system. That should spark at least one good debate.

So for 2010 I'm going into this new year with a slightly different outlook on gaming and blogging. Hopefully it will be fun for all of us.


 Also I want to give special thanks to my friend Jason James from the Nut Gallery Review for his fill in posts over the past month.

Image From Fantasy Clip Inks Spell Casters Set 1

Image courtesy of William McAusland and the gang over at Outland Arts.

Team Fortress 2 RPG

I just found an article that came out earlier this month in regards to a rpg being home brewed based on Team Fortress 2.

Not sure how many of you have seen it as I missed it the first time around.

http://tf2rpg.blogspot.com/

I did it! No D&D for me...

With the exception mentioned in my last post, I managed to go through the holidays D&D free and my plan worked. I have found that my little bout of RPG abstinence has left me with a renewed interest in not only D&D, 4e in particular, but gaming in general.
I have campaign ideas seeping out my ears, I can't write them down fast enough. I also have been energized and can't wait to set up a D&D, Hollow Earth Expedition, Dead Reign or Serenity/BSG game. I don't think that it was just the lack of gaming that recharged my batteries, but what I did during my time off. What did I do? Well with the exception of spending a lot of time on my PSP (see previous post) I read some books, surfed the net and watched some movies, all of which I think were contributing factors.
First let's start with the books.
"Hollow Earth: The long and curious history of imagining strand lands, fantstical creatures, advanced civilizations and marvelous machins below the earth's surface" by David Standish and while the title may be long the book itself is just about 300 pages and a pretty quick read. It tells the story of where the idea of hollow earth came from, the real life people who believed in it and tried to find it, what people believed they would find there, as well as the stories written about it. It is a very interesting book which inspired me to do some googling to learn more. The hollow earth is a topic overflowing with gaming potential and I can't wait to get into it.
"World War Z" by Max Brooks is another book I managed to finally finish during this time which has me itching to run Dead Reign or throw a bunch of zombies in my next D&D game. If only they had the Necromancer class up and running.
"Indiana Jones and the Hollow Earth" by Max McCoy is the book I'm reading now which is only feeding my desire to run a hollow earth/pulp game. I can't wait to put some PCs up against Nazis in the center of the earth.
Dreseden Files by Jim Butcher, I actually read two more Dresden novels during this time and am eagerly awaiting the release of the the RPG.
I also managed to fit in a Forgotten Realms novel, Mistshore, and have recently gone back to reread the Campaing Setting so guess where my next D&D game is going to take place.

Next are the movies, most of which were directly linked to the books I was reading in some manner. I watched several Zombie movies, Dagon, Call of Cthulhu, all the Mummy movies (#3 was not my favorite BTW), all of the Indiana Jones movies, Serenity, past seasons of BSG, Tombstone (I'm your Huckleberry), and all six Star Wars during this time.
Between the books, the great blogs on RPGBN, and movies I actually had time to enjoy gaming. I know that sounds weird given that I didn't do any, but it did help. I think it was the fact I was able to step back and just be a geek, a fan and not have to worry about coming up with any content. I didn't do many posts on the Gazette so I was able to just be a fanboy for a while. I didn't even do more than an handful of posts on the various RPG forums. I just blocked out all the bad and concentrated on the fun parts of being a gaming geek. The things that attracted me to gaming in the first place.
This may not work for everyone, but I have to say that taking a break worked wonders for me. I'm more jazzed about everything, including 4e, than I have been in a long time. I've also managed to decide on which systems I want to run regularly, a dilema that has plagued me for a while now. For the forseeable future the primary game systems will be D&D 4e, Serenity/BSG, Mutants & Masterminds, Dead Reign and Hollow Earth Expedition. I realized that I spend so much time trying to find systems that had the things I wanted I was overwhelming myself with games. Granted many were very good, but these are the ones I think that offer everything I want to do. I plan to cut back all my gaming purchases to just these systems/games, which I realized cover nearly everything I could want to run. Well maybe with the exception of Dresden Files when it comes out, but that's it.
It's good to be back.

Also I would like to mention the great reviews done by Kurt Wiegel, nearly all of which I have watched over the past month. If you haven't checked out his vidoes on YouTube you definitely should. The reviews are great and give you just about everything you need to know about the games he covers before buying.

Inescapable D&D

I know that I was going D&D free for the past month or so and I guess I can say that is true, kind of. I did not roll any dice or break out my D&D books for any reason over the holidays so in that I was truthful. However, I did receive a copy of Dungeons & Dragons Tactics to play on my PSP for Christmas and believe me I have been wearing it out.
The game is based on the 3.5 rules so it is familiar. The game stays pretty true in feel to the pen and paper version in almost every way. Everything from character creation to the use of spells feels like a real D&D game. Granted there were some liberties taken, but over all I didn't notice or care.
Characters kind of look like minis that are moving around a table map which was a nice addition. The story is one big campaign broken down into smaller adventures. Which is nice since I often don't have time to play a full 4-6 hour adventure. Overall the game takes about 30 hours to complete which isn't bad for a PSP game.
Character creation is pretty basic for someone familiar with the RPG and has just about all the options you have available in the PHB, including those damn Gnomes. You can pick a pre-generated party or build your own, but you really do need to keep party balance in mind. I tried making a magic heavy party with no rogue and no figher and got my butt kicked when we ran out of spells. Since it was still the first adventure I took it as a lesson learned and rebuilt my part. As the game goes on and your characters die, you can hire premade characters at various points. I've had to hire 3 wizards so far and have yet to find a place to ressurect the old ones.
Pros:

1. The game is D&D 3.5 and a lot of fun. Granted it isn't the same as sitting down with friends but it is a nice substitute when you don't have a game going on.
2. The storyline isn't bad, I've played with DMs that have come up with worse (myself included), and overall it is somewhat interesting. I've actually decided to set up a campaign based on the one in the game. Granted I will embelish and change a lot of the details and add more depth. I will also allow the characters to interact with the NPC villagers and kill them if they feel the need.
   
3. You can actually tell the difference in your characters as they progress in levels, this helps give the illusion that you are accomplishing something.
4. You get to play with a full party of 6 for most of the game, your primary character and 5 party members, which enables you to keep party balance and include a variety of characters. Unless you do something stupid like I did and make a one sided party.
5. Cross class training is also an option, so you can min/max your character with almost the same customization as in the actual pen and paper game.

Cons:

1. The camera angles during certain missions suck. They jump around and at times you can't see what is going on so you have to constantly reorient the view.
2. My main complaint with the game is the fact that there aren't enough side quests. Granted you can, at certain points, pick your path, but for the most part you only have limited choices and kind of need to follow the story. Of course it is a video game and you can't just do what you want, but it would be nice if there was a little more Knights of the Old Republic or GTA feel to the game. It would be nice if I could just run through the village picking fights with random NPCs but that isn't an option. Some times you just wanna kill stuff.
3. There is actually no real NPC interaction, this is just a straight duneon delve. Here is the mission, go kill the goblins/zombies. But what the game lacks in actual roleplaying, it more than makes up for in action, which is pretty much constant.
4. Controlling a party of 6 can be cumbersome. While it gives you the ability to make sure every necessary skill is covered, it does make it difficult to keep track of all the characters when eveyrone is in different areas.
5. Encumberance is also a pain. If you have one character that isn't carrying much they get can get waaaay ahead of others and get pinned down by six monsters while you spend the next 2-3 turns trying to get eveyrone else there to help. So you have to try and keep everyone together, which can be tiresome and boring.
   

Overall I love this game and think the wife made a wise choice in finding this gem for me. As scheduling conflicts keep my group from actually gaming, I still get to play. I can't wait for a 4e version of this game, if they ever make one. Definitely something any D&D fan should pick up for those times in between game nights.

Happy New Year

Just want to wish everyone a prosperous New Year full of geeky fun.
May your comics be mint and your dice roll true.

Happy Holiday!

Just wanted to wish everyone a Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays and hope we all have a great New Year!

Not much time to game.

As some may have noticed my posting has been a bit slim this month and that is intentional. Gaming has had to take a back seat to work, Christmas shopping, finals and grad school preparation, I take the GRE today. A test on Christmas Eve!!!! Yup, it sucks.  

Anyway with all of that on my plate, I haven't done a whole lot of gaming this month. I have a stack of RPG books, adventures, magazines, comics and video games I haven't even looked at over the past few weeks. I've hardly had time to catch a hockey game, thank goodness for radio webcasts. (I'm listening to the Blues, my team, get stomped by the Red Wings as I type this.)

Anyway I will be posting more after the holidays are over. I still have plenty of new product reviews to get to, as well as some retro-reviews I've been wanting to do. There is just so much going on that I haven't been able to keep up, thankfully most of the gang on the RPGBloggers network have been doing a fantastic job of staying on top of things.

 

Happy Thanksgiving

Hope you all have a great Turkey Day!
Now, I'm going to go raid the kitchen with my fork of gluttony +1....

Superhero Larping? Except you could really get shot!

I'm a gamer and a comic book geek through and through. I love my superheroes and like many others have argued the merit of one character/power over another, rolled up and roleplayed more than a few in an attempt to get a taste of what being a superhero is like. I've even spent more than a few moments fantasizing about being a superhero, but I have never truly considered becoming one, for real. I mean who in their right mind would run around in spandex, which is very unflattering, and face down real criminals, with real guns... not me.

However, there are people in the world who are doing just that. This is the ultimate superhero LARP, playing superhero in the real world, fighting the never ending battle, which seems like it would be cool, but I just can't get past the bad guys using real guns part.

In a Rolling Stone article I found online, it appears there are more than a few people around the world that have decided to take on the role of caped crusader in their own neighborhoods. Some are even banding together and forming super teams. The avid comic book fan and major geek in me thinks this is the coolest shit I have ever heard and wants to get out there myself... well in spirit at least. The Mental Health Professional (once I get my degree and take my boards) in me finds this behavior disturbing and wonders why seemingly normal people would even consider doing something this ridiculous. Now I can tell just by reading the RS article that the characters featured in the article have had some traumas in their lives and escaped into a fantasy world, that they then merged with the real world. There is definitely some attention seeking behavior at play, but more impressive than all the psychobabble I can come up with is their unshakable belief in doing good. Their need to make the world a better place in some small way. I find that both fascinating and inspiring.

These people have taken something many of us daydream about and spend hours rolling dice to recreate, and they live it. They seem to have just a touch of Peter Pan in them, refusing to grow up, and yet still taking responsibility for their fellow man. They are trying to take the weight of the world on to their shoulders, even though no one asked them to. Are they mentally unbalanced... probably, but I can't help hoping that one of these guys will be around if I or a loved one ever needs them.

If you want to learn more about these real life Superheroes, or feel the overwhelming need to don spandex here are some links that you may find useful.

World Superhero Registry
Heroes Network
The Green Scorpion (based in Arizona)
Superhero Lives
Wolrdwide Heroes Organization
Justice Society of Justice (based in Indianapolis)
Superhero (based in Florida)
Master Legend (based in Florida)
Dark Guardian (based in New York)
Hero Gear