Ben

I'm a geek. A nerd, a dweeb, whatever. Yes I owned garb, yes I still own medieval weaponry. And yeah, I could kick your butt in Mechwarrior the CCG. I love video games, role playing games, tactical board games and all forms of speculative fiction. I will never berate someone for wanting to be a Jedi and take everything Gary Gygax ever wrote as gospel. Well, all of this but that last bit.

One geek’s board game collection.

 Board and Card Games  No Responses »
May 162012
 

I’ve been asked a few times by various people quite recently what I’m playing, what I have and what I wish I had. So, I took some not-to-terrible photos of my collection using my phone’s camera. Here’s most of what I have (a few games are on loan). As for what I want? Well, everything else of course!  I’ve written up a very, very, very brief review/brain-dump on each game pictured that isn’t a kid game or Toys R Us game.

Click any picture to make it vastly larger.

Top Shelf

Talisman is the original Black Isle version, of which that one is review copy #50. There’s a long story behind that one, and 2nd edition which I had to give up. I don’t play this one, I just gaze lovingly at it.

Just got Race for the Galaxy yesterday and haven’t played it yet. I’m excited to try it out! I hear there’s a steep learning curve to this game. Bring it.

Continue reading »

Popularity: 1%

 Posted by Ben on May 16, 2012 at 12:51 pm  Tagged with: , ,

A whole bunch of games from DriveThruRPG are 20% off – here’s how to get them

 Pathfinder, Role Playing Games, Savage Worlds  No Responses »
May 162012
 

So you’re looking for something new to play? Maybe a nice addition to a system you’re already familiar with or something that’s totally new to you? I’ve got two things to say about that.

First, go grab the Wayne Foundation Charity RPG Pack while you still can (only available until the 18th of this month!) It’s $25 and you get $235 worth of stuff. You can’t beat that with a stick.

Second, here’s a bunch of awesome games that are 20% off. Hit up the links to see them at DriveThruRPG and then when you check out, use the code DriveThruApril (Yes, we know it’s a month out of date in verbiage, but it’s the correct code, I assure you).

These offers are good until June 14th, so take advantage of them!

Popularity: 2%

 Posted by Ben on May 16, 2012 at 9:05 am  Tagged with: , , , , ,

Huge gaming goodness, little tiny price – an update on the Wayne Foundation charity RPG Pack

 Role Playing Games  1 Response »
May 142012
 

It’s been a bit over a week that the 2nd Annual Wayne Foundation Charity RPG Pack has been on sale. To date 124 awesome people have purchased it, raising almost $2000 for The Wayne Foundation!

The charity pack is only available at DriveThruRPG and affiliates, and will vanish into the ether(net) at Midnight on Friday, May 18th. For $25 you get $235 worth of really, really fantastic things. Entire RPG systems, books to expand universes you already know and love, original novel length fiction and original character artwork. Hit the link above for a full list of what’s available.

Thanks!

Popularity: 1%

 Posted by Ben on May 14, 2012 at 10:00 am  Tagged with: , , ,

Thunderstone Advance – The next generation of deck building dungeon delving

 Board and Card Games, Reviews, Role Playing Games  No Responses »
May 142012
 

The Game

A few weeks ago a giant package arrived at the Troll in the Corner offices, and it contained a giant box of deck building happiness – Thunderstone Advance: Towers of Ruin! I’ve now sat down and played this through several times and I’m ready to give you my honest assessment of the newest version of Thunderstone. To start things off on the right foot let me just say that I like this game a lot, but others in my gaming circles were a bit more on the fence. Here’s why!

Thunderstone Advance is a deck building game somewhat similar to Dominion, or Ascension, or many of the other deck building games out there. Thunderstone Advance differs though in theme and mechanics. You’re playing the part of an entire adventuring group, bent on building up your characters and equipment to enter the dungeons and fight your way to the fabled Thunderstone. You start off with a deck of 12 cards, drawing six per turn. You purchase new cards to add to your deck which allow you to defeat monsters or buy even more cool stuff. In defeating the monsters resident in the dungeon, you gain XP with which to do cool things, and accrue points that will allow you to (hopefully) win the game.  The deck building aspect of the mechanics are similar to other games, with the difference being your choice between acquiring new cards, or using your current deck to go defeat some nasty creatures.

Are you ready to go shopping and then kick some monster butt?

In Thunderstone, at the beginning of each turn, you must make a choice. Are you going to venture into the dungeon area to take on some nasty things? Or will you head into town to do a bit of shopping, perhaps pick up a bite to eat or a new spell?  You can also choose to do neither of these and either place cards from your hand into your discard pile, or remove one card from the game permanently.

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Popularity: 1%

 Posted by Ben on May 14, 2012 at 8:49 am  Tagged with: , , , , , ,

The Gods of Aruneus – available today!

 Aruneus, Pathfinder, Role Playing Games  No Responses »
May 112012
 

The latest Aruneus PDF has hit the streets! The Gods of Aruneus is available as of today, for $1.00 at Drive Thru RPG.

Aruneus is a source book for the Pathfinder Role Playing Game detailing the world, politics, and lives of those living in a high fantasy world one hundred years after a cataclysmic zombie apocalypse.

Aruneus is a new world for use with the Pathfinder Role Playing Game system. 100 years past, Aruneus experienced an apocalyptic event. Starting in a small village, a family infected by a strange sickness died, only to rise again several days later. Within weeks hordes of undead were roaming the Human empires, ravaging any warm blooded creature that fell in to their grasp. Aruneus was devastated – losing in a few years over 10 million sentient beings.

After 100 years of fending off a complete collapse, the sentient races are rebuilding their societies and for the first time there is hope that the undead menace can be destroyed and life given a chance to flourish again.

The Gods of Aruneus gives the divine backdrop in which the zombie apocalypse was formed. Have the gods abandoned this world?

  • Six gods
  • Six new Domains
  • A new threat for the world of Aruneus

You’ll find 10 pages of new material for use in your Aruneus campaign, or in any Pathfinder or d20/OGL game. You’ll also find a new, tougher class of zombie which not only turns humans, but other races as well!

Popularity: 1%

 Posted by Ben on May 11, 2012 at 9:12 am  Tagged with: , , , , ,

Cheating is the natural state of play for those cheeky little gits called kids. Here’s why that’s okay, and why you should embrace it.

 Board and Card Games, Role Playing Games  No Responses »
May 102012
 

Cheeky Little Gits

This kid is a cheat and a liar!

I’ve spent a fair amount of time lately creating games for kids, and playing games with kids – primarily my own two girls who are 6 and 9.  I’ve come to the conclusion that the natural state of gaming for children is to get away with absolutely as much as possible and do what needs to be done to try and win the game or shape it to their satisfaction. I kinda love this about kids too, for  several reasons. I admit that my sample pool is pretty small – my two kids who are always willing to play games in the name of science, and a few other sessions with other kids. So, take this report with a grain of salt.

For some systems, this is okay. There are a ton of kid oriented RPGs out there, my own Argyle & Crew being one of them. These tend to go a little lighter on the rules than RPGs aimed towards adults. The fact that kids seem to like to cheat is one of the reasons I built A&C like I did. Yet, rather than call it cheating, I simply call it imagination. We’ll get back to this in a few paragraphs.

Of all the kids I’ve played with over the past few years, it doesn’t matter what we’re playing – board games, RPGs, My Little Freaking Pony, many of them tend to let their imaginations really run wild.  It’s an awesome experience. I can interject something strange, such as a Martian spacecraft into my daughter’s My Little Pony play session and not only does she take it in stride, it gets incorporated into her play in a matter of fact way. That’s not cheating.

When you’re playing Quarriors though, and she opts for eight dice rather than six, well that is cheating. Really in her mind it’s a much lesser form of cheating than say introducing my Godzilla action figure and my wife’s hairy Wonder Woman doll into the Pony mix. When she watches ponies on the tube, both Godzilla and Wonder Woman consistently fail to make an appearance.  Yet here she is playing with dice already and she just wants to add two more. Sheesh, what’s the big deal?

Why when young kids cheat, it ain’t cheating

Back to my game and imagination – that’s why when I made a game for young kids, I built into it the ability for the person running the game to say “yes” as much as possible. Mixing atomic age giant monsters with golden aged comic people and talking ponies who have no hands yet somehow still build trains and stuff is perfectly okay! In a young kids mind there’s no barriers formed yet between what is, what should be and whatever. They’re still learning all this stuff about the world around them and what’s possible – to a 6 year old, just about anything is possible.

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Popularity: 2%

 Posted by Ben on May 10, 2012 at 10:04 am  Tagged with: , , , , , ,

On sale now! The 2nd Annual Wayne Foundation Charity RPG Pack!

 Argyle & Crew, Aruneus, Board and Card Games, Dungeons & Dragons, FATE, Literature, parahuman, Pathfinder, Role Playing Games, System Neutral  1 Response »
May 042012
 

Available only from May 4th – May 18th 2012

Starting today, right now, the 2nd Annual Wayne Foundation Charity RPG Pack is on sale! With $235 worth of product and retailing for just $25, you’ll be hard pressed to find a better bargain than this.

Want another reason to get excited? All of the profits raised from the sale of this pack will go directly to The Wayne Foundation – a 501(3)c charitable organization dedicated to ending child prostitution.

This charity pack will get you a huge variety of amazing things! Complete RPG systems, books to supplement your D&D 4e, Pathfinder, Fate, G-core and other games, original character artwork, original short fiction and several full length novels!  You will find months, if not years of entertainment right here, in one convenient, fairly huge .zip file just waiting for you to download it.

If you’d like to help spread the word, you can grab a copy of the word/gdoc press release suitable for cutting/pasting directly into your blogging/website software. Or grab the prettier PDF press release created for us by Kristin Moran! We’d love to hear you spread the word on your sites, Facebook, Twitter, G+ and hell, even MySpace!

To see a complete list of what’s included, click past the break!

Popularity: 2%

 Posted by Ben on May 4, 2012 at 8:59 am  Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,

Wayne Foundation 2nd Annual Charity Pack – here’s everything you’ll get!

 Argyle & Crew, Aruneus, Board and Card Games, Dungeons & Dragons, FATE, Literature, Pathfinder, Role Playing Games, System Neutral, Table Top  No Responses »
Apr 302012
 

Mark your calendars for this Friday, May 4th! That’s when The Wayne Foundation Charity RPG Pack will be available for sale! With $220 worth of product and retailing for just $25, you’ll be hard pressed to find a better bargain than this.

Want another reason to get excited? All of the profits raised from the sale of this pack will go directly to The Wayne Foundation – a 501(3)c charitable organization dedicated to ending child prostitution.

This charity pack will get you a huge variety of amazing things! Complete RPG systems, books to supplement your D&D 4e, Pathfinder, Fate, G-core and other games, original character artwork, original short fiction and several full length novels!  You will find months, if not years of entertainment right here, in one convenient, fairly huge .zip file just waiting for you to download it.

To see the gigantic list, continue on after the break!

Continue reading »

Popularity: 2%

 Posted by Ben on April 30, 2012 at 9:07 am  Tagged with: , , , , , ,

There are no roads where we are headed. But we have a map. Living in a science fiction reality.

 Ben's Corner, Role Playing Games  No Responses »
Apr 252012
 

The Arkyd Series 100 LEO class. A assembly line manufactured, low planetary orbit telescope designed for remote sensing in space and detecting rare elements, water and metals.

The Arkyd Series 200 Interceptor class. A modification of the LEO where propulsion capabilities have been added, allowing for deeper spaced penetration and coordinated tracking of orbiting bodies using multiple Intercepter class spacecraft.

The Arkyd Series 300 Rendezvous Prospector class. A modified Interceptor class craft with tight beam laser communications capabilities, exhibiting swarm capabilities with other Prospector class craft they will minimize risks of deep space mining by spreading that risk across multiple, semi-autonomous craft.

Whether you like your SciFi gritty and human, or slick and scientific, you should be celebrating right now.  All of those craft sound a hell of a lot like science fiction, but in reality these could be less than 20 years in the future. In fact, the Arkyd 100 LEO is slated for use before 2020.  Cheap, assembly line created spacecraft for use in prospecting throughout our solar system with the end result being water depots in space and rare-earth elements being brought to our planet.

In what really is a historic press conference, Planetary Resources outlined their mission, nothing short of asteroid mining (the basis for so many scifi stories and game elements) which will certainly change the way we as a species view space, and view the resources available off-Earth.  I was watching the press conference yesterday and I was really struck by the overall science fiction feel of our modern lives.

Continue reading »

Popularity: 3%

 Posted by Ben on April 25, 2012 at 9:51 am  Tagged with: , , , , , ,

Looking for a paranormal themed RPG set in modern times? Check out Enter the Shadowside!

 Role Playing Games  1 Response »
Apr 232012
 

A while back on the /r/rpg portion of Reddit, an RPG was born. Some discussion was had, people were contacted and then it got quiet for a while. Suddenly, just as the memories of those discussions were fading, out bursts Enter the Shadowside – a fully formed RPG!

The folks at FableForge have just released their flagship RPG, which is available at DriveThruRPG right now, for just five bucks. I’ve got my copy and it’s looking like a lot of fun. Here’s FableForge’s press release.  If you check out their website, you can download a PDF featuring a few pages from their exclusive comic and from the RPG itself.

New York, April 20 – FableForge, an indie organization, released its first sourcebook Enter The Shadowside, a paranormal-themed RPG set in modern times and based on the Jacob’s Ladder system, an innovative visual device which resolves conflict through the properties of geometry.

The premise of the Shadowside realm offers a single theory to explain all paranormal phenomena and most religions under one umbrella. Player characters join one of nine possible organizations -ranging from elite catholic agents a la DaVinci Code, to occultist power brokers following in the steps of Aleister Crowley, to web savvy anarchs and rebels reminiscent of Fight Club. Each campaign has different organizations taking different sides in a global spiritual war -the proverbial End of Days foretold by most religions. Player characters join in Hierogamy with spiritual entities played by the StoryHost, receiving paranormal abilities in exchange for hosting a second soul in their flesh bodies.

Enter The Shadowside’s game mechanics are firmly connected to it’s premise of supernatural agency through the use of Belief Points, a character resource which serves dual purposes both powering paranormal abilities as well as modifying the outcome of dice rolls. Through it’s unique World Turtle design, characters enjoy a range of 14 different Traits while only having to maintain 7 (ie. Strength and Dexterity combine to form Agility).

Although designed with mechanical efficiency in mind, the focus of the game is placed firmly on story-telling through a philosophy referred to as “Seeing” -the act of removing oneself as an active creator of fiction, and instead assuming an observer role to intense events which are nevertheless out of one’s direct control. In other words, Enter The Shadowside encourages reaching that famed state where “the characters are practically playing themselves already”, as more than one veteran player has reported experiencing at some point.

FableForge has embraced an “Open Canon” concept, where any person who truly cares may attempt to write (and even sell) official Shadowside materials without owing any royalty whatsoever. Creative collaboration takes place in their online boards, at reddit.com/r/shadowside.

Enter The Shadowside includes a 16-page full-color comic book by Adam Isailovic and sells for $4.99 at DriveThruRPG.

Life is a resistance to what came before it, and what comes after. The universe of things is the illusion, as is the sense of birth as our beginning and death as our end.

At a primal level you know this to be true: the squareness of this world has made your mind wander, and in dreams you’ve been given glimpses of elsewhere. You remember what this elsewhere felt like, because you’ve been there. Think back of when you were a child: late at night you wake up for nor reason, your eyes go to the closet, it’s dark. Remember what that felt like. The details don’t matter -the details are gone. It’s the scent what stayed with you. Others disregard it. Maybe you tried to, and can’t. You suspect right.

The hidden wars do rage all around you; and you suspect right every time you feel their echoes whispering down the back of your neck. Take the next step. Let Belief be your key, your door and your doorknob. Let it guide you to a place where you can will anything into existence by simply hoping (or fearing) it’s already there. Because it most certainly is. Dreams and nightmares, Cogito Ergo Mundus – the Shadowside.

Popularity: 14%

 Posted by Ben on April 23, 2012 at 8:45 am  Tagged with: , , ,
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