I need to get back into the habit (or maybe actually start the habit) of
posting regularly to my blog here. I have a ton of games and even since
the last time I posted on here a ton of games have come to my attention and/or
into my possession. Looking at 2013-2014 so far, I'd say my game focus
has drifted regularly but there have been a handful of games of interest that
I'll talk about for the moment. In no particular order...
Dragon Age - I finally got a chance to play this game at Jimbocon 4 (my 2013
annual game weekend get together with my brother and friends at my
place). I've been buying the Green Ronin RPG boxes since they came out
and I really like this game. It played pretty quick at the table despite
it being everyone's first time with the AGE system. I'm looking forward
to picking up set 3 which is finally being released as I write this. The
good thing is this will basically complete the system and I'll have a fun RPG
with a strong theme/setting that I can use without trying to continually buy
more products for it.
Pathfinder - Paizo continues to put out a lot of great material for their
flagship RPG and the last few years have been no exception. I’m a huge fan of monster books so the
addition of Bestiary 4 was a big win as was Mythic Adventures. Equally useful to the GM was the NPC
Codex. I’ve picked up a number of
Golarion campaign books like The Inner Sea World Guide, Inner Sea Gods and the
Rise of the Runelords, Carrion Crown and Reign of Winter adventure paths along
with several other supplements, most recently the Emerald Spire super dungeon. Speaking of RoW, my one friend is running
this for our virtual weekly game and I’ve been playing a witch character from
the Advanced Player’s Guide which has been a ton of fun. I’m looking forward to the Monster Codex and
Advanced Class Guide for the big products for 2014, and I’ll be picking up the
Mummy’s Mask AP as well.
Star Wars – the new RPGs from Fantasy Flight Games, Edge of the Empire and
Age of Rebellion, have made their way into my collection along with the GM kits
and beginner sets for both games. I’ve
been a huge fan of Star Wars since the 70s and have many of the books for the
older D6 and D20/Saga versions. At our
game weekend last year my friend ran the EotE beginner scenario and I
definitely enjoyed the special dice and the way it played at the table. The only negative I have to say about this
system is that because of the way the books are put out, the core books contain
a lot of redundant material from one to the next, for examples the basics of
the dice, some species like humans and so on.
I hope to play this game regularly at some point.
D&D 5th Edition (aka Next) – Our group participated in the
playtest for a good while and overall we really liked the system and now having
the Basic PDF in hand I’m liking what they did with the new version of the King
of RPGs. I find it much simpler and
easier to get started than we saw with 3E/4E but streamlined. The addition of the background system is a
big plus in my book and really adds that roleplay element to the character that
has been in the past glossed over in lieu of combat statistics. I’ll definitely be picking up the core books
and DM screen at a minimum.
Basic Fantasy RPG – I came across this OSR game within the last year and I
downloaded a lot of the great free content.
This is basically B/X or BECMI D&D with ascending armor class and
separate class and race. I love that the
core rules and four adventures are available print on demand via Amazon Prime
for only a couple of bucks. I can see
using this to run older adventures, or stealing things from Next or other games
and otherwise using these simple rules as the engine.
Adventures in the East Mark – I funded this Kickstarter for the English
translation of a Spanish game that is fundamentally BECMI D&D. It has combo race and class with a few more
classes and uses the metric system. I
recently got my red box making it the first of my physical Kickstarter projects
to arrive.
World of Calidar – the Mystara setting and the work Bruce Heard did with it,
in particular the Gazetteer line and Voyage of the Princess Ark stories, are
some of my all time favorites so I definitely wanted this as a potential
setting for future games. Looking
forward to the final product arriving.
DC Adventures RPG – the Green Ronin supers game, based on Mutants &
Masterminds 3rd Edition has a nice simple four book set and the
system looks to be everything I want in a supers game with stats for all of my
favorite DC heroes and villains. I
recently was able to get all of the books in PDF for $5 each as well so aside
from maybe some M&M 3E support books, this should be the last material I
ever need in this genre. I hope to try
this game out shortly too.
More to come in a future post…
A blog about hobby gaming, in particular tabletop RPGs.
