A Role Playing Games Blog
The english edition of Dungeonslayers is nearing completion and today Dungeonslayers.com, the english version of the official DS website went online.
If you want to learn more about Dungeonslayers check out the site and join the discussions in the official forums!
Some time ago I read about an awesome freeware city map generator for Windows. But alas the creator’s site is down for quite some time now and it’s pretty hard to find a copy of the map generator on the web. So when I finally found a copy, I decided to host a copy of the latest version of the Roleplaying City Map Generator at my Google Sites site for your convenience.
By the way, if you know some interesting (and preferrably free) map creator software, please let us know in the comment section of this post! Thanks!
Update: Several people reported that the zip file got somehow corrupted. I reuploaded it and added the unzipped version.
Update #2: I uploaded the latest version of the software (v5.40) and removed the ZIP download. Thanks to Di for providing me with the latest version.
Category : D&D4e, Just my two cents, News, Reviews & Culture, RPG, Video
As you probably already know I greatly enjoy Kurt Wiegels regular RPG reviews on YouTube. He usually doesn’t do bad reviews and today I found out why this is a good thing. After a lot of people have been demanding a D&D 4th Edition review, he finally gave in. And it’s not a nice review, I can tell you.
And when I understand it correctly, he disagrees with D&D 4th Edition being so different from the earlier editions. I can understand that this is not to everyone’s liking, but does this make it a bad game? I strongly disagree. In a way he’s just saying: “It’s not what I wanted D&D 4th Edition to be – so it’s a bad game.”
I have to admit I like Kurt Wiegel more, when he’s reviewing games he likes!
Category : Advice, Fluff/Inspiration, Hollow Earth Expedition, Other Systems, RPG
Last time we defined the pulp genre and I even recommended a few games worth checking out. And you probably guessed it that I already made a decision on what game I want to run for my group. After some consideration I decided to give Hollow Earth Expedition (HEX for short) from Exile Games a try.
You can get HEX as a printed version in your favourite game shop or as PDF from RPGNow.
What is Hollow Earth Expedition?
Hollow Earth Expedition is a pulp-adventure game using the Ubiquity rules. A proper review would probably be beyond the scope of that post, so I’ll just give you the basics. The premise of the setting is that our world is hollow and that there is a complete world including a sun inside it. The time inside the Hollow Earth flows differently than outside, so you may encounter everything from dinosaurs and neanderthals to Roman legionnaires and Napoleonic soldiers there. And the landscape of the Hollow Earth is dotted with ruins from Atlanteans. The outside world is similar to real world’s 1936 with a few twists.
The rules are based on a pretty easy dice pool system. In order to make a successful check you roll a pool of dice relevant to the task at hand and you have to get a number of successes equal or higher a given difficulty to succeed in your task. Each die which shows an even number is a success, odd numbers are misses. So it doesn’t matter what kind of dice you use. Aside from the standard attributes and skills, each character has a couple of talents and resources and a flaw or two. If you’ve played any roleplaying game before you probably won’t have any problems with HEX.
Prepare yourself!
So after having read the rules, what can you do to prepare yourself for HEX? The most important aspect is to get in the right mood. Pulp games and characters should be colorful and vibrant. And don’t make the mistake to confuse the pulp genre with film noir for example. In order to get your bearings straight, you should check out a few classic novels or watch a few movies that can be considered pulp.
Some highly recommended movies are
After reading through the rulebook and watching a few inspiring movies you should be ready to make the next step!
Category : Dungeonslayers, Freebies, News, Reviews & Culture, Other Systems, RPG
The translation of the free, old-fashioned roleplaying game Dungeonslayers is finally nearing completion. I’ve finished translating the rules yesterday and the editing and layout process will probably done this week. An english site and forum are also in the works, so that players from all around the world can discuss about DS, the rules, their campaign and everything roleplaying-related there. As a first sneak peek, I present to you the fully-translated character sheet. Stay tuned for more.
You can download the complete DS sheet as PDF document here.
Category : FATE, Hollow Earth Expedition, Just my two cents, News, Reviews & Culture, Other Systems, RPG
One of the genres that have seen quite a lot of renewed interest in recent times is the pulp genre. That statement is true and not true at the same time. Why? It’s true because you hear a lot more talk about pulp games or games with pulp elements but if you look a bit closer, you notice that there has always been a strong pulp influence in gaming even if you didn’t call it that way.
So, what is Pulp anyway?
Pulp magazines were inexpensive fiction magazines that were widely published from the 1920s through the 1950s. Pulp magazines featured stories from many genres including fantasy/sword and sorcery, science fiction, detective/mystery, horror/occult, western and many more. Noteable writers that have written “pulp stories” include Poul Anderson, Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Raymond Chandler, Arthur C. Clarke, Arthur Conan Doyle, Dashiell Hammett, Robert E. Howard, H. P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Mark Twain and H. G. Wells.
So the pulp genre is much bigger than most of us would believe. I think most people cringe when authors like Isaac Asimov or Mark Twain are called ”pulp authors”, including me, but that’s what they wrote. And the pulp genre is probably defined more by its format and not the quality of writing. A recurring element were brightly colored covers with motives that more often than not featured a scantily clad damsel in distress.
Pulp in roleplaying
When we look at the list of authors that wrote pulp stories, we notice that a lot of games could be called pulp genre games. But usually we limit the pulp genre to games inspired by the more blatant features of this broad genre. Usually pulp genre games copy the artwork style from magazines like Amazing Stores or Phantom Detective even down to the price tag. The classic pulp genre roleplaying game focusses on fantastic stories, two-fisted no-nonsense characters and epic vistas. Especially Exile Game Studio’s Hollow World Expedition and Evil Hat Productions’ Spirit of the Century come to mind. So why seems there be a heightened interest in this genre recently?
For one the pulp genre was always one of the favorite gaming genres even when we didn’t call it that way. Even D&D or Traveller have been strongly influenced by pulp magazines. Since H.P. Lovecraft’s stories appeared in pulp magazines, too, even horror games like Call of Cthulhu are in fact pulp games although almost all features I listed before are missing. Another factor is the internet. In earlier times most people just didn’t know what was out there. I know groups who played D&D ad infinitum without ever knowing that there were other games, other worlds, other genres out there. The internet changed a lot of that. And people are getting tired of the same old game again and again.
And it seems the old pulp stories are old enough now to feel fresh and vibrant again!
So, what are your favorite pulp games? As always I love to read your comments, so please speak your mind using the comment section below!
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