Stargazer's World » Youseph

Searching For The Best RPG

Youseph — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 09:15:06 +0000

I have been on an epic quest these last few months tirelessly searching for what could be considered the very best table top pen and paper role playing game out there. My fingers surfed the keyboard of my MacBook Pro all over the Internets asking search engines the question, “What is the very best table top RPG out there?” I have read forum posts, blog posts, e-mails and chats with friends. Sadly, I was unable to get a clear and concise answer.

I took my quest to the next level. I pored through just about every single RPG book and PDF I have collected in the last three years since I got into table top RPGs. It’s a shockingly large amount of material I have collected. I focusing my time on reading how each different RPG handles character creation and game mechanics as those are the areas I have issues with in the RPGs I have played.

The truth is, I didn’t know what to look for, but I will know it when I see it. I wanted simple character creation with lots of choices for races and classes. Something that would fit on one piece of notebook paper old school style. You should not need several sheets of paper and index cards to build your character and track all of their powers. To me that is no longer a pen and paper RPG. It’s something else that I don’t think the hobby has developed a name for.

I also want simple gaming mechanics. When I first started playing RPGs with my friends it was, for me and everyone else at the table, all about rolling dice. We all eagerly awaited our turn to roll dice. Now that our dice addiction has subsided we have all learned that the story is the most important part of any RPG. I would like to find a game where the conflict resolution, from jumping over a pit to slaying a dragon, to intimidating a Non Player Character (NPC), is solved quickly by a dice roll. Where I don’t have to memorize or keep large tables of numbers.

As I near the end of my quest. As I finish up reading through the last few RPGs left on my book shelf, I have resolved to the fact that I will not find this perfect game. I don’t think it exists.

I don’t view my quest for the perfect RPG as a total failure either. With each RPG I read through I gain knowledge about RPGs in general. I learned that even though not one RPG fit 100% into what I was looking for I did find a handful or so that appear to be very close. Of these books I am going to go back and dig deeper into them before settling on one that will be my gaming groups next RPG.

The games I found to be top contenders for my group are:

My game plan is to stick with a medieval fantasy game (OSRIC, Dungeons & Dragons, or Castles & Crusades) as my group’s main game while tossing in the occasional one-off of something like ‘Serenity’or ‘Ghostbusters’ to just give me as game master a change of pace and a chance to recharge.

I wrote this post to not only share my experience with you, but to hopefully start some good conversation in the comments section. I would love to hear what anyone has to say about finding the best RPG out there.

DC Adventures Heroes and Villains Volume 1 Unboxing

Youseph — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 10:00:05 +0000

Links:

GreenRonin Publishing

DC Adventures RPG

A Non-Review of Mutants & Masterminds/DC Adventures

Youseph — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 10:00:06 +0000

This is not going to be an official review of Mutants & Masterminds 3rd Edition/DC ADVENTURES (M&M/DCA). It’s not going to be a review because after recently gamemastering my first game of M&M/DCA I still don’t have a firm grasp of all the mechanics. Once I do I will come back and do a proper review for this game. Till then think of this as a non-review review, of my first attempt at gamemastering M&M/DCA.

I will say this about M&M/DCA, my party has never laughed so much during a single gaming session and I think that says something about the game itself. From my first attempt at running this kind of game it is clear that it is not as rules heavy as Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition is. My players where able to focus more on the story and worry far less about dice rolls. They all loved it.

As my gaming party showed up for our weekly game night know one knew which RPG we would be playing. No one had any prep and no one had any character sheets. I thought it might make for a better surprise if we just jumped in and I think that worked.

I was going to use official DC comic book characters that everyone would recognized for the very first game. I wanted to introduce people one-at-a-time and give them all a chance to shine. I felt the best way to do this was have them all fight a generic crime and partake in general acts of heroism that made superheros so popular in the first place. So many superhero movies now a days just show superheros fighting huge battles. What happened to their simple acts of heroism that made them popular int he first place? Like stopping a old lady from having her purse snatched or helping a little girl rescue a kitten from a tree. I wanted to bring back that feeling of awe and wonder that we all had as children towards superheros.

So, we all gathered around our gaming table when I looked over at one of our players. “Henrik”, I said “You find yourself in Berlin, sitting on a bench outside a monorail station just about to eat a croissant. Something zips past you so fast that the force pulls the croissant out of your hand and it lands on the ground several feet away. People on the platform are scratching their heads not sure what is going on, but you realize that the monorail train is speeding out of control. You are a superhero. What do you do next?”

My friend Henrik said that his character walks into the monorail station and into the men’s bathroom to change into his superhero costume. It was at that point I handed him his character sheet for The Flash! It did not take long for Henrik to get into the swing of things, he described his character racing after the train and jumping up onto the back of it. He ran across the top of the cars and to the front of the train where he bent down and looked inside to find the conductor of the train passed out on the controls. He leapt and kicked through the front windshield and remove the conductor from his seat and preceded to bring the speeding bullet train to a stop. The people in the cars behind the front of the train started to cheer. Just then The Flash’s JLA wrist watch started beeping. His presents was requested at JLA headquarters.

That is how much of the game went. After the Flash’s adventure I focused on another player, and than another until all had completed their acts of heroism and met up at JLA headquarters where The Martian Manhunter gave them an assignment to prevent Cheetah from robbing Gotham City Museum.

At the end of the game my party was given the homework assignment to build their own characters.

The thing that was clear right from the get-go with this game was that everyone was having a great time. Every single player was engaged. Everyone was cracking jokes and having a good time with it. It was effortless fun. I think that speaks volumes about a game. I just can’t wait to play it again.

I went to the effort of recording our first game. Please feel free to download it and give it a listen. Let me know in the comments section below if you would like to hear more podcasts like these. My group and I are more then happy to record them.

Download audio file (SGW_DCAMnM3rd_01.mp3)

Follow up Castles & Crusades Unboxing (Now with Moving Pictures!)

Youseph — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 10:00:02 +0000

The above video and this post are a follow up to a post I wrote titled: Castles & Crusades Unboxing. It was particularly about the shipping and the conditions of the Castles & Crusades books when I received them.
I am going to take some time here to clarify my thoughts and opinion on a couple of other issues I had with the Castles & Crusades books that I did not bring up in the video due to time.

PRINTING

I am not particularly upset that all the Castles & Crusades books are printed in black and white. I just was not expecting that and felt others might like to know this as well. It seems like most modern day produced RPG books are in color. I own several modern day RPGs like Dungeons & Dragons, Mutants & Masterminds, DC Adventures, MouseGuard and Dresden Files. They are all in color. I just had the expectation that Castles & Crusades would also be in color.

When I go to used book stores seeking out older RPGs I fully expect them all to cost more and be in black and white. I have paid a pretty penny for some older pre-made adventures. Sometimes you stumble into a used book store or a garage sale that has RPG books for sale very cheap, but that seems to be getting more and more rare.

My comment was not a slam on the art in the books themselves. Just that I expected the books to be in color and for me it was a surprise to find it was all in black and white.

PDF

To me, it seems ridiculous, that in this day an age PDF downloads (or any electronically form for that matter) are not an option (or should I say affordable option?) to those buying books from RPG companies. There seems to be a divide between RPG companies that offer PDF downloads at a reduced price and those who may not even offer them at all. In the case of Castles and Crusades you can get the PDF copies of the books for just a bit under retail cost of the actual books.

I personally am far more likely to invest in a new RPG if I have the option to buy the books and the PDFs of those books at a reduced price. It’s also better for my gaming group because I am far less anal retentive about my RPG books in their hands when they are eating over them and spilling things on the gaming table because I know I have a PDF backup of the game.

For me the reason that I ended up buying Castles and Crusades as the direct result of a couple of friends who said the game is worth it. I believe my friends that this game is going to be great. But if I had just read a couple of good reviews and went over to the Troll Lord Games website and saw the overpriced PDFs I never would have bought the game.

It seems like my experience has been that most companies offering PDF copies of gaming books sell them for between five and ten dollars. To me this is a perfectly acceptable cost to someone who is also buying the books at the same time.

Now one may argue that PDFs are not the best format for gamers to download their books in. This may be the case, but until that perfect format comes around you should still offer the PDFs. Every modern day Operating system can handle them and will for quite some time. Hell, offering any kind of digital option for gamers would be nice. Text, PDF, ePub, just give us something so we don’t have to worry so much about our physical copies!
Just like I said in the video. With all the fuss my original post made regarding Castles and Crusades I am excited to play this game and give it a sold review here on Stargazer’s World.

Castles & Crusades Unboxing

Youseph — Mon, 30 May 2011 10:00:36 +0000

Based on recommendations from more than one friend and reviews I had been reading on the Internet, (or “tubes” as we say in Alaska) I ordered three Castles & Crusades books from Troll Lord Games. The Players Handbook, Monsters & Treasure and Castle Keepers Guide. I have heard nothing but good things about this game and I wanted to make sure I had a copy sitting on my book shelf for when my group and I where ready to play it. So I ordered it.

Two weeks later the game found its way to my hands. That’s a little more time than most RPG orders I make but, not a big deal to me. Like I said, I wanted the game ready for when my party was ready to try something new.

I picked up the C&C package from my post office yesterday and was a little worried because the box that the books where shipped in was looking a little beaten up. I tried not to let this bother me. In the past I have ordered RPG books from other companies that have come to me in beat up boxes, but the books where perfectly fine. My luck must have run out however, because these books where not in what I would call new condition.

When I got home I opened the box to discover that the packing used to protect the books – wads of brown paper – was only covering one side of the books as you can see in the picture below. The other side was resting against the box. So any bumps, dings, or bangs that the box encounter on this ride to Alaska would effect at least one of the book’s hard covers. Compared to my experience of ordering the Mutants & Masterminds 3rd edition book and Gamemaster’s Kit from Green Ronin, it seems like Troll Lord Games must have a troll in some dark and dusty basement doing all the packaging and mail orders. Green Ronin really set the bar high for how products should be shipped. Amazon.com does not even do it as good as them.

Removing the books from the box they where shipped in only increased my disappointment. One of the three book I ordered was shrink-wrapped. That did not help anything because the shrink wrapped book was the one that was against the box. It took the dings and blows from shipping. The other two books where not shrink-wrapped. I removed them from the box to find they where both dusty and scuffed. The dust was not from the shipping either. All three books had ding marks and scratches. It really looked like these where display books at one time or just miss handled from the get go.

When I opened the books I was disappointed to learn that none of the art was in color. The art is nice. It just was not in color. As much as these books cost me I would have expected things to be in color at the very least. But nope, just the cover is in color.

Upon closer examination I found the books to not be as well constructed as Green Ronin’s DC Universe book or any of the Wizards of the Cost 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons books. Again, the Castles & Crusades books where not cheap books by any stretch of the imagination. I am left feeling that the printers of these books cut every corner they could. It’s not that I think pages are going to start to fall out after extended use. It’s just clear the construction is not on par with the other products I have mentioned. That along with black and white printing left me feeling disappointed and not like I got my monies worth at all.

I have one last disappointment with my order of Castles & Crusades. That is a complete lack of digital downloads with their books. You can buy PDFs of Castles & Crusades for not much of a discount at all. Other RPG companies will offer you the PDF of the book you are buying for an extra five bucks. Something like that is very reasonable. In this day and age where everything is going increasingly digital, to not have a digital download option for a small fee is ridiculous. Troll Lord Games is not the only company guilty of this lack digital downloads. The big kid on the block, Wizards of the Cost with Dungeons & Dragons, is also guilty of this.

I am glad to have these books on my shelf. The main reason for buying them was a direct result of hearing so much overwhelming advice from friends and reviews other sites that Castles & Crusades is a great game. I am sure it will be. I am still looking forward to playing it with my gaming group. The books and the shipping are the let down for me.

Pros:

umm… It’s an RPG?

Cons:

Price $$$
Lack of Digital Download Option.
Shipping
Packaging
Low Quality Book Binding
Black and White Art Only

Mutants & Masterminds 3rd Edition Gamemaster’s Kit Unboxing

Youseph — Tue, 10 May 2011 10:00:40 +0000

This was a great weekend when my wife came home from a trip to the postoffice with my Green Ronin‘s Mutants & Masterminds (M&M) 3rd Edition Gamemaster’s Kit. I ordered this thing so long ago that I had all but forgotten about it. I pulled out my camera and took some quick photos of the items enclosed in the box. As you can see, true to form Green Ronin has made sure that this produced was packaged with care just like all of the products I have ordered from them.

M&M’s Gamemaster’s Kit came with two items. A black and white paperback QuickStart Character Generator and a full color Gamemaster’s Screen.

The description of this kit reads:

HEROS IN A FLASH!

The Mutants & Masterminds Gamemaster’s Kit is a key accessory for your superhero campaign. It features a sturdy and practical three-panel, Hardback screen with all the charts and tables you need to play Mutants & Masterminds, Third Edition. Also included is a 48-page booklet featuring the Quickstart Character Generator, Which allows players to speedily create balanced starting Heroes. A 2-page Character sheet suitable for photocopying completes the package. The Mutants & Masterminds Gamemaster’s Kit is the perfect complement to the Hero’s Handbook. Kick off your super-hero game with style!

Lets talk about the QuickStart Character Generator first.

The QuickStart Character Generator is just that. A quick character generator. It’s designed to give you three quick ways for your party to build their characters and get the game started as quickly as possible. You have the d20 method, the Menus option and the Combination method. With the d20 method you roll a d20 and whatever number comes up is your archetype. You then role it a couple of more times to determine your Abilities, Advantages, Skills or powers you get. The number of roles you need to make to generator your character varies just depending on the results you get. With the Menus option you get to pick the Archetype you want, go to that page and start picking different packages of Abilities, Skills, Advantages, and Powers you want. Lastly with the Combination method is a combination of the d20 and the Menu method.

The very last page of QuickStart Character Generator is a double-sided character sheet that you could easily put in a copy machine and make copies.

I have a lot of good things to say about the M&M Gamemaster’s Kit. The Gamemaster’s Screen uses wonderful art and all the content is in beautiful color. Everything is easy to find and read. The Quickstart Character generator is just that. A solid character generator with no frills or gimmicks.

Pros

Gamemaster’s Screen is solid and full color
Everything is easy to read and understand
If you pre-order you get PDF versions of everything for just $5 more.

Cons

None

Aspects of War

Youseph — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 10:00:34 +0000

Whether the Player Characters in your campaign stand for good or battle for evil, one thing will always be true. The ability to tell a story of war to your PCs. This is a very important skill for any Game Master. Be it as simple as a battle between a farm-hand and a pack of hungry wolves or a biblical showdown between Demons and Gods.

These are two extremely different battles, but the ability to explain to your PCs what is going on is equally important. As a GM we all see these graphic images in our minds eye. The hard work is already done for us thanks to our imagination. Now, take what you see and put that into words that will kick your players imagination into maximum overdrive!

A lone farmer fights by the light of a full moon to protect his chicken-coop from a pack of hungry wolves, all the while his wife and two kids look on in horror from their farm house. The man in their lives, the heart of the family, is frantically fighting a losing battle to protect their only food source.

In two sentences we have taken an otherwise dull wolf encounter and given your PCs enough description to not only jump in and save the farmer’s life, but the PCs are most likely going to do all they can to ensure this simple farming family will never have to worry about wolves again.

As the PCs battle with the wolves you can add details your players might not see that will serve to make the whole battle that much more real.
The GM roles against the PC’s Armor Class and hits. He then rolls for damage and gets an 8 and says:

Showing his teeth, with drool oozing out of the sides of his mouth, the first wolf bites down hungrily on your left arm for 8 damage.

The GM roles against AC again for the second wolf and hits. This time rolling a 5 for damage and says:

The second wolf comes alongside the first wolf and you can see the muscles of his body flex as he tenses up to bite you. He sinks his teeth into your leg for 5 damage.

From that example you can see how adding just a little description during a battle can greatly effect how you and your players perceive the world around you.

Now, how do you handle a battle scene that is far more epic than wolves on a farm? How do your PCs become a part of and get involved with something like a Biblical epic that words could never described the total horror going on? Luckily for us GMs we don’t have to. That’s the best thing about playing role playing games. One’s own imagination always fills in the gaps of a scene that words cannot.

You have been traveling for days to reach the Kingdom of Toss. You ascend to the top of the final ridge that overlooks the great kingdom in all it’s glory. Taking a moment to observed the truly awesome site that mortals have erected. Before you the ground begins to shake violently causing dust and debris to bounce around your feet. An ominous red light shines up to the heavens through the center of Toss with an ear shattering thunder. As the stream of red light gets bigger, screams can be faintly heard over the ground splitting sounds coming from the center of Toss as the sky above becomes dark with clouds and rain. A white light bursts through the clouds meeting the red light head on. Through the rain, though it is difficult to see, it can be seen, angels poor out of the light from the sky and fly down to the earth with great speed as demons fly up from the red light to meet in the middle. A holy war has erupted right before your eyes.

The question I had for the longest time was; How to get my PCs to feel like they are involved in an epic this mind blowing, but still keep it at a scale that a game master can manage? It’s just telling a story.

What do the player characters see when they enter Toss?

As you enter Toss the state of devastation is overwhelming. Buildings are on fire, damaged from flaming stones that erupt randomly like cannon balls from the center of a chasm that has split the ground wide open where the center of the kingdom used to be. Screams from women, children, and men can be heard coming from all directions. Down a once safe ally a demon with dark red wings and black horns corners a women and drools over her. In the opposite direction a child screams for his life out the second story window of a building that is on fire.

Making it a battle just to get to the epicenter of the the devastation will help make your players feel like they are literally in the events that are taking place around them.

Approaching the chasm that has ripped apart the center of Toss, it is apparent that the only way to stop the Demon Lord, Prince of Darkness is to descend down the rockery wall via small foot path leading to the center of the earth. Above angles and demons battle to gain ground over one another.

Your ability to tell stories is what makes role playing games possible. You can be using the best gaming mechanic ever invented and the game could still suck if you are a GM with poor story telling skills. To improve your story telling skills, the best advice I can give you is read books. Read fantasy, history, fiction, nonfiction; I don’t care, but your story telling skills will improve with each book you read.

Interview with Green Ronin’s Jon Leitheusser

Youseph — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 11:00:52 +0000

Jon Leitheusser

Anyone who is a fan of Mutants & Masterminds or DC ADVENTURES has probably seen the Threat Reports that Green Ronin has been putting out lately. Threat Reports are 99 cent downloadable PDFs for Mutants & Masterminds 3rd edition. They contain a quick little story about a bad guy and their stats allowing GMs to use them in their M&M games. I recently got the chance to interview one of the creative minds behind the Threat Reports, Jon Leitheusser and ask him where the idea behind Threat Reports came from. I also got to ask question about what it’s like to work with Green Ronin and what future projects he is working on.

Youseph Tanha: I want to thank you very much for taking the time to do this interview with me. It seems like there are never enough interviews like this in my opinion and I really appreciate you making the time.

Jon Leitheusser: You bet!

Youseph: Why don’t you tell me a little bit about yourself? Where you grew up?

Jon: Well, I grew up in Burlington Wisconsin. Which is sort of on the South Eastern corner of the state not far from the Illinois border. Actually its ten miles away from lake Geneva which is where D&D was created. I went to school there (Burlington) and high school there. I went to college in Madison and the UW. I ended up spending 14 years there. Not in school, in Madison.

Youseph: What role playing game did you cut your teeth on?

Jon: Oh, Advanced Dungeon & Dragons. I think it was 1982 when I started playing that.

Youseph: How did you come to work for Green Ronin?

Jon: In 2001 I got recruited to come and work for WizKids out in Bellevue Washington. While I was working their I did a little bit of freelance work for Green Ronin. Doing some editing. Specifically doing editing for stat blocks because I enjoyed it. They had a hard time finding people to do that. So I did a little bit of that for them. I did a little bit of freelance writing for them. I wrote part of the Iron Age book with my buddy Seth Jonson who was the HeroClix Game Designer after me. Then I ended up leaving WizKids and the guys from Green Ronin said ”hey you want to come work for us a Line Developer”? And I said “Sure that sounds like a lot of fun to do in my free time”. So that’s how all that went down.

Youspeh: So are they your full time employer right now?

Jon: They are.

Youseph: What did you do for WizKids?

Jon: For WizKids I was hired to be the advertising and public relations guy. I was probably there a couple of months when I walked into the head of the game design department and said “I want your job.” And he said, “All right, I’ll start sending you rules and you start giving me feedback on them. Let me know what you think.” So I… It wasn’t editing. It was slightly editing and slightly like, you know, the logic on this is wrong. The wording on that needs to be cleaned up. That sort of stuff. I don’t know what these rules are trying to say. Here is how I would fix them. He was impressed by this so he hired me out of the marketing department and into the game design department. I moved up from there and I think in two years I had his job and he had been moved up to be vice president.

Youseph: So did having something like that on your resumé open up doors to places like Green Ronin?

Jon: I imagine that is probably true, but I think that has more to do with making contacts with people. I have known Chris Pramas actually now for a good 16 years one way or another. I worked with him when I was a product manager for ‘Capital City Distribution’ which was similar to Diamond Comic Distributors. Then Diamond eventually ended up purchasing Capital City. So I had a lot of contacts in the gaming industry through that job. Chris knew me from that. We would talk at conventions.

Youseph: So how many employees does Green Ronin have currently?

Jon: Full time?

Youseph: Yeah.

Jon: 8 plus some part timers.

Youseph: So the thing that came up that made me want to do this interview was that Green Ronin has been putting out these ninety-nine cent PDFs called Threat Reports for Mutants & Masterminds 3rd Edition. Looking at the whole thing, the whole idea of it just seems genius to me. I mean you got something that costs less than a buck and it adds a layer of depth to the game. It’s just awesome and it’s set at a good price. Who’s idea was that?

Jon: The short answer is that it started with me, but the long answer is we have been talking about doing more PDF products for a while now. I was sitting around thinking about this and I though “People like PDFs. They like the immediacy of them right? So, if it costs ninety-nine cents, it’s an easy thing to download and have right then.” Then the other thing people really like are bad guy books. Those sell very well for us. So I thought “Why don’t we just do a villain of the week thing.” That’s originally what the ‘Threat Reports’ where called. ‘Villain of the Week.’ Then as we got closer to the launch date we thought “You know we should come up with a more interesting name than this.”
We figured that at the very least the PDFs would at least pay for themselves and they have. Which is great. Eventually we will collect these villains into a book in order to sell in stores.

Youspeh: I imagine there will be several more books to go with M&M 3rd.

Jon: Yeah, yeah, there definitely will be more in the future. Just for M&M this year we have a hand full of books already planned or are in the works. Then for next year we have probably already talked about another half dozen.

Youseph: Which I think is great.

Jon: Yeah it is. It’s a lot of work, but it’s good to keep new products coming out and people seem to be really enjoying the new edition of the game which is great.

Youseph: So, as an outsider looking in I love the fact that the PDFs Green Ronin offers are not watermarked. I love the fact that when you guys do an update, like the errata for DC ADVENTURE I was able to download the entire PDF updated with all the errata and it did not cost me a dime. I mean to me that is HUGE! How come Green Ronin is more accepting of selling PDFs than a big boy like Wizards of the Coast.

Jon: I don’t really know the reason behind Wizard’s strategy there. I don’t understand. As for Green Ronin, none of us are particularly concerned about piracy. It’s just not something we spend a lot of time thinking about. I can’t even say we have a strategy for it. Right? We release the products the way we do because that’s the way we release them. That’s the easiest answer. I think all of us kind of look at piracy and think, ”that sucks,” and it would be great to get all that money from all the people that are “Stealing this from us”, but you know I think a lot of piracy happens because people are interested, but not actually interested enough to spend the money… and if they download something that interests them then it’s entirely plausible and possible–and very likely in fact–that some number of those people in the future will by product from us. So, it’s another way to do marketing I guess. It’s hard to track and it’s not like you would be able to crack down on it anyway unless you pulled all of your PDFs from being on sale… and that still doesn’t even end the problems. We are just not going to bury our head in the sand over it. We know it’s out there, but we hope some of those people eventually spend some money with us.

Youseph: I want to share a link with you. Do you know the author Neil Gaiman?

Jon: Oh yeah. I have been following him and his giving the book away for free. I haven’t been able to convince Green Ronini to do that yet. -laughs-

Youseph: Well what I am trying to say is that I like what you guys are doing with the PDFs and the price point and what not. It works for me.

Jon: Well I think one of the things that helps us is that we have a really good fan base. They are really responsive and interested in what is going on. So when we announce a new project or a new product goes up for sale we do the pre-order which has the hard copy book and the pdf for an additional five dollars, or you can just get the PDF for, I think, full price or something like that. I think when you order the book, and the PDF is only an extra five dollars or so, you don’t have to worry about overpaying. The price makes it reasonable to pay for and download the pdf right away.

Youseph: Right. With the DC ADVENTURES game, was it hard to convince DC or Warner Brothers that you were going to create a PDF and put it out there and not be able to track it?

Jon: No, not at all. Not in the least. We explained to them that we would not only have the hard copy, but we would also be offering the PDF. I think there was a couple of minutes where they weren’t sure. Then they realized we were going to charge money for it and they would be getting their percentage of the sales they were fine with it. The issue of piracy never came up.

Youseph: Well that was kind of cool of them.

Jon: Yeah they have been really great to work with.

Youseph: So the ‘Threat Reports’ are selling well then?

Jon: Yeah. They are doing just fine. I mean they aren’t blowing the doors off. They are not selling thousands and thousands of copies, but you know, hundreds of copies is great. As long as we can make back what it costs to produce them we are going to keep going with them.

Youseph: Can you talk about any future projects you are working on?

Jon: Nothing that you haven’t already heard about. Heroes Journey is coming out right now. Emerald City Nights. The prologue is up and chapter one will be going up hopefully very soon. The M&M Heroes Handbook just came out. The Gamemaster’s Guide is in good shape actually. It’s written, it’s edited, it’s developed. We are just waiting on art. It’s all laid out, we just need to put the art in. Then we should have the DC ADVENTURES Heroes and Villains books coming out soon. We have the DC ADVENTURES: Universe book coming out later in the year. Hopefully in the summer. Then we have the GM Screen and the Character generator that just came out in PDF and will be out in hard copy in the next couple of months. It’s probably no surprise to anybody that there will be an Emerald City book in the summer which I am working on now. And that’s it until later in the year.

Youseph: Do you have a favorite role playing game right now?

Jon: I know I am supposed to say Mutants & Masterminds. Which might actually be true, but I’ll discount that one. See I really like mechanics, game mechanics, and I like elegant mechanics that facilitate fast, fun game play. They don’t have to necessarily have to be super deep. They just have to work well and be consistent. There are just so many games I like. Like I said I am going to discount M&M because that would probably be my favorite since I’m a superhero fan. So outside of that, I would probably have to say Savage Worlds.

Youseph: Really?

Jon: Yeah, because of what I said. Its fast and light and its internally consistent. It has a lot of flexibility because it allows you to play it as a role playing game, or a miniatures game, or a skirmish game. I mean there is all sorts of stuff you can do with that system.

Youseph: I received my copy of Mutants & Masterminds the other day.

Jon: Oh, that’s great news!

Youseph: Yeah it was nice to get it. One thing I was disappointed about was that it was a softcover.

Jon: Yeah. We’ve heard that a few times.

Youseph: Any particular reason you guys went that route?

Jon: Part of it was we assumed that people would have just purchased the DC book and we didn’t want to “make” people purchase another hardcover book since it would have cost at least ten dollars more. So instead we went with softcover. I’m sure at some point will do a hard cover version of the book.

Youseph: Oh don’t say that.

Jon: I am sure it will be a ways down the road, though.

Youseph: Well it is what it is, I guess. So I am ready to do my Inside the Actors Studio ten question ending here.

Jon: -laughs- Ok.

Youseph: What is your favorite word?

Jon: Yes.

Youseph: What is your least favorite word?

Jon: It’s a dirty word.

Youseph: That’s ok.

Jon: Ok, its cunt. I hate that word. It’s so hard.

Youseph: What turns you on?

Jon: Creatitivity. A good idea.

Youseph: What turns you off.

Jon: Willful ignorance.

Youseph: What sound or noise do you love?

Jon: That is a fine question. It’s got to be rain on a roof.

Youseph: What sound or noise do you hate?

Jon: The wrong note.

Youseph: What is your favorite curse word?

Jon: The F word. I also like to say “curses”.

Youseph: Very villainy of you.

Jon: Yes. -Laughs-

Youseph: What profession other than yours would you like to attempt?

Jon: Really anything, but if I had to pick one I would say full-time writer as opposed to part-time writer, which is what I do now.

Youseph: What profession would you not like to attempt?

Jon: Probably anything where I would have to be really angry or really aggressive all the time.

Youseph: If heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you reach the pearly gates?

Jon: I guess you were wrong. -Laughs-

Youseph: -Laughs- Well Jon, that’s it. Thank you so much for your time. I had a blast doing this.

Jon: You bet. Any time.

Mutants & Masterminds 3rd edition Unboxing

Youseph — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 11:00:14 +0000

Today was a pretty cool day. I swung by the postoffice after work to pick up the mail and found a box waiting for me. It was my copy of Mutants & Masterminds 3rd edition that I pre-ordered some time ago. I took the box, put it in my truck and drove home to open it up.

When I got home I pulled out my camera so I could take pictures of the unboxing. When I ordered the DC Adventures book several months ago I was very impressed with the packing of the book. The same care was taken with Mutants & Masterminds 3rd edition. The book was shipped with a layer of packing peanuts in the box. The Mutants & Masterminds 3rd edition book was then placed inside and the remainder of the box was cover in packing peanuts. It pretty much insures that as long as someone did not deliberately kick the package the book would remain in perfect condition.

Packaging means a lot to me. I live in Juneau Alaska and I can’t tell you how many products I have ordered that arrive damaged because the sending person or company failed to package the product affectively. That is not the case with Green Ronin. Everything item I have ordered from them has been packaged and shipped with care.

Upon removing my softcover copy of Mutants & Masterminds 3rd edition from the box it was shipped in I let out a sigh of disappointment. Softcover. SOFTCOVER!?!? Did I order the wrong version of the book? I immediately pulled out my Macbook Pro and pulled up the Green Ronin website to see. Upon checking their website I learned that Green Ronin is only selling softcover versions of Mutants & Masterminds 3rd edition. This ment the book was a few bucks cheaper then my copy of DC Adventures.

Aside from the book being softcover (and the complete lack of a hardcover version) everything else is great. The book’s art and fonts are beautiful just like the DC Adventures book. I hope to spend some time over the next few days reading through the book and enjoying the art. I can’t wait to play this game!

Pros

Beautiful
Well packaged
PDF option available

Cons

Softcover only

Free Stuff Friday: Redbox Hack

Youseph — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 10:55:38 +0000

It’s Friday and it’s time to give you some more free stuff!

This week’s Free Stuff is: Redbox Hack

Nothing is better than a free game! I discovered Redbox Hack while looking for something to post for FREE STUFF FRIDAY. Redbox is a free RPG that the developer quit working on a few years ago. But he has been kind enough to live up his old blog and allow gamers to download the game Rules and Character Sheets.

It even looks like some fans of the game made some supplement material!

So download the Redbox Hack RPG today!

Ultimate History of Dungeons & Dragons

Youseph — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 09:16:23 +0000

This might have been around for a while, but I only recently discovered it. The Ultimate History of Dungeons & Dragons! I wish I could buy a poster of this and hang it in my office.

Click here to view larger version.

Free Stuff Friday: Saturday Night Delves #1: Revenge of the Iron Lich

Youseph — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 11:00:46 +0000

It’s Friday and it’s time to give you some more free stuff!

This week’s Free Stuff is: Save Versus Death‘s Saturday Night Delves #1: Revenge of the Iron Lich

I love materials that can provide inspiration for my own home brew campaign. Save Versus Death‘s Saturday Night Delves #1: Revenge of the Iron Lich is just that. An adventure that has provided me with great inspiration for my own personal game. Just keep in mind this is not your normal everday run of the mill adventure. Save Versus Death set out to create an adventure that was designed to kill your party. It truly is something to be taken very seriously if used.

On Save Versus Death’s website they wrote this stuff up: Saturday Night Delves are a series of fourthcore dungeon adventures designed to be played in a single 4-hour session. Published quarterly, Saturday Night Delves feature extremely difficult encounters, a variety of challenges ranging from combat to puzzles, and evocative adventure sites that are both memorable and sinister.

Packaged with a complete suite of materials for DMs and players, SNDs are a great way to throw down an evening of high-energy, high-stakes, tournament-style Dungeons & Dragons.

So what are you waiting for! Head on over to Save Versus Death’s website and download the first (of what I am sure will be meny) Saturday Night Delves! Just make sure you take a moment to thank Save Versus Death for all their free stuff!

Free Stuff Friday: Oldschool Hack

Youseph — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 11:00:35 +0000

It’s Friday and it’s time to give you some more free stuff!

This week’s Free Stuff is: Oldschool Hack

I love a free RPG. I love collecting them too! Check out Oldschool Hack! It’s free!

On Oldschool Hack’s website they wrote this stuff up: A table-top roleplaying system that’s a hack of a hack of the original Red Box version of a certain popular hack-and-slash fantasy game. That’s a lot of hacking.

So download the game here.

Then download the character sheet here.

And be sure to thank the folks over at Oldschool Hack for the free stuff!

Free Stuff Friday: Mutants & Masterminds Character Sheets

Youseph — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 11:00:13 +0000

This week’s Free Stuff is: Mutants & Masterminds: Character Sheets

Character Sheets for Mutants & Masterminds.

On The Green Ronin Website They Wrote This Stuff up: Character sheets for the third edition of Mutants & Masterminds are now available — in black & white and in color!

Color Character Sheet

Black & White Character Sheet

So get your copy of the Mutants & Masterminds Character Sheets free today. Then be sure to thank Green Ronin for their free stuff!

Zombies!!!

Youseph — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 11:00:01 +0000

I picked up a copy of Zombies!!! from PAX in Seattle last year. It was a game some of our Alaska friends had talked to us about and said they really enjoyed. When I saw it for sale at the convention I picked it up.

The game play is something I like to call organic. You and the other players start out in a zombie infested town. I can’t stress INFESTED enough either. You deal with a lot of zombies in this game. Game play reminds me of Carcassonne with the tiles. With each turn you and your players are building the town and adding zombies to each tile. The goal is to survive long enough to make it to the helicopter pad which happens to be one of the three very last tiles that is put down. So the helicopter pad could end up anywhere.

As you rummage through town you can pick up extra health and ammunition to help stave of zombie attacks. You just have to be smart about it because there is not a lot of these items.

My group and I played this game on one of our role playing game nights where not everyone could show up. The game was fun, but not one of my favorites. Several people at my table really enjoy the game though so take my opinion with a grain of salt.

Zombies!!! is a 2 – 6 person game that takes about an hour to play for ages 12 and up.

Have you played Zombies? Leave me some comments on what you thought about this game.

Pandemic

Youseph — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 11:00:35 +0000

When you don’t have enough people show up for your weekly role playing game what is a game master to do? Pull out a board game, thats what!

Just last week this happened to me. With not enough people to play our normal RPG so I ended up pulled out a board game I had not yet played. The game was Pandemic and let me tell you this game was FUN!

You and up to 3 others players as a team to take out diseases that have broken out all around the world. You can play as a dispatcher, medic, scientist, researcher or operations expert. The odds are staked against you from the beginning and the longer you play the harder the game gets. The whole time we played everyone at the table was talking strategies and planning. Everyone was trying to help each other out. Each turn yielded the possibility of pulling an Epidemic card that would infect the world even worse than it already was. Just when you think you have one disease licked you are face with it popping up else where in the world, or worse yet, you become so focused on taking out one disease that a different diseases has become unstoppable.

You can win at Pandemic. It is possible, but my friends and I where unsuccessful. At the end of the first game we talked for about ten minutes about how we could improve our strategies and we played the game again. When we lost the second game we talked a long time about what we could do differently next time. It was a lot of fun and a good game to have in my library.

Pandemic is a 2 to 4 person game with suggested ages of 10 years old and up. Playing time for us was about 40 minutes each game and I spent about $35.00 on it.

Have you played Pandemic? Leave me some comments on what you thought about this game.

Free Stuff Friday: DC Adventures Hero’s Handbook Errata

Youseph — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 11:00:41 +0000

This week’s Free Stuff is: DC Adventures Hero’s Handbook Errata

Did you know that Green Ronin released Errata for the DC Adventures Hero’s Handbook? They did! Best of all it’s FREE!

On The Green Ronin Website They Wrote This Stuff up: The DC Adventures Hero’s Handbook errata file is now available!

Got to love it. Short and sweet. So get your copy of the DC Adventures Hero’s Handbook Errata free today. Then be sure to thank Green Ronin for their free stuff!

Death & Traps

Youseph — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 11:00:03 +0000

As a Dungeon Master (DM) I have a confession to make. I want to kill a player character at my table. Just one. Not the whole party. Just one, or maybe two and I don’t care which one. I just want to kill one. I have wanted to kill one since I started this 4th edition D&D game two years ago.

My D&D game has been my first real experience with any kind of role-playing game. Before I bought my first 4th Edition book I did a lot of reading about Dungeons & Dragons. Older versions of D&D and on the current version. One thing that did not become apparent to me until my party and I sat down and started playing D&D was how hard it is to threaten a player character with death. With all the healing surges and death saving throws a player has available to them the odds are in the favor of the player that he or she will not die. This fact has been the hardest for me to learn it seem.

I have been reading a lot lately about how other DMs handle this issue and there seems to be a wide array of acceptable answers out their.

(I owe a big thanks to Save VS. Death and the DM hot-line for my recent epiphany about the how to implement and handle death in an RPG game.)

Today however, I had an epiphany about this whole subject of death and I want to share it with all of you. Those of us who run RPG games, the DMs, the Game Masters (GM) out their, first and foremost we are ENTERTAINERS! That is our job. We are entertainers. We need to make sure that the quietest person at our table is having as much fun as the most outlandish and out spoken person at the table. If this is not happening then you’re doing it wrong!

I have realized that if I plan my next game to kill a player character, no one at the table is going to have a good time. It has to happen organically. Players have to make mistakes and you as a DM or GM have to be at the ready to take advantage of their mistakes.

So go about planning your next game like you normally would. Focus on making a great adventure and a great story. One that involves every player at your table. Personally, I have started added way more traps to my adventures. Deadly, painful, scary traps that take away lots of hit points. Lots of times my player characters avoid these traps. Other times they hit a trap head on and proceed the rest of the game with extreme caution. This is all ok. That is what your players are supposed to do. If your players by pass or avoid or just plan miss traps you have hidden, this is all a positive thing. That’s less planning for traps you have to do for your next game. Just take the unused traps and apply them to your next game.

Having learned how to make a deadlier game by using traps, my need to kill a player at my table has subsided quite a bit. This is because I know I am eventually going to kill one. I know it’s only one mistake away. Perhaps a trap is going to take away so many HP for a player to recover from. Perhaps the monster they battle next will be just a little to strong for one of them. However it happens, it will happen organically and it wont feel forced.

Free Stuff Friday: DinoPirates of Ninja Island

Youseph — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 10:00:12 +0000

It’s Friday and it’s time to give you some more free stuff!

This week’s Free Stuff is: DinoPirates of Ninja Island

Need a game? Need a free game? That what Free Shit Stuff Friday is all about! I got your back. Why not give DinoPirates of Ninja Island a shot?

On DinoPirates of Ninja Island website they wrote this stuff up: Ninjas, pirates, and dinosaurs. A fantasy Asia, filled with warring island nations. Samurai mounted on domesticated raptors. Bigger dinosaurs hunted by quasi-Polynesian tribesmen. Dueling factions of shadow warriors. Privateers and buccaneers battling the servants of the Imperial Navy. Fallen kingdoms deep in forgotten jungles. And we call it DINO-PIRATES OF NINJA ISLAND

So check out this free game today! Just don’t forget to thank them for the free stuff!

Free Stuff Friday: Mad Irishman Productions

Youseph — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 10:00:21 +0000

It’s Friday and it’s time to give you some more free stuff!

This week’s Free Stuff is: Mad Irishman Productions – Character Sheets

Good Gravy this site has a lot of character sheets available for download as PDFs. Character sheets for Dungeons & Dragons, Star Wars, True 20, Warhammer, D20 Modern, Arcana Evolved, Lord of the Rings and many more.

On The Mad Irishman Productions’s website they wrote this stuff up: Mad Irishman Productions, where we specialize in quality role-playing products, particularly character sheets for your favorite games. Here you will find many free goodies in Adobe PDF format — allowing you to print out sheets or maps at will using Acrobat Reader — and the occasional PDF Form which you can type on directly.

So download some Character Sheets from The Mad Irishman today! Just don’t forget to thank them for the free stuff!

Guillotine

Youseph — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 10:00:23 +0000

Generally my Dungeons & Dragons game starts at 1:30pm on Saturdays. Sometimes not everyone can make it. Sometimes enough people can’t make it that we opt out of D&D all together for some other game to play. Last weekend was one of those days for me. The game we chose to play was a pick by my Fiancé’s. It was a Wizards of the Coast game called Guillotine.

This easy to learn card game was a lot of fun.

Game play, for two to five players, takes approximately 30 minutes. Game equipment consists of two decks of cards, “Nobles” and “Actions”, and a small cardboard structure representing the guillotine itself. This is mostly symbolic, though it can serve as a convenient indicator of the direction of the “line” of face-up Noble cards played on the game table representing condemned persons waiting to be guillotined. The Nobles cards carry points values and are collected by players after execution, while Action cards allow the player to perform various acts including rearranging the order of Nobles approaching the guillotine, steal Nobles or Action cards from other players, enhance the point values of certain categories of Nobles (see “Noble Types” below) and so forth.

I could not help but think of the card game Munchkin while we played this. I hate Munchkin, but I really liked Guillotine. Some of the cards in the Action deck of Guillotine are pretty crazy and can change the game around at any moment. For a quick need-a-game-in-a-pinch, Guillotine with it’s easy to learn quick to play rules fits the bill perfectly.

Mouse Guard RPG Boxed Set

Youseph — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 10:00:13 +0000

David Peterson posted on his blog today some new information about the upcoming release of the Mouse Guard RPG Boxed Set.

At the NYCC we announced that there will be a Boxed Set of the Mouse Guard RPG to be out later this year. We have currently sold out of the Hardcover (though your local shops and online retailers may still have some in stock) and with plans to reprint, we thought we would offer a deluxe package as well that is full of stuff fans of the game asked for…

…Among the items to be included in the box will be: a softcover edition of the 320-page Mouse Guard Roleplaying Game, a pad of character sheets, a pad of GM sheets, a folding GM screen with handy reference charts, a map of the territories, 5 mouse pawns (which I carved the master for) to mark locations on the map, and a few more items I’d like to talk about in more detail: A brand-new 44-page supplement* with new missions and adventures….

…The plan is to release the supplement booklet as a .pdf purchase so that players who already have the original RPG hardcover are not forced to buy the boxed set in order to take advantage of the new rules.

PAX Celebrity Dungeons & Dragons

Youseph — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 10:00:15 +0000

While I was at PAX Prime this year I went and saw the Pax Celebrity Dungeons & Dragons game. I was maybe sitting 5 rows back. The game featured Wizards of the Coast R&D’s Chris Perkins as DM, along with players Jerry Holkins, Scott Kurtz, Mike Krahulik, and Wil Wheaton. If you have been following the D&D podcasts for Acquisitions Incorporated then this is the next game in line. The players sought to bring Wil Wheaton’s Character back from the dead! I have been waiting since I got back to Juneau for Wizards of the Coast to post the video from the game. It’s now finally up for everyone to enjoy. I hope you will. It’s worth your time to watch it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqXqK3ZlqWI

Free Stuff Friday: A Death Certificate

Youseph — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 10:00:23 +0000

It’s Friday and it’s time to give you some more free stuff!

This week’s Free Stuff is: A Death Certificate

I think we can all agree that when a player characters dies in an RPG it is sad. It’s sad for the game master and it’s sad for the player. So why not give them a little something for their death. Something like, oh I don’t know, a really cool death certificate! I don’t know about you but if I die in an RPG I sure would like to have a little something for my effort, and for the GM it’s official.

Here is your certificate of death. You are dead and no backing out of it buddy. Now go roll a new character!

On Ben’s RPG Pile website Ben wrote this stuff up: Remember all those silly paper awards you got in grade school (outstanding reader, math magician, etc)? Here’s a chance to use them in your own game but with some real flair and style. As Rob puts it, “Hey I respect your character, but man, he got jacked up!”

For DM prep, you simply have to fill in the gritty details on the template and print it out. If possible, stay classy and do it in color. Then take it to your next game session to award in a mini ceremony of sorts. If you’re feeling especially funny, don’t hesitate to get all munchkin on his ass as you hand it out.
So download the Death Certificate template today. Just don’t forget to thank Ben for the free stuff!

Zombie Dice

Youseph — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 10:00:16 +0000

While I was at the Penny Arcade Expo I waited in several lines to attend various events thought out the course of the three-day weekend. While waiting in the lines I noticed that just about every single person was playing a game. Be it a hand-held gaming device like the Nintendo DS, Sony PSP or iTouch, to Card and Dice games.

Just from my personal observation of the different lines I had waited in the three most popular games played in line where Pokémon on the Nintendo DS, the Magic the Gathering card game and Zombie Dice.

Zombie Dice was the one that Hannah and I talked about the most when we saw other people playing it. We could not figure out just from watching other people play how the multi-colored dice game worked. Which was driving us a little crazy because it was clear from watching others play that it that this was not a complex game.

Some point late in our PAX adventure we decided we would buy the Zombie Dice game and learn how to play it. Unfortunately it would not be till after PAX that we would get our hands on a copy of Zombie Dice for the first time.

I am happy to report that Zombie dice is a fun, easy and quick game to play. The perfect game for waiting in a line with friends. The game comes with 13 dice. 3 Red, 4 Yellow, 6 Green and a dice cup. The dice have three possible faces. Shotgun blast, Feet and Brains. In Zombie Dice you play a zombie trying to collect 13 brains before you get 3 shotgun blast. The green dice are the least likely to land on a shogun blast where the red dice are most likely. You put all 13 dice in the dice cup and shake them up.

Rather then having me write out how this game works step by step take a moment and check out this Zombie Dice demo up at Steve Jackon Games website. They also have an unboxing video.

I do have a question for all the readers out their. This game is easy and fun and clearly as a bit of a cult following. Those of you who play Zombie Dice, do you play with any kind of modified rules? It seems like a game like this is very adaptable to home-brew rules. I am just curious if other players play with modified rules or not. Let me know!