A Role Playing Games Blog
Freebies
“You are all travelling in a Stagecoach…” Weird West pre-gens
0May 11, 2011
Recently Michael posted about the new game by Robertson Games Weird West. I have never run a western game, and only played on a short (one session) long Boot Hill game that we quickly derailed and ruined in ways that had the GM throwing his hands up and walking away from the table. I’m also not a big fan of Westerns. I loved Western movies as a child, specially the Lone Ranger, but as I grew up I really did not care much for the genre. There are exceptions; I love The Magnificent Seven, the “Dollar Trilogy” and modern Westerns like Unforgiven and 3:10 to Yuma. However, as much as I love the Cohen Brothers films, I was underwhelmed by True Grit and I am NOT a fan of The Duke, i.e. John Wayne.
That doesn’t mean I am not interested in Western themed RPGs. An old copy of Boot Hill sits on my shelf, and I own Deadlands (both the original version and the d20 book, not the Savage Worlds version) and Sidewinder: Recoiled. However I have never wanted to run one until recently. One of my players has been trying to put together a Western game and another player is a HUGE fan of the genre. SO I found myself thinking about what I would do for such a game.
Help playtest the High Score RPG
1April 15, 2011
High Score is a roleplaying game currently in development by fellow RPG blogger Dennis Santana which has an interesting premise. Each event in the game has a certain high score the players have to reach before they “won” the scene. Of course there might be different objectives. Killing all the bad guys may grant you enough points to finish the scene successfully but rescuing the damsel in distress may also get you halfway there.
Dennis has recently released a 24-paged playtest version of the game that you can download from his blog. If you are interested in trying something new, you should definitely have a look at High Score. And don’t forget to send your feedback to Dennis. His email address is given in the playtest document.
A font by any other name…
0March 31, 2011
I don’t know about you, but I love collecting them. Ever since I got my first word processor I cherished the possibility of changing the font depending on the purpose of the document I was writing. For a big period in my gaming life one of the things I enjoyed the most was creating character sheets for the games I was playing, (this was in that bygone age before high speed internet connections and great collections of pre-made character sheets like the Mad Irishman, kudos!) and selecting the right font from that seemingly endless collection of fonts displayed against the monochrome background of my monitor was a key part of that process!
Actually, my love for fonts can be traced back to my early gaming days. Perhaps many of you first discovered the idea of fantasy script with Tolkien, but while I fondly remember reading the novels I can’t say I was particularly taken by the funny looking script. The first time I made the connection that a made believe fantasy language could have a script corresponding to our own alphabet was reading the old Forgotten Realms grey box, in the book there were illustrations of the scripts of Faerun with the equivalent letters in the Latin alphabet and the Arabic numbers (that’s how I remember it and I’m not searching for the book at this our so do not thread over my memories!). (more…)
Free Stuff Friday: Redbox Hack
0March 4, 2011
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
5March 2, 2011
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
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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!
Freebie: Stars Without Number
12February 23, 2011
I’ve known of the existence of this game for quite a while now, but for some reason I just picked it up pretty recently. That’s why I don’t want to call this post a fully review.
Stars Without Number is a surprisingly well-made SF roleplaying game “influenced by the Old School Renaissance and partially inspired by the great fantasy role-playing game editions written by Tom Moldvay and Frank Mentzer”. Perhaps it was that mention of the OSR that put me off a bit initially.
Don’t get me wrong, I very much enjoyed Swords & Wizardry and I recently picked up Lamentations Of The Flame Princess but aside from that my interest in the old-school movement waned. It actually bothers me that people waste their time and creativity to recreate the 1970s’ fantasy RPG over and over again. But that’s the subject for another post…
Luckily Stars Without Number is different. While the system it uses has some resemblance to old-school D&D, it can pretty much stand on its own feet. SWN features three pretty broad character classes (Warrior, Expert, and Psychic), a sizeable number of Background Packages (from Adventurer to Worker) and a point-based psi system. Since the basic system is still pretty close to the d20 System, D&D veterans of all editions should get into SWN pretty fast.
Aside from the fact that it’s basic system is inspired by old-school D&D, Stars Without Numbers feels like a modern game, both in presentation and rules. Although the layout isn’t as fancy as some other games I’ve seen lately, it’s clean and has a good readability. The artwork is of a mixed quality (probably because it’s stock art – I recognize a few pieces I bought myself), but it usually fits the genre well.
Aside from the rules needed to create characters and run the game, the GM gets quite a lot of tools for his own games. There are rules for World, Faction, Adventure and Alien Creation, a Xenobestiary and a fully fledged out sector for you to play in. The author didn’t forget simple but effective Starship design rules either.
The 210-paged PDF version of Stars Without Numbers is free and can be downloaded from DriveThruRPG. You can also get this fine game as a softcover or hardcover book through DriveThruRPG’s POD service, if you prefer the hardcopy over the digital download. The printed books set you back $19.99 or $24.99 respectively.
SWN is definitely worth a look if you are into science fiction RPGs. The game supports various sub genres and gaming styles, so it should be pretty easy to adapt it to almost any campaign.
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