Archives: Reviews

Tabletop Gaming: Hexcrawls, Campaign Settings, & Adventures

In my last entry in this four-part series, intended to be of use to fellow gamers when they pop by RPGNow in the upcoming Christmas in July sale, I’m discussing some more of my favorite game mastering tools. And I’m going to cheat.

I get a lot of my adventure advice from the review columns written by Bryce Lynch over at Ten Foot Pole. Bryce ruthlessly looks at every adventure he can lay his hands on, and mostly he finds things he doesn’t like. When he DOES enjoy an adventure, though, it’s almost always for the same reasons I like a pre-packaged adventure — cool places to visit, neat things to interact with, great characters to meet, a compelling hook, prose that’s engaging and organized, treasures beyond the ordinary, and so on. And like me, he despises the Tomb of Horrors and similarly styled player killer adventures. He also shares my love of strange faerie elements and bits from folklore.

I differ with his preferences only a little in that A.) I’m not as big a fan of mixing in weird science fiction elements into my fantasy settings, aka “gonzo” material (but Bryce always indicates whether the adventure includes those) and B.) I’ve yet to run a megadungeon that my players care for. The latter places me in the minority of game players, I guess. It seems like every other game master I meet has his players in a megadungeon.

With that preamble out of the way, allow me to point you towards the best adventures listed on Bryce Lynch’s Ten Foot Pole site. And then permit me to point you towards his “no regerts” category (yes, that’s spelled that way on purpose) where he lists the runner-up adventures, some of which I’ve found just as good as those on his best-of list. Look closely, because some of those on both lists are actually FREE. That’s right, wonderful, top-rated free adventures, like the one in the picture there. Bryce’s thumbnails don’t always indicate if they’re free, so look around.

Tabletop Gaming: Tableside Resources

Some of the resources I’ve talked about in previous articles are actually useful both as adventure/campaign building resources, and as table side resources, meaning that they’re helpful both during prep time and when you’re actually running the game. As I mentioned, these are just the ones I’ve read and liked best. If you’re aware of others, please share.

Tableside resources are the items you keep on hand to help you riff with descriptions, or to add a little detail that can entertain the players or bring the environment to life. I’ve previously mentioned the Raging Swan Press books like 20 Things I, II, and III, and I Loot the Body, and you definitely ought to be familiar with those and have them on hand. Ultimate Toolbox and the D30 books I mentioned last time have some wonderful aids as well.

Tabletop Adventures has some mighty entries in this entire category. If you need some interesting things to see if your players are walking through some caverns, or the plains, or the wilderness, or if you need some extra little incidents or a few extra rooms or curious land features, you can keep these cards on hand. They come in all kinds of flavors, like Bits of Dungeon, Dungeon II, Bits of Darkness: Caverns or Bits of the Boulevard (and more). And then there’s the whole Into series, like Into the Mountains or Into the Swamp or Into the Wildwood or Into the Open. In each supplement you get fantastic details that help bring the particular setting to life – the characteristics of a temperate forest versus a deciduous forest, say, and the kind of flora and fauna typical of each. Sometimes you even get a weird new monster to encounter as well. I’m pleased to have them all.

Tabletop Gaming: Campaign & Adventure Design

As I mentioned last week, RPGNow has a Christmas in July sale coming up soon, so I’m taking a look at my favorite tabletop gaming resources. I’ve accumulated a lot of them over the years, so I’ve divided a discussion of the tools across multiple articles. I last looked at treasure. This time, I’m looking at third-party game products that are full of creative lists and descriptions, advice about campaign and adventure design, and adventure seeds.

It may be that there are some excellent ones out there that I haven’t read — if so, let me know. Here, though, are the ones I most use.

Ultimate Toolbox is an expanded reimagining of the earlier Toolbox, both from Alderac. Ultimate Toolbox lacks the 3.0/3.5 statblocks of its predecessor, and it ports over almost (but not quite all) the rest of the material from the original book. But then it adds scads more simply great stuff. You want to design your campaign world, or generate some tavern drinks, or toss some riddles into your campaign or name some dwarfs or, danged near anything else you can think of, this is a must have, both during adventure prep and while you’re running the game. I’d never part with this book.

Tabletop Gaming: Treasure

Every year  RPGnow/Drivethrurpg.com has a Christmas in July sale. It’s not under way yet — usually it takes place around the end of the month. Almost every year I get a wish list together, save up some PayPal cash through some trades, and get ready to splurge.

I love reading this stuff even if I never use it in a game — even if I’m NOT gaming — because the best of it throws off sparks and sets fire to the ‘ol imagination.

This year I thought I’d do a series of articles before the sale begins and point you towards some fantastic products I’ve accumulated, in the hope that you’d get some joy out of them yourselves. I’m such a long time gamer that there are quite a lot of them, so today I’m going to focus solely on treasure and loot.

As you’d probably guess, almost all of this material is from small vendors you’ve never heard of.

I’m only going to discuss my very favorites. If you have others you think ought to be mentioned, I hope that you’ll do so.

Robots of Gotham: Sly, Slam Bang Action Adventure

A few years ago I became a beta reader on a really swell manuscript that’s just now been released in hardcover. It’s already garnering some strong reviews, and I’m not surprised. It was strong in rough draft and it was even stronger as I read additional changes. Robots of Gotham is just a great read, and I was honored to blurb it.

Yeah, it’s not sword-and-sorcery, and it’s not historical fiction, but remember that I DO love me some space opera… but it’s not that, either. It’s science fiction in the near future, which doesn’t at all sound like my cup of tea. EXCEPT that it’s full of adventure, and suspense, and great action bits, and a hero who rises to the occasion, and dangerous and capable and well-motivated villains, and mystery. I mean, I could hardly stop reading it even in its rough state, and I never dreamed it was as looong as the thing is because it absorbed me so deeply. The thing’s huge, and not really my genre — and I COULDN’T PUT IT DOWN. I think that says a lot. It was so engaging I blew off my own writing time and just kept reading. Only a handful of modern writers can pull that off.

Gravity Falls

I’m locked away in the highest tower of my domain, working feverishly on a new draft, but I wanted to share with you that the complete Gravity Falls is now available for pre-order.

Gravity Falls is a wondrous, goofy, and extremely well-written show, stuffed full of creepy humor, thrills, lots of heart and good old fashioned heroics. Each episode is strong and most stand on their own, but they build into a wonderful interconnected, multi-layered story. It’s far more than it seems on first glance.

For years Disney refused to release it in its entirety, as they have done with many other TV properties, marketing only a few episodes here and there. But the fans were loud and the fans demanded and it seems that maybe Disney listened.

In any case, I just placed an order, in part for me, but also because my wife takes endless enjoyment in the show. There are always new minor details to notice in the background, because it was really well thought out from the start…

You can find it here.

Remembering Heroes and Sacrifices

In honor of D-Day this year I picked up a copy of the John C. McManus account of the 1st Division’s assault on the eastern section of Omaha Beach, The Dead and Those About to Die.

It’s an intense and gripping book, filled with detailed accounts of the harrowing obstacles and events, and tragedy and heroism. Just a great read, and full of examples of true leadership.

I had no idea that the men were so overloaded with equipment that it slowed them down. Time and again survivors reported that they had been weighed down with too much equipment, and felt that they wouldn’t have lost as many men if they could have moved faster. So many things went wrong — the aerial bombardment against German positions wasn’t very effective, the water was so choppy the special amphibious tanks sank, most of the boats were swept off course and into the worst possible places…

And yet somehow the men got off the beaches and took out the fortifications. In case you couldn’t already tell, this book has two thumbs up from yours truly. Highly recommended.

Mighty Warriors Arrive

My brand new copy of The Mighty Warriors turned up in the post yesterday. I can’t remember when I had a NEW anthology chock full of sword-and-sorcery. I mean, I’ve had old anthologies that were new to me, but not one that was hot off the presses.

I’ve been friends with two of the authors for years, Charles Rutledge and Paul McNamee. Charles is the fellow who spoke so highly of Shotokan karate and therefore helped me choose which school to attend many years back (and I’m STILL there). I’ve known Paul since I used to edit the old Flashing Swords e-zine. He helped manage the related web site for a while when I was busy with grad school. Yet I’ve never read any of their work! Now I have the chance, because they both have a story in the volume, along with one of my favorite writers, Charles Saunders, my friend David C. Smith. There’s also work by friendly acquaintances and industry standard bearers. I’ve been hearing good things about Adrian Cole’s Elak pastiches for a while, so I’m particularly interested to see what he’s cooked up.

Anyway, I’m pleased to have a copy and eager to get to reading. Your own copies can be found here.

Hammerhead

I exchanged gifts with my old friends Brad and Bruce this weekend, and one of the goodies I came home with was Hammerhead, a James Bond graphic novel from Dynamite.

I’d never heard of the publisher Dynamite before the two James Bond collections I’ve read, but I’m really impressed. The issues of the comic collected in this book were written by Andrew Diggle and illustrated by Luca Casalanguida, and they sure delivered the goods. Casalanguida has a striking, cinematic style that really helps evoke the sense you’re watching a film. And Diggle’s script was aces: Bond was clever, ruthless, and observant. Much like the first James Bond graphic novel I read last year, Vargr, I actually enjoyed the comic better than I have any number of Bond movies. So far the scripts are simply smarter.

Highly recommended. I look forward to reading more. As an added bonus, unlike a lot of the stuff I write about, this one’s in print!

Twenty-two

Here we are twenty-two days into December and as I look back on the first day of December things around here have changed a little.

My first-born’s back from his first semester as a junior in college, which is mind-blowing. He’s been re-reading the Dabir and Asim novels and short stories with an eye towards running some role-playing adventures for my wife and I — with her playing Dabir and me playing Asim. That just sounds like a whole lot of fun, and he may try running the first one tonight.

That’s assuming that we’re not working late on dinner prep, because we’re hosting the extended family Christmas dinner at our place this year, for the first time. That’s meant that a LOT Of my spare time over the last three weeks has been dedicated to some deep cleaning. The house needed it, even if I didn’t, so much. After that really long run towards deadlines through both October and November I was hoping for more downtime.