The world was a large place. The four races, Humans, Elves, Dwarves, and Orcs coexisted with an uneasy peace, but at the least, they were able to share the land and survive. Empires were formed, lives created and destroyed, magic flourished and for a brief time, Humanity strove to master the globe. Then the undead scourge broke the world.

In funding the Aruneus Project through Kickstarter, one of the rewards was an official Aruneus T-shirt.  Since I’ve designed a few of ‘em, and I had a few other, more modern designs and put them up on Printfection.  If you’re interested, I’d love it if you checked it out.  From now until September 15th, you can also save $5 on any orders over $25.  Here are images of what’s available. They’re a little small but you can see full sized images right on Printfection.

Troll in the Corner.

Related posts:

1. Aruneus zombies featured in the DriveThruRPG Newsletter! Woo!
2. The Zombies are here! World of Aruneus – Contagion Infected Human Zombies and Zombie Cards now available!
3. Official Aruneus campaign premiering at KantCon!

© admin for Troll in the Corner, 2010. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Aruneus, rpg, t-shirt, zombies

We’ll have more contests coming soon, so keep your eyes peeled!

Technorati Tags: rpg, contest

Troll in the Corner.

Related posts:

1. Win a PDF copy of Fantasy Craft RPG or the Splicers RPG – enter quick!
2. We have our winners – The Bridge Troll contest
3. We have our winners! The International Pathfinder Contest!

© admin for Troll in the Corner, 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: contest, rpg

I’ve been thinking a lot about gaming burn-out recently. You see, every 3-4 months, I go through a phase where I am just not into gaming. It’s usually characterized by a lack of motivation to do anything game-related, negative thinking about the gaming situation that I find myself in, and a gnawing sense that I should be doing something else with my time. Most times this happens, I chalk it up to being burnt out with gaming. I figure that it’s time to pack it up and move on and focus on a different hobby.

This time, it’s different. I’ve been writing for Troll in the Corner for a few months now. In that time, I’ve acquired a lot of gaming knowledge, seen a lot of awesome things, and I’ve gained a measure of responsibility. I have books to read, systems to review (and test if possible), and articles to write. I love what I do here, and that means I have to keep my head in the gaming scene.

So, how have managed to keep this thing going? Well, I’ve figured out a few things during these last few months; maybe you’ll find some of those things useful.

Don’t Get Stuck in Your Own Head

This is the thing that I struggle with the most when it comes to gaming. I GM most of the time, and I worry far too often about what people will think about the game I present to them. Not that I shouldn’t be concerned with the quality of my game sessions, but if it seems to me like one of my players wasn’t as in to the sessions as I had hoped, or if I don’t get effusive praise for the session, then I tend to get into a funk. I find myself imagining conversations with my players where they tell me that they would rather not play RPGs anymore. It’s not a fun state in which to be.

Gaming is a mental exercise, but getting caught in my own mental webs get me nowhere. If I find myself walking those mental circles, I do my best to just snap the hell out of it. I love gaming, and I especially love GMing. If I spend too much time wallowing, then I won’t focus on actually making the game a good one. Paying attention to the details of the story I want to craft is far more important than paying attention to the ramblings of a bout of poor self-esteem.

Don’t get lost in your own mental mazes. If you really want to game, then clear the cobwebs, put pencil to paper (or fingers to keyboard) and write for the game. If you’re a player, write a story starring your character; if you’re the GM, plot out a new adventure. Do something that will help you advance your character or your story.

Don’t Get Distracted by the New and the Shiny

You’re playing  a game system that you, hopefully, love. You’ve spent hours reading the books, you know the rules forward, backward, inside and out. You’re getting ready to make a new character, or start planning a new campaign, and you get distracted. Maybe a friend has told you about a new game system, or maybe you heard about something new on a podcast, or from a web blog. It sounds awesome, and you abandon your plans. You start reading this new system, get all hot and bothered for it, and you start working on the new system.

Now, if you and your group are all looking for a change, then this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. If, however, this is something that happens every three months, or after two game sessions, then it really becomes a problem.

My current system of distraction is Savage Worlds. I love the system, but I never get to play it. As much as I would love to begin a Deadlands game, or run Realms of Cthulhu, I know my players. They love their d20s and love Pathfinder. I am a huge fan of Pathfinder, but Savage Worlds calls to me. However, if I spend my time pining for a system that I have few opportunities to play, then I will miss the great gaming that I can get from the system that my group uses.

Find Ways to Get Re-Energized

One of the signature moments in my gaming-filled summer was my time at Origins. It stands out (and probably always will) because it was my first gaming convention, ever. I have since been to bigger, and better-organized conventions, but Origins was something magical for me. I jumped in with both feet, immersed myself in new games and new systems, and I don’t think I will ever experience anything like it again.

What that time did for me was solidify just how much I love gaming. No other hobby that I can think of could keep me up until 6:30AM, and then have me back, engaging with people a mere 3 hours later. For weeks afterward, I was on a gaming high. It was that energy that helped me prepare 5 gaming sessions for KantCon, and it has stuck with me as a high-water mark of gaming in my life.

If you’re feeling run down, find something that will recharge your gaming batteries. For me, it was attending my first gaming convention. For some, it might be a marathon gaming session. For others, it might simply be taking a break.

The End Result

If you’re feeling at the end of your gaming rope, then do something to get out of it. In my opinion, one of the worst things that a gamer can do is drag along, not really enjoying what they’re doing, gaming-wise. If you’re a player, it brings your group down if you’re the one player checking your email, screwing around online, or generally not paying attention. If you’re the GM and you’re burnt out, then you’re likely doing nothing but giving your players a bad gaming experience.

I’ve been both of those things to groups before. I’m not proud of those times, but I’ve learned from them. I have a much better grasp on how I do things and how to handle my inevitable cycling down. Right now, my gaming future looks bright.

Troll in the Corner.

Related posts:

1. Burn Zombie Burn. Buy it on Amazon, download it and play it on your PS3
2. What to do when your PC’s go somewhere you hadn’t planned
3. Quick Review: Cthulhu For President

© Tracy for Troll in the Corner, 2010. | Permalink | 6 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags:

Talisman is one of those games that are just damned fun to play.  It’s simple enough that anyone who enjoys playing games can pick it up easily and enjoy the game.  Its complex enough that you can implement real strategies depending on which character you’re playing in your quest to dominate the world.  It is reminiscent of many fantasy based RPGs, yet it’s a board game.  You have characters that you play, dice to roll, and various cards to do different things to you and the other players.  It can be cut-throat and joyfully random as well.  Plus, you can get turned in to a toad, a feature I very much enjoy.  I had the chance to sit down with five other players and enjoy a massive and pleasantly lengthy game of Talisman this past weekend.  Here are the details.

Welcome to the world of Talisman

So what exactly is it that you do in this game?  It is, as I said, fairly simple.  You start off on a game board with three regions.  The outer region(where things are relatively easy), the middle region (gets tougher here), and the inner region (run screaming).   To start play, you pick one of 14 characters that come with the base game.  Your character card will tell you where you’ll start in the outer realm and then you have but two goals in this game. The first is to garner a Talisman, which you need to enter the inner region.   The second goal is to enter that region, reach the Crown of Command and then use that to rain death down on your opponents until you’ve destroyed them all and become master of the world!  MWAHAHAHA!

He did not become master of the world, mwahahaha.

Your characters each possess various traits and abilities, some are shared and some are unique to that character.  Each character has several stats – Strength, Craft, Fate, and Life.  These stats determine how well you’ll do in a fight (Strength) or a test of wills (Craft) and how many lives you can lose (usually 4) before you’re character is killed.  Fate points can be discarded to re-roll a die and hope for a better outcome.  Each character also starts with a gold piece. Gold can be used to purchase items in the game, restock Fate points,  heal lives, or any other number of things.

In the above image (click it and the others for a larger view) you can see the character I played, the Wizard.   He’s an evil bugger – there are three alignments, evil, good and neutral.  In his case, his alignment prohibited him from going into certain places or obtaining certain items.  Although by the time the photo above was taken, he’d been converted to the good alignment.  The Wizard has a high craft (5) and relatively low strength (2).   He starts with 4 lives, 3 fate and one gold.  Lives, strength and craft are each represented by colored cones, red for strength, blue for craft, and green for life.  Fate is represented by cardboard tokens and gold by, well, little plastic gold coins.  The plastic minis, which have replaced previous edition’s cardboard cutouts, are a nice touch.

Hanging out in the Graveyard at the start of the game.

To play you roll a d6 and proceed in one or the other direction around the outer realm.  When you land on a space that instructs you do draw an Adventure Card, you do so from the (now massively buff with expansions) Adventure Card deck.  Adventure cards come in a number of flavors.  Strangers, followers, enemies, events, items and of course, bags of gold.

At the start of your game, your character proceeds around the board collecting items and defeating (or being wiped across the game board by) enemies and discovering events that change the nature of play for everyone.   The adventure cards are numbered from 1 to 6 and when multiple adventure cards are drawn, are always played lowest number first.  Generally enemies come first, which you must defeat before you can get to anything good behind them.  Combat is simple and straight forward.  If I pull a wolf, with a strength of 2, another player then rolls a d6 for that wolf and adds 2 (the wolf’s strength) to the total die roll. I do the same, adding my strength to the total die roll.  Highest number wins, ties are a draw.  Craft battles work the same way.  Of course, being a wizard I also have a few spells up my highly decorative sleeves.

Spells in this game are also available in the form of cards.  They are drawn randomly from the deck by any who either start the game with them, or always have them.  You need a craft score of 3 to have 1 spell, 4 to have two spells and 6 to have three spells, the maximum number.  Spells can do any number of magical things, from turning you invisible to stealing items and followers from other players.  They’re loads of fun, except when someone uses them to steal your followers.

the dreaded Dark Cultist

So, how do you advance in this game?  Unlike standard RPGs, there are no experience points.  Instead, you work to increase your strength and craft scores through a number of methods.  Each time you defeat an enemy you retain that enemy’s adventure card as a trophy.  When you’ve stored up 7 points worth of strength or craft – that is, if you kill a creature with a strength of 4 and another with a strength of 3 you’ve got 7; then you can discard them and add one point to your own strength score.  Same goes for craft.  In addition to this there are loads of items that add to your strength and craft scores.  Also, there are magical means to increase your stats.  Some characters, such as the dreaded Dark Cultist even have abilities that allow them to do so at certain times.  That’s her up above by the way, and she eventually won the game.

Speaking of objects, each character is allowed to carry up to four objects – more if they have a special object that allows them to do so, like a horse and cart or a bag of holding.  Also, you can collect followers in your adventures.  These are folks or beasties that add to or occasionally hinder your abilities and can also give you special abilities.

There are lots of other things going on as well.  For instance, if you land on another character, you can choose to attack them and take a gold, item, follower or a life.  Other folks are also wandering around the realms, causing things to happen that can affect you as well.  Early on in our game I drew an event which caused every character to lose all of their fate counters.

Just before she wins the game

As your characters gain strength and craft, items and followers, you’ll find yourselves adventuring up to the middle realms where things get tougher but the rewards can come faster.  Eventually you’ll find yourself ready to face the challenges of the inner realm.  First you’ll need a Talisman to even enter the inner realm (there are four in the base game).  That’s an item you can’t win without.  Next, you’ll face a series of challenges designed to make it fairly hard to reach the crown of command.  Once you do though, you have a 50% chance of removing one life from one character each turn.  The person at the crown of command does this until they are either defeated by another character that also has a talisman and has made it to the inner realm, or until they win the game.

That is the essence of the game.  Now you know how to play, let’s find out what is included when you get the base set and the expansions!

The base game comes with 1 game board, 1 rulebook, 14 character cards, 104 adventure cards, 24 spell cards,  40 strength counters, 40 craft counters, 40 life counters, 30 gold coins, 36 fate tokens, 28 purchase cards, 4 talisman cards, 4 toad cards, 4 alignment cards, 18 plastic figures,  and six 6-sided dice.

The characters are (in no particular order) Troll, Warrior, Monk, Assassin, Prophetess, Minstrel, Elf, Priest, Thief, Sorceress, Druid, Ghoul, Wizard, and Dwarf.   Each character has varying stats, and each have unique abilities that allow them to do cool things.  For instance, the Warrior can roll two d6 in battle and use the higher attack, the Monk can add his craft to his strength during battle, and so on.

The game itself is gorgeously designed and has very good production value. The game board is large and looks great.  The character cards are wonderfully illustrated, the gold coins look like gold coins – it’s all good.  My only two gripes, and they are minor gripes, are that the characters are plastic rather than actual lead minis (but plastic is a damned sight better than the old folded cardboard jobs) and that the life, strength and craft cones are a bit hard to grasp.  They occasionally would *sproing* right out of a players hands, much to my cat’s delight.

This basic set has everything you need to enjoy a decent game of Talisman.  Expect to be playing with four players for about 2 – 4 hours depending on how crafty and cut-throat everyone is.  Seeing as I have a bit of a sickness when it comes to collecting all things Talisman though, let’s take a look at the expansions!

All of the Talisman collection, on a Lego table, surrounded by lesser games

I’ll start with the first expansion I purchased. The Reaper.  90 Adventure Cards, 28 Spell Cards, 12 Warlock Quest Cards, 1 Grim Reaper Miniature, and 4 additional characters and minis.

The Grim Reaper himself is an interesting element to add to the game.   Honestly I did not think I’d like it at first because there’s a chance of Death simply waltzing up and destroying a character.  But after playing with this expansion, I give it just as much love as the base game.  The Grim Reaper starts his game just outside the inner region.  When any player rolls a 1 for movement, they also get to roll the die again and move the Grim Reaper.  If the Reaper happens to land on your character lots of (generally) bad things can happen at the roll of a die.  The effects range from “It is time” where your character is just blown out of the game through “I have plans for you” where you can gain either a strength, craft, life, gold, spell, fate or teleport to any other space in that region.

The four characters this expansion adds are the Merchant, the Knight, the Sage and the Dark Cultist. Oh the Dark Cultist.  I think she’s one of the most powerful characters in this whole game.  Why?  Whenever you defeat an enemy or another character, you receive a fate, gold, life, strength, craft or spell.  As the game goes on and the characters become more powerful, winning more fights, the Dark Cultists’ powers grow almost exponentially.  It may be even a bit game balance effecting, if not countered early in the game.  And by countered, I mean taken out by the other characters.

You’ll notice that all of these expansions also come with Adventure cards, which are thrown right into the base game’s adventure deck, the same applies to the spell cards.

Next we’ll look at the Frostmarch expansion.  The Frostmarch expansion features 4 new character cards and plastic figures, 84 Adventure Cards, 20 Spell Cards, 24 Warlock Quest Cards, and 3 Alternative Ending Cards.

Here’s the first expansion I picked up that really changed how the base game was played.  To start, there are Warlock quests added to the game.  The base game actually features the Warlock in the middle region and there are a few quests you can attempt to complete in order to receive a Talisman as a reward.  With the Frostmarch expansion, these quests are given a bit more detail and gusto.  They range from sacrificing a magical item to taking the life of another player.  Anything for that Talisman!

Frostmarch comes with the Ogre Chieftan, Warlock, Necromancer, and Leprechaun characters.

Also, this expansion features the addition of alternate endings. Some of the things I enjoyed most about the 2nd edition were the alternate endings, and this expansion brought them back for me.  These are two endings that can be randomly chosen and a third that can be agreed on to use.  They sit in the center of the board in place of the Crown of Command and offer players different ways to win the game.

If agreed on, the Warlock Quests ending can be used.  Each character starts the game with 4 randomly selected Warlock quests.  The first character to complete all four and reach the Crown of Command, wins.  The two randomly drawn endings are the Crown and Scepter and the Ice Queen.

An alternate ending

With the Crown and Scepter is a variant on the standard Crown of Command, except each turn all players lose 1 life.  If there’s another player at the Crown of Command, instead of casting the Command spell, they must battle each other to the death first.  Once active, there’s also no healing allowed.

If the Ice Queen is encountered, the character reaching the crown of command must choose to attack the Ice Queen with either strength or craft.  She has 12 in both, and four lives.  If the Ice Queen is defeated, the game is one.  If she is not, everyone else get’s healed up to full and the game continues.

The Dungeon is the next expansion we’ll examine, and the one I was most eager to acquire.  I had spent many a game session delving in the Dungeon in the 2nd edition of Talisman and I was eager to see if this expansion lived up to the original.  Happily, it does!  This is the first expansion to add an entirely new playing board to the game, in addition to the base game board.  It includes 1 Dungeon Board, 128 Dungeon Cards, 20 Spell Cards, 10 Adventure Cards, 10 Treasure Cards, 5 Character Cards, and 5 Plastic Figures.

The Dungeon (near) and the Highlands (far) and an awful sweater

The dungeon is (optionally) a one way trip, and it can be very hard on your characters, in a good way.  Once you enter the dungeon, you cannot turn back and must proceed through until the end, where you’ll meet and hopefully defeat the Lord of Darkness, and grab some cool loot.   There is a change from the original game, in which with this Dungeon expansion, you can opt to turn back.  We’ve house-ruled it so that it plays like the original, but next game we’ll try it with the “oh crap run!” sissy rules and see how it plays.

When traveling through the Dungeon, you do not draw adventure cards as normally you would, but rather dungeon cards which feature all kinds of new things not normally encountered on the base game board.  At the end, if you defeat the Lord of Darkness (Strength12, Craft 12) you get to choose from one of 10 powerful treasures to take with you.  Oh, and you could also get spit out directly into the Crown of Command, so make sure you have that Talisman!

The Dungeon introduces a new game board!  This fits snugly on to the base game board right at the ruins and gives a nice way for your characters to stroll in to impending doom.  A bit to note about the new expansion board, it is large.  When added to the base game, it makes for a HUGE game board which barely fits on our dining room table.  That’s not to say it’s not worth it, it certainly is!

The Dungeon introduces the Philosopher, Amazon, Gladiator, Swashbuckler, and the Gypsy as new characters.

The last expansion I purchased was the Highland.   Here we have another board added to the base game board in a similar way as the Dungeon, and a bit of an easier trip for those characters not quite ready for the Dungeon yet.   In addition to this you get 6 new characters, three new alternate endings, around 80 Highland cards, and new adventure and spell cards.

I particularly like the three new alternate ending cards.  They’re the Battle Royale, where all characters who don’t have a Talisman lose and everyone who does gets to duke it out.  There’s also the Hand of Doom ending in which a die is rolled and bad things happen all around (my least favorite, but still fun).  Lastly, there is the Eagle King ending in which the character must defeat the Eagle King to win (Strength 12, craft 12, 4 lives).

Set up much like the Dungeon, but with the inbuilt ability to come and go, the Highlands add a bit of space to the game when a large number of folks are playing.  They also add the Challenge of defeating the Eagle King (Strength 8, Craft 8 in this permutation) to obtain some lower level magical items.  The Highland also introduces Trinkets, magical items that are small and don’t take up space as one of your four objects.  They’re fairly low powered, but as trinkets, I’d expect that.

The Highland is a place for less advanced characters to hang out. Somewhere between the outer region and the middle region it offers a good place to find encounters and treasure without the risk that comes with the Dungeon.

The Highland comes with the Sprite, Alchemist, Valkyrie, Highlander, Vampiress, and Rogue.

Simply put, I cannot recommend this game enough.  I’ve had a fantastic time playing it in groups ranging from two to six players, using some, all or none of the expansions.  Each game has its own way of playing out and always has a few surprises built in to it.

This lucky fairy wasn't so lucky for this toad.

If you enjoy the base game, I’d highly encourage taking a look at the expansions as well.  They each have their own strengths and change the way the game is played.  I’ve found that the more expansions I include, the shorter the games get.  Don’t get me wrong when I say this though, that means a four hour game drops to a three and a half hour game.  With all of the expansions, you’ll find yourself with more cards than you can count.  Somewhere north of 320 adventure cards, 32 characters, lots of spells, and quests.  It’s a board game collector’s dream.

If I had to put them in order of purchase, I’d order them thus:

• The Dungeon:  This is the must have expansion.  Torturous fun.  A new game board doesn’t hurt either.
• The Reaper: Adds a bit of chaos with the Grim Reaper wandering about.  With 4 new characters and a bunch of adventure cards, it works well with the base game.
• The Highland: Again, new board! Alternate endings, 6 new characters and a whole new set of cards to play with.
• The Frostmarch: Alternate endings and 4 new characters are good.  The extra adventure cards are fun as are the warlock quests but probably the most wishy-washy of all the expansions.

The near future will also see the release of the next expansion, The Sacred Pool, due out on November 14th.  This expansion will be similar to the Frostmarch expansion, featuring 4 new characters, new adventure cards and new alternate endings, plus neutral alignment markers.  I’ve already pre-ordered it, as my compulsion demands.

In conclusion, if you love board games and fantasy adventure, if you’re looking for a great way to spend a game night or even as a night off from your regular RPG campaign, I’d highly, highly recommend this edition of Talisman.  Well worth your time and money.

He's either pointing something out, or about to win

Technorati Tags: talisman, board games, review

Troll in the Corner.

Related posts:

1. Talisman 4th edition gets reviewed, photographed and strip searched
2. Reviews & Ideas: Paranoia – Mandatory !Bonus Fun! Card Game
3. Quick Review: Making Craft Work – a workable system for crafting items in Pathfinder

© admin for Troll in the Corner, 2010. | Permalink | 5 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: board game, review, rpg, talisman

How do you win?  It’s easy!  Just leave a comment here stating which one you would prefer (yes, you’ve got to pick one).  The winners will randomly be picked using either random.org or a monkey dressed as Wonder Woman throwing lassos around.

The contest is already on, and it ends on Thursday, the 9th at 11:59 PM EST.  The winner will be picked and announced Friday morning.

Good luck!

Troll in the Corner.

Related posts:

1. Win yourself a copy of the Agone Role Playing Game
2. Today is your last chance to win a copy of Bridge Troll!
3. Reminder! Enter the international Savage Worlds give away by tomorrow!

© admin for Troll in the Corner, 2010. | Permalink | 49 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: contest, pdfs, rpgs

The internet is a pretty spectacular thing, but I can’t say I’d ever imagine it would bring me an RPG based on pie charts.  It just goes to show that the gaming market is far from tapped out.  There are a million ways to game and a million more are fast approaching.

PIE is a simple and light weight role playing game released under Creative Commons License by a man who calls himself Dull Barbarian.  With this system, he has put together something new and very intriguing.  This isn’t exactly a review as I’ve not actually had a chance to run this system yet, but instead a call to attention for the awesomeness of free stuff.  A lot of work has been invested here and all of it is being put out for online consumption 100% free, which means there’s no good reason not to give it a look over.

What I can say is that there isn’t a lot to dig into yet and I think that might hurt the author’s success a little here in the beginning.  Because he has kept the system universally operable for any time period or place as an in-game setting, as well as no doubt created the project on a low or potentially non-existing budget, the game doesn’t really have much by the way of details at this time.  No equipment charts, no setting, very few suggestions for character creation, and unclear definitions of just what is within reason to keep play balanced.  This can make for a bit of struggle for those that are not experienced gamers.  The whole thing is just a little too open.  Open can be a good thing, but more guidance would be nice just to get started.  For now at least, this is really for someone who needs a non-standard framework to develop, not the game master that wants to start playing right away.  Dull Barbarian is working on a setting for PIE that he intends to release, which may alleviate some of these concerns.

The basic mechanic revolves around each player having a set number of slots on his sheet dedicated to particular attribute domains labeled Physicality, Intellectuality, and Emotionality.  Though the document itself is pretty plain, the character sheet really does draw the eye when completed, a section of which can be seen below. The geometric hard angle graph instead of a typical filled circle chart has a lot of style and I think it looks great.  If this system gets enough interest, I think an online generator of some sort than can create colored sheets would be a wise addition.

Afterword

I hope Dull Barbarian will continue to expand his PIE system  in ways that will bring players and GMs in.  Sometime soon I’m going to give the system a run through just to see how it translates from paper to play, but I have no clue when that will be.  There should be a follow up post when that happens which will detail how that night goes.  I love these new small-time or independent RPGs, and I want to see them get more exposure, they really grow the hobby in unimaginable ways.  You can download the PDF directly HERE to get your own slice and the accompanying character sheet HERE for a dollop of whip cream.  (Oh bad pun, maybe “pie plate” would have been better?)

Dull Barbarian is desperately seeking some feedback so he can improve the system.  Go check it out, give it some play, and please let him know what you think.  You can leave comments here which I’ll make sure he sees or visit his site HERE to e-mail him directly.

Technorati Tags: Role Playing, PIE, RPG, Gaming, indie, rpg

Troll in the Corner.

Related posts:

1. A new, free PFRPG creature – the Exasperating Ooze
2. A Terrible Idea for RPGs, which is actually a Great Idea – free to use character portraits
3. Save the date – June 19th, 2010 is FREE RPG DAY!

© Nundahl for Troll in the Corner, 2010. | Permalink | 6 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: free, gaming, indie, pie, role playing, rpg

Technorati Tags: savage worlds, rpg, role playing games, contest

Troll in the Corner.

Related posts:

1. Cthulhu has claimed another victim! Er… we have a winner!
2. The International Savage Worlds contest: Win the Explorer’s Edition and Deadlands Player’s Guide!
3. Reminder! Enter the international Savage Worlds give away by tomorrow!

© admin for Troll in the Corner, 2010. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: contest, Role Playing Games, rpg, Savage Worlds

Troll in the Corner.

Related posts:

1. Holy Reddit Batman!
2. Fieldrunners hits the PSP GO so I can lose hours on hours to two platforms
3. Zombie cards and my absence from the site

© admin for Troll in the Corner, 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: oops

Savage Worlds is a Fast! Furious! and Fun! rules system for any genre of roleplaying game. Create your own setting, convert an existing one, or pick up one of our amazing worlds like Deadlands, Slipstream, or Weird War II.

The rules give players plenty of depth to create their characters and keep bookkeeping to a minimum for the game master.

If you’re looking for a game that’s fast and easy to set up, run, and play, Savage Worlds is for you!

This is a full-color Explorer’s Edition-sized book (6.5″x9″). This is a copy of the third printing. 160 pages.

The Tombstone Epitaph has always been filled with lurid tales of daring desperadoes and deadly drifters, but lately the West’s most-read tabloid claims there’s something more sinister stalking the fronteir’s lonely plains: monsters! Fortunately, where there are monsters, there are heroes. Squinte-eyed gunfighters, card-chucking hexsligners, savage braves, and righteous padres have all answered the call. And if they fight hard enough, they might just discover the identity of the mysterious Reckoners some say are behind it all.

The Player’s Guide is the core rules book for player of Deadlands Reloaded. It includes new rules for shootouts at high noon, new Edges, Hindrances, and powers, and everything thing a cowpoke needs to begin his journey into the Weird West.

So how do you qualify to win these two books? Easily done! Go to Pinnacle Entertainment Group’s website and tell us what year PEG started out and what they first published. (Hint – both answers are right next to each other and a cut/paste is fine). Once you’ve got this info, email it to us at savageworlds AT trollitc D0T com. Be sure to use a valid email address as that’s how I’ll be contacting the winner.

Since I’m also celebrating my survival of (not really all that) life threatening surgery, I’m also going to put in one of my own, unopened Savage Worlds official Oversized Action Deck! That’s a lot of capital letters but also a neat extra prize.

Rules:

This contest will start at approximately 9am on Friday, August 27th and will end at 11:59pm EST on Friday, September 3rd.

• This contest is open to anyone I can ship to via the United States Postal Service. You are responsible for verifying the books and cards can be shipped to your address.
• The winner will be chosen by either a random number generator at random.org or a rhesus monkey dressed as a zombie hurling D&D 4e miniatures at a chart of entrants – whichever is easier for me to arrange.
• All decisions are final, even decisions arrive on by a monkey.
• Folks who write for TC or work at PEG shouldn’t enter. That’s just not fair.

That’s all there is to it! Good luck and get to entering!

Technorati Tags: rpg, role playing games, savage worlds, contest, deadlands

Troll in the Corner.

Related posts:

1. The International Savage Worlds contest: Win the Explorer’s Edition and Deadlands Player’s Guide!
2. Reminder! The Pathfinder International Give Away – 3 books, tons of PDFs, 16 winners, anywhere in the world!
3. International Pathfinder Give Away! Last two days to enter! Giving away three PFRPG books to anywhere in the world

© admin for Troll in the Corner, 2010. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: contest, Deadlands, Role Playing Games, rpg, Savage Worlds

When you go to check out, just enter this coupon code:  HotAugustGames2010

This deal is good through October 5th.

Since they’re all offering you a discount, I feel I should do the same on my products.  So the entire Troll in the Corner/Aruneus collection is available for 25% off.

Thanks for reading and thanks for making this awesome hobby better!  We appreciate every single email and comment!

Troll in the Corner.

Related posts:

1. Save the date – June 19th, 2010 is FREE RPG DAY!
2. Flash Contest! Win one of three RPG PDFs from Drive Thru RPG worth a total of $50 over the next 2 days
3. Help the Hobby! Read an RPG Book in Public!

© admin for Troll in the Corner, 2010. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags:

The audio this time around was all processed by Ethan Parker of Gamer’s Haven fame. I took everything that I did, or that we did together, and put it up on his site. In the case of the shorter interviews, he strung a bunch of them together so that they made a larger file. As well, he joined me on a few of the interviews, which was always fun. I’m going to link to all of them and give a short breakdown on each file.

So, here we go!

The One With All of the Interviews

These were a lot of fun. Throughout the convention, I had time to talk to a lot of really neat people, and the list is as follows:

The first thing that I want to say about these interviews is how cool the people were to talk to. Everyone was candid and answered the questions asked in what seemed like an honest manner. I also learned some interesting things along the way, such as:

Iron Dynasty, the steampunk samurai game from Reality Blurs, is not going to stay a Savage Worlds-only product. In fact, they are going to be releasing the setting for FantasyCraft, as well. No timeframe for the release, but it’s still a cool bit of news.

I’m also really excited to read and review some of the products that were talked about during these interviews, including Maschine Zeit, Thunder Hamsters, Moonbase Crisis, and Outbreak: Undead. I am also planning on taking an extended look at Infrno, because it looks like it could be really useful.

The ENnie Awards

If you didn’t have a chance to watch the videocast of the ENnie awards, but are curious to know what the ceremony is like, then this is the audio to listen to. We did arrive at the awards a little late, so we missed a lot of the info on the RPGNow Gamers Helping Haiti project (which apparently went well), but we did manage to get all of the awards in. If you didn’t hear the winners for this year, just trust me when I say, it was a very Pathfinder year this year.

Some Actual Play – Killball and Pathfinder

Lastly, I did actually get to play a few things at GenCon this year, and two of those things were Killball and a sort Pathfinder delve.

Killball is a boardgame by Travesty Games that plays like soccer, but with death, dismemberment and a world of pain. It seemed like it could fun, and I’m hoping to be able to get my hands on a copy of it for a full review.

As well, I participated in a quick Pathfinder delve that saw our group trying to take out some werewolves that were plaguing a nearby village. Unfortunately, we were the ones that got taken out, as out tactics were far from useful. Still, it was a lot of fun.

And that’s all she wrote

Unless I miss my guess, that’s the end of my GenCon coverage for this year. I had a great time at the convention, and I am really looking forward to going next year. Keep check back to Troll in the Corner, as I will be getting out reviews of things I got at GenCon as the days, weeks, and months go on.

Technorati Tags: rpg, rpgs, board games, interviews, conventions, GenCon

Troll in the Corner.

Related posts:

1. GenCon 2010 Expanded Coverage – Candid Keith Baker
2. GenCon 2010 – Retrospective
3. GenCon 2010 – Day 3 Ennies and Such

© Tracy for Troll in the Corner, 2010. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Board and Card Games, conventions, GenCon, interviews, rpg, rpgs

Your Mind is Software        Program It

Eclipse Phase is a post-apocalyptic, science-fiction-based story of Transhumanity. What’s transhumanity? Basically, technology has advanced to the point that no one need permanently die. You back up your consciousness, your Ego, and resleeve yourself into a new body, your Morph, almost any time you need to. Indeed, you might not eve need a body, choosing to live as an Infomorph. You might even be an animal, uplifted to sentience and posessing capabilities and intelligence that rival or surpass most “humans.” Your mind can be augmented, your body can change if you have the credit to change it, and you are effectively immortal.

It all sounds great until you realize that world around your ancestors knew is no more. Earth is a smoking ruin of its former self, thanks to the rise of malicious AIs knows at TITANs. The TITANs nearly wiped transhumanity from the solar system, and then… they just left. In their wake, transhumaity has found wormhole-based Pandora Gates, has spread throughout nearly all of the known solar system, and has even established small footholds on distant planets. The hold that transhumanity has on its collective existence is a precarious one, and any number of threats, both internal and external could send things over the brink.

Your Body is a Shell        Change It

The first thing that struck me about the Eclipse Phase book was the overall design of the book. The art, the ways the pages are laid out, the style of it, it all oozes professionalism and it all really gives the reader a good feel for the aesthetics of the setting.

An Example Page from the Book

The quality that you see above is carried out throughout the book. It is easy to read and follow, and also gives you a good idea of what to expect from the setting. Excellent, all around. As well, the art is very good, and presents some very compelling images that, again, give you a really good feel for the world of Eclipse Phase.

The World as They Know It

The other thing that struck me as different from most RPGs is the writing. It’s not that RPG writing is, as a rule, bad; It’s that the writing in Eclipse Phase is so bloody good. When reviewing a book, especially one that is heavy on the crunchy mechanics, and especially if you’re likely to not have a chance to playtest it, I tend to read pretty quickly. I get a really good idea of what a given section has to offer, and then, most times, I move on.

No so with Eclipse Phase. With this book, I read far more than I expected to, just because it was so compelling. The detail given for the setting is impressive, but it’s far from overwhelming. You want to read what they’ve written, and it’s no surprise that the Gold ENnie that Posthuman Studios won for this game was for the writing. There were a few typos, and a sentece or two that I would re-work, but I have a BA in English, so I tend to be picky. Still and all, I’m anxious to read their newest supplements, if only so I can get more details about the compelling world that they have crafted.

Death is a Disease Cure It

The mechanics and the crunchy bits seem to be pretty manageable. The resolution mechanic is always a percentile roll versus some type of target number. Those target numbers can take some math to derive, but it’s not like you’re going to need a calculator at the table.

Where the crunch really comes in to play is in character creation. There are a ton of options to choose from, which is appropriate given how much customization a given person can undertake in the game world. However, for a starting player or GM, it’s going to take some time and a lot of accounting to get all of the character options taken care of. For example, take a look at the sidebar on this page the details the step-by-step process for character creation.

Character Creation Detailed

Now, many systems have detailed character creation processes, and I’m sure that once you get the system down, it’ll be second-nature; it is in most RPGs. Still, from the jump, it looks like a lot of work, and when I interviewed Rob Boyle at Origins, he admitted as much. That doesn’t make it a bad system, it’s just something to be aware of.

Extinction is Approaching        Fight It

Everything in this book practically begs you to play it. The future they describe is both enticing and horrifying. They ask extremely interesting questions about what it means to be human, what someone’s motivations will be if they can effectively live forever, all covered by the looming horror of the unknown. Are the TITANs really gone? What about Earth? Is it reclaimable? Should it be reclaimed?

The book seems to explicitly refrain from telling you what the plot of your campaign should be. What they give you instead is a metric ton of plot hooks, all interwoven throughout the book. Almost any given page of the book can spark an idea for an adventure or an entire campaign.

The goal, ultimately, is to survive.

And, something that bears mentioning, just because of its pure awesomeness. Eclipse Phase is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. To quote Posthuman Studio’s own words:

What this means is that you are free to copy, share, and remix the text and artwork within these books and PDFs (with the exceptions noted below) under the following conditions:

Final Rating

I would love to have a chance to play this game. Final Score: 5 out of 5 stars with no hesitation.

Eclipse Phase is published by Posthuman Studios in conjunction with Sandstorm Productions. You can buy this book for somewhere around $50 USD. Also, it is completely legal to torrent everything they do, so check it out!

Technorati Tags: rpg, rpgs, role playing games, Eclipse Phase,  Posthuman Studios, Sandstorm, reviews

Troll in the Corner.

Related posts:

1. Origins 2010 Expanded Coverage – Rob Boyle Interview
2. Origins 2010 Expanded Coverage – Catalyst Game Labs
3. Today is the last day to enter the signed Realms of Cthulhu book give away!

© Tracy for Troll in the Corner, 2010. | Permalink | 10 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Eclipse Phase, Posthuman Studios, reviews, Role Playing Games, rpg, rpgs, Sandstorm

Savage Worlds is a Fast! Furious! and Fun! rules system for any genre of roleplaying game. Create your own setting, convert an existing one, or pick up one of our amazing worlds like Deadlands, Slipstream, or Weird War II.

The rules give players plenty of depth to create their characters and keep bookkeeping to a minimum for the game master.

If you’re looking for a game that’s fast and easy to set up, run, and play, Savage Worlds is for you!

This is a full-color Explorer’s Edition-sized book (6.5″x9″). This is a copy of the third printing. 160 pages.

The Tombstone Epitaph has always been filled with lurid tales of daring desperadoes and deadly drifters, but lately the West’s most-read tabloid claims there’s something more sinister stalking the fronteir’s lonely plains: monsters! Fortunately, where there are monsters, there are heroes. Squinte-eyed gunfighters, card-chucking hexsligners, savage braves, and righteous padres have all answered the call. And if they fight hard enough, they might just discover the identity of the mysterious Reckoners some say are behind it all.

The Player’s Guide is the core rules book for player of Deadlands Reloaded. It includes new rules for shootouts at high noon, new Edges, Hindrances, and powers, and everything thing a cowpoke needs to begin his journey into the Weird West.

NOTE: This is for the print copy only, a PDF will not be won in this contest.

So how do you qualify to win these two books?  Easily done!  Go to Pinnacle Entertainment Group’s website and tell us what year PEG started out and what they first published.  (Hint – both answers are right next to each other and a cut/paste is fine).  Once you’ve got this info, email it to us at savageworlds AT trollitc D0T com.  Be sure to use a valid email address as that’s how I’ll be contacting the winner.

Since I’m also celebrating my survival of (not really all that) life threatening surgery, I’m also going to put in one of my own, unopened Savage Worlds official Oversized Action Deck!  That’s a lot of capital letters but also a neat extra prize.

Rules:

This contest will start at approximately 9am on Friday, August 27th and will end at 11:59pm EST on Friday, September 3rd.

• This contest is open to anyone I can ship to via the United States Postal Service.  You are responsible for verifying the books and cards can be shipped to your address.
• The winner will be chosen by either a random number generator at random.org or a rhesus monkey dressed as a zombie hurling D&D 4e miniatures at a chart of entrants – whichever is easier for me to arrange.
• All decisions are final, even decisions arrived on by a monkey.
• Folks who write for TC or work at PEG shouldn’t enter.  That’s just not fair.

That’s all there is to it!  Good luck and get to entering!

Technorati Tags: rpg, role playing games, savage worlds, contest, deadlands

Troll in the Corner.

Related posts:

1. Reminder! Enter the international Savage Worlds give away by tomorrow!
2. Savage Winner!
3. We have our winners! The International Pathfinder Contest!

© admin for Troll in the Corner, 2010. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: contest, Deadlands, Role Playing Games, rpg, Savage Worlds

Well, a few days ago, he decided that since a lot of people were taking pictures of their unboxings of D&D Essentials, it might be fun to do an “unboxing” of an old-school product. That immediately got my brain humming and I thought that, with all of the buzz surrounding the 4e re-launch of Dark Sun, it might be a lot of fun to take pictures of an unboxing of my 2nd Edition Dark Sun boxed set.

So what are we waiting for? Let’s get to the pictures!

The Box - Ain't It Beautiful?

I picked up this boxed set from Half-Price Books a few years ago, and I have to admit, I’ve done little with it since. I’ve always thought that Dark Sun was a cool setting, but I never had a chance to use the materials within. I got it for a good price (you can see it if you look at the upper-right corner of the box). As well, the box is really heavy; whomever traded it in to HPB traded it with extra stuff inside.

Maps! I love maps.

First we’ve got a couple of maps for the world and some of the areas. They’re delightfully old-school, and just looking at them made me want to start designing things to work around what was already there; maps do that to me.

The Rules

Next we’ve got the rules for playing in the setting. For those that don’t know, Dark Sun was (and is) really different from most settings. Magic killed the land, Psionics abounded, and it has a decidedly post-apocalyptic feel to it. From the Half-Giant race, to the Thri-Kreen (big mantis-like race), to carnivorous Halflings, it’s all different, and it’s all really cool.

The Imitable Half-Giant

I mean, come on. Who wouldn’t want to play one of those? (The answer is: the person who wants to play the Thri-Kreen Monk).

The Wander's Journal

The Wander’s Journal is the book for the setting itself. Descriptions of the City-States, the full flavor of the setting; it’s all in here.

Psionics

Psionics was the lifeblood of this setting (in my opinion). No matter what your opinion on Psionics in D&D (and trust me, if you’ve ever use Psionics, not matter the edition, you’ve got an opinion), Dark Sun wouldn’t be Dark Sun without them.

The City-State of Tyr

And this is where my boxed set deviates from what you would normally have gotten had you purchased this in 1991 when it first came out. This book details the City-State of Tyr (duh, really?) and gives you a more detailed description of one of the more central placed in the setting. Don’t know what this originally retailed for, but I’m happy to have it.

2e DM Screen

Yes, someone gave their DM Screen when they traded in their set. If I ever run 2e Dark Sun, this will come in handy.

Dragon Kings

Another extra, another bit of awesome. Dragons are bad enough in their own right. When they rule over you with an iron claw, well, their badness takes on a whole new dimension.

Some of the interior art

I’ve got this picture in here to show you what the art in the books is like. This, I find to be awesome. If your artwork is going to suck, but suck in full color, I’d prefer something sweet like this. Just give me awesome line drawings. If I want color, I’ll grab my crayons and go to town.

The Four Elements

Did I mention that the gods don’t influence the world? So, from where do Clerics get their power? Look at the text on the cover above and be enlightened. For me, this feels like a move the presages the option in 3rd Edition to have a world with no gods, and for a Cleric to follow an ideal of some kind. I’m sure that there were games before Dark Sun that did this, but it, again, is one of the things that makes this setting so different from everything else TSR released.

Complete Gladiator's Handbook

Another extra, another cool book. The Gladiator was a new class in Dark Sun, and as with most of the “core classes” a Complete book was released for it. I love the faux-leather look of these books.

Tyr

Another extra map, and a another gorgeous additon to my map collection. *sigh* I really love maps.

The provided Adventure

This is the adventure that came with the boxed set, complete with handouts for both the players and the DM. I know that boxed sets are more expensive to produce, but getting stuff like this makes it worth it for the buyer, I think.

Psionics Errata

Yes, even in 1991 TSR was releasing errata for their rules. Nobody’s perfect, right?

A tear-jerker

I saw this and I wanted to fill it out and mail it in. I know that all of the back-issues can be gotten digitally, but I would have loved to have played enough when I was younger to have warranted a subscription to these beauties. This one was nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake.

The Whole Kit + Kaboodle

When I bought this box, I bought it because it seemed a good price for a setting that I never got to play. After having gone through all of the stuff that I got with the box, I not only think that I got an amazing deal, but also that Dark Sun was a setting definitely deserving of a new life. I don’t use 4e, myself, but I’m glad that a setting this rich is off and running again.

If you liked what you saw, check out the new Dark Sun that WotC just put out. If you prefer d20 rules, then head over to Athas.org and check out their 3rd Edition rules. A little adaptation, and you could even be running Dark Sun in Pathfinder!

Anyway, I hope that you enjoyed this old-school unboxing. Thanks again to the Newbie DM for the idea.

Technorati Tags: D&D, rpg, rpgs, role playing games, Dark Sun, unboxing

Troll in the Corner.

Related posts:

1. Quick Review: City of the Dark Elves – mood music for your RPG
2. Old-School Gaming with OSRIC (Review – Races and Classes)
3. Enter the Singularity – Eclipse Phase Book Review

© Tracy for Troll in the Corner, 2010. | Permalink | 7 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: D&D, Dark Sun, Role Playing Games, rpg, rpgs, unboxing

For a decade now Freeport has stood as one of fantasy gaming’s most distinctive cities. Home to pirates, foul cults, terrifying monsters, vicious gangs, crime lords, and corrupt politicians, Freeport is a dynamic setting that offers a unique blend of high adventure and cosmic horror. Now the City of Adventure returns to its roots with the Freeport Companion: Pathfinder RPG Edition, a rules supplement for the Pirate’s Guide to Freeport. Its 160 pages are packed with all the support you need to run a Freeport campaign with the Pathfinder RPG. In addition to giving game stats for all the city’s major characters, the Freeport Companion provides new core classes like the corsair and monster hunter, new prestige classes like the musketeer and witch hunter, famous magic items, an insanity system, new spells and incantations, and an introductory adventure. Celebrate 10 years of the City of Adventure with the Freeport Companion: Pathfinder RPG Edition!

I always like to look at the layout of a book as I’m looking at the content.  I feel that RPG books should be something of a standing work of art in their own right.  The artwork in this book ranges from good to outstanding, with the front cover being an excellent example of what you will find (although all work inside is black and white).

The layout itself is clean, easy to read, well set up for finding what you need and bookmarked throughout, which I always find extremely handy.

What you’ll find inside the Freeport Companion is everything you’ll need to launch a Freeport campaign in the Pathfinder RPG system.  This includes descriptions of all of the Pathfinder core races and how they fit into the world of Freeport, and Azhar, a new race of outsiders who travel the waters around Freeport.  The Azhar as PCs are akin to the Efreet and carry a number of abilities appropriate to these races.

The Freeport Companion also boasts a number of new character classes.  The Assassin, Corsair, Monster Hunter, Noble and Survivor are all available as player characters.  The Cultist is a new NPC class.  Along with these classes come a number of new skills, feats spells and prestige classes.

With mentioning the Cultist NPCs, we get in to the aspect of Freeport that makes it very interesting.  This campaign comes with two things not normally found in the Pathfinder system – guns and a huge nod to Lovecraftian horrors, complete with it’s own madness system.

The introduction of firearms is handled very well. They’re treated as something new to the world and as such are expensive and unreliable, but can be very effective.  Think muzzle loaded pistols, rifles and small canon in your favorite swashbuckling movie and you’ve got a good idea as to how firearms are used here.

The horror aspect is also very well implemented and gives Freeport a nice edge on other, less gritty aspects of the Pathfinder universe.  Your characters can deal with some pretty scary things, and eventually go insane doing so. Of course, being a high magic world, there are cures for this.

What Green Ronin have done best is allow the GM and players to decide how much of each aspect introduced in Freeport they wish to include in their game.  You can emphasize buckling swashes, or the horror of unearthing ancient gods, or none of the above and simply use the setting as a standard Pathfinder campaign.  Brilliant!

Freeport Companion is full of interesting NPCs to throw directly into your game, another big bonus.  And when you’ve finished reading through the book, there’s a good 1st level adventure included in the Appendix for you to launch your campaign with and get a real feel for Freeport.

Clocking in at 172 usable pages (a page of licensing and a blank page are also included) you will not be disappointed with the Freeport Companion.   Also, while you may be interested in picking up the Pirates Guide to Freeport, it is not strictly necessary to run a decent Freeport game in Pathfinder.

5 out of 5 stars

Technorati Tags: rpg, role playing games, pfrpg, freeport, pathfinder, green ronin

Troll in the Corner.

Related posts:

1. Quick Review: The Genius Guide to Air Magic for the Pathfinder RPG
2. Quick Review: Obsidian Twilight – a new campaign setting for Pathfinder
3. Quick Review: Creepy Creatures – 100 new Pathfinder creatures

© admin for Troll in the Corner, 2010. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: freeport, green ronin, pathfinder, PFRPG, Role Playing Games, rpg

Background

Warrior, Rogue and Mage is written by Michael Wolf of the Stargazer’s World Blog for Stargazer Games.  About a month ago he released it as a 100% free RPG product complete and ready to play at download.  Since then, he has also released a companion document which expands on the magic items available in his fantasy world.

How it Works

This game has taken a unique approach to a classless system, taking one great idea for baseline character generation and melding it with some of the better parts of both Savage Worlds and Dungeons and Dragons.

At the root of this system is his mechanic for base abilities, using the titles Warrior, Rogue, and Mage to describe the attributes of all characters, as opposed to the standard system of using Strength, Dexterity, and Intelligence or some variant on those themes.  In effect, the concept is not new but is interesting when looked at through the non-typical label “Warrior”.  It’s not “How strong is this character?” but his strength, combat prowess, and ability to take a hit all rolled up together.  Add this to his very basic Skills mechanic of trained or untrained, and finish the system off with Talents that serve as the final piece of the puzzle to customize your character.  These can give you stand-out features such as the ability to use the character’s blood to fuel magical rituals or a re-roll that can be used once per combat.

What the system does well may actually turn away some otherwise interested parties.  The goal is to keep things very simple, but Warrior, Rogue and Mage might just be too simple.  There are few opportunities for deriving a truly unique character, at least not in the vanilla system as presented.  Michael suggests that readers consider this system to be a baseline and that house-rules and additional content should be added as needed, but I worry that he might have just too little to really build on from what is there.

Perhaps it just comes down to what kind of gamer you are, if you prefer the points on paper to just get you from point-A to point-B, with descriptions and imagination driven from within, this game has what it takes to get the job done.  The battles are quick, deadly, exciting, and easy to manage.  In my play-testing I couldn’t believe how many encounters were covered in such a short period of time.  But if you demand more detail from the system, and are less open to interpretation or discussion, this probably isn’t for you.  Concepts are very basic and it can often lead to some confusion if the game master isn’t quickly decisive.  For example, hoping to honor the system and play it rules-as-written, when a player cast a spell blinding a particular monster, I struggled searching through the PDF for any definition of what a blind condition could be in game terms.  Sadly, I had no luck and simply made a ruling of a rather hefty penalty to rolls where it made sense.  There’s just not much to the 41 pages of RPG, and a lot has to be determined during play.  That’s a fine way to game, but can cause some frustration for players if the GM is inconsistent with modifiers or situational effects.

One of the things that struck me as odd with this game is that the assumed setting seems to be very familiar.  An empire, divided amongst the ruler’s children, collapses to civil war, in a world of high magic and wide-spread magic technology such as golem servants.  This all rings far too close to Eberron.  Although historical examples in the real world of broken kingdoms of course do trump a fantasy setting, I think this is cutting it just a bit too close all around.  I’m sure Michael has some wonderful ideas that will set his fallen empire apart, but even the equipment supplement From the Imperial Forges, written by indie game designer Colin Chapman, lacks anything that truly makes even this partial setting stand on its own.  Most of the items in the expansion are simple conversions of standard D&D magic items to show how simple it is to bring them into this setting.  That said, with setting and system put aside, there are a couple of gems that make it a worthy download.  I am hopeful that given time and a few more releases, the Imperium of Vaneria can grow to segregate itself in my mind from Eberron or other steampunk/magipunk settings.

To make one final complaint about this system before giving my final verdict, I have to say the equipment/coin system needs considerable work.  Michael has stated online that he did not set out to make a balanced game, but the starting coin at a whopping 250 silver pieces when all items are priced so cheaply (the best armor you can buy is 120 silver pieces) is just too much money.  Because all character are encouraged to have some Mage ability and thus be able to cast magical spells, it is understandable that the balance should be high to allow spell purchase at the start of play, but I have to imagine a better way.  The problem posed by having a Warrior garbed in the indestructible Heavy Plate Armor, was that anything powerful enough to hit him will absolutely and without question slaughter a character that chose to have a High Mage score and not wear comparable armor due to spell interference.  This can certainly be accounted for in play by either matching battles with appropriate opponents or simply forcing the heavily protected character to regularly remove his gear to prevent fatigue.  I can easily see using a towering brute and a score of minions to keep the encounter exciting and relatively perilous for all without overwhelming one, but that pattern can grow repetitive as well, and if the character can buy the armor, I don’t believe in taking away the toys the player wants to have.  There are certainly workarounds, but as-is I believe the system should likely be reworked.  I wouldn’t mind seeing some pricing for magic accouterments as well.

Afterword

In the end, there’s nothing you should be able to read about this game that will prevent you from taking a moment to download it and read the 41 quick pages for yourself.  Michael has the ability to accomplish two things with this game, and I think he’s succeeded at one already.

• He has laid the ground work for something that isn’t quite yet ready, but I think can be fantastic as he continues to make additions and revisions to the product.
• He’s proven himself to be an incredible game designer/author.  On the first read-through of the system I knew fully how to play, and I can’t really think of any other RPG that has done that.  Even one of my favorites, Savage Worlds, is a system that could benefit from a rewrite in this direct and clear style.  I do think that Michael probably has read a fair amount of Wizards of the Coast’s products, because the sentence structure is similar, but it is a time tested pattern that has plenty of merit.

You can find the core book HERE as well as From the Imperial Forges HERE.

Of my group, everyone enjoyed the system during play testing.  One player in particular loves it.  He happens to be an old-school sort of gamer who longs for simpler days.  I think for that kind of player, or one who is new to gaming and doesn’t want to invest but would like an idea of how these things work, Warrior, Rogue and Mage might be the game of choice.  My buddy is considering starting a campaign, so as we play on I might have more to say in time.  I look forward to seeing what else Mr. Wolf has to offer the gaming community.  Having content of this worth online for free means that everyone wins.

Technorati Tags: Role Playing, WRM, RPG, Gaming, indie, rpg

Troll in the Corner.

Related posts:

1. Doctor Who – Adventures in Time and Space Review
2. Quick Review: Genius Guide to Loot 4 Less: Belt One On
3. Quick Review: The Genius Guide to the Time Thief, a new character class for Pathfinder

© Nundahl for Troll in the Corner, 2010. | Permalink | 7 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: games, gaming, Indie RPG, review, Rogue and Mage, role playing, rpg, Warrior, WRM

Looks

First thing’s first. The game is beautiful. I mean, take a look for yourself.

Click to Embiggen

The board is made of a high-quality stock and the images on the board are bright and vibrant. The pieces for the board are all wooden and are high-quality as you could expect wooden pieces to be.

The pieces

As well, all of the cards that come with the game, though pretty thin, are printed well.

About the Game Itself

The basic principal of the game is this: you start with a company in a given market, and your goal is to get to a total net worth of $1 Billion. You do this by buying other companies, putting your companies up for IPO, building factories on your companies and building offices in other markets. To do all of this, you collect asset cards for the companies you own, pay your expenses for said companies and then do your best to keep your head above water financially. But I’m getting ahead of myself; let’s take a look at the board, mid-game, and then talk about how a given turn progresses.

A game in progress

Your turn begins by drawing a number of asset cards based on the value of your owned companies. Asset cards consist of straight-up money (1s, 5s, 10s and a single 50 million dollar card), Lawyer Cards (which let you either sue a player to take an Asset card from their hand, or defend against said action), Broker Cards (which let you buy a company that has been taken public, or retrieve for free a company you took public), Disaster Cards (which let you place a disaster on a market, or remove a disaster from a market) and Perceived Value cards (which are worth 25 million initially, or 100 million at the end-game, under certain conditions). Additionally, any of the Asset cards, aside from the money, can be used to initiate a Private Auction for a random company.

Sound like a lot to deal with? It’s pretty manageable once you get playing. The box states that a game should take between 60-120 minutes, and we had fun in our playthroughs, with some sizable caveats. Normally, I’d go into detail about what we liked, followed by what we disliked, but almost everything we enjoyed about the game came with some kind of rider attached, something that made it not quite as good as it could have been.

The Companies

The absolute best part about the game is the stable of companies. You can tell that some care was taken in their naming and their descriptions. You’ve got Nuclear Thais, Satalin Airplanes, Conquista Ore, Raj to Riches, and many others. The descriptions of the companies are a lot of fun to read and the companies themselves bring a lot of levity to the game. The issue is that there is no explicit reason to read the descriptions. As well, the names of the companies don’t affect the gameplay in any way. You buy certain combinations of companies to get extra money at the end of the game, and that’s great, but the great company names are very easy to overlook as the game progresses.

The Board/Cards

I mentioned above how great the game looks, and it does. There’s a level of professionalism in the production of this game that definitely stands out. In fact, the board and the cards (though they’re pretty thin stock) survived the spilling of a beer with nary an issue.

Just after the spill

The problem with the board is that, as the game progresses, you end up dealing with a bunch of different companies, a bunch of different markets, and a bunch of colors that are very easy to confuse. Every market is assigned a color, as you can see on the board. Problem is, the company cards for a few of those markets look very similar, color-wise (I[m looking at you, Pacific Rim and South America). The other issue is that the pieces the player's use are the same set of colors. You can very easily end up confusing the color of a player's pieces, the color of the markets, and the color of the companies. There's a lot of gorgeous, vibrant color, but there might be a few shades too much.

The Gameplay

In the very beginning of this write-up, I said that this game reminded me of Monopoly. That's true, to a point, but Globalization allows you to go into debt to make your purchases. Maybe it's just indicative of our own spending habits, but the ability to go into debt leads to biggest set of issues that we came across with this game.

We would go, round after round, and it seemed no matter how hard we tried to avoid debt or keep it on the low side, we would end up in over our heads to the point that, with five players, we were running out of debt cards. The problem, we think is that even though you gain the ability to draw a crap-ton of Asset cards as the game progresses, it's very possible to end up with 22-card hand that contains very little in the way of liquid assets. So, say you start your turn and are able to draw 19 Asset cards. You do so and you get only a few cards that let you then pay off the expenses for the companies that let you draw the cards in the first place. So, you go into debt, and you can't win the game if you have any debt.

Something about that cycle made the game likely more difficult that it needed to be. We tried to keep a handle on our debt, but it soon spiraled out of control. This happened in both games, and with gamers that know a thing or two about board games. In each case, this made the games last far longer than the 2 hour suggested upper limit that the box boasts.

The Role-Playing Takeaway

If you want some inspiration for humorous companies, or some excellent tongue-in-cheek, then this game will help you. As well, if you want to take a break from your usual game, and you've got some gamers who enjoy Monopoly-style games, then I would think of giving this a shot.

The Final Word

Ultimately, we enjoyed our time with the game. If you're the type of gamer that like Monopoly, then you will find a lot to like in Globalization. Given that some of us are the type that get drive a bit mad by Monopoly, I find it to be high praise that my group of friends generally liked the game. However, there were issues that kept it from being something great. We all felt like there was some secret, some strategy, something not explicitly mentioned in the rules, something that would let us really learn the game like we're used to doing.

The big question, the one that determines if you should buy a game or not is this: would we play it again? The answer, for us, is yes. We want to take some time and kick this game's ass. That having been said, we all felt like we should have been able to do that already, if not for the issues I mentioned above. This is one of those situations where I will give my recommendation, but with reservation. If these issues get tweaked or resolved, then I would be able to give it a much higher score.

Final Verdict: 3.5 out of 5 stars.

Globalization will be available for purchase in October for something in the neighborhood of $40. Globalization is published Closet Nerd Games, in conjunction with Sandstorm Productions.

Technorati Tags: board games, Sandstorm, rpg, rpgs, role-playing games, reviews

Troll in the Corner.

Related posts:

1. Get Ready to Throw Some S*#t – Poo Reviewed
2. Talisman 4th edition gets reviewed, photographed and strip searched
3. GenCon 2010 – Photodump

© Tracy for Troll in the Corner, 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Board and Card Games, reviews, Role Playing Games, rpg, rpgs, Sandstorm

John linked to the product in question, here, and states that the game is a direct copy of his.  His comment reads, “Someone calling themselves “FNH” is publishing a Cat roleplaying game that’s EXACTLY like the Cat RPG I published years ago. Right down to the fact that you fight invisible monsters to protect mankind, the contest, the king of the cats, everything.”

For now, I’ll refuse to purchase the suspect document on principal.  I trust that John wouldn’t raise a false alarm on something like this, but I’m curious as to exactly how close the two compare.  To be fair, the concept of cats protecting mankind from creatures dates back centuries, and has at least made one film appearance in the 1985 film Cat’s Eye.  In the final short, a young Drew Barrymore is attacked nightly by a goblin-like creature.  Her new pet cat, The General, for which the short is named, protects her by doing fierce battle with the evil imp.  The final climactic battle against the mean troll can be seen here.

If anyone has checked out both games, I’d love to know if this appears to simply be the same concept, or strict word for word plagiarism.

Indie RPG, role playing, games, RPG, John Wick, Cat RPG

Technorati Tags: Indie RPG, role playing, games, RPG, John Wick, Cat RPG

Troll in the Corner.

Related posts:

1. John Wick, RPG creator and world designer answers our questions on video!
2. New authors and lots of new RPG coverage!
3. Play Review of Warrior, Rogue and Mage

© Nundahl for Troll in the Corner, 2010. | Permalink | 5 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Cat RPG, games, Indie RPG, john wick, role playing, rpg

His setting, the Aruneus Project a Pathfinder Zombie Post Apocalypse, recently hit 100% and thus is officially funded!  Soon, he’ll be putting together the finishing touches for his project (and I’ll be editing!).  Thank you to all of the supporters out there!  He really is stoked, and this is probably the best present for him to spend a few days enjoyng while building his strength.  How could you not be fully charged up knowing that all of your hours of effort on an RPG setting really will be published?

There is still some time to join in as a backer of the project, which currently sits at 111% of the goal with 13 hours left at the time of this post.  Any excess earnings today will go towards making Aruneus better, and now you know for SURE that it is going to happen, so jump in!  You can find info on how to donate and more on the Aruneus Project HERE.

rpg, role playing, Aruneus, Kickstarter, Pathfinder

Technorati Tags: rpg, role playing,  Aruneus, Kickstarter, Pathfinder

Troll in the Corner.

Related posts:

1. Aruneus and Kickstarter – Please help spread the word!
2. Aruneus becomes officially Pathfinder Role Playing Game compatible
3. A massive Aruneus update – lots of new art and a layout artist joins us!

© Nundahl for Troll in the Corner, 2010. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Aruneus, kickstarter, pathfinder, role playing, rpg

I had forgotten one of the most important thing about going to a big convention, something that got me through Origins without crashing and burning: I had forgotten to take a solid afternoon break. When I was at Origins, every afternoon found me at Barley’s, relaxing with some food and a pint. So, instead of going to a Dresden Files game (which turned out to be something good to skip), I decided to find a place in Indianapolis to do just the same. And while I was walking down the street, who did I run into but my friend from Origins, David.

For those that don’t remember, David is the guy who encouraged me to try out a bunch of games I otherwise would not have, Plus, he’s just a genuinely good guy. He’s also a guy that knows people. When he goes to conventions, he meets people, talks to them and makes a good impression. Suffice it to say, we went and got a beer together. During our relaxing, he mentioned that Keith Baker, creator of Eberron, winner of the WotC Setting Contest, would be hanging out in a lobby not too far from where we were. It wasn’t an official event, Keith was just going to hang out and talk to folks who like what he does.

I’ll admit, I didn’t know much about Keith. I had no familiarity with Eberron, aside from knowing that it existed. I will say this: talking to Keith was great. He was very candid, and we got to talk a lot about his attachment to the setting he made, his thoughts on the direction that 4th Edition took the setting, and what his plans are for the future.

The best part? I got the audio of the whole thing. Now, unlike my audio from Origins, I’ve given all of the audio I got at GenCon to my friend Ethan from The Gamer’s Haven, and he is hosting all of that audio as part of their RSS feed, since audio is what they do.

To find the audio of the time that I got to spend with Keith Baker, click these words, and you will be transported.

And, now that Ethan has my audio files up and ready to go, expect to see me link to them often as I continue to write in more detail about what I experienced at GenCon. The GH folks are good folks, and you can expect to see those of us here at TC working with the Gamer’s Haven more and more as time goes on.

Technorati Tags: rpg, rpgs, Keith Baker, Eberron, D&D, role playing games, interviews, GenCon, conventions

Troll in the Corner.

Related posts:

1. GenCon 2010 – Day 3 Ennies and Such
2. Origins 2010 Expanded Coverage – Rob Boyle Interview
3. Origins 2010 Expanded Coverage – Matthew Grau Interview

© Tracy for Troll in the Corner, 2010. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: conventions, D&D, Eberron, GenCon, interviews, Keith Baker, Role Playing Games, rpg, rpgs

The good news is, late last night Eric dropped off the reformatted Zombie Cards!

The problem with a zombie apocalypse is that there are so many darned zombies.  It can become hard for you, the GM to keep track of them all.  Enter the Contagion Infected Zombie Cards.  Not to worry, it’s the zombies that are infected, not the cards.

On each these cards you’ll find all of the important stats for each of the three types of zombies, plus an easy way of keeping track of their hit points (starting and current) whether or not they have additional armor and a helm (meaning a Head Shot isn’t possible), current AC and whether or not they’ve moved or not.

Just check off the number of each type of zombie you want and off you go!  How many zombies make a party?  Use the Encounter Chart to determine the exact number of deadly, infected and hungry undead come shambling towards your party.

Track up to 15 of each type of Contagion Infected Zombie.  Or just grab a bunch of cards and make your party very, very nervous.

Print this out double sided to save paper and to get yourself some double sided zombie cards.

Technorati Tags: zombies, pathfinder, aruneus, rpg, pfrpg, role playing games

Troll in the Corner.

Related posts:

1. The Zombies are here! World of Aruneus – Contagion Infected Human Zombies and Zombie Cards now available!
2. The status of the Aruneus Project – making a 100 page zombie apocalypse source book for the Pathfinder RPG system
3. Aruneus Project II – A 100 page source book for a Zombie infested, high fantasy apocalypse

© admin for Troll in the Corner, 2010. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Aruneus, pathfinder, PFRPG, Role Playing Games, rpg, zombies

That’s the first time having something in my bag named after bodily waste has ever made me smile.

But I digress.

Poo is a card game where you take on the role of a monkey at the zoo. Apparently, something was off in the food you and your fellow monkeys were given, and the only way to respond is to throw some s*#t. This continues until you are the last monkey standing. Once you get hit with 15 pieces of poo, you’re out.

The game plays quickly. Each player starts with a hand of 5 cards, and that number remains constant throughout the game. If you play a card for any reason, you draw a card to replace it right away. There are a number of different cards that can be played, and they function is pretty self-explanatory.

Poo Cards – Let you throw poo at an opponent

Special Poo – Lets you throw poo at multiple opponents, or use multiple Poo Cards at the same opponent.

Event Cards – Change something about the game, maybe letting a tiger out (which will become the target for all poo until it is hit 6 times), or having the lights covered in poo for a short time.

Clean Cards – What else? They let you clean off some poo so you can keep throwing.

Mishap Cards – Sometimes when poo is thrown, things don’t always go as planned. Sometime you slip, sometimes your efforts to get more poo to throw turn out to be just a fart.

Defense Cards – Simply put, these let you block incoming poo.

When my friends and I played, we had a really good time. We spent about an hour throwing poo at each other, and during that time, we got a few rounds of the game in. The cards are a lot of fun, the art on them is cartoony, funny, and it’s hard to stop yourself from giggling when you play a card that lets you use your buddy’s face to keep yourself from being hit with poo that has been flung at you. And, as a note, for all of the obvious jokes about bodily functions, the content of the game is pretty clean. Definitely on the PG side of things.

The only issue we ran in to was the tracking of the amount of poo each player has on themselves. Each person stays in until they get hit with 15 pieces of poo. The first person to 15 actually gets to come back in, thanks to the Golden Banana card. But with all of the cards that can clean you off, or redistribute the poo, your number keeps changing. It’s a simple matter to give each player a piece of paper and a pencil to track the poo, but the game doesn’t give you any way to keep track of things. Given how fun the game is, this is a really small thing to complain about.

Overall, if you want a fun, quick card game and enjoy a healthy dose of bathroom humor, then Poo is for you.

RPG Take-aways

We here at TC are primarily an RPG crowd, so for any of my reviews that don’t focus on RPGs, I’m going to include some ideas for how you can use this game in or around your current tabletop game.

Mechanically, I can’t think of many ways to incorporate this game into an RPG. However, thematically, there are some things to glean. We all (some more than others) have a childish side. Poo is firmly aimed at the juvenile in all of us, and that feeling is something you can grab for your game in a heartbeat. Whether your players are playing younger adventurers, or you just need a small change of pace for your hard-bitten PCs, you can take some of the tone of Poo and inject it into your game.

For example: your PCs have to infiltrate an orphanage and get information from the residents by posing at a young orphan (almost any game with magic or advanced science would allow for appropriate disguises to be crafted), or maybe they just need to befriend some children. What better way to do so than with a little bathroom humor?

Final Rating: 5 out of 5 stars.

Poo was developed by Matt Grau (creator of Cthulhutech), is distributed by Wildfire LLC, in partnership with Sandstorm Productions, and can be purchased for around $15.

Technorati Tags: reviews, card games, poo, Sandstorm, rpg, rpgs, role playing games

Troll in the Corner.

Related posts:

1. Not Quite Taking Care of Business – Globalization Reviewed
2. Origins 2010 Expanded Coverage – Matthew Grau Interview
3. Game Review – Zombie Fluxx

© Tracy for Troll in the Corner, 2010. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: card games, Poo, reviews, Role Playing Games, rpg, rpgs, Sandstorm

If you’d like to listen to the interview, you can head here and download the audio, or grab this and other great Gamer’s Haven podcasts (like their awesome Actual Play series) right from iTunes.  This was a lot of fun for me, being my first ever interview and my first time featured on a podcast.  I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

Technorati Tags: gamer’s haven, aruneus, role playing games, rpg, pathfinder

Troll in the Corner.

Related posts:

1. KantCon 2010 – Actual Play Sessions
2. The Zombies are here! World of Aruneus – Contagion Infected Human Zombies and Zombie Cards now available!
3. The Dwarven Empire now available for free at DriveThruRPG

© admin for Troll in the Corner, 2010. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Aruneus, gamer's haven, pathfinder, Role Playing Games, rpg

Technorati Tags: zombies, aruneus, pathfinder, rpg pfrpg

Troll in the Corner.

Related posts:

1. The Zombies are here! World of Aruneus – Contagion Infected Human Zombies and Zombie Cards now available!
2. Contagion Infected Human Zombies, Head Strikes and High Fantasy – so it begins
3. Aruneus zombies featured in the DriveThruRPG Newsletter! Woo!

© admin for Troll in the Corner, 2010. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Aruneus, pathfinder, rpg pfrpg, zombies

In my review I asked the community for some good interview questions they would like to see answered by Reality Blurs President, and author of Realms of Cthulhu, Sean Preston.  You guys delivered with some fantastic inquiries!  Honestly, for those who asked multiple questions, you made it tough to pick the best ones!  Sean has been so busy with GenCon that he needed to get through that before he could answer, but now he’s recovering his sanity he is able to push aside some time and get to them.  Let’s not delay any further; as always we’ll start with my questions then roll into yours.

Nundahl: I’ve made it pretty clear that I am a huge fan of Savage Worlds, but I’m hoping you could touch on what it is about the system that drew you in to write for it in the first place, with your first setting, Rune Punk.

Sean: When I first discovered Savage Worlds, it was not so much from wanting to become a game designer as it was a quest to find a system that would incorporate the style of play that best suited myself and my group of players, a style of play that I eventually labeled “story-forward” — a style that allowed the rules to fall (for the most part) into the background and enabled the group to be a part of an interactive story without the restrictions of some systems that steered the style of play in one direction or another.

After playing it a few times with the gang, I decided that I wanted to move into the industry as a professional — a thought that they immediately questioned — and began to develop a setting that would build upon the Savage Worlds strengths of blending various elements of technology and magic. When I decided that, I drafted a rough outline of what I wanted the world to contain, and what mechanics would be necessary to fulfill those goals. I’ve always loved steampunk and dark fantasy, so I pitched this to Shane in a short “elevator pitch” style of email, and after getting the green light from him, I began to develop in earnest. I learned a lot during the development process, and am still pleased with RunePunk which remains unique, despite the recent increase of steampunk in RPGs. I could wax on and on about RunePunk, but rest assured, you’ll be seeing more of the steamy city of ScatterPoint. Its future is far from over.

Nundahl: It is obvious to anyone that has read Realms of Cthulhu that you must have done a great deal of research to prepare.  Aside from books written by Lovecraft and other mythos authors, as well as of course Chaosium’s Call of Cthulhu game, do any resources for inspiration or information stand out in your mind?

Sean: You might say that I’ve been preparing myself to write Realms of Cthulhu my whole life. I read pulps that my brothers collected as a kid, and was immediately drawn to dark horror having grown up with reading tales of Poe and Howard and Derleth. One of my prized possessions as a teenager was an old copy of Supernatural Literature in Fiction by HPL that my brother found at a flea market. I devoured it immediately. After high school, my path was set and I got a degree in English Literature from The Citadel.

My background includes reading a lot of the world’s masters, such as Kafka, Fitzgerald, Hemmingway, and Whitman. That however is less salient to the question asked. Let’s just say, I have a solid foundation of literary inspiration tucked away in the old gray matter, and move on more precisely to the question at hand.

When we sorted out the details with Chaosium and Pinnacle, and Realms of Cthulhu was to become a reality, I deliberately set myself to reading through scads of Lovecraft and Derleth, and watching a lot of really bad — and a few good — horror movies. Researching is one of my favorite parts of the process. I take notes as I proceed on points or aspects I may want to hit and salient details that I want to convey to my target audience of fellow gamers. Conversations with gamers and designers certainly helped in this process, as developing in a vacuum is something I certainly do not recommend.

Some of the works I heartily recommend include Titus Crow by Brian Lumley (for those seeking insight into running a sustainable Cthulhu campaign) and The Cthulhu Mythos Encyclopedia by Daniel Harms which is an excellent resource on Mythos knowledge in general.

Nundahl: Do you prefer to be a player or a game master, and can you tell us what you enjoy most about each?

Sean: I prefer being a GM. It’s the role I’ve noticed most game developers fall naturally into and start from. The player perspective is somewhat different and is a refreshing change of pace. Currently, I’m in a homebrew fantasy campaign a buddy of mine is running. It’s fun to focus and develop one character’s story, rather than creating entire worlds, but ultimately, I prefer to create the game space for people to play in.

Nundahl: Before I open up to questions from the readers I have one last question.  What advice can you offer to the young game designer who is eager to make his break into the industry?

Sean: Short answer: don’t; it’s madness. Now, with that out of the way, I’d advise the potential designer to find both a genre and system they are passionate about, become active on relevant forums, refine their skills, know the system(s) inside and out, and be able to craft a sentence that grabs the audience by the throat, and be relentless in the execution. Honestly, unique ideas are all over the place, but at the end of the day, it is the execution of said ideas that separates the hobbyist from the designer. Whatever you end up working on, you’d better love it, because you’re going to be living with it for a long time. Luckily, in my position, I get to work on things that I love, but there is a lot more work involved in being a publisher than just being a writer. If you want to write, don’t plan on being a publisher, because you’ll be wearing many hats, and the hours are extremely long. You do, however, get an opportunity to write from time to time.

Reader Questions

Gerhb:  “What is your favorite Lovecraftian tale or otherworldly being?”

Sean: The second part of the question is easy, so I’ll answer that first. I have a warm, angular spot in my heart for the Hounds of Tindalos. Others I enjoy are the Deep Ones (that I view as the foot soldiers of the Mythos) and Mi-go (that function quite well as aerial support.) As far as favorite tales go, it is easy to say At the Mountains of Madness, but I would be lying. It’s certainly a solid tale, but I’d have to rate The Rats in the Walls, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, and Pickman’s Model among my favorites. This question is like ice cream however. I like lots of ice cream. Ultimately, the choice depends upon the time of year, my mood, and the position of the stars…

Eric: “When writing Realms of Cthulhu, did you try to stick to Lovecraft’s vision of a meaningless and chaotic universe, or do you prefer Derleth’s interpretation, where the gods are classified as good and evil?”

Sean: Good question. Early in the design process, I bounced this off the team, and read numerous forums hither and yon about what people were looking for in a Mythos game. A number of them appreciate the nebulousness of the traditional Lovecraftian approach, while a smaller demographic wanted more clarity. We blurred things a bit. I knew that Savage Worlds would be speaking to a new audience, one that may not have much familiarity with the Mythos, and found that it would make more sense to provide the Keeper with clear descriptions of the canon creatures — my interpretation of them — while giving them all the tools necessary to modify them. It’s essential for the Keeper to know what’s going on, even if no one else does. From the positive responses we’ve received, this approach has served us in good stead.

One overwhelming truth I held to in the design process is that good and evil are really irrelevant to beings as powerful as Cthulhu and its ilk. We provided motivations that enabled these higher powers to interact with humans for one reason or another. While I love all the myriad interpretations of the Mythos, at the end of the day, we have to make certain it resonates for the Keeper and his group.

1Point618: “Was there something particular that attracted you to [Savage Worlds] that had to do with how it would integrate with the setting, or was the choice more one of liking SW?”

Sean: For me, the decision was easy. I’ve been developing for Savage Worlds since 2004, and knew that some people didn’t think the system could do anything but pulp. Some of my friends thought I was mad for wanting to provide anything other than a pulp experience for Cthulhu, but I convinced them it could do so much more. The big trick was getting the Sanity system right, but I had solved that conundrum in my developmental work for True20, and knew it wouldn’t be too difficult to refine the system I had originally developed for Agents of Oblivion and make it work within the Savage Worlds context. Naturally, we tested it thoroughly, and it was an iterative process, but we finally arrived at the finished design — a design that has been well received. It delights me that people are using the four play styles to craft the game that they want to play. We also knew that RoC could serve as a capstone setting, and the modular nature of design could be easily integrated into any of the existing (and, hopefully, future) properties released by us and others.

LoMerc: “When you play Realms of Cthulhu, do you require someone in the party to be a psychotherapist? It seems that without one, the game is almost impossibly tough because of the madness penalties.”

Sean: Absolutely not. It’s not much different than mandating a healer in a party. It’s certainly a good idea, but not strictly required. Any character who takes Knowledge (Psychology) can certainly take a crack at helping someone losing their grip, and a number of archetypes have that to a degree, such as con men and gamblers. I know in most traditional Cthulhu games I’ve played, one person typically plays a psychotherapist. In groups without one, I’ve noticed people treading a bit more cautiously.

Thor: “With other Cthulhu based games out there (Call of Cthulhu, ect…) how does Realms of Cthulhu separate itself from the others and bring forth a truly terrifying Lovecraft setting?”

Sean: Realms of Cthulhu provides you with all the tools you need to craft a game that is as pulpy or as dark as you desire. This core book is a toolbox at its heart, and it lets you play a game that is two-fisted action with a splash of terror, or create a game that is as deep and hopeless as some of Lovecraft’s traditional works. Additional materials in development, namely Echo of Dead Leaves, will take you to the southern city of Charleston where all-new horrors await. This first book was intended to enable you to take our sandbox and play in your own playground. Soon enough, you’ll be playing in ours.

Magehammer: “What is your greatest strength as a game designer?”

Sean: The ability to intermingle setting design with mechanical design wherein the rules fluidly integrate into the base (core) system and just make sense. In other words, I try to make certain the mechanical elements make sense for the settings we’re developing. For example, in Realms of Cthulhu, there are a handful of edges and hindrances, and a spare few setting rules, but those setting rules fundamentally change how the game is played, but you read them and immediately understand them. It takes established SW players only a moment to review these changes and get it. At the other end of the spectrum, Iron Dynasty: Way of the Ronin has a huge number of edges and hindrances, but it has a different design goal — to let the player create the kind of robust kesshi (hero) he wants to play in an oriental setting. As these rules come into play incrementally and the player has ownership, there is no slowdown in play. It takes more time to design in this manner, but it is very rewarding at the end of the day. The best design is that which goes unseen. When people open up Realms of Cthulhu, or any of our other books, and say, “this makes sense” or “this is so obvious” then we can smile knowing that we’ve hit the sweet spot of design (and we can pause to reflect on the countless iterations it sometimes takes to distill things down to that level of “simplicity”).

Dan Petrocelli: “Did you experiment with other sanity systems before simply converting the wounds system over?”

Sean: Not really. I knew how to best approach it, as the Sanity system I developed for True20 was a precursor to my work in Realms of Cthulhu, and it had been well received by the community. While there certainly is an analog to the wounds system, it is not a literal conversion. The commonalities that do exist were conscious parts of the design process. The biggest obstacle to address in making it work within a Mythos context was how to handle the miniscule bits of sanity loss one gets in Call of Cthulhu and make it work within the design parameters. Finally, we hit upon Sanity being ablative, where it could gradually be lost over time. Additionally, we had to add in the half-steps of Sanity loss, or it would be entirely too gross of a loss. This occurred when you gained dark insight by seeing a creature or skimming a tome. Mental Anguish served us well, as emulating the physical damage paradigm made sense and allowed people the opportunity to spend bennies when making their Guts roll (evocative of making a Sanity check in CoC). The final dilemma in discarding Sanity Points was how to handle magic and rituals. Hitting upon using Knowledge (Mythos) as a driver of spell performance was simple and elegant, as it already accounted for a loss of Sanity and gave us the mechanic we wanted wherein those who knew the most secrets were fragile from their exposure to mind-rending horrors.

Afterword

Nundahl: Is there anything you’d like to plug or do you have any closing words for our readers?

Sean: As a general rule, I like to let our products speak for themselves, but we’ve a few products that we’ve just wrapped up that cannot speak yet, as they haven’t made their way into the wild at this point. I speak of Iron Dynasty: Way of the Ronin and Art of War. These two products — one for Savage Worlds and one for Showdown — have been equal parts labor and love, and will be wending their way out to you very soon. The RPG sold out of pre-release copies at Gen Con. If you dig SW, you will dig this stuff.

Shaintar and Agents of Oblivion are the next big settings in our sights. Mythos Tales: Volume I should be lumbering your way before too terribly long, while I work away on Echo of Dead Leaves in the shadowy recesses of my room.

I want to thank you all for supporting us through thick and thin as we grow. Once upon a time, Reality Blurs was just me. Thanks to you all, it is growing into the thriving, dynamic company I always knew it could be. On behalf of my team, I thank you!

Nundahl: Sean and Reality Blurs have been awesome to work with throughout this interview process.  Even with their hectic GenCon schedule they stayed on top of communication and I can’t wait for their next project to come out so I can jump on another review.  Sean is also pretty active on Facebook and Twitter so look him up, he’s a lot of fun to talk to or follow in a world ending cult, just a thought.

Ia! Ia! Cthulhu Fhtagn!

Technorati Tags: Savage Worlds, Reality Blurs, rpg, role playing, games, interviews, Lovecraft, Cthulhu

Troll in the Corner.

Related posts:

1. Please post your questions for Reality Blurs President, Sean Preston!
2. Win a Signed Copy of Realms of Cthulhu from Reality Blurs!
3. Realms of Cthulhu, Savage Lovecraft

© Nundahl for Troll in the Corner, 2010. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: cthulhu, games, interviews, lovecraft, reality blurs, roleplaying, rpg, Savage Worlds

Fluxx is a game over ever-changing rules. The basic, starting rule is simple: draw a card and play a card. As the game progresses, you end up changing that rule a number of times. You’ll see changes to how many cards you need to draw or play, how many cards you can have in your hand and, most importantly, the win condition is constantly changing.

To win, you need to satisfy the conditions of the current Win card. You usually have to have a certain combination of Keepers (cards you play in front of you), you might have to have a certain number or type of Creeper (the usually-bad cards, depicted by Zombies in this game). Whatever the case, the rules change nearly every turn, making this game something that you can win half the time by skill, and half the time by luck.

There are a number of different variations of Fluxx, and Zombie Fluxx gets a lot of its fun from the Zombiness of it all. Many of the Zombie Creepers will not die when you kill them (which can be done only when certain cards are in play), but they instead will shuffle on over to an opponent. As well, there are cards that you can play to bring all the zombies to you (useful if the win condition involved a Zombie Baseball Team), or to spread the zombie love to everyone at the table.

My only two niggling annoyances with the game are as follows: if you play it a lot, you tend to see a lot of the same cards over and over again, and it can get same-y pretty quickly (Although, it never gets old to have the “Braaaaiiins” card in play, which requires you to say just that when you play a Zombie, or pay a penalty). The repetitiveness can be alleviated by adding another Fluxx deck, which is useful. All editions of the game, save for the very first, so you can always add more variety.

My other possible worry is that if you’re not the kind of gamer who can deal with they way you win changing nearly every round, then Fluxx, of any stripe, is not for you. Trust me, it’ll just lead to frustration.

Personally, I enjoyed my time with the game, and my gaming group did too. A solid 4.5 our of 5 stars.

Technorati Tags: card games, Fluxx, zombies, reviews

Troll in the Corner.

Related posts:

1. Origins 2010 Expanded Coverage – Fluxx
2. Origins Game Fair Day 1 – Cthulhutech and Fluxx
3. The Zombies are here! World of Aruneus – Contagion Infected Human Zombies and Zombie Cards now available!

© Tracy for Troll in the Corner, 2010. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: card games, Fluxx, reviews, zombies

If you don;t feel like reading past this point, then here’s the short version: I like what I see a lot; go buy it. Now, the expanded look.

What Do We Have Here?

Rather than try to re-state what you can easily read on the Paizo website, I will take their words and use them for my own purposes. From Paizo.com:

“Explore new and uncharted depths of roleplaying with the Pathfinder RPG Advanced Player’s Guide! Empower your existing characters with expanded rules for all 11 Pathfinder Roleplaying Game core classes and seven core races, or build a new one from the ground up with one of six brand-new, 20-level base classes. Whether you’re designing your own monstrous helpers as an enigmatic summoner, brewing up trouble with a grimy urban alchemist, or simply teaching an old rogue a new trick, this book has everything you need to make your heroes more heroic.

The Pathfinder RPG Advanced Player’s Guide is a must-have companion volume to the Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook. This imaginative tabletop game builds upon more than 10 years of system development and an Open Playtest featuring more than 50,000 gamers to create a cutting-edge RPG experience that brings the all-time best-selling set of fantasy rules into the new millennium.

The 336-page Pathfinder RPG Advanced Player’s Guide includes:
• Six new base classes: the monster-hunting inquisitor, the explosive alchemist, the noble cavalier, the prophecy-haunted oracle, the monster-crafting summoner, and the hex-weaving witch
• More than a hundred innovative new feats and combat abilities for characters of all classes, including Steal, Point-Blank Master, and Bouncing Spell
• Variant class abilities, rules subsystems, and thematic archetypes for all 11 core classes, such as the antipaladin, the hungry ghost monk, and the urban ranger
• Hundreds of new spells and magic items, from phantasmal revenge to the Storm King’s Cloud Castle
• A wealth of fantastic equipment, such as fireblast rods and fortune-tellers’ cards
• New prestige classes like the Master Chymist and the Battle Herald
• AND MUCH, MUCH MORE”

So, that’s what they have to say about the book. Here’s what I have to say about it.

The Good

The OPTIONS! Good Lord, the options! From the new classes to the new items, to the new spells, all of it adds some excellent utility to the already-really-good Pathfinder rules. In my opinion, here are the highlights:

- Racial Trait Substitutions

With these, you can really make the gnome you play your gnome. You can focus any race in any direction you want to, even bucking the stereotypes that the race usually adheres to. If your particular campaign world has a different flavor than a typical fantasy setting, then you are almost sure to find something here to fit your world.

- Class Feature Substitutions

This might be my absolute favorite part of this book. If you add these options to the Racial Trait substitutions mentioned above, then you have a lot of options available to customize classes to fit your world. There are variants that we’ve seen in other places, like the Urban Druid, or the Drunken Master, but the variants go even further, adding different Sorcerer Bloodlines, deeper Wizard Specializations and Cleric Domains and, praise be to the wicked powers, an Anti-Paladin.

- New Weapons and Magic Items

Some of these are traditional weapons and types of items that we have seen before, but some are brand-spanking new. Because I’m an evil GM (apparently), and I love having cursed items, I was thrilled to see a new sheaf of just that in the magic item section.

- New Spells

Not only are there spell offering for the six new core classes, but there are also a lot of new options for the  11 classes found in the main book.

The Bad

I’ll be completely honest: as I was reading through this book, I found very little that I did not like. Now, I’ve not had a chance to playtest any of this material, so I could find that the things I’m loving now are things that I end up hating. Still, most of it looks really good.

My only complaint, thus far, is the set of options for Favored Classes. If you’re tired of just getting a Hit Point or a Skill Point when you take a level in your Favored Class, then you now have some different options, but what I dislike about them is that most of them only give you a benefit every other level, or every 3rd or 4th level. What this means is that, if you take a Favored Bonus that gives you a +1 bonus every 4 levels, then you have to add a +1/4 bonus every time you take it, rounded down. It’s math that is necessary if you’re multi-classing, but to state it in terms of such small fractions seems overly complicated for this d20-based system.

That might be a small nit to pick, but consider it picked.

The Ugly

The what? Seriously, have you seen this book? It’s freaking gorgeous. I guess if you’re a fan of overall simplicity, then you could call this entire book ugly, as all it does is add options, and options do make for complications.

The Final Word

If you’ve been looking for something to spice up your Pathfinder game, or have a custom world that needs a rules-based kick in the pants, then this book is for you. My own tastes have me strongly considering a Stampunk/Victorian/Robert-Downey-Jr-as-Sherlock-Holmes-type setting, using these rules to modify the base races and classes to fit. Also, there’s a Sword Cane in the Items section; enough said.

I’ve seen a lot of rules supplements for d20 games over the years. I went through basically every splatbook that WotC released for 3.0 and 3.5, and this is one of the best books in that vein that I have ever seen.

If I’m going to use the same 5-star system that Ben has used, then it’s undoubtedly a 5 out of 5 stars. If I’m breaking it down on a percentile scale, then it’s a solid 94% our of 100. Highly recommended.

Technorati Tags: rpg, rpgs, role player games, reviews, Pathfinder

Troll in the Corner.

Related posts:

1. Quick Review: The Genius Guide to Air Magic for the Pathfinder RPG
2. Quick Review: The Genius Guide to the Time Thief, a new character class for Pathfinder
3. Quick Review: In the Company of Gargoyles – a new player race and class for Pathfinder

© Tracy for Troll in the Corner, 2010. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: pathfinder, reviews, role player games, rpg, rpgs

First and foremost – while work continues on all of the new Aruneus documents, I’m also heavily involved in revising the existing core of Aruneus works.  I’ve brought in a fantastic layout artist, Eric Vernon, who’s already redone one of my non-Aruneus projects, Mirkmoot.  (Go here to view a full sized preview).   Eric is currently working on the Contagion Infected Human Zombies and the Zombie Cards.  Once the zombies are done, I’ll have the errata from the Orcs applied, as well as some re-written material and possibly some new additions and they will be next to receive a revised layout.

Recently I was very pleasantly surprised to get the latest art from Seth Kumpf. Seth has provided the Aruneus Project with the lions share of the artwork and he’s coming through with even more. I’d like to share the new World of Aruneus header which will be on the Aruneus documents. As well as our new header, Seth has provided a new, full color zombie.  He’s got more coming our way too, which is fantastic!

I’ll also be bringing in art from a number of new artists!  Ever hear of Dan Houser? He’s a great artist who’s work can be seen in Adamant Entertainment’s Villainomicon, Phipps Publishing’s upcoming ‘Book of Villains’ and ‘Wargames’, as well as serving as Line Artist for Adamant’s ICONS line of modules and supplements. And now it an be seen in Aruneus as well! Dan’s given us a sweet meat treat, in the form of this guy!

Another addition to our artist pool is Hayley Ehrenfeld, who is illustrating the Magical Herbs and Plants of Aruneus, which will feature a number of new herbs and plants that can be used either directly or in rituals and spells.  Here’s two of the six new paintings she’s providing to us.

Another bit of cool news.  I’ve been talking with Jess at Geeky Clean who doesn’t just make really freaking cool soap.  It turns out she’s one of those multi-talented people and is a very good artist as well.  She’s going to try her hand at a bit of Aruneus art and we’ll see where that goes!

Lastly, a bit of not so great news. I have a touch of the zombie fever, or something modern and medical that’s not to distant a cousin to it. It’s looking like I’ll be heading into the OR and out of actively working for a few days just about when this project is set to wrap. Nothing would please me more than coming out of this whole thing with an RPG book to be made!  That’s my impassioned plea to please bring this project above it’s current 83% mark!

If you’re interested in what you get for becoming a backer and have not clicked on the widget or seen the project, here’s what you’re in store for:

Pledge $10 or more

For $10 you will receive the finished Aruneus source book in full color, PDF format when it becomes available. You will also, should you choose, have your name (or a favorite character name) listed in the credits as a Patron. No copyrighted names for characters please.

2 BACKERs

Pledge $25 or more

For $25 you will receive the full color PDF, be listed as a Patron, and receive the complete back catalog of all Pathfinder PDF’s I’ve published as of September 10, 2010.

1 BACKER

Pledge $35 or more

For $35 you will receive all of the above, plus a 1 year subscription to any future PDFs published, starting on September 10, 2010 and lasting until September 10, 2011

4 BACKERs

Pledge $50 or more

For $50 you will receive all of the above, plus the hard cover of the book when it is complete. In addition, you will be listed as a Founding Patron, should you wish, and you will receive an exclusive Aruneus T-shirt.

3 BACKERs

Pledge $75 or more

For $75 you will receive all of the above, with all available digital products pre-loaded on a 1GB flash drive. You will also become part of the Aruneus canon. I will include your name, or the name of your character in the Aruneus source book as a named NPC.

1 BACKER

Pledge $100 or more

LIMITED REWARD     19 of 20 remaining

For $100 you will receive all of the above, be listed as a Friend of Aruneus, receive an original and a one of a kind magical item designed by me and provided in digital and print (on parchment) copy. You will enter the Aruneus canon as a named NPC who plays a pivotal role in the world, and will appear again in at least one future Aruneus document.

1 BACKER

Pledge $200 or more

LIMITED REWARD     12 of 15 remaining

For $200 or more, you will receive all of the above, plus have your name (or character name) permanently embedded on the Troll in the Corner website, be featured as a Patron Par Excellence in the finished book. Your NPC will be featured with original artwork based on a description or photo provided by you. I will write you a personal letter of thanks, sign your hard copy, feature you in an article on Troll in the Corner (should you chose) and design a one of a kind short adventure featuring your NPC. Two, count ‘em, two copies of the book, both signed and lastly, you will receive ANY future Aruneus PDFs free of charge.

3 BACKERs

Technorati Tags: aruneus, rpg, pathfinder, pfrpg, zombies, undead

Troll in the Corner.

Related posts:

1. Cool things afoot for Aruneus. Maps, a layout artist and more! Real zombies in your high fantasy
2. Aruneus and Kickstarter – Please help spread the word!
3. The status of the Aruneus Project – making a 100 page zombie apocalypse source book for the Pathfinder RPG system

© admin for Troll in the Corner, 2010. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Aruneus, pathfinder, PFRPG, rpg, undead, zombies

Let’s start with the very first bit you’ll see.  Alex Ross doing what he does best with his iconic cover art.  The art in this massive 280 page PDF is exceptional.  The Green Ronin folks had access to the DC Vaults and they obviously spent their time there well.  Speaking of iconic art – prepare to meet some iconic characters as well.  Even the most anti-comic book person will know such names as the Green Lantern, Superman, Batman, and the list goes on.  One after another icons of the super hero world are detailed for our reading pleasure.

At it’s core, the game is a d20 system but there have been some pretty interesting modifications.  A lot has been stripped out and it’s a smooth and well oiled system left behind.  Ability scores have been boiled down to their modifiers, two new stats have been added and feats have been redesigned and renamed as Advantages.

Then there are the powers – the heart and soul of any superhero RPG.  Powers refer to all extraordinary traits inherent in the superhero (other than stats).  There are a ton of them to choose from.  You build up your characters powers by taking “effects” which when combined give you such things as super speed or flight.  Each Effect has extras that are relevant to these effects and also flaws that pertain to it.   A bit of thought goes into character creation at this point but it works to make unique and interesting characters to play.

This book also contains a good deal of back ground information from which you can build your setting and campaign.  There are a ton of well known heroes who’s stats you can delve in to and suggestions for playing the game.  The PDF is done very well, is completely bookmarked and easy to navigate and honestly, a lot of fun to read.

As someone who’s not a major super hero fan, I can easily see myself playing or running a game in the DC Adventures system.   5 out of 5 stars.

Technorati Tags: rpg, role playing games, DC hero, DC, super heroes

Troll in the Corner.

Related posts:

1. Quick Review: Obsidian Twilight – a new campaign setting for Pathfinder
2. Quick Review: Green Ronin’s Freeport Companion for Pathfinder. Pirates, guns and madness!
3. Quick Review: The Secrets of Martial Mastery – an expansion for Pathfinder RPG

© admin for Troll in the Corner, 2010. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: DC, DC hero, Role Playing Games, rpg, Super Heroes

Fantasy Flight Games has announced Blood Bowl: Team Manager – The Card Game, designed by Eric M. Lang and Corey Konieczka, a standalone game of deck-building action that takes 2-4 players through the cutthroat excitement of an entire Blood Bowl season, all in about an hour.

You’re the coach, and you’ll customize your deck by grabbing the best new draft picks, or employ devious tactics to take your opponent’s Star Players out of the game…for good.

We’re calling every armchair quarterback who thinks they can lead a rowdy group of some of the roughest, toughest creatures in the Old World to victory…your time has come!

Click here to go to the official site where you can sign up for future mailings about the game.

Technorati Tags: blood bowl, games

Troll in the Corner.

Related posts:

1. Blood Bowl Star Players and one line about my experience with the game.
2. Four new Blood Bowl star players revealed
3. Blood Bowl website, beta registration and contests go live today!

© admin for Troll in the Corner, 2010. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: blood bowl, games