There are many bands out there who like to play loud, ass-kicking, speaker-bursting music with thrashing guitars and pounding drums. Surprisingly, or perhaps not, most of them are total geeks. They may look like hard-ass biker leather fetishists, but in reality they're just D&D and Lord of the Rings nerds who hope that if they sing about dwarves and elves loud enough, people will think they're tough and not pick on them anymore. He was almost cool. Then he opened his mouth. Although I'm sure we could list thousands of bands that could fall into the genre, I'm just going to list The Top 4 Bands That Write Songs Based on Their D&D Campaigns. Actually, they're just my 4 favourites, but whatever. 4. Iron Maiden Seriously, how many kids back in the 80s ran home after school to play D&D and listen to Iron Maiden? Well, probably not THAT many, but if you're reading a blog about role-playing games and you're over 30 years old, you know what I'm
Last year I shared a list of 10 Random Zombie Survival Intro Scenarios based on my ad-hoc zombie survival/horror game (which is kinda like a DCC Funnel but set in the modern world, and with zombies). It was actually one of the most popular posts I ever wrote on this site (people still really seem to like zombies , go figure) so I thought it was time for a sequel. Last time the set-ups were pretty standard fare. Scenarios you've seen in many zombie movies, games and books. A rag-tag bunch of strangers, thrown together in an every day situation (a crashed bus, locked in a mall, hiding in a cabin in the woods) and they must survive the overwhelming onslaught of the undead. Death is rampant and expected (each player begins with four 0-level characters), and only the best (or more likely luckiest) will survive. This time a few of the scenarios are quite a bit weirder and may take some more prep work. If you don't want them, don't pick them, or if you roll them randomly,
It's that time again! No, it's not time for me to clean my gutters (it certainly needs to be done, but I don't see myself ever getting around to doing it). It's time for me to fantasy cast that every-elusive TV show that should have happened years ago, Dungeons & Dragons! A new Dungeons & Dragons movie is actually currently in the works, set to start filming next year and supposedly starring Ansel Egort (I'm not sure if that's the actor's name or his D&D character), but until this damn thing actually happens I'm going to keep making up my own show in my head. Hell, I'll probably keep doing it even after the movie comes out, because I assume it will be better than whatever Hollywood spews out anyway. To get you up to speed: In Season One , a Badass Crew of adventurers team up under the leadership of Sir Brador (Jonathan Banks) to bring down a rebellion led by Ezbar (John Leguizamo). The crew is hired by the weird and creepy Ba
About 6 months ago I read through all of JS Morin's Black Ocean series. These are short novellas, episodic in nature and feel a lot like the TV show Firefly where a crew of a ship gets up to silly hi-jinx while always looking for the next job, the next score, or the next get rich quick scheme. The whole time I was reading the series, I felt like there was potential for a RPG to be based on this setting. It has all the essentials - an easy to sum up background, potential for fun quirky characters, and a familiar enough feel to get the uninitiated in to it. Keep this last point in mind while I tell this next part... Yep, this gets complicated.... A group of 6 or 7 of us have been playing a D6 Star Wars adventure fairly regularly for the past 4 months or so - typically meeting on Skype twice a month. While not everyone can make it every time, we've managed to keep a fun adventure going with different characters popping in and out as available. to be fair we're pre
Why? Short answer: Because I can. Long answer: Because I'm still learning FATE and the best way to learn a new system is to tear it apart and make something new with it. Of course, the cool thing about FATE is that's the whole point - you're expected to tinker with it and make it your own. I chose Thomas specifically for a number of reasons. First, a cursory glance shows no other Thomas homebrews out there. ( This is a pretty awesome list of other FATE hacks, though ) (Fun aside - someone tried to make a Thomas video game RPG on Kickstarter a few weeks ago, which was quickly shut down for copyright reasons. +John Williams - I apologize in advance Gullane Entertainment shuts down Rule of the Dice for this) Secondly, I've been watching a lot of Thomas with my son lately so it's at the front of my mind. The trains of Sodor live in an incredibly detailed and expansive world (a world with an insane amount of railroad on an island only 60 miles across). Plus,
As I posted about here , I had been toying with GMing a new game. Well it has come to fruition. My group has started a PBEM (play by e-mail) game, set in the world of Robin Hobb's Farseer books . We've only been going for about 2 weeks now, which isn't very long in PBEM time, but I'm already having doubts. The problem is, I can't tell if my players are having any fun. The start of an adventure is always tedious. Players aren't sure who the other PC's are, or where they are supposed to fit in. As GM, I never know how much infomation to give. So far my adventure is pretty open. The King has given the party a task, but how they go about it, and what they discover along the way is up to them. I do have a general story in mind, but if they take a left turn, I'm happy to adjust and improvise. And as a PBEM, that's much easier for me as I have time to think about any changes. Where I think I might be going wrong is that I haven't explai