Please Welcome The New Guys

At the beginning of the new year I posted that I was looking for additional writers to join me here at Rule of the Dice. This is partially because I want to expand the blog and have some different contributors post cool articles. But it's mainly because I'm a lazy and don't want to have to write or work very hard (and I also need time to practice my cage fighting). Luckily some real great chaps volunteered their services as henchmen. Now I'll just sit back while they do all the work and I reap the benefits of being an RPG blog tycoon... it's a thing, it's a real thing.

Please give a very warm welcome to...

The New Guys

C.D. Gallant-King

C.D. Gallant-King has been playing and GMing role-playing games for 20 years, but he would still describe his skills as “fair to moderate.”  He has been a game designer even longer, his first game created in honour of the 1988 Calgary Olympic Games, which featured players racing across the country with torches.  There was also an option to slow your opponents down with oil slicks.  He still doesn’t quite understand how the Olympics work.

He has written eight novels you’ve never read, and has fuzzy d20s hanging from his rear-view mirror. Though it may come as some disappointment (or surprise) to all the ladies reading this, he is happily married.

Joseph Nelson
Joe is still an acolyte among the gaming elite and his sense of wide-eyed wonder has not been crushed (yet) by the harsh realities of the gaming world. He deeply enjoys the old-school games and the new wave games, considering them both part of his dysfunctional little RPG family.

He lives in the Northeast United States, where even the Frost Giants fear to tread.


Andy (aka. Carpe Guitarrem)

Andy, a regular poster at The Player's Side of the Screen, is a relative newcomer to RPGs. He picked them up a few years ago, with a few sessions of D&D, and now he's diving into the world of RPGs with a voracious abandon. He likes studying different game mechanics, and how they shape players' experiences. On top of that, he's multiclassed into a billion different things, like music and art and computers and...a lot more.
So please give these guys a very warm welcome, and most importantly check out their posts.

Comments

Post a Comment

Thanks for commenting at Rule of the Dice.

Greatest Hits

Top 4 Bands That Write Songs Based on Their D&D Campaign

Image
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&#
Read more

10 More Zombie Survival Intro Scenarios

Image
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,
Read more

The Walking Dead Role-Playing Game

Image
The Season 5 premiere is not until late October, but news broke this week that The Walking Dead has just starting filming the upcoming season. In a few short months our favourite band of post-apocalyptic undead-fighting misfits will once again grace our TV screens, but until then we have to entertain ourselves somehow. And since going around pretending people are zombies and stabbing them in the head is frowned upon (for some reason), we'll have to find some other way to get our zombie-killing fix. Why isn't there a role-playing version of The Walking Dead yet?  There are numerous board games, none of which are very good . The video game by Telltale is excellent and very story- and RP-based, but it's one-player and pretty linear (Don't kid yourself - the multiple-path narrative is just an illusion. It always ends the same). A property like The Walking Dead is simply begging for an open-world, sandbox-style RPG. You have a group of survivors working together
Read more

Love, Sex & Dice

Image
Because of the special romantic holiday we celebrate this week, I decided to come up with a special romantic theme article. Did you know that February 15th was National Flag of Canada Day? Sexy. Of course, the holiday I'm referring to is Valentine's Day, and the special theme is lovin' and bangin' in role-playing games. For those of you who are uncomfortable with this topic, you can stop reading now, and go here instead. Does love and sex have a place in table-top role-playing games? It obviously has a place in video RPGs, if Final Fantasy VIII and Dragon Age are any indication (WARNING: That second link is probably NSFW). But many players are uncomfortable acting this at the table and I can't really blame them. Sitting around the dining room table with four other sweaty guys drinking Dr. Pepper and eating Cheetos can make it hard to look into your friend's eyes and profess your undying love for him - I mean, his character, Mistress Clitoria Hexblade. I
Read more