Posts

Showing posts from June, 2014

Casting the Dungeons & Dragons TV Show

Image
Last week +Patrick Stuart wrote about randomly recasting Star Trek over at False Machine . I thought that sounded like a lark but as I'm not much of a Star Trek fan (please put down your pitchforks), I decided to do the same with the cast of the as-yet-imaginary Dungeons & Dragons television series. The idea of a D&D series is kind of a joke and yet at the same time I can't image another period in the history of media when - if done properly - this could actually turn into a real thing. With shows like The Walking Dead , Game of Thrones , Once Upon A Time , and more superhero-inspired programs than you could shake the corpse of Thomas Wayne at, why couldn't a D&D show work? Hell, it looks like a Magic: The Gathering movie is in the works, and I cannot possible imagine that not sucking. So why not throw some money at a few episodes of Dungeons & Dragons? Someone thought Dads was a good idea. Warning: My vision of a D&D show is going to be prett

SPLATTER-ELF Playtest #2

Image
Last week, appropriately enough on Friday the 13th, we played the second-ever session of SPLATTER-ELF: The RPG . I had a new group of three completely different players from the first session, which works out well to get new perspectives on the game. It was also great for me because I got to reuse the same adventure! In the first session we had three people who game just for fun and didn't really care about the rules. They had a good laugh though, and really enjoyed hacking the shit out of everything they ran into and accidentally choking out enemies with their own intestines. The second session had two guys who were more familiar with and comfortable with game mechanics so they went out of their way to try different things, which from a testing perspective was very helpful. The third guy hadn't gamed in years so he was just having fun being there. It was interesting to see how the two groups reacted to the same situations. In some instances they did the exact same thi

Splatter-Elf RPG Update

Image
I've been rather surprised by the feedback for  Splatter-Elf: The RPG so far. I've had people approach me asking for more info about it (someone even wanted the rules so they could play it!) and I've seen it discussed on forums completely without my prompting. It's pretty nice to have a circle of supporters (as small as it is) and it encourages me to keep tinkering with these rules to create a full-blown game. Of course, no discussion of Splatter-Elf is complete without mentioning Philip Overby , the Godfather of Splatter-Elf himself who coined the term and gave me the idea in the first place. But that's all Philip gets: one quick mention. The rest of today's post is about some ideas I've been kicking around for the game. The Core Mechanic For those of you who have been paying attention, the basic mechanic for Splatter-elf uses a d12. If you want to attack something you roll d12 and add applicable modifiers. The target rolls d12 and adds his modifiers

How Did You Start?

Image
If you are reading this blog, you're probably a gamer. You may have been playing for years, or this may be a new hobby (obsession) for you. What usually stands out is what first drew us into this world. I flirted with RPGs for a while as a kid. My first attempt was in grade 4; a friend said: "Let's play d&d." And I said "play what?" We had no clue what we were doing, no rule books, and no story.  What we did have was imagination and a drive to play.  My friend drew a map and made up a reason for me to get through it. I would try creative ways to get past the obstacles he described. To see how well I did, we'd roll d6's and compare opposing rolls (All we knew was d&d needed dice...). My next exposure was when my sister, who is 8 years older than me, would let me tag along with her when she went to play with her high school friends. She would have been about 17 or 18, and I was 9 or 10.  Most of the time I would just watch them play, but