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Greatest Hits

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

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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
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10 More Zombie Survival Intro Scenarios

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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,
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10 Zombie Survival Intro Scenarios

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Can you smell Halloween on the air? Smells like non-toxic face paint and burnt pumpkins. In case you weren't aware, I've been playing around with a zombie/horror game based on the Dungeon Crawl Classics Funnel system - basically you send in a gang of 0-level schlubs, hoping that at least one survies to become a level 1 character in an on-going post-apocalyptic survival game. It uses basic d20 rules that everyone is pretty familiar with. To keep the game as chaotic as possible, in our first playthrough I just rolled the scenario out randomly as we went along - determining encounters, locales, etc purely by a toss of the dice - and I plan to continue doing the same thing. Partly this is to keep my prep work down, partly it's to keep the tension and suspense high as the party never knows what to expect. Sometimes the group meets 1d4 stray dogs, sometimes they meet 1d4+1x100 roaming zombies. I've been using the many tables in Palladium's DEAD REIGN ™®© books (a
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Another Collection of +1 Magical Swords

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So last week I stumbled across " On Magical +1 Swords " at the Hack & Slash blog, which was the latest in a series of a excellent posts on old-school magical blades (check out the r est: Different Magic Swords: A Proposal  by JD Jarvis, Evocative +1 Sword Replacements  by Gus L, and Weird Swords and Not Swords  by Arnold K).  The idea behind the series is to create interesting, colourful weapons with compelling stories, abilities and dr awbacks.  They don't necessarily need to be insanely powerful - not every weapon will be Excalibur, Stormbringer or Shieldbreaker - but there should never be such a thing as "just a +1 sword" either. I love me some magical swords. Magical swords are probably the reason I started playing D&D in the first place (greatest magic sword ever? The lightsaber), so I had to throw my two cents in here.  Or two feet.  Of steel, that is. Some of these I've actually used in campaigns and some are brand new that I've ju
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Revisiting Star Wars, the Greatest RPG of All Time

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It's been five years since I started writing for Rule of the Dice, and a lot has changed in my life since then. Having two kids is certainly the biggest event(s), and publishing my first novel was also cool. But of particular interest to this blog is how my outlook on and taste in role-playing games have changed. One of my first posts here was fawning over my favourite game of all time, the old D6 Star Wars RPG by West End Games. Recently I've started running a Star Wars campaign again for the first time in many years, thanks in part to the buzz and excitement provided by the first good Star Wars movie in many, many years. Yet playing this game again regularly for the first time since I was a kid has struck me with an odd thought: I'm not sure if I still like it as much anymore. In honour of my new game, the new movie and my five-year anniversary with Rule of the Dice, I thought I would revisit my previous argument and touch on the five reasons why I originally stat
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Sodor Stories: Thomas the Tank Engine RPG (Powered by FATE Accelerated)

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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,
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The 6 Most Ridiculous Player Characters Ever (In My Campaign Right Now)

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D&D Player Characters are by definition ridiculous.  They're elves and wizards and halflings and barbarians.  They are the absurd, the preposterous, the illogical and oftentimes the inappropriate.  You can make the coolest, darkest, bravest, most-brooding-est swashbuckling hero with a tortured past you want, but there comes a time when that dude is going to have a fight a slime and he's just going to look like an idiot. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. Our characters should be fun, over-the-top and a bit ridiculous.  That's what makes them memorable, and makes them a joy to play and to watch our friends play . I was going to write a list of the craziest characters I've ever had the pleasure to play with, but then I realized that 99% of the characters I've ever run across are crazy and silly (and the other 1% are boring), so trying to rate them all was a waste of time.  Instead, I'll just tell you about the characters in the game I'
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