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Chaosium’s Borderlands: Can Playing RPGs Really Make You a Billionaire?

Chaosium’s Borderlands: Can Playing RPGs Really Make You a Billionaire?

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Chaosium Borderlands-small Chaosium Borderlands-back-small

Some of the most treasured possessions in my games library are the boxed adventure supplements published by Chaosium between 1981 – 1986. They include some of the finest adventure gaming products ever made, such as the classic Thieves’ World (1981), Michael Moorcock’s Stormbringer (1981), the brilliant Masks of Nyarlathotep (1984), the Arkham Horror board game (1984), Larry Niven’s Ringworld (1984), the revolutionary King Arthur Pendragon RPG (1985), and H.P. Lovecraft’s Dreamlands (1986).

I bought each as it was released, and over the last 30 years I’ve made a concerted effort to pick up spare (i.e non shrink-wrapped) copies whenever I can find them. I had to give that up about a decade ago, as prices have skyrocketed… copies of many of Chasoium’s early boxed sets in good condition sell for $200 and up these days. A few years back I was lucky enough to find a decent condition copy of Borderlands, an epic campaign for RuneQuest published in 1982, for 40 bucks — a bargain! — and snatched it up. It’s been sitting next to the big green chair where I write all my BG posts ever since, waiting until I have the time to say a few words about it.

Coincidentally, yesterday I stumbled upon a fascinating tidbit at Geek & Sundry that reports that LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman — who recently sold his company to Microsoft, becoming a billionaire in the process — was one of the writers of Borderlands, and in fact was a contributor to Chaosium at a very early age. Here’s the relevant part of the article, written by Ben Riggs and titled “Playing RPGs Can Totally Make You a Billionaire, You Guys.”

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The Son of the Return of Ravenloft Again

The Son of the Return of Ravenloft Again

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Plane Shift: InnistradOver at Dragon+, Wizards of the Coast has published James Wyatt’s Plane Shift: Innistrad, a free pdf that introduces Dungeons & Dragons to Magic: The Gathering’s world of Gothic horror:

The starting point for this document was The Art of Magic: The Gathering—Innistrad. Consider that book to be a useful resource in creating your Innistrad campaign, but not strictly necessary. An abundance of lore about Innistrad can be found on the Magic web-site. This document is designed to help you turn the book’s adventure hooks and story seeds into a resource for your campaign with a minimum of changes to the fifth edition D&D rules.

It’s hard to determine where the snake’s head begins and its tail ends here: Innistrad was MtG’s version of D&D’s Ravenloft, which itself has gone through umpteen editions, the most recent being WotC’s Curse of Strahd hardback; and Plane Shift: Innistrad contains suggestions for moving the action of Curse of Strahd from Barovia to Innistrad.

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Teaching History through Wargaming: Strategy & Tactics #280: Soldiers 1918

Teaching History through Wargaming: Strategy & Tactics #280: Soldiers 1918

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ST280-2I’ve been a history buff all my life, and this interest led me to a career as an archaeologist before becoming a writer specializing in history and historical fiction. Thus it’s not surprising that I want my ten-year-old son to have a firm grounding of history, even though he takes more after his astronomer mother and will almost certainly go into one of the STEM fields.

One of my main interests is World War One, so when I visited Belgium a couple of years ago for the centenary I brought him back some Belgian comics on the conflict. Now we’re watching the excellent Channel Four series The First World War. I’m also vocally hoping he’ll read my Trench Raiders series, so far with no luck! I’ve been pushing this particular era of history because we live in Madrid. Since Spain wisely stayed out of the war, I don’t think the Spanish educational system will teach him as much about WWI as I think he should know.

So why not add a little extra knowledge through wargaming? He’s been expressing an interest in it lately since his favorite comics shop has some wargaming tables, so I invested in issue #280 of Strategy & Tactics, a classic wargaming magazine that’s older than I am. This issue comes with the game Soldiers 1918: Decision in the Trenches, which one BoardGameGeek labeled as “medium light” in difficulty.

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Of Necromancers and Frog Gods: Part Two (The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes)

Of Necromancers and Frog Gods: Part Two (The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes)

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FROG GOD GAMES

Last November, I did a post on the history of Necromancer Games. I wrapped up with, “And there, our saga of Necromancer Games draws to a close. But our story has most certainly not come to an end.” That’s because Slumbering Tsar would rise from the ashes and a new RPG company would be built on its foundations. Welcome to Part Two: Of Necromancers & Frog Gods.

Waking the Tsar

FGG_DesolationShortly after Necromancer hung it up, co-founder Bill Webb established Frog God Games just to publish Greg Vaughan’s The Slumbering Tsar as a fourteen-part subscription saga, to be issued as one massive book at the end of the project.

Starting at 7th level, Tsar is divided into three books. If you want to start from 1st level, I suggest using The Wizard’s Amulet and/or The Crucible of Freya, then part of Tomb of Abysthor as a 1st through 6th level lead-in. The Lost City of Barakus is another excellent option, though not as thematically linked. Though it wouldn’t take much to give the villainous Devron a tie-in to Tsar.

Book one, The Desolation, is three installments (parts) dealing with a small settlement in the barren plains. It totals about 125 pages and gives the party a staging area for adventuring towards Tsar. Think of a Necromancer version of The Village of Hommlet – but way nastier. The story of The Army of Light at the very end of part one is worth it alone for me.

Part two includes the Ashen Waste: with such highlights as The Tomb of the Sleeping Knight (not a lot of sleeping going on here) and the burial mound of the barbarian warriors led by Tark. The Chaos Rift, featuring The Sepulcher of the Last Justicar, is even more deadly.

Part Three gets the party to the walls of Tsar, though it might well perish in The Boiling Land or The Dead Fields first. And a sticky situation waits outside the walls…

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Is There Such a Thing as an RTS Board Game? Rivet Wars: Eastern Front Thinks So

Is There Such a Thing as an RTS Board Game? Rivet Wars: Eastern Front Thinks So

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Rivet Wars-small

Last month I bought a copy of Rivet Wars, one of the most popular light war games on the market. It was designed by veteran computer game designer Ted Terranova (Rise of Nations), who worked hard to give the game the feel of a computer RTS (real time strategy) game…. and, going by the reviews, he largely succeeded. Here’s the description.

Rivet Wars is a miniatures boardgame that springs forth from the warped imagination of Ted Terranova – set on a world that never quite left World War I but with crazy technology like walking tanks, diesel powered armor, unicycled vehicles and armor plated cavalry! Don’t let the cute visuals fool you; it’s a world full of angst, war-torn camaraderie and dark humor. Rivet Wars is at its heart a strategy game, with both players deploying units each round to counter the threats set forth by their opponent and stay one tactical step ahead. Heavily influenced by Ted’s experience working on RTS games like Rise of Nations, players gather resources (bunkers and capture points) and use these to deploy streams of new units! There’s an ebb and flow on the tactical landscape and you can stock up surprises for your opponent to be unleashed even as he thinks he’s winning!

And here’s a peek at the back of the box.

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John DeNardo: In Defense of Media Tie-Ins (Part 1)

John DeNardo: In Defense of Media Tie-Ins (Part 1)

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Dan Abnett Eisenhorn-smallJohn DeNardo has closed up shop at his Hugo Award-winning blog SF Signal, but he continues to write about SF and fantasy in his regular column at Kirkus Reviews. One of his best recent articles — indeed, one of the most enjoyable blog posts I’ve read in a long time — was his passionate and articulate defense of Media Tie-ins, published on June 15.

As much as I bemoan the poor public of image of science fiction by mainstream readers, there’s an even worse injustice going on. Some people in those very same slighted genre circles are often quick to dismiss a certain type of book: media tie-ins. These are the books that are based on a story most often found in another media (like film, television, and games) but could be sourced from other literary properties as well. These are the Star Wars, Star Trek, and Dungeons and Dragons prose novels that the bookstores like to relegate to the end of the science fiction and fantasy bookshelf section. They are positioned like an appendix in a non-fiction book “in case you’re interested in more reading.” You know, if you’ve run out of other things to read…

So, yes, media tie-ins are worth your time. I’ll even back that up: one of the best set of books I’ve ever read — in any genre — was the Eisenhorn trilogy by Dan Abnett. The books are set in the richly-imagined Warhammer 40K universe, which is based on the popular role playing game. (Even WH40K itself is an offshoot of the fantasy RPG Warhammer, for which there are even more prose novels.)  Abnett is a one of the most skilled master storytellers you’ve never heard of.  This is the series that I point to when anyone is quick to dismiss tie-in fiction. The fact that it is set in the Warhammer 40K universe is incidental, though if you are familiar with the games, that would be an added bonus when you read them. I don’t play the game, but that didn’t stop me from losing sleep because I couldn’t stop turning page after action-packed page, or cheering when a bad guy finally got his comeuppance.

Read John’s complete article here.

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A Choose Your Own Adventure Board Game: Red Raven’s Above and Below

A Choose Your Own Adventure Board Game: Red Raven’s Above and Below

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Above and Below-smallWhen Kickstarter first became popular, it seemed every month I was getting deluged with updates for a dozen campaigns for new board games. Many failed, of course, and more than a few never delivered. But lots of those promising projects did deliver, and the result has been some fascinating products over the last few years.

Ryan Laukat’s Above and Below is a great example. It was a Kickstarter project with a $15,000 goal, and ended funding on March 25th, 2015 with $142,148 pledged. The last few copies shipped out to the 2,553 backers in October of last year, and the game has been available to the rest of us ever since.

Above and Below is a mashup of town-building and storytelling where you and up to three friends compete to build the best village above and below ground. The game’s premise should be warmly familiar to most fantasy readers.

Your last village was ransacked by barbarians. You barely had time to pick up the baby and your favorite fishing pole before they started the burning and pillaging. You wandered over a cruel desert, braved frozen peaks, and even paddled a log across a rough sea, kicking at the sharks whenever they got too close, the baby strapped tightly to your back.

Then you found it! The perfect place to make your new home. But as soon as you had the first hut built, you discovered a vast network of caverns underground, brimming with shiny treasures, rare resources, and untold adventure. How could you limit your new village to the surface? You immediately start organizing expeditions and building houses underground as well as on the surface.

With any luck, you’ll build a village even stronger than your last — strong enough, even, to turn away the barbarians the next time they come knocking.

Players explore a massive cavern, building a new village above and below ground in what more than one reviewer has called a Choose Your Own Adventure-style board game.

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Get an Inside Look at the Hottest Boardgames with Meeple Monthly

Get an Inside Look at the Hottest Boardgames with Meeple Monthly

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Meeple Monthly May 2016-smallIf you hang out in game stores (and who doesn’t?) you’ve doubtless seen copies of GTM, Game Trade Magazine, a monthly industry mag for the Adventure Hobby industry that also doubles as a handy catalog for Alliance Game Distributors. GTM is always a pleasant read, with fun articles and full color pics of upcoming RPGs and card games. While I was browsing the magazine rack at my local game store last month, I came across something called Meeple Monthly, and at first couldn’t believe my eyes. It looked like GTM, except for board games… a full color magazine devoted to the very latest releases, with full color throughout, chatty articles, a nice assortment of ads, and enthusiasm for the industry dripping off every page. And that’s exactly what it was.

Ah, what a marvelous world we live in. An inexpensive color magazine devoted to new board games? Yes please! I snatched up that issue and brought it home, and I’ve bought every one I could find since. The May issue, featuring a cover feature on Fireside Games and USAopoly’s Star Trek Panic, covers games shipping in July. It also contains:

  • An inside look at Happy Salmon from North Star Games
  • A sneak peak at 400 new monsters for Dungeons and Dragons Ancient Bestiaries in Tome of Beasts, from Kobold Press
  • Wade Rockett’s preview of the excellent artwork in Tome of Beasts
  • Robin Laws’ inside look at Gumshoe going One-2-One in Cthulhu Confidential, from Pelgrane Press
  • The Battle for Hill 218 comes to the Ogre Universe in Ogre: Objective 218, the newest from Steve Jackson Games

All that plus over a dozen pages cataloging every upcoming board game, from all the major publishers, all in full color. What’s not to love?

Meeple Monthly is edited by Jenna Piller and published by ACD Distribution. It is 48 pages, full color, priced at just $3.95. See more details — including news on the upcoming June issue — at their Facebook page.

The Magic of Hobbyland

The Magic of Hobbyland

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HobbylandMy first addiction was model trains, HO gauge engines and layouts that I was forever redesigning. Because I grew up in Columbus, Ohio, the need for new boxcars and Plasticville edifices led me without fail to a mid-sized indie shop in the Graceland Shopping Center called Hobbyland.

What I didn’t know until the summer between sixth and seventh grades was that Hobbyland had also begun to carry, mixed in with the how-to guides on paper airplanes and WW II tank models, peculiar tomes that hinted at inexplicable mysteries: Greyhawk, Blackmoor, and Eldritch Wizardry.

To enter Hobbyland in those early years of my next addiction was to experience, in its most literal form, the marvelous. Forget about the trains, planes, and automobiles. The real heartbeat of the place turned out to be the display-rack bookshelves, gray-painted, not numerous.

You remember. You recall how those early D&D books were so peculiar, so thrown-together, more like pamphlets and broadsides than the sort of book that sat on your parents’ shelves at home. Greyhawk, etc., would have sat well with quackery advertising (phrenology, anyone?) or the meditations of theosophists or Doctor Dee.

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Build Your Very Own Fantasy Empire With Asmodee’s Hyperborea

Build Your Very Own Fantasy Empire With Asmodee’s Hyperborea

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Hyperborea board game-small

I have a certain fondness for epic fantasy games. You know the ones I’m talking about. The kind where you build vast armies, dress them up in matching clothes, and scooch them around, crushing civilizations.

I also have a fondness for saving money. And where these two interests intersect, I find a lot of personal joy. So recently I’ve been hunting up game bargains online, especially on Amazon, which has deep discounts on a number of fantasy boardgames. Why they do, I dunno. I don’t question it. I just give them my money, and get fabulous shinkwrapped treasures in return.

My most recent acquisition is Asmodee’s game of epic fantasy conquest, Hyperborea, which multiple online sellers are offering for about 60% off. It’s a 2–6 player board game that challenges players to build their mythical nation into the greatest empire in history. You do that by capturing land, defeating imposing monsters, exploiting strange technologies and magics, and building mighty armies. That you scooch around the map, crushing civilizations.

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