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Get a Fresh Take on Dungeons & Dragons in Volo’s Guide to Monsters

Get a Fresh Take on Dungeons & Dragons in Volo’s Guide to Monsters

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There have been 18 different iterations of the Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual since Gary Gygax authored the first one in 1977. Over at Polygon.com, Charlie Hall has authored a fascinating article about the upcoming 5th Edition resource book Volo’s Guide to Monsters, which takes a fresh angle to the D&D monster book — by adding a story. Hall talked to lead designer Mike Mearls to get the scoop.

This time around, [Mearls] and his team have decided to do something a little bit different. Their next take on the Monster Manual will be called Volo’s Guide to Monsters and, for the first time, it will have a lot more character to it.

“It’s risky,” Mearls said. “In the end, it’s still a giant book full of monsters. No one would argue with that. But I just think that if that’s all the Monster Manual is, then we’re selling ourselves short. So the idea was, the kind of genesis of it, was that want to do something that’s more story oriented.”

Volo’s Guide will have a narrator — two actually. One will be Volothamp Geddarm, an over-the-top, braggadocious explorer. The other will be Elminster, the wise Sage of Shadowdale. And the two will often be at odds with one another. Their differing accounts will be scattered throughout the book, and take the shape of comments scribbled in the margin.

Put simply, the goal is to create a book that high-level players and dungeon masters will enjoy reading. The goal, in the end, is to inspire new stories at the table, not simply reinforce the lore of the Forgotten Realms and ram storylines down player’s throats.

“I have this pet phrase I use,” Mearls said. “I like to say that we’re living in a post Game of Thrones world. Fantasy has changed.”

Read the complete article, “Dungeons & Dragons is changing how it makes books,” here. It includes several full-color sample pages from the upcoming book.

Volo’s Guide to Monsters will be published by Wizards of the Coast on November 15, 2016. It is 224 pages, priced at $49.95 in hardcover. There is no digital edition.

Tabletop Terror: The Dread House Kickstarter

Tabletop Terror: The Dread House Kickstarter

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The Dread HouseI have previously discussed the great horror-themed supplements that Paizo is putting out for the Pathfinder RPG, but they aren’t alone in this. With the advent of digital publishing and crowdfunding sources like Kickstarter, there’s an array of new, independent publishers who are finding under-served niches in the gaming industry and creating projects to serve them.

One of these current Kickstarters, The Dread House by Hammerdog Games, is currently fully funded and building toward its initial stretch goals. It has some really unique features:

  • A 128-page hardcover (or digital) adventure/setting book of a haunted house, containing adventures for the Dungeons & Dragons (5e), Pathfinder, and Call of Cthulhu roleplaying games, including multiple possible time periods within these games.
  • Rules for powerful new creatures, including the Dread Ghost.
  • Optional Fear, Sanity, and Soul Point rules.
  • Fictional “ghost stories” written by Kevin Andrew Murphy and Richard Lee Byers.
  • A set of haunted house tiles, matching the maps within the adventure book.
  • Sets of room decoration miniatures, including furniture pieces such as beds, bookcases, bathtubs, and, yes, even a couple of privies!
  • Additions of more adventures, miniatures, and tiles as stretch goals are reached.

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Tabletop Terror: Betrayal at the House on the Hill

Tabletop Terror: Betrayal at the House on the Hill

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Betrayal at House on the HillI was the only gamer geek in my family growing up. We played Monopoly, Clue, Risk, and so on, the staple games of the twentieth-century American experience, brought to you by Milton-Bradley, but my mother wasn’t a fan. She and my grandmother both tended more toward word games like Scrabble and card games, particularly Rummy variants. I became an avid Solitaire player early on. And we had an Atari, of course, then a Nintendo. So I was a gamer from an early age, but not a board gamer.

From high school and through college, I pretty much abandoned board games in favor of roleplaying games. Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (2nd edition) at first, but eventually I became engrossed in the World of Darkness system from White Wolf Games (now published by Onyx Path Publishing).

Board games had completely fallen off my radar by the time I got out of college and began actively adulting. Board games, after all, were for kids, right? In the age of roleplaying games and video games, including an array of online roleplaying games, surely there was no way a board game could be nearly as engaging, nearly worth the time commitment to play it.

It was Betrayal at House on the Hill (Amazon) that dispelled that illusion, showing me what board gaming had become while I hadn’t been paying attention.

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Modular: Eye of the Beholder – The Art of Dungeons & Dragons

Modular: Eye of the Beholder – The Art of Dungeons & Dragons

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Art is a HUGE part of Dungeons and Dragons (D&D). In fact, you can’t separate the amazing illustrations, (from black and white sketches to glorious color panoramas) from the actual playing of D&D. Of course, this applies to other role playing games. Wayne Reynolds’ illustrations were a big draw for me in trying Pathfinder. But there’s a reason I mentioned D&D.

Eye of the Beholder: The Art of Dungeons & Dragons, a documentary by X-Ray Films and Cavegirl Productions, is due out next year. And what a BRILLIANT idea! In addition to featuring artists and their work, it will also include interviews with game designers, authors, insiders and fans.

 

If this preview doesn’t grab you, I’m not sure you’re a D&D fan. If you read Part One of my history of Necromancer and Frog God Games (you did, didn’t you?), you saw those awesome Necromancer covers. I’ve loved D&D art since I started playing and I even had a puzzle with Larry Elmore’s drawing from the cover of the Red Box.

There’s a very short article about it in Format Magazine that has a bunch of wonderful D&D art from several of the greats. Makes me think of those great Dragon Magazine covers.

You can read Bob Byrne’s ‘The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes’ column here at Black Gate every Monday morning.

He founded www.SolarPons.com, the only website dedicated to the ‘Sherlock Holmes of Praed Street’ and blogs about Holmes and other mystery matters at Almost Holmes.

He is an ongoing contributor to The MX Book of New Sherlock Stories series of anthologies, with stories in Volumes III, IV and the upcoming V. 

Two Months Until Xmas! Alternatives to Halo Mega Bloks You Need to Test Right Now

Two Months Until Xmas! Alternatives to Halo Mega Bloks You Need to Test Right Now

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Lovely toys. Bit of a curse.

In my geeky neck of the woods, Halo Megablocs are a bit of a curse.

Oh, they are lovely toys! The mini-action figures are robust, the equipment and vehicles lovingly follows the original designs. (The company is also really good about sending out replacement parts, by the way.) Armed with a couple of boxes of the stuff, kids — mostly boys, in my experience, but your mileage may vary — can capture the atmosphere of the original video game series.

And there-in lies the problem.

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Normally 16+ for violence… played by much younger kids (including mine).

Halo video games normally rate around  16+ for violence. However, the shear fact of the existence of a Lego-like tie-in range is a dead giveaway that they’re played by much younger kids. My son ‘Kurtzhau’ has been playing it since he was 8 — we had some great father-son split screen sessions, hunting aliens together, but my original intent was just to expand his MilSF slot to include more than just Clone Wars.

Now he’s 12, it’s lovely watching him teach his 8-year-old little sister ‘Morgenstern’ how to play. And most of her male classmates who have an Xbox have the game, so this lets her play with the boys  —

— and why not? Halo has a wonderful imaginative genuine SF setting, fantastic music, immersive artwork, and though there’s violence, it’s not particularly graphic and has unpleasant consequences. In the single player missions, there’s even sophisticated tragedy of war and dodgy politics threads. In the arena modes, you get a chance to use teamwork to beat the opposition.

The snag is that the grit and grim of the franchise is attractive because it feels adult, which means the kids quickly grow out of the Mega Bloks toys…

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Modular: Swords & Wizardry Complete Kickstarter Explodes

Modular: Swords & Wizardry Complete Kickstarter Explodes

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swords-and-wizardry-new-rules-smallLast month I wrote a post on why I chose to use the Swords and Wizardry (S&W) Complete Rules, instead of Pathfinder, for my latest campaign. S&W is a redesign of Original Dungeons and Dragons (pre-1st Edition), written by Matt Finch and put out by Frog God Games. Due to a stretch goal achieved in the Sword of Air Kickstarter, the S&W rules are permanently free in PDF format from Frog God. You can also buy a hardcopy with a cool Earl Otus cover.

On October 14, Frog God launched their thirteenth Kickstarter to fund a third printing of S&W Complete. But this is a little different than just a simple reprinting effort. Designer and RPGer Stacy Dellorfano had suggested to Finch that Frog God print a new version of the S&W rules, but with art and design done entirely by women. Within minutes, Finch and Bill Webb were on board and the project moved ahead.

There are minor revisions to some of the game play examples, but otherwise it’s a reprint of the second edition. However, there are two brand new adventures included: “The Five Maidens” and “Zaya’s Promise.”

Finch explained that the intent was for Dellorfano to come up with a design that was no less appealing to males, but more appealing to females. Webb has cited Lisa Stevens of Paizo as a huge influence on the role of women in the gaming community (as well as “saving the game industry when WotC cratered on 4th Edition”) and has said that his daughter will taking over Frog God from him some day. So, he was very much into the concept.

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Tabletop Terror: Pathfinder Edition

Tabletop Terror: Pathfinder Edition

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Pathfinder Occult AdventuresHumans hate to be frightened … except when we love it. There’s a small, sinister part of our brains that love terror and menace, not in real life so much as in our entertainment. This shows up regularly in our fiction and films, of course, as shelves are stocked with horror and thriller novels, as well as slasher flicks and suspenseful films and television series (some of which, I hear, even feature zombies).

Over this month leading up to Halloween, I’ll be focusing on how this horror element manifests itself in some great tabletop games which, among other things, can add immense fun to the Halloween holiday seas. (Am I the only one who celebrates all month long?)

To begin, I’d like to focus on some recent releases from one of my favorite RPG systems: Pathfinder RPG. While there has never been a shortage of monsters in the Pathfinder world of Golarion, over the last year they have had two major releases that really up the ante on the terror quotient, by introducing dynamic new game mechanics related to exploring these horrors. These manuals, together with their current Lovecraftian-themed horror Adventure Path series Strange Aeons [Paizo, Amazon], means that if you want to dive directly into a world full of terror and occult mysteries, you’ve got everything at your disposal to do so.

Occult Adventures

Released in August of 2015, Occult Adventures [Paizo, Amazon] formally introduces a psychic-based magical system into the Pathfinder RPG. These powers draw from the internal mental powers of the individual (or other individuals), rather than from the sources that fuel arcane or divine magic, and they provide a wealth of new approaches to magic to mix things up for people who have been playing wizards and clerics for several decades. In addition to six new psionics-based occult classes, and a variety of archetypes to offer psionic variations on existing classes, it introduces psychic magic, various new occult rules and mechanics, and occult-related equipment and magical items.

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Nathan Long Spills the Beans on The Bard’s Tale IV

Nathan Long Spills the Beans on The Bard’s Tale IV

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Nathan Long, lead writer on inXile’s upcoming Bard’s Tale IV, posted a major update on the game’s Kickstarter page last night, alongside the above gameplay clip.

This clip is meant to illustrate the tone that we are looking to capture for our environments and creatures in The Bard’s Tale IV – a captivating and expansive landscape for you to explore, and a menagerie of creatures inspired by myth and Celtic folklore. We’ve also been feverishly working on the combat system and have made some amazing progress, but we don’t want to show our hand on it quite yet…

Right from the beginning, we made the decision that BTIV would be a game of free exploration. You’d be able to go in any direction you chose, ignore the main story to do side quests if that’s what tickled your fancy, or just noodle around and find cool stuff. We therefore made Skara Brae and the land it resides in, Caith, big places with lots of space and lots of story, scenery and secrets to get lost in. Skara Brae is a city now, with multiple levels of sewers, catacombs, and crypts below it, while the lands that surround it are vast and varied, with broad fields, haunted villages, deep forests, treacherous fens, and looming mountains, all riddled with caves, ruins, dungeons, and hidden places, all ripe for exploration.

inXile’s Torment: Tides of Numenera team is scheduled for release early next year; The Bard’s Tale IV will arrive sometime after that. They’ve recently announced their next game Wasteland 3, follow-on to the acclaimed Wasteland 2, will be launching a crowdfunding campaign on Fig on October 5th, 2016. Nathan Long is the author of Jane Carver of Waar, and has written extensively in the Warhammer universe, most notably his Black Hearts, Ulrika the Vampire, and Gotrek & Felix novels. Read Bill Ward’s two-part Black Gate interview with him here and here, and enjoy Nathan’s complete update here.

The Print Version of the 7th Edition of Call of Cthulhu is Now Available

The Print Version of the 7th Edition of Call of Cthulhu is Now Available

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The Kickstarter for the long-awaited Seventh Edition of Call of Cthulhu, one of the greatest role playing games of all time, was one of the most successful crowdfunding campaigns in gaming history, pulling in over $560,000 on a $40,000 goal. The PDF versions were released back in 2014, but the promised print edition took a lot longer to arrive. But it is now here — officially announced on the website on August 26, and already offered for sale at various online outlets.

The 7th Edition, based on the original rules by Sandy Peterson and Lynn Willis, was significantly revised by Paul Fricker and Mike Mason. It weighs in at 448 pages in hardcover, with an eye-catching cover by Sam Lamont and some color interiors. A significant amount of supporting material is already available, including the Call of Cthulhu Keepers Screen, a hardcover Investigator Handbook, the S.Petersen’s Field Guide to Lovecraftian Horrors, and the first 7th Edition adventure collection, Nameless Horrors.

If you’re new to Call of Cthulhu, or just curious, great! CoC is one of the most innovative and creative role playing games ever made, and — almost uniquely in the industry — its supplements and adventures make great reading, even if you never have the chance to sit down at a table with fellow players. It was the first semi-contemporary RPG, and also the first to feature ordinary folks as protagonists. But don’t just take my word for it… here’s a dead-on quote from Ed Grabianowski’s io9 article, “Call Of Cthulhu Was The First Role-Playing Game To Drive People Insane.”

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Goth Chick News: Midnight Syndicate Releases Zombies!!! Board Game Soundtrack

Goth Chick News: Midnight Syndicate Releases Zombies!!! Board Game Soundtrack

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zombies-official-board-game-soundtrack-midnight-syndicate-smallOh be still my little black heart…

Award-winning composers, dark music pioneers and my goth-boy-band crush, Midnight Syndicate has released the Zombies!!! Official Board Game Soundtrack. The new release features Midnight Syndicate’s signature, sultry blend of sound effects and instrumental music set in the modern day, post-zombie apocalypse world of the Zombies!!! board game.

Darkly brooding front man Edward Douglas explains;

We wanted to design a soundtrack that would not only heighten the Zombies!!! game play experience, but also appeal to all fans of zombies and our friends in the haunted attraction industry. I think we were able to achieve that.

Given the character and core elements of the game, I think we immediately felt this album should focus on having a more modern, aggressive sound. In order to achieve that, we brought in a lot of electronic and percussive instruments and kept the fundamental game scenarios firmly in mind, approaching it more as an actual soundtrack than as a collection of songs built around a particular theme or setting. While there are a few tracks that are more situation or location-specific, most are intended to evoke the general feel and atmosphere of the game world, allowing you to play along without interruption.

“The soundtrack is a perfect complement to the game,” added Twilight Creations co-founder, Kerry Breitenstein. “I couldn’t be more excited for the Zombies!!! fans to hear it, let alone the rest of the world!”

Picking up this album is a no-brainer… get it? Zombies? “No brainer”?

Never mind…

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