Today my wife pointed me to an article on CNN.com announcing a new edition of Dungeons and Dragons. That’s right. A new edition, announced only four years after the last edition. I was just starting to get used to Fourth Edition — and starting to play it enough to actually want to buy some of [...]
Archives for Roleplaying Games
Learning the Combat System in Savage Worlds
Lately I’ve been playing two tabletop RPGs, which partially accounts for the lack of blog posts in about three months. One of my games is, of course, Ars Magica, and the other is the (relatively) new Space 1889: Rad Sands setting for Savage Worlds. I find that over the past three or four years my [...]
Searching within PDF Documents using Windows Search
Windows Search is a a built-in feature of the operating system which, if I recall correctly, has been around since Windows XP. It can find which files (“documents” in Windows-speak) contain certain words or phrases. It is very handy if, for example, you know you have the shopping list somewhere on your computer but can’t [...]
Area Effect Templates for D&D Miniatures
Playing D&D 4E pretty much requires the use of tabletop miniatures (or some equivalent, like cardstock counters). During one of the early sessions of our current campaign, I realized that the wizards in particular were using a lot of area effects. Probably that’s because wizards have access to first-level powers that can be used at [...]
(Slightly) Revised Opinion of D&D Fourth Edition
You may recall that my first impression of Fourth Edition D&D was less than favorable. Back in June, I finally played 4th Edition D&D for the first time. In spite of some problems with the published scenario we used, my players and I enjoyed 4E rather more than I expected to. Good Things About 4E [...]
TPK on the Shadowfell
Only two years after it came out, I finally played 4th Edition D&D. Some of you may remember that my my first impression of 4E was not entirely favorable. Now that I’ve actually played it, I have rather more to say. But first, here’s how the adventure and the game session went.
Face Painting for Confusing Face Recognition Software
A researcher named Adam Harvey published some of his findings about how face paint can confuse face-recognition software. He has pictures on his Web site. This makes me think of science-fiction games, especially cyberpunk games. I kind of like the idea of characters painting their faces with camouflage patterns before they run the shadows. And, [...]
Simulationist vs. Gamist approach to RPGs
I haven’t posted anything specifically about games for a while, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been thinking about them or playing them. Mostly I just haven’t had a lot of time to write because I’ve been drinking computer security from a firehose due to new project responsibilities at work. Since I started in semi-professional [...]
Tools for Tabletop Gaming
I have a D&D gaming group that meets infrequently (every three or four months) because the players live far apart. We experimented with playing online but I wasn’t really happy with the software we were using. So a few days ago, I searched for other electronic tools for tabletop gaming. What I Found I found [...]
Wizards of the Coasts Abruptly Suspends Sales of PDFs
This morning, I received in my inbox a message from Paizo Publishing that Wizards of the Coast insists they immediately stop selling PDFs of D&D gaming supplements. Later in the day I discovered that RPGnow and other online game stores had received the same demand. Presumably this came without a lot of advance notice. Wizards [...]