Articles tagged with: RPG

I am around 10 projects backed on kickstarter already, and not all of them are RPG related, but at the time of writing this post, you still have 52 hours to get an incredible deal.

Reaper miniatures is doing a "Bones" kickstarter: For 100$ (+25$ for international shipping), you get the "vampire level" which right now amasses around 150 200 miniatures, including heroes, monsters, futuristinc minis, "fire" and translucid special minis, townsfolk, elfs, dwarves, goblins...

Just count, is less than 1$ per mini, and believe me, the quality is really high and most look really amazing.

And then, if you want, for increases of 10-15$, you can get optional packs with huge minis like dragons (all sorts of them), giant skeletons, ettins, drows, giants, demons, even Cthulhu mythos monsters!

I couldn't resist having the Ettin and Drow extra packs, and I'm seriously thinking about Dragons or daemons, but even the basic pack is incredibly cheap for the stuff you get.

At the kickstarter page you can check the full lists, I won't link them because the image is already huge and constantly changing (the total pledges are coming near 1.9 million dollars!).

If you like fantasy miniatures, either for painting or for any fantasy game (Descent, DnD or any similar one) you should really take a look. But do it fast before the kickstarter ends!

Posted on 2012-08-23

Kickstarter.com is a nice fresh idea: You present a project, define what it will be, show some concept art, sketches or a video of somebody explaining it, and you define pledges and associated rewards. A simple pledge can be a copy of the new RPG book, or a copy plus t-shirt, or even being included in the book as a NPC!
Then you get funds directly from buyers, and they get their pledge when you finish. Is amazingly simply yet brilliant, and what I love most is t hat you no longer need middle-companies or distributors, so you get mor profit and less restrictions.

While there are some really cool projects about physical RPGs, custom dice or new expansions/modules for existing games, two computer RPGs have all my attention (and now a bit of my money ;)

Shadowrun Returns & Wasteland 2.

If you are a pen&paper RPG player and old enough, chances are high you at least have seen, read about or played Shadowrun. But if not, there is a nice 87 free PDF "primer" at the authors' website.

And about the original Wasteland... Let's just say that the original computer game was the inspiration for the Fallout series.

I'm pretty sure more cool games will appear, but this two ones are looking really promising.

Bonus: Legend of Grimrock has just been released a few days ago. The game is a tribute to the legendary Dungeon Master, and from a few hours of play I can say it's recommend for all old school CRPG lovers.

Posted on 2012-04-14

• Treasure chests can only hold one or two items at most. People can hold a near infinite amount of items.
• If someone in town tells you that they heard a rumor, it's true.
• Dungeon monsters and traps will only attack or effect the hero and the people traveling with him/her. If you're just an unimportant person, you can go ahead and run through the dungeon, temple, forest, desert, cave, or other place teeming with evil unharmed.
• You should always walk behind waterfalls, because there's always something hidden back there.
• Animals, in general, will attack you relentlessly as you travel from one place to another.
• Most people stay in the same exact spot all day long.
• Everybody in every part of the world speaks the same language.
• Sleep is the only absolute necessity of life. You can travel all over the world and fight as much as you want, and there is never a need to eat, drink, or go to the bathroom.
• Most houses in the world only have one room.
• After dealing your arch enemy an apparently fatal blow, don't think you can rest easy. He'll probably transform and become stronger.
• You may see beds everywhere, you may be able to get into them, but you won't be able to sleep unless you pay money.
• The world is flat.
• You can carry 99 tents, 99 potions, and 99 Phoenix Downs, but you cannot carry 100 potions.
• Items in treasure chests, even in someone else's house, are yours for the taking.
• Your job is to defend a world that has less than 100 people and a limitless amount of monsters.
• Store owners have the right to keep getting rich from the hero, even though the fate of their world rests on the hero's shoulders.
• All methods of transportation, be they subway, airplane, boat or bus, are usually free.
• When you get injured by a sword, or other weapon, blood will not pour out, only numbers.

 

This, and more funny things we have surely learned, at the original source.

Posted on 2012-02-06

Thanks to my friend Vicente now I'm doomed too and I've started buying old and out of print pen&paper RPG books.

To test it, I've bought two books, Megatraveller and Cyberpunk 3rd edition.

Megatraveller (1986!!!) is a space sci-fi RPG with heavy focus on the creation of characters, settings, worlds, and even spaceships. Characters have to choose a profession as background, you can design your own space (and have space fights), and in general get as deep as you want.

I learned about this game playing the old Amiga games (Megatraveller I and II), and I recall having seen this boxed set (contains three books plus a huge hexagonal star chart) when I was quite young, so I couldn't miss this opportunity :D

Cyberpunk 3rd edition is the other book. As can be seen in the photo, I alreaady own the 2nd edition in spanish. In fact I didn't knew there was a semi-recent new revision (2005), so why not giving it a try...

From the intro and first look, seems that the complex rules of Cyberpunk 2020 have been simplified and streamlined a lot (the game was quite hard to learn and play, and also very easy to die after all the effort demanded for setting everything up).

I need time to read them but looks like I'll be searching for more old RPGs...

Posted on 2010-04-20

Thanks to my friend Vicente, last sunday we had a 4 hours roleplaying session of Alternity, a sci-fi RPG from the late 90s.

At first it looked to me as a crossover between Cyberpunk 2020 and the Star Wars movies, but I was very wrong: The game uses a more or less simple d20 throwing system based on modifiers (which usually means additional dice, from d4 to d20 always, but sometimes a pure +/- modifier).
Combine that with 3 ranges of ok roll results (normal, good amazing) and an interesting combat system (with three levels of damage, and stun hits always present no matter how good the armor is), and you get a nice mix to enjoy futuristic adventures and alien combats.

The play itself was like a mini-adventure (that we managed to finish, albeit some catastrophic rolls :) and was quite funny (being 7 people allows for variety of decisions, opinions and ideas).

The only "negative" point was that the adventure had some similarities to a past Warcraft RPG adventure we played.

The setting and some of the races brought to me the sensation of being playing Mass Effect: the weren are so similar to the krogan, the psyonic magic...

Really fun and nice playsession, now the idea is to keep at least one session per month (one each 3 weeks would be great if we all can make it).

Oh, and as an extra, here is the image of the 8th misterious player... She didn't say anything but was willing to play:

Posted on 2010-01-13