If you're a fan of horror movies, you may have experienced the half-way horror curse. It's that point at which a perfectly good horror movie that's been keeping you guessing for about 45 minutes finally reveals the monster to you, and then you promptly lose interest. It's the same problem, technical...
I'm playing through all the Mansions of Madness scenarios I own, and reviewing each one as I go. The first one is Cycle of Eternity, which is one of the introductory adventure included in the main game. My short spoiler-free review is that Cycle of Eternity is a combat-heavy and very challengi...
Recently, I took a blacksmithing workshop. I haven't felt the need to do any more smithing, but it did satisfy my curiosity about the process. Also, it's made me think about metal than I used to. While painting my army for Hattusa, I knew I wanted it to be very clear that they existed in the Bronze...
In previous blog posts, I've lamented the lack of historical miniatures where I live and how that forced me to use a Carthaginian army as my Romans, and an Ancient Egyptian army for my Ptolemaic army. Very recently, a local mini reseller added a proper Roman army, so I sent my Carthaginians back to...
Since getting a Steam Deck, I've actually been playing games in my Steam library. Recently I played and finished Lara Croft Go, and these are my reflections on the game.
The Go series of games by Square Enix are puzzle games set in popular video game universes. Lara Croft Go is set in the...
In a wargame, you frequently have 20 or 30 or even 100 miniatures in your army. This can be confusing for a few reasons, not the least of which the sheer number of physical objects you have to keep track of. Each miniature generally gets to move and attack, and may also be subject to morale checks o...
Caverns of the Spore Lord is an adventure from Kobold Press, and the first written for the Tales of the Valiant product. ToV is a 5e system, so it's directly compatible with other 5e implementations. It's a short adventure for level 1 adventurers, with just 17 pages of content not including appen...
I've written about roleplay and roleplaying in reverse in wargames, but the only reason I have the luxury of waxing poetic about additional options for wargaming is because it's such a flexible system. Roleplay can fit nicely into a wargame, just as much as a wargame fits nicely into an RPG (tha...
Some time ago, I thought that it would be nice to have spaceship miniatures for Starfinder space battles. I developed a simplified system for Starfinder ship combat, which is currently a Copper Seller on DrivethruRPG, so I do actually do run ship combat pretty frequently. So I got some (more about...
I'm reading The Hobbit again, as I live-action roleplay as a Tolkien scholar in an attempt to understand Middle Earth, its lore, and its effect on modern gaming. I'm reviewing each chapter of the book as I read, and this is my review of Chapter 7: Queer Lodgings.
This review contains spoiler...
Here's the thing. I bought the Horus Heresy: Age of Darkness boxed set because it has a bunch of Mk VI (beaky) space marines in it. Originally, I'd intended only to use those models with 10th Edition rules, but the Age of Darkness box comes with a 400 page rulebook in it, and I'm nothing if not...
I've been playing Mansions of Madness a lot lately, which is a game I love but also one that inspires a lot of thought about strategy and roleplay. In a tabletop roleplaying game, like Tales of the Valiant or Pathfinder or Shadowrun, you often make up a strategy based on how you think your...
I've been running a Tomb of Annihilation campaign for about a year now, and I can't honestly say it's been quite as nice as running a good module like Expedition to Castle Ravenloft or Rise of the Runelords. It's my fault, because Tomb of Annihilation is actually a sandbox. I understand the...
When the video game Banner Saga came out, one of the exciting things about it was that its sprites were all hand-drawn. From screenshots and game play footage, it looked like you'd be playing a Ralph Bakshi movie or a good Saturday morning cartoon. That seemed really cool to me, and so I bought th...
I'm reading The Hobbit again, as I live-action roleplay as a Tolkien scholar in an attempt to understand Middle Earth, its lore, and its effect on modern gaming. I'm reviewing each chapter of the book as I read, and this is my review of Chapter 6: Out of the Frying Pan, Into the Fire.
This r...
I read Knights of Macragge by Nick Kyme, partly because I'm mystified by Black Library's sequencing, and this is my review. This review contains spoilers.
I thought Knights of Macragge might be part of the Indomitus series, which is weird because Indomitus (I think) isn't a series but a si...