I've been thinking about the games I play, and what kinds of games I tend to enjoy playing the most. I've written about atmosphere and mechanics previously, and both of those apply equally to tabletop and video games. There's another component that strictly applies only to video games, although...
What Next? by Big Potato Games is a cross between a game book and a cozy party game. It's essentially a choose-your-own-path adventure written on a deck of cards. There are three decks of cards in the box, each with a self-contained adventure. Pick a deck, and turn over the top card. Read it, make...
The Contrast line of paints by Citadel are designed to provide instant highlighting and shading with just one coat of paint from just one pot. When it works, it's the stuff of science fiction. To this day, I sit and marvel at my painted Ur-Ghul miniatures, and all I did was slap some Pylar Glacier...
If you use miniatures in your tabletop games, it's easy to get spoiled when you start buying Citadel miniatures. Games Workshop miniatures tend to be high-quality, highly detailed, and super imaginative. In fact, if anything, Games Workshop is too imaginative. Really. Some of their sculpts are bizar...
Las Vegas has been quarantined due to a zombie outbreak, and the USA plans on dropping a low-yield nuke to clear everything up. But there's 250 million dollars locked in a safe beneath a world-famous casino. Let's go in and retrieve the money!
It's a really good setup, 80% Escape from New York a...
In an effort to keep better track of what I watch, I'm reviewing the movies and shows as much as I can. No spoilers in this one.
Cyberpunk Edgerunners is a Netflix anime series based on the Cyberpunk video game, which is in turn based on the Cyberpunk roleplaying game. I own the Night City...
I decided that during 2024, I'd reinvent one game every month. This month, I decided to fix Monopoly.
I can't think of a board game as famous, or as reviled, than Monopoly. Nobody's ever accused Monopoly of good design, and while probably some people enjoy the game it's usually because they've...
I love lore. It's one of the reasons I play games. Having read through Mantic Games's Warpath Sourcebook, I've been thinking a lot about the quirky cyberpunk / hard sci fi / comedy-of-errors / war-ravaged universe that is the Warpath setting. On the surface, it's just kind of general wargame scie...
At the time of this writing, Mantic Games is finishing up a Kickstarter campaign for a 10mm or 12mm mass warfare game called Epic Warpath. I'm a backer for several reasons. I can use the assets for the intended Warpath game, but also as auxiliary troops for some Mech games. I could, obviously, d...
Mansions of Madness by Fantasy Flight is an investigative RPG with a scripted Game Master. In fact, game play is guided by an app you can run on Steam or on a mobile device. The app tells you what tiles of the board to set out, what tokens to mark the board with, and helps you through exploration...
I'm reading the Stardrifter series by David Collins-Rivera, and reviewing each book as I finish it. The short story The Proposal is a story about a special-ops mission performed for a mysterious client. That's the same elevator pitch I used for the previous story but, believe me, the two are not...
I'm re-reading the Horus Heresy, and this is my review of the second book in the series, False Gods by Graham McNeill. There are minor spoilers in this review.
This is it. This is the book where it all happens. The previous book introduced us to Horus himsulf, and managed to make him pretty en...
A battle mat is useful in both wargames and roleplaying games, and there are lots of different options for what to use. Like many players, I use a mix of them, including Paizo's dry-erase grid boards and flipmaps, BattleTech map packs, and boards that come packaged with games like Zombicide and...
I'm a fan of the Fallout New Vegas and Fallout New Vegas, as well as the Wasteland series. When I found out there was a Fallout board game called, appropriately, Fallout the Board Game, I bought the last copy available in New Zealand (or at least at Mighty Ape, but I couldn't find it anywhere...
Some people have the impression that solo games, or playing multiplayer games by yourself, are consolation for people with no friends. The assumption is that it's "normal" to buy a game for your family or your game group, and that you'd only resort to a solo game when there's something wrong. Maybe...
In 2009, Pathfinder became the successor of D&D. It literally took the existing rules and re-published them with a bunch of improvements as Pathfinder. It was so successful with RPG players that it's spawned a video game, a board game, and a card game. I've played several rounds of the card...