Mixed Signals

Straight-forward gaming

Visually, you can never go wrong by adding a skull or two. I don't know what it is about the insides of our own heads, but for some reason we humans think fleshless cranial bones are pretty cool. I'm no exception, and in fact I've had a tattoo of a skull on my arm for years now. Skulls are iconic an...

Monsters attack ancient Rome! Can your legionaries defeat them? I've been playing Broken Legions by Mark Latham, published by Osprey Games, and that's pretty much the premise of the game. I picked up the book because I like alternate history, and also because this seemed like an excellent excuse t...

For me, the Blackstone Fortress and Cursed City releases of the Warhammer Quest boxed game from Games Workshop are practically perfect games. They're extremely replayable, but they're board games and are, appropriately, bound to their boards. They each tell a specific story. Blackstone Fortr...

About half-way through the lifespan of Dragon and Dungeon magazines, a company called Paizo was commissioned to take over publication. After the Dungeon and Dragon and Polyhedron magazines were discontinued, Paizo obstinantly continued to publish adventures for D&D. And from magazine t...

If you're used to D&D 5e but have [wisely] switched away from Wizards of the Coast, then you might be playing Pathfinder 2. And if you're the Game Master for a Pathfinder 2 campaign, then you might notice your players staying at level 1 for a lot longer than you're used to. D&D 5e and its unofficial...

I'm running Tomb of Annihilation as a Pathfinder 2e adventure, and as usual there have been some surprises when comparing what a book says and what happens in a game. I regretted starting my players in Port Nyanzaru because, as hex crawls go, Tomb of Annihilation is not exactly the best. It's ab...

At the time of this writing, I'm preparing to run Tomb of Annihilation for the first time. It's been out for a good 5 years, and I've played scenarios from it, but I've yet to run it. As I read through the book to prepare for the game, I've decided to post about my impressions. This review contai...

At the time of this writing, I'm running Tomb of Annihilation for the first time. As I read through the book, I've decided to post about my impressions. Although I started this review before the campaign started, I'm now running this module (using Pathfinder 2, incidentally) for my weekly session,...

At the time of this writing, I'm running Tomb of Annihilation for the first time. As I read through the book, I've decided to post about my impressions. Although I started this review before the campaign started, I'm now running this module (using Pathfinder 2, incidentally) for my weekly session,...

At the time of this writing, I'm preparing to run Tomb of Annihilation for the first time. It's been out for a good 5 years, and I've played scenarios from it, but I've yet to run it. As I read through the book to prepare for the game, I've decided to post about my impressions. This review contai...

I've run the mega-dungeon Rappan Athuk twice so far. Once in AD&D, and currently in 5e. From its marketing, Rappan Athuk is "legendary," but I'm honestly unclear whether that's a claim about real live people knowing and loving the book, or whether it's a reference to fictional people in the game wor...

Before there was Curse of Strahd (CoS), possibly the most famous 5e adventure, there was the 3rd edition adventure Expedition to Castle Ravenloft. Instead of running CoS, I sometimes run Expedition. It's fun for players who have never experienced Ravenloft before, and it's got a few surprises...

Before there was Curse of Strahd (CoS), possibly the most famous 5e adventure, there was the 3rd edition adventure Expedition to Castle Ravenloft. Instead of running CoS, I sometimes run Expedition. It's fun for players who have never experienced Ravenloft before, and it's got a few surprises...

Before there was Curse of Strahd (CoS), possibly the most famous 5e adventure, there was the 3rd edition adventure Expedition to Castle Ravenloft. Instead of running CoS, I sometimes run Expedition over Halloween. It's fun for players who have never experienced Ravenloft before, and it's got a...

Before there was Curse of Strahd (CoS), possibly the most famous 5e adventure, there was the 3rd edition adventure Expedition to Castle Ravenloft. I run this adventure around Halloween, sometimes starting with Death House, the free introduction to Curse of Strahd. It's fun for players who ha...

I've run Sunless Citadel, originally published for 3rd Edition and most recently printed in the Tales from the Yawning Portal book, a few times and thought I'd give my thoughts on running it in either Pathfinder or D&D. In my experience, it's more or less a perfect adventure for almost any purpo...