Like a lot of (or all? is this a defining trait?) geeks, I'm pretty obsessive by nature. I focus on things intensely, and work in sprints so I can concentrate my current obsession into productivity (by some definition of "productive"). I work in the tech industry, which also works in sprints, so I'v...
Death is so frequently the lose condition in games that I think you could argue it's a little lazy. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind when a game threatens my game avatar with death. In fact I enjoy it as a threat. Morbid though it may be, I enjoy imaginary over-the-top violence and pretend gore in m...
Most tabletop roleplaying game systems have the concept of rolling dice as a way of determining whether a player character in the game succeeds or fails when attempting a non-trivial task. A die roll doesn't itself have any meaning. A 20 on a 20-sided die is just a number, no better or worse than a...
I've written before about how much I love Citadel's Contrast paints. I recently decided to try out a similar line of paints from Vallejo, not because I'm looking to replace Citadel Contrast but because I want more. I love painting with auto-shading pigments, so I wanted to see what colours Valle...
I've been painting lots of Pathfinder and Cursed City miniatures lately, using my Citadel Contrast and Vallejo Xpress Color paints. Because I've been using them a lot, I thought it might be useful to provide a review of each Xpress Color paint based on how I've been using it, and what I thin...
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...
I haven't been painting miniatures for long. In the past, I've purchased pre-painted miniatures because I didn't have the time, money, or bravery required to paint miniatures myself. Recently, I've felt comfortable enough with my personal budget to spend a little money on a paint kit, and I buy a mi...
There seems to be a lot of talk these days about character death in D&D and other roleplaying games. It seems that there's an audience that doesn't want their player character to die. Ever.
Which, admittedly, is the point of the game mechanic. If players don't care about death, then there's no poi...
When I find art I love, I'm usually compelled to share and promote it, because that's what we humans do when we're excited about something. With independent art, though, that can be tricky because sometimes the art you love is literally one-of-a-kind, or it's only available from the artist directly,...
My first experiences in hobby shops (specifically, but not exclusively, a Warhammer store) were not great. And yet some of my best experiences in the hobby have happened in a Warhammer store. I think there's a secret to turning a geeky hobby, like building and paintng 28mm toy soldiers so you can pl...
Last year, I developed and published Skuffle Wammer, the universe's smallest wargame. It's designed to be played in 5 minutes or less, with the intent of being the tabletop gaming equivalent of a good stand-up-and-stretch at work. The play area is an A4 sheet of paper, you throw out some miniature...
I think a lot of us gamers think that tabletop roleplaying games are exhilarating at the beginning, but that they tend to taper off toward the end. Commonly, this is expressed as "the problem with high level play." I sense that it's seen as more of a problem in class-based systems that emphasize the...
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...
After you paint a hundred miniatures or so, you might find that you start to get a sense that some miniatures are fun to paint, while others are less fun. It might seem strange that there would be a difference. It's tempting to assume that one hunk of plastic is the same as any other hunk of plastic...
Tales of the Valiant (ToV) is a tabletop roleplaying game developed by Kobold Press, replacing Dungeons & Dragons 5e. The game is fully compatible with 5e, meaning that you can use content from any 5e book in a Tales of the Valiant game. It doesn’t mean everything in ToV is suitable as a one-fo...
Tales of the Valiant is a new tabletop roleplaying game, developed by Kobold Press, to replace Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition (5e). Back in December 2022 until January 2023, it was urgent that somebody replaced 5e, because Wizards of the Coast was claiming it had the right to control who could...