Update: HALP!

I may have bitten off more than I can chew. Maybe not. But hey, here's a wonderful outline of the reason why I'm currently panicking but excited for the upcoming week...oh, the stuff to do...and I'm not even at GenCon! Which is a good thing because then I'd be even more busy........

Review: Heroine RPG by Josh Jordan

Hello again! Perhaps I do stand a chance at getting the blog updated semi-regularly now. This time around, I'm reviewing +Josh T Jordan's game Heroine. (PDF is found here.) It's an RPG that gives players roles in the story of a young girl who enters a strange Other World (think of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe or Alice in Wonderland) and is challenged with saving it by growing as a person.

(As full disclosure, I received an electronic copy of Heroine for review purposes.)

Character Building: Torchbearer!

So, here's another "Character Building" post! This time around, I'm actually doing it with a pragmatic motive in mind. See, I'm gonna be playing in a game of Thor Olvasrud's Torchbearer, a dungeon-crawl homage that's a hack of Mouse Guard. It streamlines the rules, and brings the genre back to a survivalist, claustrophobia-inducing adventure scenario. If you make it out alive, you might manage to grab enough loot to make it all worthwhile. That sounds awesome.

Becoming: an RPG of Legends

Becoming is a pretty sweet game. I'm just gonna say that off the bat, and because it's past 1 AM here, I'm gonna keep it brief for all of you. (Getting in a quick post before I head off to CONvergence, wot?) It recently funded, and they're looking for a little more money for an awesome stretch goal. So get over there and check it out, once I explain why.

Character Building: The One Ring RPG

Hello all! This time around, I'm doing a post that I call "Character Building". I've decided that now that I have a huge load of game systems on my shelves (and in my "RPG" computer folder), I should get better-acquainted with them. So begins these posts, wherein I take a game system and create a character for it. I'll start with systems that I don't really know all that well, so this time around--it's The One Ring.

Update: What I'm Hammering Out

Greetings, all! I'm finally back with another post. This time, it's what I'm gonna call my "update" post, where I give a little peek into what's going on, gaming-wise, for me. Just another way for me to keep people posted, and to keep content on the blog, eh? This time around, I've been meddling in some pesky game design, which can be loads of fun.

dSection: And Then I Take My Turn...

So, hi. That went nowhere fast. One weekend, I was at a con, then I came down with a case of "con crud", and the next week, I was off at a hospital helping to install and run tech support for my company's software. Now I'm back! Let's hope that I don't stay away quite so long next time. This time around, I'm covering Hollowpoint's unique initiative system, looking at how it encourages quick, violent action. As before: this is NOT playtested, and is possibly horrendously out-of-balance because it whacks up some core ideas in the game. I tinker; it's what I do with this post. Tinkering with things generally makes them blow up.

dSection: Escalate! Escalate! Escalaaaaaaaate!

I am so sorry for the horrid pun. "dSection" is an idea that I had a while back that I'll probably carry out for a few posts. My intention is to have a series of posts where I delve into various games, dissect out an element from a game's rules system, and then discuss how to apply it back into D&D, as a model for how to do it with a more traditional game. I'm doing that because D&D is a nice baseline that everyone in the hobby knows and can relate to. For the debut, I'm gonna take a closer look at part of Vincent Baker's Dogs in the Vineyard. As one last note: this has not been playtested in any way. Mostly, it's my mulling over an idea. So take that into account if you've got critiques; this is more about the base idea, and not the details.

Ludicrus Gaming: Why This is Ludicrus

Hello there! I'd imagine that most of you folks are coming here from my old blog, The Player's Side of the Screen. You might be wondering a few things. Most importantly, why a new blog (and name)? Of secondary importance, what the blazes does "Ludicrus" mean; am I just a bad speller? The answers to both of those are, unsurprisingly, linked. So sit tight, and let me lay it all out for you: what Ludicrus is, and why I deemed it necessary to shift things up a bit.