Tag Archives: Role-Playing Games

Announcements, Crossposted

Watch Me Play D&D Tonight!

Tonight (Tuesday, June 4th, 2019) at 7pm (9pm EDT) I’ll be a guest player at the Typecast RPG table. That link leads to their Twitch stream, so you’ll be able to watch live as I make a half-orc of myself.

The game is run by Dan Wells, and the three core players are Charlie Holmberg, Mari Murdock, and Brian McClellan. The setting is a D&D 5 home-brew featuring magical flying cities and other stuff I still need to read up on.

I really do need to read up, because tonight I’m playing a half-orc bard, a traveling scholar who does bounty hunting on the side. It would be pretty embarrassing if I didn’t know at least some of the lore of the place. Especially if the occasion calls for me to set some of it to song during battle.

Here’s the Typecast RPG home page, and for good measure another link to the Typecast RPG Twitch stream.

Announcements, Crossposted

Yeah, I’m Illustrating A Munchkin Deck

Steve Jackson approached me at GenCon Indy and asked whether I’d be interested in illustrating a Munchkin deck. Oh, and if so, when I might have the time for it? My answer, paraphrased, was “yes,” and “I will make time.”

That was late August. I made a whole bunch of time I didn’t even know I had the materials for during September and October, and for contractual reasons I spent that entire time referring  this very exciting gig as “super secret project.”

Today I can finally point you all at Munchkin® Starfinder and say “I helped make this.¹”

The cover art is a riff on the cover of the source material, Starfinder, the brand-new sci-fi+sorcery RPG from Paizo:

See what I did there?

The cover was one of the very first illustrations I did for the project². I can only take credit for the line art—the coloring and layout is someone else’s work, and they did a brilliant job of taking my riff and sticking the landing. It’s beautiful.

Steve Jackson Games³ is Kickstarting this project on October 23rd.  Don’t tell me how you can’t wait. The 23rd is close enough that it might as well be now. I have been waiting since August 20th.

¹ My contributions, specifically, are the line-art. I don’t know who is doing the coloring, but they’re crushing it.
² A very clunky version of this cover was my “audition.” I’m quite pleased to tell you that my contract prevents me from showing it to anyone at this time. 
³ Got questions about the game? You should take those questions to Steve Jackson Games, because I don’t know anything useful. 

Crossposted, Reviews

Die Hard Metal Dice: I Love These Things

The moment I held these in my hand I knew I had to own them.

dieharddiceinhand

These are metal dice from Die Hard Dice¹, and if you like the feeling of doing something significant when you’re rolling dice, you will like rolling these.

dieharddicebattleworncopper
Battleworn Copper RPG set from Die Hard Dice

The set pictured above is the “ancient” finish. I selected “Brilliant Gold,” “Battleworn Copper,” and Nickel for myself. When  I ran the Planet Mercenary play test at ConFusion I used two nickel six-siders and one gold one, which is pretty much perfect for the permutation factoring built into the Mayhem system.

I got the metal boxes for mine, along with a play mat which protects the surface of the table, and distributes enough of the throw² energy that the dice stay on the table, even when you roll them in a bit of a panic. I can’t properly describe my delight at the kinesthetic experience provided by these dice. I can describe the jealousy of the others seated at the game table, but I shan’t, because I hold those fine individuals blameless. I’d be jealous too.

The RPG sets (d20, d12, 2xd10, d8, d6, and d4) plus a metal box are $26.50. The 5xd6 sets are $18. The play mat is $8. There are “Brilliant Gold” RPG sets available with the box at scratch-and-dent pricing for $18. I don’t know how they scratched or dented the dice themselves, but I assume a diamond press was involved.

When I perused the Die Hard Dice website for links, I found that they have a new series of chrome dice with colored numbers. These will be mine as soon as Sandra gives me permission to spend money again.

 

¹Disclaimer: I accepted these as a gift³, with the understanding that if I loved them, and could in clean conscience recommend them, I would do so. I do, and I can, so I am, and now I have.
²Do not throw-throw these. They will do real⁴ damage. Roll them, like a gamer.
³If you were to take these away from me and tell me I needed to pay $75 to replace them I would do so the moment Sandra looked away from where my wallet currently sits.
⁴If you are actually being attacked by something, these dice will fit in a conventional slingshot and inflict sufficient injury that you might be able to escape while your adversary admires your choice of projectile.

Announcements, Journal

February’s Projects

I’ve got a full plate this month. Aside from wrapping up the climactic bits of Schlock Mercenary: Delegates and Delegation (the current story online) I need to tackle the bonus story, the cover, and the marginalia for Force Multiplication so that we can send it to print.

Then there’s the substantial task list for the upcoming Schlock Mercenary role-playing game, designed by Alan Bahr, with lots of input from me. The core game stuff is done, and once we’ve got some art to show off we’ll start building a Kickstarter page. That campaign will likely go live sometime in mid-March, and will support the production of a very nice, fully-illustrated rule book, and some odds and ends that will make some of our peculiar (maybe even unique) game mechanics fast, intuitive, and hilarious.

I say “we” with regard to the art. I’ll be doing a few, goofy comic-type things in the book, but most of the artwork will be the sort of thing that you’d expect to see in a wonder-invoking, far-future, science-fiction RPG book. Full-color, fully rendered characters, weapons that look like they’d actually work, and vehicles that are more interesting than the things I dash off with a straight-edge and a circle template.  Think of it this way: Schlock Mercenary, the comic strip, is the canonical story, but the comic’s artwork is mere caricature. The RPG book will show you that universe more clearly, and give you and your players much better starting points for your flights of fanciful shared storytelling.

Back to the task list: I’m also featured pretty heavily in the programming of LTUE, the SF&F symposium here in Utah on February 12th, 13th, and 14th (Thurs-Sat.) and at the end of February I’m flying to Chicago to record more Writing Excuses Master Class sessions.

You might get a movie review or two this month. I’ve seen Strange Magic and Into The Woods, and I’ll be seeing Jupiter Ascending, but the real time sink is actually writing them up.

And speaking of writing, I’ve got a bunch of prose fiction on my plate as well, so I should finish writing this, and start in on some actual work.