PODCAST VIRTUAL TABLES & BOARD GAMES

Another great D&D Podcast

The blurb for this one reads

We talk with Doug Davison from Fantasy Grounds, and then a visit from R&D Gamer Designers Chris Dupuis and Ben Petrisor.
Fantasy Grounds
Fantasy Grounds is an application acting as a virtual online gaming table primarily intended for pen and paper style narrative roleplaying games. Designed to perform many of the things you can do while playing at a conventional gaming table and move it online.
Temple of Elemental Evil
In the Temple of Elemental Evil board game, you play as a heroic adventurer. With amazing abilities, spells and magic weapons, you must explore the dungeons beneath the Sword Coast where you will fight monsters, overcome hazards and find treasure. Are you ready for adventure?

The Fantasy Grounds is great--Doug has been on a lot of podcasts recently & this one contains some of his clearest explanation of the cost structure.

The Temple of Elemental Evil discussion is interesting--Chris has a fascinating career path & Ben is always awesome. I have only played one Adventure System game & I did not really love it, but it is nice to see WotC still supporting it.

I am not really interested in either of the topics this month & I miss Rodney, but I am glad that they seem to be staying on a more disciplined release schedule. 

Round Table 71 - Dragon+ and Survey Results Review

A rather short episode this week--they open with what is your favorite module & someone says the Dinosaur Lair Assualt which really was great!

The blurb has:

James Introcaso sits down with Joe Lastowski, Andrew Kane, and Vegas Lancaster to discuss the newly launched Dragon+ app and the results of the second D&D 5th Edition survey. This podcast was recorded on May 21, 2015.

I thought that they were overly optimistic on the D+ app which is really not good & a waste of resources that could have been spent making an online character builder or other fan requested tools. Maybe I am alone in this, but I want Dragon back--just pure and simple Dragon like in the old days--not this ad ware zine that reprints Tumblr posts. D+ will need to get much better before I am in. 

The survey summary shows how desperate we are for content--I mean if all we have to talk about going into Summer & Con Season is the Survey Results D&D is really loosing some of its steam.

D20 Gets Worse

So recently I lost my D20 & it appears that his downward spiral continues.

We may be past the time for intervention!

Gamex 2015

Jack & I headed to Gamex this weekend. The highlight was likely the tourists with the dead battery on level four--luckily we had jumper cables & after jumping their car took their fantastic parking spot.

Of course, this spot ended up coasting us US$30 for the day! I am seriously considering finding a cheaper way to attend next con!

This image needs to be on the next Gamex t-shirt--is is definitely my mantra for con:

Jack and I scored tons of Dum-Dums & a great hand fan during registration--which was $30 bucks for the day--EACH! we definitely need to do something about this--$90 to park and attend is just way to much for a day at Con & we still have not purchased nachos, pizza, tube of dice, or any of the other required tools

Speaking of Nachos this was likely our first stop--the food at New Con Location is fantastic

Jack & I hit the Paint and Take minis to get some heroes for our games. Jack had broke his glasses that morning so these are his new two dot pair--which really added to his painting focus.

I made a Slaver with Trident & Net--totally awesome!

Jack totally crushed me with his Bunny with Spear

Then we signed up for games--a little late night Gurps

A great game of Space Hulk--which is not Hulk on a Space ship, as we had hoped

Then some Nuke War in the lobby with Luis

We struggled with a horrible game of Pandemic--actually first time we had won, but we cheated on turn order and some other mechanics so I am not sure we can count it--the couple we played with were awesome--died hair, crazy focused--they had just played some Farting game tournament and were on fire

Our GURPs game was on Star Trek Voyager:

We battled some strange creatures in a mostly non combat type of way which is so popular in GURPS

Our GMs did accidently write on his mat with a wet erase marker, which was tragic.

The big take away from this con was we need to plan more--we did not play any D&D, we did not really game with any people we knew, and we left before 4 in the morning--we will do better next time!

CypherCaster Magazine - Issue 001 (May 2015)

DriveThruRPG is offering the first issue of Cypher Caster Magazine for $4. This is a no brainer for anyone playing and/or interested in Numenera--a good quick read on all the things currently going on with the Monte Cook Games Cypher system--it often reads like an extended press release--but includes a lot of very creative ideas from the community.

The table of contents includes blurb reads:

The first issue of the CypherCaster Magazine includes:

• MCG Spring/Summer product preview
• Shotguns & Sorcery interview with Matt Forbeck & Robert Schwalb by Andrew Cady
• Exploring Cypher Space by James Walls
• “Shapes in the Salt”, Numenera short fiction by Jim Ryan
• “Hunting for Krofwarten”, a Numenera adventure by Chris Fitzgerald
• “Estate Files” covering a Norse Mythology recursion cluster for The Strange by Marc Plourde
• “Holstenwall — A Recursion of Gothic Fear” by Scott Robinson
• MCG Fan Relations News

The stunning cover art by Jeff Brown conveys the vast wonder of the Ninth World of Numenera (or perhaps a recursion in the Strange). A copy of the artwork without the masthead and trade dress will be included for use in your games.

Second issue coming, July 2015

The cover are really is amazing:

And the other art in this issue is fun, playful, and inventive--for example, here is a map:

All of the content is OK, but not all is  fantastic--I am mostly interested in Numenera and not that interested in the Strange or some of the other things that MCG has going on. The short fiction was an easy fun read. I hope that they stay focused on that kind of community creativity part of the Numenera community and not to much in the crunch.

I think that this is a great start to a magazine & expect that the next issue will be a lot better.