Year of the RPG: The Two Years

Posted on January 18, 2019 by

AmbiGaming

Everything else gets a sequel, why not Year of the RPG?

That’s right, friends. I had so much fun with Year of the RPG that I’m doing it again this year, but with a few tweaks based on what I’ve learned. For those of you who don’t remember, I deemed 2018 to be Year of the RPG here, and invited other folks to play along with me in a very loose adventuring party of sorts. I had a list of eight RPGs (most of which I got through or at least played), and was going to play through all of them before the end of the year.

Image result for yeah!

None of it went exactly according to plan. I had a loose idea of how people could collaborate, but because I didn’t want to be a task-master I decided to be very hands-off with how people would participate; I was well aware that…

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From the DM’s Chair: Approaching Adventure Modules, the introduction.

Posted on January 18, 2019 by

Shadowonthewall

Dungeons and Dragons is a truly free and unlimited past time of a hobby. It encourages storytelling, imagination and teaches interesting subjects to aspiring DMs such as the basics of world-building and even game mechanics and game designing tricks. However, for DMs, D&D also represents a herculean task of impossible measure: creating your own setting and adventure from scratch. For those creative members of our community overflowing with an abundance of world design ideas and epic long-scale plots, these overwhelming endeavours might well be an outlet for them, an enjoyed hobby to be refined and developed upon. For the past month, I’ve been doing just that: enjoying re-designing a setting of my own creation, whilst simultaneously juggling plotting a possible campaign for that world and ideas for my ongoing endeavours with the Dorvine campaign (which will hopefully be continued soon). However, not everyone enjoys world-building or, more importantly, not everyone…

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It’s been a long time

Posted on January 17, 2019 by

Anitcs ~ Pure Ascentions

I haven’t blogged in what close to 4 years now. It’s been a hectic time since my last post. My ongoing d&d group split and it’s been over a year since I have played any tabletop RPGs. I am back in school, yeah a 34 year old going back to school it’s been rough. I haven’t had much time for PC gaming in well a long while. I have tried to get back into it just to many responsibilities with my children and school and work.

I was doing some tabletop strategy gaming, like warhammer and a lot of blood bowl a few years back but my kids became toddlers and decided my miniatures were toys. It’s fine they had fun and that’s what those things were for.

I have mostly been writing content for possible campaigns. Reworking my old fairytale campaign to run smoother and be more consistent. I…

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Triple-A: down or up?

Posted on January 17, 2019 by

Later Levels

Late last year I published a post about the volume of sequels, spin-offs and remakes released since 2008. After classifying over 1,500 titles and analysing the data, I discovered that over half (59) of 2018’s top-100 titles were remakes and a much smaller number (12) were new IPs. It seems as though the video game industry is stuck on repeat: publishers like the low-risk approach of something which isn’t entirely new, while gamers enjoy the nostalgia that comes from playing something which feels familiar.

This finding was echoed in an article I read the following day on TechSpot entitled Is the next AAA-games crash imminent?, which noted three factors that could mean we’re heading for disaster: creativity, stagnation and gamer backlog. Just a couple of weeks later however I came across a piece on IGN explaining Why 2018 was the best year for video games; followed by…

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Gaming concentration

Posted on January 17, 2019 by

GamingSF

A few posts ago I was writing about a particular kind of focus regarding my gaming. I listened yesterday to a Mozilla podcast about a different kind of focus: issues with concentration while reading.

The podcast talks about reading and how the Internet-era and modern technology can interrupt the act of reading or even the desire to read traditional long-form texts such as novels. I’ve noticed this as a growing issue for my gaming hobby. My phone is usually near me while on my computer so any incoming alerts from texts, emails or other notifications can easily distract me and potentially breaking any immersion I might have in the game at that moment. Although I had most notifications switched down low or off completely on my old phone, I’ve just this week switched phones and it’ll take a while to calm down the storm of notifications that all the apps…

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Questing from January 7th to 10th

Posted on January 16, 2019 by

Erdrique's Blog

Just the previous weekend, this past week was also light in quest runs.  I kicked off the week by taking Garrrin (Level 24 Barbarian/Fury of the Wild) into the Harbor to knock out some favor runs.  I’m currently on a kick to just maximize all of my favor across all of characters.  It will slow me down in getting them leveled up but I don’t imagine it will take each character too long to fill in their blanks (of course I could be wrong on that).  In any case, I took him through Irestone Inlet (which I can’t believe he didn’t have on elite already) and Freshen the Air.  I was doing this while also playing during our digital table top game.  Speaking of the table top game, we moved over from using MapTools to Fantasy Grounds.  During this play session, I saw a lot of dialogue time…

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The Best of the Rest: Games I Missed in 2018

Posted on January 16, 2019 by

Gamer Crash

The Backlog. It’s something most of us have to deal with and it never seems to get smaller. Being an adult means I just don’t have enough time in my day to play everything I want. Not only that, many games have moved to continuous updates or battle pass style content, which means I also feel obligated to continue playing over time to unlock new stuff.

If you managed to check out my annual Gamer Crash Awards (catch up with this handy link if you missed anything: HERE), it’s more than likely that you found yourself saying something along the lines of “but wait, why isn’t game x on this list?!” As unfortunate as that is, ‘Game X’ wasn’t left off by mistake. I pride myself on only including games that I’ve played during the year because frankly, how can I judge something if I haven’t played it? It…

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A Glimpse Into the Vault: PAX Unplugged Edition

Posted on January 16, 2019 by

Cannibal Halfling Gaming

Today, we have a special PAX Unplugged Edition of A Glimpse Into the Vault, with a special roundup of board games of interest I came across at the con! Now, this is a little unfair, as this is a grossly cursory look at only some of the many games and vendors that were on display, but with the extensive number of products available I only had so much time and attention to really dig in. Luckily, I managed to get on the media list for PAX Unplugged, so I was fortunate enough to be solicited by a number of people interested in getting attention for their game, and from that I managed to schedule a slew of interviews about different games. We previously chatted with Brendan Conway about Unbound, the latest supplement for Masks: A New Generation, but today we’ll be tackling the board games I got to see…

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A Fun Little Trinket

Posted on January 15, 2019 by

Erdrique's Blog

There are a number of interesting and powerful trinkets in DDO.  However, there is one that I find to be tremendously fun, the Shard of Xoriat.  The Shard of Xoriat looks like one of the disks that are used in the Dreamforge to upgrade the items from the Inspired Quarter and Dreaming Dark quest packs.  You can only get it out of the quest, The Sane Asylum and it also an exclusive item, meaning that you can only have one in your inventory at any time.

The Shard of Xoriat grants a +1 Exceptional Charisma and Greater Enchantment Focus.  However, its most useful characteristic is the ability to summon an Xorian creature to your aid three times per rest.  The creates that you can summon include a chaos beholder, a mind flayer, a flesh render, a greater evil eye, or a Taken.  All five of these creatures have their…

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25 Campaign Starting Adventure Seeds

Posted on January 15, 2019 by

Ready To Role

dungeons-and-dragons-1983_l41Picture Credit: Dungeons & Dragons cartoon

New Year, New You… New Campaign? Whether you’re rolling up a fresh character or reviving an old favorite, the start of a campaign has a certain magic to it! And with this month’s Adventure Seeds I aim to give DMs a jump start on how to start off that sometimes awkward first session.

I thoroughly enjoyed coming up with these Adventure Seeds- my only problem now is I want to run them all! Some of them focus on a story element that could translate into a larger story arc, while others provide easy ways to suddenly make the group work together!

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