At the Asian Board Games Festival in Penang in August, I did a game exchange with Vito of Homp, an Indonesian game design studio. I still have not managed to play some of the games, but they look good and I want to showcase them. Sultan Spices was inspired by a children's book called Sultan Kecil Mencari Rempah (Little Sultan Hunts for Spices). Back of the box

With today’s game, due to unique circumstances, I’m going to pull out a review first. Specifically, one from the November/December 1983 issue of Softline. Quoting directly: There are adventures, and there are adventures, and then there are adventures. And after them, there’s this. It’s Blood Quest. It’s new. It’s now. It’s happening. It rages. It melts. It burns. It’s free verse. It’s beyond description. It’s the last word in graphic adventuring. This game has everything, and consequently it’s…

Awekeys currently has a Kickstarter campaign going to fund its new see-through metal keycaps. I’ve signed up. They say they’ve made strides with the diffusers. We’ll see. I tried some one elses see-through metal caps, and couldn’t get them to work well. The best they did was on the dual-LED XVX Trooper63. The legends are illuminated properly when looking nearly straight down on the boared as above, but you can’t see them well from a normal typing position. This is because of inadequate…

Sonic Generations was a big deal when it first released in late 2011 for PS3 and Xbox 360. It was the first major Sonic …

I have been running Caverns of Thracia with Fantastic Medieval Campaigns for quite a few sessions1, and just about every session I have to stop and discuss with the players about how to proceed with a ruling. In the spirit of FMC, I have been doing my best to avoid backporting modern D&D-isms into the game. In fact, where reasonable, I do my best to make my interpretations different from later rpgs. So, without further ado, here are a bunch of my rulings for FMC: All HD are rolled every…

Card shop stop for Pokémon at Spitty’s Cards.

DC has posted several preview pages from next week’s issue of Absolute Flash, and you can see them at Adventures In Poor Taste. The preview features Ray Palmer telling his story of the discoveries which led to him becoming the Atom, and his connection with several important people in the Absolute universe. Check it out at the link! ABSOLUTE FLASH #20 Written by JEFF LEMIRE Art by HAINING Cover by NICK ROBLES Variant covers by DERRICK CHEW, MARCIO TAKARA, and RYAN BENJAMIN $4.99 US | 32 Pages |…

I enjoyed this episode of Frodeno Going Mental, in which three-time Ironman World Champion Jan Frodeno interviews six-time Ironman World Champion Mark Allen. Allen’s mindset and mindfulness truly resonates with me; I really needed to hear this after my last race. I could quote the entire thing, so just give it a listen.

He might not be a spooky action figure but Zartan is definitely dressed up! A master of disguise, Zartan always looks a bit different and his 1993 Ninja Force variant (known to A Real American Heroes as Zartan v2) gave the Dreadnok leader a black leather vest, neon green pants, and a bright orange mohawk. At the time it seemed like just part of the neon craze of the early 1990s where action figures were trying to capture the attention of kids with brighter colors and popular themes, but really,…

We say quite often in the solo gaming world that "prep is play." Meaning that preparing for your solo game - rolling characters, building a world or map to explore, getting all of the scaffolding of a campaign together - is a part of playing the game. I'm not sure I've ever managed to have as much fun prepping for a game as I have with Traveller. It's tedious and time consuming and just fun. I've rolled up four characters. I'm halfway through creating a subsector. It's taken days upon days of…

Reasons why I will be playing this game again. Dispatch is a choose-your-own adventure game where you play as a down-and-out superhero named Robert Robertson who finds himself working as a dispatcher at Superhero Dispatch Network (SDN). Robert is assigned to manage the "Z-Team," which is comprised of ex-convicts. The team, known as The Phoenix Project, is the brainchild of Blonde Blazer, fellow superhero and Robert's boss, who hopes that Robert can turn these former criminals into the heroes…

We love it when we find weird and unique indie games to tell you all about! Our alien friends to the left herald these occasions. It’s Spooky Season, and the best cartoon for that time of year has to be Patrick McHale’s Over The Garden Wall. If you haven’t seen it, go seek it out: it’s only ten episodes, each 11 minutes long, and tells a complete story. If you’ve done that, or have already seen the show, then this will be of the most interest to you. About a year ago for the show’s 10th…

The Crownless Company explore some Wizard Bullshit and find Master Fulkth, the wizard who controls the bugbears on floor 3. Party Members Tina the Titanic - Level 8 Fighter Vaco Adjacent - Level 6 Paladin Tobias Little, a.k.a. Lil Toby - Level 7 Cleric Telperion Desh - Level 7 Lich Huntsman - Level 6 Martial Artist FollowersTiny Tina (Cleric 7), Princess Pizzabones (Thief 5), Rutger (Robot 7), Captain Nasty (Fighter 6) and Jenx (Level 4 Bombard) Session RecapDeciding it was finally time to go…

By Roberto MarcariniOld School FoxOSELevels 3-4 Beyond those tangled boughs, deep within the forest, the cure that could save Baron Duncan Bravewater and his wife from a terrible curse may lie hidden. Moira, the hag of Gloomwood, might know the secret to free them from their prison of stone… but what price will you have to pay to earn her alliance? And what dangers await you on the path to her remote hut, concealed among gnarled trees and deadly marshes? This 68 page adventure presents eleven…

I've always had a soft spot for strange physical media (like my recent obsession with unique physical PSP games), particularly the sort of thing that makes you wonder why anybody thought it was a good idea in the first place. There's something fascinating about the unusual ways companies tried to deliver entertainment before everything became a download, and even more fascinating when somebody decides to revisit one of those ideas decades later. Which brings me to a question I hadn't really…

Welcome to this week’s roundup of ttrpg goodness. This week on the blog the most popular articles were Good Adventures and Great Adventures, Running Red Dragon’s Tale, Turns: Understanding the Grammar of D&D, Dolmenwood Resources for you and a Dolmenwood Retrospective. Thank you to all my subscribers, and please subscribe if you want to receive this newsletter in your e-mail inbox every Saturday. Contents Discord discussionsBlog postsProjects to bookmark and downloadPlay ReportsPatchwork…

It would be nice if this door would just stay open. I start this session by returning to the Upper Catacombs, which I don't think I fully explored last time. Following the rightmost wall pattern, I first come to a door to the Lower Catacombs. It's locked, but it opens with my Key of the Scion, which being a staff instead of an actual key, doesn't go on the same key ring that I can use for every other key. The Lower Catacombs that I enter do not seem to be the same place I visited before (by…

A short video this week, but what a machine!

Michael Myers again? Yup. Michael Myers again. The man is synonymous with Halloween and I'm usually a pretty easy mark for most Michael Myers items that are on the affordable side. During a shopping trip to Five Below back in early September I stumbled upon this Michael Myers Squishmallow and I just had to have it. My daughter has never been too into Squishmallows (I think she has a couple of the Pokemon ones and maybe a random one or so) but her best friend is all about them, so I've seen…

tl;dr: a rules-light game of playing creatures of Slavic myth, an interesting lens, something different to the usual adventurers. Potvory is a tabletop adventure role-playing game which offers "a new look at traditional Slavic mythology through a queer lens" as per the cover. I backed it during the Kickstarter originally as it came from a local team and I do like interesting zines. I had the great good fortune of getting to play it at a recent con that was being run by the authors. The game was…

I have always had an interest in computers. I took some summer computer classes at our area vo-tech school when I was in elementary school. One of the highlights was getting to play games at the end of class. These games were text based–choose your own adventure games that involved knights and dragons. Those were the days of green phosphors on a black background computer terminals. No OS with a graphical interface like we are use to today. During my senior year of high school, I took a basic…

This is a game I've been wanting to play and review for over a decade, but haven't had the means to do so until now, which is kind of exciting. Japan-only games on the X Box and 360 are inherently interesting, I think, since they were kind of doomed from the start, because those consoles had such small userbases there. This one is also interesting in its own right, being as it is a kind of game that represents a specific time and space in wrestling that, as far as I know, doesn't have a lot of…

Aura Triolo has assembled her IGF recommendations list here. These aren't necessarily the games Aura voted to win IGF awards - they are instead the games from this year's crop of submissions that she thinks are particularly worth playing. I have already bought a game off of one of her recommendations here! I bought Echo Weaver and played a bunch of it last night. It's really good!! Anyway, Aura's blog is a great follow if you're interested in periodic indie game recommendation lists from both…

Lair of the Lamb is 0-level survival horror adventure released by Arnold K in April of 2020 under Creative Commons SA NC 3.0. The original versions (4/13/2020 and 4/24/2020 [Final] are available on his blog, Goblin Punch. Both versions are great. I have been running Lair of the Lamb as a one-shot for several years. What I run has a little bit from both versions and my own house rules and twist. In true spirit to the original work, I’ve released two versions. The first could be considered a…

New to the ongoing blog series called STQK "Would you like to know more?" Disclaimer: Episodes 11-15 will be using an oracle system I am developing for solo players; you can see it in action here. Once I am happy with the way the oracle plays it will be available for the community. Hello there, We continue with the next episode in the Dragon Quest SPI System. (Content Warning: Violence, Traumatic Events) Scene 11 Greetings were introduced again as the two adventurers were hushed away with the…

We’re getting close! Only a few more days and SPIEL Essen 2026 will be opening its doors. Since you’ve probably already seen a lot of most anticipated games lists, pre-order lists, and other shopping guides, I thought I’d instead give you some suggestions of other things to do or look out for. Because let’s face it: if you’re reading this, chances are you have way too many games at home already that you should be playing more instead of buying new ones, right? So here are a couple of things I’m…

Adventurers Character Race Class Description Ainsley Human Ranger level 1 An older gentleman with a groomed moustache and a wooden pipe in his mouth, covered in dark green cloak. Aurella Elf Fighter level 1 / magic-user level 1 Exiled and chased out of her tree commune, she now wanders the Wilderlands. Herbaecious Roncule Human Druid level 3 A sun tanned, grubby, dried-berry-looking fellow dressed in green cloak. Chews a large cigar. Kenso San Human Fighter level 2 An arrogant and self-assured…

Hi! I published an extensive Minecraft post about German BedWars and compared it to Hypixel variation. You'll learn the history of German BedWars, what Hypixel got wrong and my personal experience.

The Transformers Civil War continues to rage on their homeworld of Cybertron and also Earth, which the Decepticons have identified as ripe for fuel exploitation. New reinforcements have arrived on both planets via the intermediary world of Nebulos, and the Autobots are rejoicing at the return of Optimus Prime, restored to life as a Powermaster. However, the threat of the time-travelling Decepticon warlord Galvatron remains and a new threat has been located in deep space: the mysterious…