We love getting feedback, and so this next campaign was actually a suggestion from one of our listeners, Beetle! He suggested we take the new D&D 5th edition adventure “Baldur’s Gate: Descent into Avernus”, and play it as a party of only halflings! Now he gets to see what a poor decision he has made! In this episode, we meet most of the party as they answer a summons to see a local Captain in Baldur’s Gate.
Read MoreThis week, I had the opportunity to sit down with 2 creators of another Kickstarter in the Roleplaying Game (RPG) genre, Richard Kreutz-Landry and Rich Howard of Descent into Midnight (DiM). Based on the popular Powered by the Apocalypse (PbtA) engine, this Kickstarter still has a couple of weeks to go and is already well above its $25,000 goal.
In DiM, you play as characters in an underwater society, one that has not interacted with any type of human society. It is your responsibility to create this community and defend it from some type of threat. The exact nature of that threat can vary between games, as the game is centered around how the characters respond to these varying threats. I’ve kept an eye on the development of DiM for a while now, ever since I played in a couple of games with Richard at Acadecon a few years ago.
Read MoreDisclaimer: If you haven't heard about Arkham Horror: The Card Game, you might have trouble with this post. Also, potential spoilers ahead.
Last time, I continued our recap of playing through the Path to Carcosa campaign. Now that we’ve witnessed a crazy play and made a party get “lit” (har har), it was time to get down to business. The next scenario, Echoes of the Past, has us go to the nearby museum to investigate a rumor that this is not the first time that “The King in Yellow” has come to Arkham.
Read MoreOne thing I’d like to start doing on this blog is interviewing various people in the tabletop gaming communities (board games, RPGs, etc.). I used to do this back when I did the Boards & Swords podcast solo, and I miss talking with new people and finding out about cool new projects in the works. At the time that I realized this, I also came across a brand new Kickstarter called “Decuma” from first time Kickstarter company Golden Lasso Games.
Golden Lasso Games is the brainchild of Kimi Hughes, one of the hosts of the Happy Jacks RPG podcast. I’ve talked about Happy Jacks before in my video last year highlighting women in RPGs. I also follow a few cosplayers, and Kimi is very active in that community as well (her company name stems off the fact that she is a big fan of Wonder Woman).
Read MoreWe've got the news, the reviews (Silver from Bezier Games, Menace Among Us from Smirk & Dagger, and more!), and the.....cool personalities?
Secret Hilter being played in State Senate
https://madison.com/wsj/news/local/govt-and-politics/gop-senator-wants-legislative-pages-to-stop-playing-secret-hitler/article_d5b4ed05-c503-5e86-8534-8de650fd3e1d.html
New J. Alex Kevern game I'm required to talk about
http://www.tabletopgamingnews.com/Renegade-Game-Studios-Taking-Pre-Orders-For-Succulent-Board
Game Games announced I really don't care about https://boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/100003/spielwarenmesse-2020-ravensburger-teases-castles-t
Expansion for Journey into Middle Earth https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2020/1/28/shadowed-paths/
New Keyforge cards! https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2020/1/30/mass-mutation/
Read MoreIt’s the last part of our DC Comics Adventures game! The last bit was a little short, so I threw in the few outtakes we had at the very end for you to enjoy. Come back next time as we start our newest D&D 5th edition campaign: Descent into Avernus!
Read MoreFantasy Flight Games (FFG) has been announcing a lot of new stuff for their Marvel Champions Living Card Game (LCG). Some might argue that they should focus on getting more stock of the products that have been already released, but those kinds of issues usually take weeks to fix. In the meantime, last week we found out about the newest hero that will be coming to the game, Doctor Strange. Currently, the schedule has this hero deck becoming available in May (March = Thor, April = Black Widow, May = Doctor Strange).
Read MoreUnless this is your first visit to this website, you are probably familiar with the fact that I am a big fan of the board games made by Fantasy Flight Games, specifically their cooperative Living Card Games (LCGs): Arkham Horror the Card Game and Marvel Champions the Card Game. Both of these games come in smaller “core” boxes, but with the vast waves of expansions that FFG is known for putting out, these types of games quickly outgrow these boxes.
Read MoreDisclaimer: If you haven't heard about Arhkam Horror: The Card Game, you might have trouble with this post. Also, potential spoilers ahead.
Last time, I began recapping our group playing through the “Path to Carcosa” campaign, which ended with me realizing that I had mixed up the Act & Agenda decks. In the next scenario, The Last King, our characters stumble into the weirdest dinner part ever in order to find out more about the play “The King in Yellow”.
Read MoreHaving played Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) 3.5 edition in college, when I got an actual job in 2008 and was able to afford things I started playing RPGs again. Unfortunately, I ended up playing a lot of D&D 4th edition, but at the time I was loving it. After getting the core books, I wanted to get some of the vast sourcebooks that were available. There were a ton of different settings, but the one that grabbed me was Eberron. Written by Keith Baker, it was a custom setting that was submitted to Wizards in a D&D3.5 contest that became a full setting supported in 4th edition as well.
If the idea of flying ships, magical trains powered by elementals, and huge steampunk colossi in your D&D game sounds awesome to you as it did to me, then you are in luck. Wizards of the Coast has teamed up with Keith Baker to make Eberron: Rising From The Last War, an official D&D 5th edition sourcebook that updates the lore of the world and brings its mechanical and mystical creatures into the most recent version of the game.
Read MoreWe continue our DC Adventures RPG from Green Ronin. Our players are “famous” heroes from the DC Comics universe who have been gathered at Arkham Asylum to investigate some weird stuff going on. Last time, there was a meteor crash that had the team wake up to find that the asylum had been….altered. Wear headphones if you can! We experimented with using the Syrinscape software to add some thematic background noise to help with the ambiance. Let me know if it came through alright!
Read MoreI love the new Marvel Champions Living Card Game (LCG) from Fantasy Flight Games. You might have gathered that from the post I did talking about teaching the game to my dad. Well, FFG recently showed off some of the cards in the upcoming Black Widow hero deck, currently scheduled to release in April. The more I play this game, the more I want to dig in deep into all aspects of this game, so let’s take a look at the released images. Note that I have not yet read the FFG article where the images debuted as I wanted to capture my initial thoughts of seeing the cards.
Read MoreFirst episode recorded in 2020! We talk about what we are expecting this year, then we go into lots of board game reviews such as the Adventure Games from Kosmos, Cat Cafe from Alley Cat Games, and the Pickle Rick game from Cryptozoic.
Read MoreDisclaimer: If you haven't heard about Arhkam Horror: The Card Game, you might have trouble with this post. Also, potential spoilers ahead.
Last time, I talked about playing through the Dunwich Legacy solo. Well, I still have my campaign night group interested in playing Arkham Horror, so we sat down to play Path to Carcosa starting with Part 1: Curtain Call.
So, I’ve been very anxious/nervous to play through the Path to Carcosa scenario. Part of it is because this is the third time I’ve tried to get the campaign going, with only getting to the 3rd scenario in the previous attempts. The idea of actually being able to complete the campaign is very exciting to me. However, looking online at all the Arkham Horror discussions, people almost universally consider Path to Carcosa to be the best campaign that Fantasy Flight Games has put out. Therefore, I’m a bit nervous to play through it as I’m afraid that I may have built it up too much in my mind.
Read MoreCaveat: Not a real professor. I just play one on TV….if your TV is looking at my YouTube videos. Also my grandfather used to call me that when I was in college.
Now that I am back to blogging more often, its time to revisit this column. Got a question about board games, roleplaying games, comics or pop culture? Send me an email Chris@ocdcast.com or tweet me @ChrisTheProf on twitter with the #asktheprof hashtag and I may answer it in a future column.
Pulling from my archives, @BKfishen4Games asked on Twitter:
"How can I teach young gamers that it’s not all about winning?"
Brandon from the Brawling Brothers podcast (@BrawlingBros) asked:
"How do you loosen up the 'stiffs' at the table and have them fall into character?!?"
First of all, calling them stiffs is probably not helping your cause. Secondly, I totally know where Brandon is coming from. One of the first games I ran as a GM was the Star Wars Saga Edition RPG from Wizards of the Coast (basically D&D 3.5 but with Star Wars). I was trying to get a new group of friends into RPGs and as such pretty much everyone in my game had never played in a RPG before. A couple of players got into it, but there was one or two people that basically acted like we were playing Zork:
Read MoreIt’s our first episode of 2020! And its our 150th episode! And its the first episode of a new game! Here’s the first episode of the game we streamed on Halloween using the DC Adventures RPG from Green Ronin. Our players are “famous” heroes from the DC Comics universe who have been gathered at Arkham Asylum to investigate some weird stuff going on. Wear headphones if you can! We experimented with using the Syrinscape software to add some thematic background noise to help with the ambiance. Let me know if it came through alright!
Read MoreAs you may or may not know, one of the hottest board games of the past 2-3 years has been Gloomhaven designed by Isaac Childres. No matter what list you look at: top selling board games, top 100 board games of all time, hardest board game to dead lift, Gloomhaven is high on that list, if not #1 on it. This board game takes a standard “trope” of board games, which is the “go into a dungeon, fight a bunch of monsters, complete some quests” style, or “dungeon crawl” game and do something unique that makes the game feel truly different.
For years, I’ve seen the hype around Gloomhaven and knew that it was a game that I needed to try at some point. There’s miniatures, an evolving story, and an in-depth setting that just screams “PLAY ME”. Yet, the game is a big burden to play: at $100-150, it is an expensive game to purchase. Especially if you dont already have a group dedicated to play it. Several groups have offered to start a Gloomhaven campaign, but nothing ended up panning out. Fast forward to Pax Unplugged last year, when Frosthaven was announced. This game is going to be huge, and I knew I wanted to talk to Isaac about the game on the podcast, so I managed to get a review copy of the game and told myself I’d play through the game solo so that I could 100% make sure that it would get played.
Note: Some minor spoilers of the first scenario ahead.
Read MoreWe’ve had to reschedule some recordings for various reasons, so Episode 143 was going to be super huge (spoiler, it was huge anyways). So I decided to write a few more jokes than normal and put out a special bit to hold you over until the full up episode drops. Oh, and Collin and Cindy were there too.
Read MoreDisclaimer: If you haven't heard about Arkham Horror: The Card Game, you probably might have trouble with this post. Also, potential spoilers ahead.
In previous articles, I talked about my experiences playing the Arkham Horror Living Card Game (LCG) with a brand new group of people. Well, for the past year, I’ve also been solo playing through the first “full” campaign, which is called the Dunwich Legacy. After a long time, I’m finally getting close to finishing a campaign, especially since I’ve had most of these cards for a couple of years now.
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