Dear readers, I’m going to let you in on one of the facts of the gaming world. Picture it, you’re a DM who’s prepping a game and that means—depending on the system—hours spent figuring out villains, general plots, and the specific events of the next game session. If you’re doing pre-generated characters that’s another step to add in at the beginning. Even if you’re taking the relatively easy way out of a pre-made adventure module—assuming your system offers those—you still have to sit down with the module and read through it a few times before the session. No matter how you really look at it—and this is that fact I mentioned earlier—running a game takes a lot of work. Fortunately for we the time-crunched Storytellers of the world that is where this month’s product comes in. This is RPG Nerd. Continue reading →

Greetings fans of RPG Nerd. This entry is something of a retraction, something of an apology and something of an endorsement regarding the last RPG Nerd, Final Fantasy 2d6.
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Join me in a world of majestic airships, physics defying melee weapons, incredible technology and effeminate men in tight pants with hairstyles that are probably only achievable with a fork and an electrical outlet. I speak of course about one the foundations of role-playing game culture, the Final Fantasy series. The existence of a Final Fantasy role playing game isn’t new. Those of you familiar Scott Tengelin’s Final Fantasy RPG system that was published in 1995 may have your own opinions on how well Tengelin succeeded. Common complaints about the system tend to revolve around mathematical complexity. But this review isn’t about Tengelin’s system but instead on a variant rulebook that was created by a group of players in Alberta, Canada. The variant’s author is Kyle Hand and together with his group they took Tengelin’s original rule set and adapted it to what they felt was a more fluid tabletop gaming experience. When they finished their work they took it out to the masses and it was play-tested in several different groups across North America. The final result is the game this month’s RPG Nerd addresses: Final Fantasy 2d6. Continue reading →

Superhero stories have been called the Greek myths of our age, an opportunity to tell stories of paragons of goodness and evil clashing in epic battles that decide the very fate of the cosmos; or to examine the moral interplay in a single man granted powers far beyond his fellows. But some of the best comics in the world have examined the idea of heroes not being loved but feared or mistrusted. I’m sure most of you immediately think of Watchmen, The Dark Knight or perhaps The Incredibles as examples and they’re good ones. But in the world of Superhero RPGs very few systems present that sort of dystopian society in their setting. A Game Master wanting to run a story that deals with questions like ‘Who watches the Watchmen?’ usually has to cook up his own setting and perhaps rely on GURPS as a system. But one of the other games on the market that allows, and is in fact built, for a dystopian superhero tale is Brave New World. Alderac Entertainment Group published the game in 1999; the same company also published 7th Sea, Legend of the Five Rings and the Farscape RPG. Continue reading →

Space… the final frontier. No, I kid, we’re not looking at a Star Trek RPG this week, but it does set a certain kind of mood doesn’t it? Exploration, aliens, sexy encounters with green skinned women? There are lots of different science fiction series out there in a variety of mediums that look into what humanity would be like as we took those first tentative steps into a wider universe filled with all sorts of weird aliens. There’s a lot of ‘fellowship’ and sharing the galaxy in an idyllic utopian society. This month’s game takes a different tack on the sci-fi setting. 3:16 Carnage Among the Stars is a role-playing game published by Box Ninja and written by Gregor Hutton. It won a High Ronny for its game design. It takes a far more realistic look at what our species would be like if we were to go out into space. Continue reading →