Graph Paper Games

Yeah, that's right, I'm a dino scientist with a raygun... So I thought I'd take a stab at a rough sketch of what I thought Doctor Tyranno would look like.  Sure, he's campy, but he's campy in the Jack Kirby kind of way.

With all the superhero movies out there, and my son and daughter getting into comic books, I've been thinking about running a superhero RPG for them. If it goes well, maybe I'll take it to a larger audience. In any case, I've been working up an introductory scenario, "The Danger of Doctor Tyranno."  Anyone interested in helping me with a little character illustration?  Doctor Tyranno is a millenia-old super-intelligent dinosaur cum mad-scientist whose goal it is to overthrow humanity and re-establish saurians as the master species of earth. If it works out well, I'll publish the adventure here on this blog.

"Tolan, Male Druid" by Reaper Miniatures I painted this fellow to represent Jared, a Shifter Druid in my D&D 4E Campaign.  Back when we were short players, one of the players played two characters: Jared and a minotaur barbarian.  Since our group has grown, the player settled on the barbarian, and Jared has faded way into the woodwork, no pun intended.

For almost a year I've been slowly adding pieces to a modular dungeon.  This is actually the third or fourth modular dungeon I have built in the past decade or so using Hirst Arts blocks, but none of my previous creations made it with me when I moved to my new home almost a year ago.  Thus, I started another, using a technique I had been considering for a while, namely using the mini-walls from the "Stone Arch Mold" (#88) and the "Cracked Floor Tiles Mold" (#203).  These two molds work together to made a fairly simple but effective layout.  The walls of the dungeon are represented without blocking view on the table.  The downside comes with flexibility--when you have a "dungeon tile" layout you can put the door anywhere in the room you like.  But that's the sacrifice you have to make with a layout like this. Anyways, the terrain-building bug as struck again, and after cranking out a quick wargaming piece I thought I'd start adding to the Meg...

The fifth round of books from the Mystery RPG Box of Mystery is: Queen of the Demonweb Pits, Module Q1 (Advanced Dungeons & Dragons) Signs and Portents: Babylon 5 Roleplaying Game and Fact Book (Mongoose Publishing) Missions (Shadowrun, FASA) All right, now we're talking. Queen of the Demonweb Pits was the final episode is series of modules running though the "Against the Giants" (G1-3) and "Drow" (D1-3) modules.  The PC's have made their way through some standard monster lairs, an underground wilderness, a mega-dungeon/lair, and finally an entire city-nation of evil elves.  Where to go from there?  Apparently even Gary Gygax didn't know, so he gave the job to in-house artist David Sutherland, who had some ideas about an extra-planar realm that would serve as the home of the drow goddess Lolth, Queen of Spiders.  Q1 is probably best known for the map of the Demonweb, an elaborate maze involving some non-Euclidean geometry.  In addition to ...

I actually did an earlier draft of this post but realized that most people were not interested in a play-by-play description of all my comings and goings, my struggles and victories, and everything else involving my weekend at KantCon.  So here's the brief recap: The Good Great location  Good food Friendly people The Not So Good On Friday there were not games available for people who had not pre-registered (like me) What I bought Ingenium by Silver Gryphon Games.  This is a great lightweight fantasy RPG that clocked in at $20 for 98 pages.  I literally crammed the rulebook in thirty minutes and was playing with my kids half an hour after that.  I'll do a review later, but both running and playing in this game was a breeze. OSRIC  this is the new giant black book from Black Blade Publishing.  Yes, it's 1st Ed. AD&D with a new slipcover, but at $26 for essentially the three core rulebooks in a beautiful binding its a deal for those who want ...

The fourth round of the Mystery RPG Box of Mystery contains Wild Dragon Den, an adventure for D&D Denizens of Earthdawn Part One, a sourcebook for Earthdawn Ravenloft II: the House on Gryphon Hill (module I10, for AD&D) Still a little heavy on the D&D stuff, but that's no mind. Wild Dragon Den  is the first adventure from the same boxed set that Wyrmhaven came from, built for four 1st-to-3rd level adventurers.  The format is simple to the point of being trite: a wealthy patron seeks adventurers to exterminate the lair of a black dragon and her lizardmen henchlings (is henchling a word?)  Like Wyrmhaven, the PC's are equipped by the patron with flashlights, healing potions, and equipment designed to neuter the main villain, namely the aforementioned black dragon.  In this case the equipment is several potions for curing poison, and two shields who remove most, but not all, of the damage from the dragon's acid breath. I actually like Wild Dragon De...

Over at Dragonsfoot, Evereaux once said the following about his Megadungeon campaign: The Dungeon is a weird, unfathomable, and deadly place, and as such it should sound an irresistible call to those with the doughty hearts of adventurers. It is the paragon of Chaos, a limitless manifestation of danger, chaos, and alien strangeness, just as the Town is the paragon of Law, a physical embodiment of safety, uprightness, and predictability. Within the dungeon, you will find ferocious monsters, lethal traps, cunning tricks and buried secrets, tortuous layouts and forgotten ways, baffling riddles, and best of all, fabulous treasure beyond imagining. You the player will be challenged as much, if not more, than your PC, and it will take the combined skills of both to succeed. This place is not merely a workaday, subterranean lair, with logically arranged sleeping and eating areas for a species simply somewhat different from (or even antagonistic toward) humans and demi-humans. The door you o...

The third round of books from the Mystery RPG Box of Mystery contains: Wyrmhaven , an adventure for Dungeons & Dragons (1992) Smuggler's Run , a sourcebook for the Dragonstar  game (Fantasy Flight Games) Oasis of the While Palm , a module for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (1983) All right, I'm moving out of the generic rulebook part and into some adventures and sourcebooks. Wyrmhaven  is actually out of the Dragon's Den box set that came out in the struggling years of TSR.  The hope was to induce new players by creating a sort of hybrid game reminiscent of boardgames with which young people could transition into RPG's.  With that in mind, TSR created the "Easy to Master" Dungeons & Dragons, essentially a re-tooling of the Basic D&D into a box set that looked like a board game in size.  To supplement the game they created several box set adventures, including Dragon's Den, which featured three adventures, all featuring dragons. ...