Graph Paper Games

I would hate to see someone's pet project almost make it to the finish line but suddenly falter.  Hero Games' retro-clone of the Champions RPG called "Champions Now" is (at the moment of the writing of this blog post) at $18,459 of a $20,000 goal.  For $30 you get a physical and digital copy of the rules, which is a pretty good deal.  I'm personally interested in this project because I thought that later iterations of the Hero System/Champions have become a larger, more complex mess.  For example, in the most current version of Champions you build starter PC's on a 400 point base, rather than 250. With a little over two days left, why not take a look?  You can find out more here .

Happy belated Father's Day to all the fathers, step-fathers, teachers, mentors, and other people who identify as male and have chosen to take on the role of caring and nurturing children. My own children were very sweet and generous this year.  My son bought me Teen Titans: The Silver Age Vol. 1  which I'm enjoying reading for all the campy, hip teen drama. Speaking of superhero nostalgia, I also decided over the weekend to back the Hero Games Kickstarter for Champions Now , which basically looks to be a "Champions Ed. 3.5" where they update the game but don't take it all the way to being the universal system that was the Big Blue Book.  Unfortunately with just a few days to go and only barely past the halfway mark, I'm not sure this one is going to come to pass.  I've super-curious about it looks should it make it.  I liked the earlier editions of Champions, and there were whole swaths of the Hero System that largely went untouched in most Champion...

What do you do when you tell yourself you should dedicate more time to blogging right when you're not doing much in regards to the subject of the blog? Just write stuff, I guess. Yesterday I saw on Facebook that the local high school had a D&D club who was doing a fundraiser by selling shirts, so I went over and bought three for myself and the kids.  The young people I met were really friendly, and I think a little surprised.  In my work clothes I am the most ordinary looking person: middle aged, average height, nondescript dress and appearance.  But get me talking about D&D and my gaming group, etc. and I'm definitely a gaming geek through and through.  As I said the kids seemed really friendly and I wish I had met more people like that thirty years ago when I got into this pasttime.  Plus the shirts were cool and for a good cause. My current campaign is taking a few weeks off.  May is always a busy month here, and this year my son is graduat...

I've been trying to get back into the swing of writing more, which of course means I need to find things to write about. A couple of weeks ago I had a conversation with a core member of my gaming group, not to mention the father of another member of my gaming group, over the issue of his having increasingly allergic reactions to being in my house.  He's got issues with pet dander, and I recently added a second pet to my house.  He is especially allergic to cats, and very soon I'll be adding those to my house as well.  The upshot is that in a matter of months, he and his son will no longer be able to game about my house. This isn't a huge deal--there is another venue where we can gather to game--but I've gotten used to having access to all my gaming supplies when I run a game, such as miniatures, terrain, etc. not to mention a kitchen where I usually make dinner.  When my friend isn't coming to a session, I can still play at home, but it has me thinking about...

I finished the second part of my fieldstone modular dungeon, made with Hirst Arts blocks.  The second part includes four 15' hallways (one square=five feet) six 10' hallways four doorways three pillars two 30' by 30' rooms two 20' by 20' rooms with two entrances--one with the entrances on opposite walls, the other on adjacent walls The idea behind the second phase was to obviously add some much-needed variety to the first part of the dungeon, and some larger rooms that accommodate a normal-sized adventuring party better.  Next up is the three layers of painting.

Click from a larger pic Recently my gaming group has had to change the venue of our sessions because I am getting several cats in the near future and have two players who are very, very allergic.  This is kind of a bummer for me, because I like gaming in my own house and have been building a very cumbersome modular dungeon to use in my games that I do no want to lug around from place to place. So to resolve my immediate issues regarding having a more mobile gaming set-up, I invested in an Ergon Gaming Mat that I spotted on an ad from Amazon.  I have a Chessex game mat, the kind that folds up and takes all kind of punishment, but I was curious about what a more flexible silicone mat might be able to do.  In addition to having the normal grid on one side, it also had hexes on the other (which suited my constant dreams of running Champions again).  The mat showed the dry-erase marker clearly and could be rolled up, even squished with no signs of damage.  U...

I tried to avoid spoilers to this movie, but if you think I didn't, my apologies in advance. It's been a while since I've reviewed something, so I thought I'd give my handful of readers my take on the new DC animated movie Suicide Squad: Hell To Pay For those familiar with the earlier animated Suicide Squad movie Assault on Arkham , I should tell you that this is not a sequel to that movie but rather follows the DC animated movie Flashpoint , a fact which isn't revealed until pretty late in the movie.  That's too bad, because I thought Assault on Arkham was a great movie and vastly superior to the live-action film.  The real giveaway that the two are not related is that Killer Frost, theoretically killed in Assault on Arkham , appears in Hell to Pay  but with a different secret identity and costume (for those keeping track, the AoA version is Louise Lincoln, the HtP version is Crystal Frost). Hell to Pay is a pretty standard Suicide Squad plotline: th...