Impossible Landscapes

In the last few years, seemingly any time favorite RPG campaigns are brought up, someone mentions Impossible Landscapes. It’s a huge campaign book for Delta Green written by Dennis Detwiller, “of wonder, horror and conspiracy”, “a pursuit of the terrors of Carcosa and the King in Yellow”. I’ve just finished running it, and boy do […]

Wildsea

Wildsea is a roleplaying game written by Felix Isaacs about a crew of (wild)sailors cutting through the branches of impossibly tall trees on a chainsaw ship or something just as bizarre, in a world taken over by verdant greenery. Among the games that inspired it, it lists Belly of the Beast, Blades in the Dark, […]

Heart, the City Beneath

Heart is a roleplaying game of weird dungeondelving about doomed people getting exactly what they desire, no matter how badly it turns out for them. It is published by Rowan, Rook and Decard and is set in the same world as (and directly beneath) another of their games, Spire. Everything in the book drips with […]

Mothership (p)review

Mothership, a sci-fi horror OSR game by Sean McCoy & Tuesday Knight Games, is quite popular. Seemingly any time someone asks for a game that has anything remotely to do with sci-fi or horror, Mothership will be among the recommendations. What’s interesting is that Mothership isn’t even properly out yet: what we have is effectively […]

Electric Bastionland

BastionThe electric hub of mankindThe only city that matters Deep CountryIt stretches foreverThe long shadow of our past In the UndergroundMachines undermine reality Aliens are hereFrom beneath the Living Stars You have a Failed CareerYou have a colossal debt Treasure is your only hope Electric Bastionland is a self-described “particularly fast” roleplaying game by Chris […]

Arkham Horror the Living Card Game

Campaign games are a hot new thing in board gaming. I’m quite a sucker for them, and judging by their performance on Kickstarter, so are a lot of other people. Since I’ve backed a few, I figured I might as well write about them. To kick things off, however, let’s take a look at a […]

Spire – the game must be played

Spire, or more fully Spire: The City Must Fall is an RPG by Grant Howitt and Christopher Taylor of Rowan, Rook and Decard (don’t ask which one is which). In it, players are dark elves living in the namesake megapolis, their former capital taken over by high elves, or aelfir. The game is about the […]

Blades in the Dark – haunted by greatness

Blades in the Dark is the New Hot Roleplaying Thing. Written by John Harper and published by Evil Hat, it is a game about a crew of scoundrels in a haunted industrial city. While not directly Powered by the Apocalypse, it is a descendant of Apocalypse World. And just like its predecessor, it has spawned […]

First Impressions – Gloomhaven

With two fantastically successful kickstarters behind it and a #1 spot on Board Game Geek’s top 100 list, Gloomhaven is the current darling of the hobby. Designed by Isaac Childres, it is a monumental board game, largest and heaviest of boxes I own. A tactical dungeoncrawling game with persistent world and character advancement, essentially a […]

Progression Done Right – Gumballs & Dungeons

Having spent the better part of the last month railing against exploitative progression systems in games, I thought I’d take a moment to talk about a game that does progression well. A mobile collectathon. Please don’t run. A mobile collectathon with energy, timers, and premium currency. No, seriously, hear me out. Gumballs & Dungeons kept […]