Nightfall is a new deck-building card game from Alderac Entertainment Group that is set in a dark world of vampires and werewolves. The game supports between 2 and 5 players and takes roughly 45 minutes to an hour to play. The basic set for the game comes with over 300 cards that include minions you can recruit into your deck, actions that you can play during your turn and other player’s turn, several types of wound cards representing different types of damage taken (bite, burn, and bleed), and draft cards that are used during the game’s set up.
The Architect DM: Give Your Cities Some Character
As with nearly every topic I cover in this series, I’ve touched on the idea of adding character to settlements and cities before but now I’d like to put it in the spotlight. Let’s face it, your players will only remember select portions of the adventures you run even on the best of days. The elements that players seem to remember the most are specifically striking elements of a few NPCs, villains, encounters, and social interactions. Generally speaking, they will not remember a location very much unless a specific element of that location ties directly to one of those elements. They may not remember a location featuring a really sweet bridge if you describe it to them, but set a dramatic encounter on that bridge and they’re much more likely to remember the details of that location.
Review: Heroes of Shadow
The book Player’s Option: Heroes of Shadow is the first real print product we have seen for 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons since the Essentials line and also marks what I hope is the end in what I perceived as a lag in print products for the game. Heroes of Shadow was delayed from March until April so that it could be printed as a hard cover book instead of a smaller format paperback, and I am very pleased with having a larger sized hardcover in my hands with 4E content in it after months without one. What this book contains is exactly what you would expect from a book focusing on player characters that tap into the shadow power source and draw their inspiration from the darker corners of your D&D universes. Its contents range from entirely new classes to new builds for existing classes to new races and more than a handful of new options for characters of all types that want to have a bit darker tilt to their abilities.
Agents of the Un-Kingdom: The Thoughteater
As the Conquering Dreamer’s forces dig further into an area, the arsenal they utilize grows. Nullmen are replaced, but the legion also begins to grow as victims are caught and transformed into new ambitionless soldiers. New creations emerge as well, the most terrifying of which is the thoughteater. It turns out that all the Un-kingdom needs is your body. Your thoughts are useless garbage, which the thoughteater feeds on.
Junk Punch
You have been sucker punched. As a gamer, you’ve been categorized and used as a negative stereotype to illustrate points about terrible movies. Video games and gamers get a bum rap in film criticism. Film critics seem to like to use video games and the people who play them as a culturally understood idiom. This practice makes the critics look as bad as what they might be criticizing.
The Architect DM: On Dungeons
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the iconic “Dungeon” concept that many of us think of when we think of it in the context of Dungeons & Dragons. Also because only a month or two ago Dave wrapped up his 4E run through the Temple of Elemental Evil with custom mechanics to add to the “large dungeon crawl” feel of the adventures. Now I find my own campaign on the verge of the epic tier (the characters are currently level 19/20), and I am beginning to brainstorm a series of elemental dungeons that they will have to go through as a form of the Temple of Elemental Evil now fractured and embodied in five separate temples. Yes, I loved The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and I plan on stealing liberally from it.
Battletech Introductory Box Set Preview & Review
I have been a die hard fan of Battletech since I first picked up a Technical Readout book and wondered what all of the information about awesome looking giant mechs was really used for. Three years ago when Catalyst Game Labs acquired the Battletech license and put out the Classic Battletech boxed set, I was excited but didn’t get a chance to pick one up before the print run completely sold out. That’s why I flipped out when I saw the new Battletech Introductory Boxed Set in a vendor’s stand at PAX East and quickly picked up a copy.
Interview with PAX East Champion Dungeon Master, Matt Brenner
In early March of 2011, at the PAX East gaming conference, Wizards of the Coast sponsored the second annual PAX East Dungeon Master’s Challenge. In the end Matt Brenner took away the prize and title as Champion Dungeon Master.
Danny’s PAX East 2011 Recap
Just over a week ago we returned from Boston and from my first PAX ever, which I’m very happy to say was incredibly fun for both myself and my wife from start to finish. Without a doubt the highlight of PAX East for me is much the same as other conventions like GenCon, and that’s meeting great people and getting to play games with people that I don’t normally have the opportunity to game with. However there are a few big differences that I noticed which really made PAX East stand out from the other conventions that I’ve been to.
Agents of the Un-Kindgom: The Nullmen
There were no words, just… one of them approached you, pulled you close to its mask…and your mind started flooding with shame, with anxiety, with fear, and guilt…before you knew it you were revealing everything you know about anything. I could hear myself babbling and bawling like a baby, but I couldn’t stop. I just couldn’t stop. Once they got the person they had come for, they dragged him out of town and left us survivors here, weak, exhausted, and empty.
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