My sister Katelin bought me a game a while back called Iota. I hadn’t ever heard of it, but she said it was fun and that I might like it.Read More »
The High Cost of Living and Dying and Having an Angel Cast Raise Dead
On Sunday morning, one of my D&D groups assaulted a fortress full of ogres. It didn’t go so well, and one of them ended up dying, but I used an NPC ally of theirs to bring them back to life. I have some reservations about this all the way through.Read More »
The Perils of a Night’s Rest
Last night, one of my D&D groups cracked open the outer door of a prison containing a demon that has been imprisoned for hundreds of years, with the intention of killing it once and for all. But about halfway through the dungeon, low on resources with one of the PCs having been inches from death, they’ve decided that they should probably retreat for now and come back the next day after recovering. They are aware that there is a danger that the demon could escape and either come after them or cause some other havoc.
But if the PCs do decide to turn back and return the following day, what should the demon do in the meantime?Read More »
Fifth Time’s a Charm
Wizards of the Coast recently released the Fifth Edition (5E) of Dungeons & Dragons. After years of playing Pathfinder, having been disappointed by 4th Edition, my friends and I have decided to try out Fifth, and I’m really pleased with what they’ve come up with.Read More »
Adventure in Candy Land
A few months back, my fiancée Danielle said she would learn how to play Pathfinder if I made an adventure for her that was themed after Candy Land. I told her I was game, but never quite got around to making the adventure, having not found, I suppose, just the right inspiration to get the creative process started. But two or three weeks ago, our friend Bryan heard about our bargain and, with my permission, decided to step in and make the adventure himself. Last night, he ran that adventure.Read More »
Missing Friends
A quick aside: My friend Baker back in New Haven had a birthday recently, and she and some of my former colleagues went to the Irish Club in East Haven to celebrate. They sent me the following pictures, which was bittersweet to see them still playing Smallworld and Zombie Dice without me.Read More »
Dungeons of Catan
Danielle and I had Erik over tonight for dinner. I experimented with making some turkey burgers, which I would classify as a good first attempt. I’ll make them again, and maybe I’ll make them better.
A more solidly successful venture was the game Erik brought over that he purchased at Aero yesterday after the Theros Prerelease: Lords of Waterdeep.Read More »
DC Comics Deck Building Game Blog Post
One of Amazon’s daily deals recently was a set of discounts on a handful of board games, some of which I owned, but most of which I didn’t and hadn’t heard much about. One of the ones I had heard nothing about was the DC Comics Deck Building Game, which I promptly snatched up for a very reasonable price. I was skeptical, for some reason, about anything licensed by DC, maybe because they license a lot of crap, and because it stank of something that was not a labor of love created by an independent game designer nor a project benefitting from the expertise an established game studio with a proven track record, but its odor was instead of capitalization on the popularity of deck building games.Read More »
A Trap They Set For Themselves to Get Them Through the Day
I just finished watching “The Booth at the End” on Hulu tonight. I will be spoiling plenty in this post, but I suspect many of you won’t ever watch it, even though I enjoyed it. Nevertheless, you’ve been warned. I mention this show because in the last episode the old man in the booth who makes “deals” with people says something that’s awful reminiscent of how some people conceive of games, but he’s not talking about games at all: “A trap they set for themselves to get them through the day.”Read More »
Reinventing the Multivariate Hypergeometric Wheel
On Monday morning, instead of packing—something that I’ve been saying a lot lately—I was doing research for strategies at Magic: the Gathering sealed deck tournaments, since I’m going to one on Saturday, and I generally suck at Magic, at least when it comes to the whole winning part. I ended up fascinated by the certainty with which experts break down how many lands you should have in a 40 card sealed deck, and got to thinking about the probabilities here.Read More »
No Free Parking Money 