It's On The Ceiling! Roll d12:
1. d100 Swords of Damocles
2. City of the Intellectual Bats
3. Manhole-like trap door to maintenance level
4. Tapestry of webs depicting events in spider history
5. Stalactite pueblo dwellers: evil dungeon fairies
6. Adventurers impaled on barbed spikes
7. The furniture: nailed up by prankster
8. Alarming amount of dripping water and muddy seepage
9. Pulsating illumination from strange glass tubes in metal fixtures
10. Shriekers!
11. Eyes (d1000)
12. Hand-chiseled diagram of dungeon level
This and many other useful tables for DM improvisation at
The Dungeon Dozen. New table every day!
posted by JHarris
on Feb 3, 2012 -
22 comments
IRL : "You do anything long enough to escape the habit of living until the escape becomes the habit." A short film by a recovering WoW addict.
posted by crunchland
on Jan 31, 2012 -
35 comments
If you enjoy playing Dungeons & Dragons or similar fantasy RPGs, or if you just like reading in-depth analysis of fictional worlds, then the
Tome of Awesome [pdf] is for you.
[more inside]
posted by jedicus
on Jan 12, 2012 -
50 comments
Pokemon:
Game Freak and Nintendo's series of cartoony monster-training RPGs that kicked off huge crazes among the kids of both Japan and the U.S. In these games, children take up the calling of "Pokemon trainers," capturing the titular animals and then keeping them as pets or fighting them against either wild pokemon or those of other trainers.
Nobunaga's Ambition:
An even-longer-running classic series of historical strategy/simulation games produced by Koei. Noted for their realistic approach, their difficulty, and a high level of dryness. You grow rice, distribute it to your population to keep them happy, send out spies, guard against assassins, raise and train a military, and ultimately attempt to unite feudal-era Japan.
And now...
Pokemon + Nobunaga's Ambition, a Real Thing that will Soon Exist.
posted by JHarris
on Jan 1, 2012 -
26 comments
Haven't been addicted to a flash game in a while? Take on
Swords and Potions, where you tackle the under-appreciated other side of the RPG universe: being a shopkeeper! There's a lot to this game, so here's the
wiki if you need help, and don't worry about your productivity- turns take time to regenerate so you can't get stuck playing all day.
posted by BuddhaInABucket
on Sep 16, 2011 -
28 comments
NationStates is a free political simulation game founded by author
Max Barry back in 2002 (
previously). Loosely based on his dystopian corporate thriller
Jennifer Government, the game
starts by asking players to provide some national trappings and answer a few civics questions, then generates a virtual country with a matching political outlook.
Periodic policy decisions like mining rights and compulsory voting allow players to further modify their country along
axes of social, political, and economic freedom, arriving at one of
twenty-seven colorful government types like Tyranny By Majority or Scandinavian Liberal Paradise. There's also a healthy roleplaying community -- players can discuss current events in the
General forum, practice wargaming in
International Incidents, form cooperative Regions to debate internal affairs (many of which form
their own communities), and elect Delegates to send to the
World Assembly (so renamed after
an amusing cease-and-desist from the real-world U.N.). Their collective history is thoroughly recorded in
the 35,000-article NSWiki, which provides a
detailed legislative record,
gameplay guide, and profiles on many of the
90,000 active nations,
8,000 player regions, and
countless characters that currently make up the game world.
posted by Rhaomi
on May 9, 2011 -
62 comments
Following the success of
The Haunter of The Dark, the HP Lovecraft Literary Podcasts presents two new readings,
From Beyond and
The Picture in The House, by Andrew Leman and Bruce Green. Both recordings are available "In 3D". Alternatively if you like your Lovecraft with both pictures AND sound, the HP Lovecraft Historical Society version of
The Whisperer in Darkness is complete and being shown at worldwide film festivals - it's a talkie! (The HPLHS are now also offering a rather handsome
"official membership" pack.) Want something more interactive?
Cthulhu Dark offers a complete Lovecraftian tabletop RPG system that fits on two sides of a sheet of paper. Please note:
"If you fight any creature you meet, you will die. Thus, in these core rules, there are no combat rules or health levels. Instead, roll to hide or escape."
posted by Artw
on Mar 29, 2011 -
21 comments
In 1989, Milton Bradley debuted
HeroQuest, a board game in the style of Dungeons and Dragons. Not to be bested at their own game, D&D's parent company
TSR released
Dragon Strike (reviewed
here by
Angry Video Game Nerd's James Rolfe.) Packaged with the board game was a
low-budget fantasy short film meant to simultaneously set the mood, demonstrate a potential adventure and explain the rules.
posted by griphus
on Jan 9, 2011 -
74 comments
You are in a warm, dark, comfortable place. This has been your place since you became aware that you are alive. It's almost time to enter a different world now.
In 1986, Activision published a roleplaying computer game called
Alter Ego. Unlike the action and fantasy titles that ruled the day, this game simulated the course of a single ordinary life. Beginning at birth, players navigated a series of vignettes: learning to crawl, reacting to strangers, getting a first haircut. The outcome of each scenario subtly influenced one's path, and with every choice players slowly progressed through infancy, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and old age.
Graphically minimalist -- one's lifestream is represented by simple icons, and the scenarios are all text -- the game was nevertheless engaging, describing the world in a playful, good-natured tone tinged by darkness and melancholy. And it had quite a pedigree; developer and psychology PhD
Peter Favaro interviewed hundreds of people on their most memorable life experiences to generate the game's 1,200 pages of material. Unfortunately for Dr. Favaro, the game didn't sell very well. But it lives on through the web --
PlayAlterEgo.com offers a full copy of the game free to play in your browser, and the same port is available as a $5 app for
iPhone and
Android.
More: Port discussion group -
Wishlist -
Vintage review - Original game manual (
text or
scans)
posted by Rhaomi
on Dec 31, 2010 -
46 comments
Nehrim is atotal conversion of the Oblivion engine by the German amateur team at
SureAI. Four years in the making and one of the largest mod projects ever completed, it features a massive new hand-crafted world, an elaborate and compelling main quest, dozens of side-quests, over 50 professional voice actors, a reworked leveling and crafting system, new spells, new items, new enemies and an original score of over 50 songs. Those who persevere through the prologue into this open world will be rewarded with a
truly brilliant classical RPG.
[more inside]
posted by sophist
on Oct 7, 2010 -
17 comments
Flash Friday:
Mardek 3 is an rpg similar in style and length to the Final Fantasy or Earthbound games from the SNES days. But that's not all!
[more inside]
posted by Lemurrhea
on Jul 16, 2010 -
11 comments
"The impression that Ars Magica requires a Ph.d in medieval history to play was not helped by several supplements for the fourth edition that were in fact written by Ph.d’s in medieval history." Don't let that stop you, though; you can
download the fourth edition for free.
[more inside]
posted by kaibutsu
on Jun 7, 2010 -
19 comments
