Robot Viking

Robot Viking is taking the week off. Hopefully, you have a few days off from school or work yourself — days which you are putting to good use playing games! We’ll be back in 2010 to celebrate Robot Viking’s birthday. Seriously, it’s been a whole year since the site launched.

To get your D&D game in the holiday spirit, you could tie jingle bells to your horse, hang mistletoe on your helm, or wrap your greataxe in garland. Or, you could just be Sinterklaas (the old Dutch version of Saint Nicholas upon which certain Christmas traditions are based). Ho Ho Hoooooooooooooooooooooo!

The era of Star Wars RPG era guides is over, which is probably a good idea, since they’ve already covered every conceivable time period in the Star Wars expanded universe. These new (well, newish) books offer a plethora of options for droid builders and droid characters, plus inside info on Star Wars military organizations, perfect [...]

The latest expansion for the Star Wars Miniatures game, The Dark Times, comes out next month. Aside from Boushh, Ubese Hunter, what else can you expect to find in the set? Alien scouts, Gungan bounty hunters, and the (in)famous General Veers back when he was just a Major. Check out our gallery of minis and [...]

Boushh’s reputation as brutal, calculating bounty hunter with a psychotic streak wasn’t the least bit diminished by the fact that he was successfully impersonated by a princess. Honest.

The sweet Sliver Premium Deck Wizards of the Coast recently released got me thinking about those weird polygenomic critters. A lot of Slivers have already been designed, using most of the basic keywords in Magic, but no one’s made a Sliver using one of the most popular current mechanics: Cascade.

There’s a lot of cool stuff going on with Magic: the Gathering these days. If you’re looking to drop a few gift-related hints to friends and family who might be doing a little holiday shopping this week, here are a few ideas.

Crafty Games has released the latest adventure for Fantasy Craft, their D20/OGL derived fantasy RPG. Not only is this adventure supported by an audio soundtrack and set terrain pieces, it’s been optimized to run in one or two game sessions (or one convention time slot). It’s got wyverns, goblins, cultists and a demon, plus the [...]

Crash Test Magic (where we design and test new spells, cards or features for our favorite games) has been away too long. Don’t call it a comeback — this new 4E monster power will make even low-level minions into a serious threat.

Having trouble finding enough adventure in the mortal world? Does the Feywild feel tame? The Shadowfell not double-dark enough for you? Then I guess it’s time to go sailing through the Elemental Chaos, where any old random nonsense can happen.

Earlier this week (Dec. 7, specifically), we marked the anniversary of Japan’s attack on the U.S. Naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. More than 2,300 Americans were killed on the “date which will live in infamy.” Everyone has their own way of respecting and memorializing both those who lost their lives and those who fought [...]

The first edition of the Draconomicon gave us all the inside info on chromatic dragons for D&D fourth edition. What about the good guys? The latest Draconomicon fleshes out the gold, silver, brass, bronze, copper, orium, iron, steel, mercury and other metallic dragons. Beware: they’re not as noble as you might remember them.

Robot Viking comrade Wood Ingham and his fellow writers over at Jet Pack have been steadily filling the world with intense bursts of strange fiction, and Wood’s latest, “So I caught up with Dennis,” is no exception (though it is, to be sure, quite exceptional).

Fourth Edition D&D is a cool system, and combat is usually a lot of fun (and more interactive and interesting than 3rd edition combat), but it has one flaw: it sometimes takes forever. Our gaming group has been experimenting with different ways to speed things along, and I think we’ve hit on something that works.