Robot Viking

How do you keep track of your campaigns? Do you write it down in a master list? Do you rely on an exceptional memory? What about if a campaign takes a hiatus? Here’s how I’ve used Obsidian Portal to solve some common campaign problems.

About three years ago, author Nick Logue made big plans to create his own company (Sinister Adventures) and release products for his Razor Coast setting, one filled with pirates and high adventure. Logue fumbled the ball badly and left a lot of people waiting for unfulfilled pre-orders. Now Lou Agresta is manning the helm to [...]

The folks behind CthulhuTech have always done one thing very right, and that is flavor. Say what you will of their mechanics, their setting information and fiction is among the top tier of RPGs. More to the point, they recently released another setting book moving their metaplot forward: Burning Horizon.

I’ve written a review of vampire/espionage thriller RPG Night’s Black Agents over at io9. The review includes an interview with NBA creator Kenneth Hite. Check it out!

The million dollar Kickstarter campaign for Pathfinder Online is drawing near the end (and just over $300K short as I write this). To help explain Goblinworks’ and Paizo’s grand vision for a sandbox MMORPG world that’s shaped by the players, Goblinworks’ chief technology officer Mark Kalmes answered some of our questions about the game and [...]

About a year ago, Robot Viking’s Pillager-In-Chief wrote an article for io9 brainstorming ways for making Magic: the Gathering into an RPG. Unaware of this, the west coast Vikings decided we would try to make a Magic RPG work. We later discovered Ed’s article and we shamelessly stole some things from it, but with some [...]

The bell tolls for thee, 4E. A lot of people have wondered what kind of D&D books will be released in 2013 if the D&D Next playtest is going to take two years. Menzoberranzan answers that question — edition-neutral books packed with fluffy lore and epic (p)ages of fictional history. That gives D&D fans a [...]

There’s a New Event Nearby, and it is in a little game called Guild Wars 2, the latest offering from ArenaNet. Fans of the original Guild Wars and its expansions likely wept tears of joy when it was announced and queued up for the head start weekend.

I was able to attend the D&D keynote address at Gen Con, talk with Mike Mearls about D&D for over an hour and play some D&D Next with him as the DM, and interview brand manager Laura Tommervik about Rise of the Underdark. I’ve gathered up all that info into one feature article that just [...]

I hope your GenCon was good. This week I would like to talk about a piece of gamer news that caught my attention at GenCon: D&DNext is going to take two years to playtest.

On the surface, Pelgrane Press’ 13th Age RPG looks like a slightly tweaked D&D rule set with a world populated by classic fantasy archetypes. You might think, “Why bother?” I did, at first. But then I had a chance to play it at Gen Con, with co-designer Rob Heinsoo as DM. That’s when I discovered [...]

GMs have competed at game cons all across the realm. Only a select few have had the mettle to prevail and be named an Iron Contender. They have imaginations of steel, creativity of titanium, table management skills of platinum, and nerves of partially depleted uranium. Here they stand.

One of the great ongoing RPG debates is “Grid combat with minis” versus “Slightly abstract combat without minis.” It’s particularly interesting right now, with a new edition of D&D in development. There is, of course, no correct answer. But something odd occurred to me this weekend that will forever shade my views on the subject.

The Unspeakable Oath is a magazine focused on the Call of Cthulhu RPG. It’s been around since the early 90s, but there was a long hiatus. Now fully resurrected by Arc Dream Publishing, the 21st issue came out this month. If you play CoC or one of its variants (or any horror RPG, really), this [...]