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Role Playing (Games) Books Media Book Reviews

Dungeons and Shadows 282

Table-top Roleplaying has had a big year. There have been a number of important releases from several of the well-known product lines. Sales and turnout from August's Gen Con Indianapolis event would tend to suggest that the downturn the industry has experienced recently is a temporary problem. That's good news for Wizards of the Coast's well known Dungeons and Dragons line and the FanPro published Shadowrun campaign setting. Both are heavy hitters in the world of Table-top gaming, and today I have details and opinions on what you can expect in your Friendly Local Gaming Store from the latter half of the year. Read on for a hardcore dose of nerd.
City of Splendors: Waterdeep
Eric L. Boyd
Wizards of the Coast
$29.95, 160 pages

Waterdeep is one of the largest cities on the Sword Coast, the western shore of the continent known as Faerun. Ed Greenwood's Forgotten Realms setting for Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) is the most popular setting supported by Wizards of the Coast (WotC). Stretching back more than a decade, it has an enormous backstory that can be somewhat intimidating to dive into. Waterdeep attempts to allay the fears of a Dungeon Master (DM) looking to set a campaign in the most well known city of the setting. The book offers up political intrigue, mercantile callousness, and an endless parade of Non-Player Characters (NPCs). Unfortunately, Mr. Boyd's effort to capture the richness of the setting falls somewhat short. The issue at hand is a complaint I have about several WotC products. Waterdeep is a mere 157 pages and retails for $29.95. Within those pages, the book is packed tight with information. A history of the city, notable NPC guilds and organizations, and important personages flesh out the bulk of the book's front-end. As with most D&D books there are new prestige classes, monsters, and spells. This stems from WotC's determination that every book has something for both players and DMs. At the center of the 157 pages is a mere 20 pages worth of localities within the city. It seems to me that describing the city would be the primary purpose of the book, but almost as much time is spent on prestige classes as in providing an understanding of the city's layout. At $30 a pop it's imperative that a tome either be focused on DMs, focused on players, or have good integration of the two types of content. While City of Splendors provides copious details, the inclusion of relatively weak player-oriented content dilutes the purpose and impact of the book. Players will be severely under-served by this offering, and DMs should only consider purchasing it if they know they're going to be running a long-term campaign in this particular corner of the Realms.

Weapons of Legacy
Bruce R. Cordell, Kolja Raven Liquette, Travis Stout
Wizards of the Coast
$34.95, 224 pages

Weapons of Legacy is an 'options' book that provides players and DMs with something that every gamer wants in droves: crunchy stuff. The pages of this book are filled with descriptions of noteworthy items with sometimes sordid but always interesting histories. As a result of the weight of history around the items in this book, not only are they magical but powerful to boot. Each item, whether weapon, armor, or amulet, has a detailed history associated with it. When found by a player character it appears to be a simple (usually underpowered) magical crafting, but detailed study and rituals can unlock the potential within. The enhanced features of the item are only available to someone who has followed specific rituals that directly relate to the item's history. Additionally, they must take feats to allow them access to the unlocked power. Requiring characters to invest themselves in order to get the most out of an item ensures balance. Whereas Waterdeep's diluted focus resulted in a mediocre offering, Weapons of Legacy offers plenty for both DMs and players by integrating the content for both groups into a cohesive whole. While there are classes and spells, they tie directly into the overall legacy item theme of the book and do not seem the least bit out of place. The mechanics for using the weapons are sound and DMs can chortle with glee, as the in-depth backstories associated with each item are tremendous hooks to hang adventures on. Above and beyond simply moving a campaign's plot forward, the specific rituals associated with the item provide a sense of history to the gameworld and willingly have players insinuating themselves into a campaign's plot. For folks that just need to tweak, there are even rules provided for creating new Weapons of Legacy. This book isn't for everyone, of course. Legacy items are a neat idea and the book's ideas are executed very well, but not every campaign or character is going to benefit from this tome. Despite that, if the idea intrigues you'll find a well-integrated sourcebook with interesting ideas and a lot of backstory just waiting to get your gears moving.

Five Nations
Bill Slavicsek, David Noonan, Chris Perkins
Wizards of the Coast
$29.95, 160 pages

The newest campaign setting that Wizards of the Coasts supports is Eberron. Developed after an exhaustive search through thousands of proposals, Eberron is a unique style of D&D play. Incorporating elements of pulp mystery, Indiana Jones, and gritty war stories, Eberron is very different than the high fantasy nature of the Forgotten Realms or Greyhawk. Five Nations is the first sourcebook for the setting which details the world at large. It describes the nations that once made up the ancient kingdom of Galifar. At war for over a hundred years, they've only recently found peace. Each nation has a dedicated chapter and provides a host of details for both players that might want to know about a character's homeland, and for DMs looking to set an adventure there. Besides basic histories and geography, there are some great fiddly bits strewn throughout the book. Sidebars in each of the chapters details five things that every countryman knows, for example, and there are 'daily life' examples for each nation. Each chapter also contains prestige classes and adventure hooks, the occasional monster or spell, and wraps all of these elements together into a detailed overview. The book conveys a lot of information in a surprisingly thin pagecount, and is well worth the pricetag. Simply put, this is a must-have for anyone planning on running a game in Eberron. It fills in many of the gaps the core book leaves open and offers a bevy of opportunities for adventure and intrigue. Players will find it extremely enjoyable as well, with lots of crunchy elements to empower characters and a satisfying amount of detail about a PC's homeland. Every chapter is a mini-sourcebook, and taken together Five Nations is a solid reference for every Eberron campaign.

Explorer's Handbook
David Noonan, Prank Brunner, Rich Burlew
Wizards of the Coast
$29.95, 160 pages

Where Five Nations acts as a reference to the world of Eberron, the Explorer's Handbook is a DM-specific tome that allows for intuitive mix-and-match adventuring. Most of the book is made up of locations, self-contained areas that can be dropped into an ongoing campaign or strung together to form an adventure. In addition to the adventure locales, the Handbook begins by offering extensive details on the act of traveling within Eberron. An emphasis is placed on the idiosyncrasies of airship, rail, and sea travel. Explorer organizations, prestige classes, and some equipment is also detailed, all with the idea of preparing and provisioning an expedition to a far-off place. While this section nominally offers content for players, the rest of the book is completely focused on the needs of the Dungeon Master. The adventure locations are divided into 'Points of Origin', 'Midpoints', and 'Destinations'. Each chapter collects a handful of places grouped together around a theme. Each 'Point of Origin' is a place to find or set off for adventure, such as a nightclub or train station. NPCs to staff the location, some flavour to interest player characters, and several possible adventure hooks are offered to provide a DM with everything he needs to run the locale. 'Midpoints', in turn, are more exotic places that can offer up more clues and draw characters further into the plot. An elven city populated by good-aligned undead is one such location, a trove of knowledge held by benign beings with a truly alien outlook. 'Destinations' are all obscure or hidden locations typically fraught with danger. They're the endpoints to an adventure, allowing characters answers to their questions and opponents to defeat. A variety of end-points are offered, from a dragon's astrological observatory to an abandoned city of giants. Explorer's Handbook does a competent job of guiding the DM's hand. In addition to concrete localities, the examples hand an Eberron DM blueprints for constructing the kind of pulp high adventure the setting is known for. It's essentially of no use for the average player, but a DM looking for assistance in creating an Eberron campaign could find much worse than this particular bag of tricks.

Loose Alliances
Malik Toms, Peter Taylor, et. al.
FanPro
$24.99, 128 pages

The world of Shadowrun is a complicated place. Just over fifteen years of publications with the Shadowrun (SR) name attached makes for a phenomenally rich backstory for this cyberpunk-meets-Tolkien gameworld. Loose Alliances is a tool for Game Masters (GMs) and players to understand the heavyweights of the world more fully. With an ever-increasing number of books detailing the Shadowrun world outside the city of Seattle (the traditional setting for an SR game), there are ever more opportunities to go running around the globe. Loose Alliances breaks down the movers and shakers outside of the corporate set. In Shadowrun even political movements, religious groups and the idle rich have a use for 'deniable assets', and where there's money and interest there's a hook for a GM. As with most 'background' sourcebooks, Loose Alliances is presented as a series of electronic documents on the network of pirate Matrix (a world spanning virtual reality) sites called Shadowland. Numerous commentaries from the peanut gallery should make most Slashdot readers right at home, given the wide range of opinion and bias that run through the observations. Between the posted text and the comments, Loose Alliances gives a reader a better feel for the ways in which groups of like-minded people affect the SR world. While most Shadowrun games involve characters doing illegal things for and against world-girding corporations, the metahuman rights organization down the street or a religious group is just as likely to have dirty deeds that need doing. The best sourcebooks for this setting open up the world beyond the cookie-cutter expectations some games can fall prey to, and Loose Alliances does an admirable job of exposing GMs and players to new possibilities.

Shadows of Asia
John Szeto, Jason Levine, et. al.
FanPro
$29.99, 231 pages

The 'Shadows of' series of Shadowrun books are geographical guides. Already published Shadows of North America and Shadows of Europe are joined by this guide to the east. Besides the war-torn microcountries of China and the Japanese Imperialist state, the book goes into detail on nearby areas such as the Indian subcontinent, Pakistan, Iran, Israel, and the Philippines. Though some previous sourcebooks have touched on this area of the world (specifically the Philippine's fight for freedom against the occupying Japanese), there has never before been a dedicated look at the region for the setting. The most geopolitically active areas of the region, such as China and Japan, receive long treatments discussing local history, important cities, and general trends in the country. Smaller nations receive one to two page summaries of the most important elements a runner is likely to need to know. It's difficult for me to separate my appreciation for the pure flavour information within the setting from what might be useful to the average player or GM. These types of books offer the most insight into the backstory of the gameworld, and Shadows of Asia provides GMs hundreds of little plot hooks, for localities from Neo-Tokyo to Jerusalem. They are fantastic resources for the Game Master, essentially making this book required reading if you ever plan on running a game set east of Poland and west of Seattle. For a player, though, there isn't a great reason to pick up the book. There aren't any character options and the book has more detail than most players would probably want for their backstory. If deep background is what you're after, though, both GMs and players will find that Shadows of Asia fills in a large gap in your Shadowrun worldview.

System Failure
Drew Curtis, Jason Levine, et. al.
FanPro
$29.99, 128 pages

One of the most enjoyable aspects of the Shadowrun world is that it is far from a static place. Just as time, politics, and technology move forward in real life, so too does the reality of the Shadowrun setting. Every few years setting publisher FanPro releases a sourcebook that has serious ramifications for the world at large. One classic sourcebook turned the city of Chicago into a post-apocalyptic nightmare of gang lords and killer insect spirits. Another discussed the birth of an Artificial Intelligence in the midst of a crisis situation. System Failure does more than just provide interesting color; it wipes the slate clean on the Shadowrun universe's computational otherworld called the Matrix. A terrorist attack by a group of anti-technological fanatics, combined with the machinations of the aforementioned AI manages to corrupt and destroy most of the world's communications and informational systems. The book provides the background needed to understand the players involved and the scope of the events. It's not a traditional adventure per se, but instead provides a number of tools for creating adventures. GMs can use provided adventure hooks to bring player characters into the momentous events detailed in the book, either working for or against the forces planning the destruction of a fundamental element of the Shadowrun world. System Failure is Shadowrun at its absolute best, bringing together numerous plot threads that in some cases have been brewing for over a decade. Even without the plot significance, the sheer cool factor of the events described will make for amazing campaigns with a vaguely end-of-days feel. Definitely not a book for players, GMs of the setting can use it to craft an entire campaign or just use it to fully understand the world-reshaping events that lead to the newest edition of the setting.

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Dungeons and Shadows

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  • Neat. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Short Circuit ( 52384 ) * <mikemol@gmail.com> on Monday November 14, 2005 @04:06PM (#14028767) Homepage Journal
    Articles like this are why we should have a Games section, and a dedicated Games editor.
    • We have one (you should see games.slashdot.org in your address bar right now). It's just that most Games section articles don't show up for people by default because you have to explicitly choose to see the Games category in your preferences.
    • Re:Neat. (Score:2, Insightful)

      by JavaScrybe ( 662349 )
      Were I to have Mod points, I'd mod you up in a second.

      There really should be a distinct icon for tabletop RPGs, there certainly is a critical mass of pen-and-paper roleplayers on /.. The FFII icon just doesn't represent nights of cola, chips and dice-rolling.
    • Re:Neat. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by rjforster ( 2130 ) on Monday November 14, 2005 @04:35PM (#14029013) Journal
      Almost.

      We need a games-that-are-not-computer-games games section.

      Kind of like "news for nerds, stuff for people who know what FLGS means"
      or
      "news for nerds, stuff for people who don't know how many dice they own"

    • Re:Neat. (Score:3, Informative)

      by Surt ( 22457 )
      http://games.slashdot.org/ [slashdot.org]

      Or maybe your are suggesting a 'non-video' games section?
  • Alternity (Score:2, Insightful)

    by MicktheMech ( 697533 )
    I won't be impressed until WotC brings back Alternity. That was a blatant FOX move, pulling a line because it isn't generating the revenues of your juggernaut.
    • It seems that Alternity went away with the launch of the 3rd editon of DnD and the launch of D20. I have got back to my Dark*Matter books to see if it might be converted to D20 but no one wanted to play with me, so i never finished.

      so sad...role playing is fun stuff
  • by RandoX ( 828285 ) on Monday November 14, 2005 @04:09PM (#14028787)
    Every year someone complains that tabletop roleplaying is going to go under because of different causes. Religious nut jobs, PC games, console games, live action roleplaying. Guess what, as long as there are nerds there will be roleplaying. Too many DMs have invested too much cash to just stop.
    • Tabletop gaming is a lot more about the socializing than the game mechanics or story for most of the groups I've played with. I don't find the same thing with Console or PC games. (and I didn't enjoy LARP the time I tried).
    • You could reasonably argue that tabletop RPG's would be going away if there was a 100% replacement for them. I don't play RPG's as much anymore because they are way too time consuming, but I've found that they provide a lot of unique things that I don't get from other sources.

      MMORPG's that I've played are, in essence, all the dull parts of RPG'ing with good graphics. Lots of hacking and slashing of NPC's (dice rolls), and that's the bulk of it. There's a social element to it, but frequently the social el
  • by sdaemon ( 25357 ) on Monday November 14, 2005 @04:12PM (#14028813)
    all of my Friendly Local Gaming Stores seem to keep going out of business :(

    Sword of the Phoenix was sort of the Mecca for All Things Gaming here in Atlanta for...as long as I can remember. They just closed up permanently this year. The game shops (I think they were actually called The Game Shoppe) in the local malls closed up two or three years ago. About the only places I can find locally are either used bookstores with varied wares (and rarely anything new), or stores dedicated mainly to comic books or collectible card games. Other than the slim pickings there, the only option is mail-order.
    • Ah ha! (Score:5, Funny)

      by savi ( 142689 ) on Monday November 14, 2005 @04:22PM (#14028896)
      If only there were a way to purchase gaming books without going to a used bookstore or using a mail-order catalogue? This sounds like ... a quest!!!

      First, we will need to bring this old bucket to the ancient witch by the village well. She will then tell us of a strange, spider-like beast lurking nearby in the woods, known only to the local inhabitants "The Interweb."

      DUN DUN DUN ...
    • by decipher_saint ( 72686 ) on Monday November 14, 2005 @04:31PM (#14028972)
      I DM a large group, everything from first time RPG'ers to a few old hands and I hear things consistantly between all of them: "[we] can buy our books cheaper online".

      Much as comics receeded from mass distribution to specialty comic shops in the 70s/80s I see new RPG material and supplements going into a catalog only system. Sure used stuff and core books will probably still be staples at most comic / gaming stores, but you don't strictly need every D&D supplement that comes out every X months, there's just no market for it. And sadly when a store owner has to choose shelf space between the next niche RPG supplement or something that's really in demand it's going to be an easy decisiion.

      HOWEVER, most places that i frequent that carry a wide array of RPG stuff are usually that way because the owner or owners are passionate about the game and will try to have as many books on hand to attract the "serious" diceroller crowd. The store I purchase most of my comics and RPG stuff from (Warp 2 in Edmonton) is run by an RPG enthusiast and a couple real comic-heads and is probably one of the better places in the city to buy new material when it comes out, again, because the owner is passionate for the material he will make sure it's there.
      • by Syberghost ( 10557 ) <`moc.tsohgrebys' `ta' `tsohgrebys'> on Monday November 14, 2005 @05:17PM (#14029412)
        The problem is that gamers tend to be less well-off financially. People who can afford to ignore the costs of their hobbies are less likely to also be able to pull 12-hour Saturdays or all-nighter Thursdays playing games, and so can't always buy from their local vendor, even though I'm sure most of us can agree that's better for the community. However, although things are once again in the bleak side of the cycle for your local game shop, they're improving for your local gamer.

        There are an increasing number of systems that available directly over the internet; I'm not talking about ordering a paper book, I'm talking about downloading a PDF or text file directly. In many cases, they're cheaper than the printed version of the same system. There is a limit to how much cheaper they can be, however; the majority of the cost of producing a professional RPG or supplement isn't in the printing. You still have to do just as much work writing, editing, procuring or commissioning artwork, etc. However, you can cut out the distribution costs, which are a good half the total price to the consumer.

        Many games now have "fast-play" rules sets for download, which are good enough for everybody but the GM, but some even have full systems available for download free. If you have a laptop this is a godsend, but more than a few gamers have downloaded these things at work and printed 'em out on the company laser printer for non-laptop use. Not that I'm recommending the latter course of action, of course. As disposable computing becomes more commonplace, I expect to see e-book readers cross a hurdle or two and supplement laptops, opening this course up to a lot of people who can't really afford a decent laptop presently.

        Additionally, I think it's only a matter of time at this point before somebody starts offering print-on-demand book sales; the only question is whether the big book chains (Borders, Barnes and Noble, etc.) beat the big printing chains (Kinkos, uhm I don't care who else, etc.) to the punch. When that happens, you'll be able to walk into your local Kinkos or whatever and walk out the door with a professionally-printed book.

        When these things combine, your local game shop may not recover, unless it focuses on dice, figures, and services; provide comfortable chairs and computers so that the local gamers can meet in your store and use your computers, and you might even be able to sell the service, IF you do it right. A really good player-locating service and an active gamer club run from your store can bring people in. Of course, places like Kinkos can fight you there, too, since many have conference rooms.

        I envision the successful gaming store of 10 years from now consisting of a small merchandise area with lots of dice and t-shirts, a concession area with cheap but profitable food and drinks, and a lot of comfy couches with permanently-tethered GM laptops and free WiFi. It would offer a web-based player locator service, ideally through a partner instead of trying to run the web server themselves. The most successful ones would be within walking distance of a Kinkos, and preferably also of a college.
      • Anything you know you want to buy before you get to the store is doomed to die out unless it has a compelling reason to be in a retail space. It's time for those stores to adapt their business model to a new reality. That reality is: people can buy books cheaply online.

        What does a local game store offer which is unique?

        Personally, if I were looking to do that sort of thing, I'd be interested in doing a sort of modular nerd paradise. Here's what I'd want to offer:

        (1) Food. Food is high margin and if someone
    • There are two gaming shops just North of atlanta that I recommend: Dr. No's which is just north of marietta http://www.drnos.com/ [drnos.com] - run by a friend - Tell Buck/BJ that Andy sent you. And the war room is in the gwinnett area, which is north on 85 http://www.thewarroom.com/index.asp [thewarroom.com] happy gaming!!
    • About the only places I can find locally are either used bookstores with varied wares (and rarely anything new), or stores dedicated mainly to comic books or collectible card games. Other than the slim pickings there, the only option is mail-order.

      Hmm...... I know for a fact that my Barnes and Noble actually carries Dungeon and Dragons game books. I don't know how many but I do know for a fact that since I opened up one of them and started reading it.
    • Around here there's always been two. When one goes under another pops up to take it's place.
    • The War Room is still around-- though it's moved...

      -F
    • Sword of the Phoenix was sort of the Mecca for All Things Gaming here in Atlanta for...as long as I can remember.

      Oh man. I loved Sword of the Phoenix when I lived in Atlanta...
      When I was in the Air Force, stationed in northern Mississippi, we took road trips to Atlanta just to go to SOTP...

      Yeah, big nerds, we was...
    • (Note: ###'s are used in place of name of a company)

      I've purchased a few things from my local Comic Book Store, but unfortunately our unfriendly neighborhood huge book chain (########.######.ca) have them cheaper, and in fact, their online store is cheaper than their retail store (and by a considerable amount!). For example...

      On the Wizards.com website, the Dungeon Masters Guide II: Price $39.95 ; C$55.95

      Our local gaming shop? Just a bit over $56.
      Our local huge book store? $55.95
      Our local huge book on
      • On the Wizards.com website, the Dungeon Masters Guide II: Price $39.95 ; C$55.95

        Our local gaming shop? Just a bit over $56.
        Our local huge book store? $55.95
        Our local huge book online store? $37.48
        i####### Member Price: $35.61 (i####### is $20 for a year)

        Yeah. It only seems to work for game books though if Im going through Barnes and Noble. They list an additional 20% discount for their books. I wonder why. (Yes it wasn't that hard to figure out which company you were talking about. The $20 discount car

    • I believe you're now looking for www.atlantagamefactory.com [atlantagamefactory.com]

      They're on 10th Street by Georgia Tech. They're doing great. RPG's every tuesday. Board games on Wednesdays and Saturdays. They're cheaper than SotP was, and the owners are all nice guys. They have a great discount too.

      Take I85/75 to the 10th street exit, go west on 10th street, they're on your right after City Cafe.

      --michael
    • Sword of the Phoenix was sort of the Mecca for All Things Gaming here in Atlanta for...as long as I can remember. They just closed up permanently this year.

      I hear your pain, man. Sword of the Phoenix was a great little shop, and its death is part and parcel of the continuing polarization of the industry into two camps -- the small indy game industry and the far more familiar mass-market supplement factories.

      Neither of these camps really support the local game store anymore.

      The former category relies on the
    • by Audacious ( 611811 ) on Monday November 14, 2005 @07:28PM (#14030428) Homepage
      I felt that I had to say something here.

      A friend of mine plays D&D and he used to live in Corpus Christi, Texas. One thing about CC was that there were a lot of people who wanted to play D&D et al but there really wasn't anyplace for them to meet and play. Further, it was only a few people who wanted to get together at the time and they didn't want to meet in some place where they would have to put up with all of the screaming and yelling and other problems which occur when you play in a game shop's back room or floor.

      Their solution was this:

      Get a group together and go find a cheap unused shopping strip and talk with the owners. Tell them their problem and see if the owner would be willing to rent some of the space out to them on the weekend so they could have some place to gather and play. They started out with a place that cost them $100.00 a month. It was in a bad neighborhood but there was plenty of parking because no one ever came to the shopping strip. (When I visited him there was only one shop open there for some small company.) They only used the place on the weekends and always left it cleaned up so if the owner got someone they could move in without any problems. Well, first thing they did was to pool their money to buy a small refrigerator (one of those $50.00-$100.00 models) so everyone could bring their drinks and keep them cool. Then they decided that each person would donate $0.50 for each drink so they could use the money to pay for the place. Then someone decided to buy boxes of candy and bring that. Since each drink cost about $0.25 and each candy bar only cost around $0.30 each (they sold them to themselves for $1.00 each), the club made enough money each month to pay the owner and have quite a bit left over. This allowed them to rent the space for the entire month - which they did.

      Once they'd begun renting the space for the entire month they went about getting more people to come to the club. The rules were simple. No outside food or drinks. If you wanted something more substantial than soda and candy you either left and ate outside of the club or made a suggestion on what the club should provide. But, if you suggested something, they bought it, and then no one ate it, it was then put on a list (white board by that time) of things tried and found to be not a good thing for the club to buy. This eliminated a lot of the problems and the club prospered. When I went to visit the club again, it had over 100 people in it, maintained a list of who wanted to use the club when, had a BBS set up to handle reservations and annoucements, and the club's size was well over 6000sq ft of space. It was costing them around $500.00 a month for usage and they were even thinking of moving to somewhere a bit fancier. The walls had been hand painted by the club members with pictures of dragons, castles, treasure, and what-not. They were having contests like the greatest amount of treasure obtained in a game, the highest level, and so forth. They were talking of moving to a new location that would allow them to have glassed in areas so that each of the groups didn't disturb the others while playing yet still allowing everyone to see everyone else playing and having a good time.

      And this all started with just four people who wanted to play D&D.
  • I think MMO's are replacing most table top games, I don't think table top games will ever die but, people want to experience and see and feel "real" things, instead of just imagining them.

    Just look at the kinds of PC games and video games being released, we don't want overcomplex table top games, we want simple fun, easy to get into games because of the massive constraints now on our time.
    • by Evangelion ( 2145 ) on Monday November 14, 2005 @04:22PM (#14028906) Homepage
      I don't think table top games will ever die but, people want to experience and see and feel "real" things, instead of just imagining them.

      Wrong. I'd give anything to play D&D again.

      The problem simply is, that as an adult, with a job and a family, if I were to play D&D again, I might... MIGHT be able to play twice a month. And that's assuming that the other people in my group were as dedicated as I was. Which is never the case.

      In reality, we've gotten together twice in the last 6 months.

      On the other hand, I can log on to WoW and play two hours a night after the kids are asleep.

      People play MMOs because they like actually being able to PLAY, instead of schedule coordinate and then get disappointed when no one shows up.

      I don't have to worry about THAT until MC.
      • Nicely put.

        The recent success of MMORPGs like WoW have been proven to have expanded the market.

        This gives a greater chance that some of the neophytes to the genre will jump over into tabletop gaming to diversify their entertainment. Many of them are younger and have less demands on their time, thus can afford 9-hour runs in MC (and the like). Once they grow bored of the limitations inherent to computer-mediated games like WoW, it may bode well for tabletop fantasy RPG games.

        Just a thought...

        /K

      • On the other hand, I can log on to WoW and play two hours a night after the kids are asleep.

        Of course, nothing prevents you from playing any tabletop game on-line...chat rooms, IRC, etc. People have been doing this for a long time.

      • "On the other hand, I can log on to WoW and play two hours a night after the kids are asleep."

        You actually have the self-control to stop at two hours? I'm impressed. Every time I log in for "two hours" I look up 5 hours later and realize I have to got work tomorrow.
      • Amen. I *love* Shadowrun, but the exact phenomenon you describe pretty much restricted my playing of it to using a MUD (AwakenedWorlds, a pretty nice recreation of the milieu telnet://awakenedworlds.net:4000 [awakenedworlds.net] iirc), and even that I haven't had time to log into for over a month due to a killer project at work.
      • I know the feeling. I'm lucky in that I have 5-6 friends who also have jobs, family, etc., but who genuinely enjoy D&D. We live near the same city (Cincinnati), so our host puts out a schedule of 4-5 dates when he and his wife can host the game over the next 2 months, and then we all reply to say which dates work for us and which don't. By process of elimination, we usually end up with 1 date where we can all make it, and we agree to get together then ("then" always being 2-6 weeks in advance). It takes
      • I hear ya Evangelion!

        Last year a few friends and I started "poker night". It was every other Wednesday. We started off for a few months with MTG, but then decided we'd try a D&D campaign. There were four guys and one girl (unbelievable I know...she's stripper-hot too). We are all in our thirties and some are married and/or have kids. We were going pretty strong for a couple of months, but there are always things that eventually have to come first: working late, can't get a sitter, dinner party, in-laws
      • I don't really consider MMOs (or single player RPGs) to be exactly a replacement for tabletop gaming. I also no longer have the time or circle of friends to play D&D (forget the play sessions, a good DM has to spend a lot of time on prep). When I used to play pen and paper RPGs the focus was on the roleplaying and story less so on the mechanics. An MMO is heavily mechanical and rigid - there is no DM to bend the rules. I know a lot of people like to play on role playing servers but it just feels silly t
      • On the other hand, I can log on to WoW and play two hours a night after the kids are asleep.


        I cannot, but my daughter is about 1 year old and is still staying up until about 10 pm, and waking up around 6 most days.

        On the other hand, I can occasionally schedule a night to be out and play with friends.
    • I think MMO's are replacing most table top games...

      Which, to me, is very strange. The thing I love most about tabletop RPGs is the way that the game world can (depending on the way your GM likes to run) mold itself to be appropriate to the players and their characters, and the way that characters tend to be exceptional (again, depending on how your GM runs). Our GM made it very clear that adventurers were special -- the dozen or so people born to be the world-shakers of their generation. In most of the M
  • Other systems (Score:5, Informative)

    by ajs ( 35943 ) <ajs.ajs@com> on Monday November 14, 2005 @04:18PM (#14028860) Homepage Journal
    D&D's d20 system is doing well, but here are the other heavy-hitters out there with large and loyal followings:
    • Ars Magica 5th ed. [atlas-games.com] winner of the Best Role-Playing Game for 2004 Origins award.
    • Vampire [white-wolf.com], Mage [white-wolf.com] another White Wolf "World of Darkness" games.
    • GURPS [sjgames.com], the generic role playing system, now in its 4th editon.
    • Hero System [herogames.com], originally designed for superhero-oriented gaming, it is now a generic system with special focus on supers, fantasy, SF and martial arts.

    All of these are great games, and I recommend that newbie role players talk to your local hobby-shop owner and get a sense of the options at your disposal, and what would fit your group best.
    • I used to play GURPS about 10 years ago. Also dabbled in GURPS Cyberpunk [sjgames.com] a little bit. Very cool stuff. I liked the flexibility much more than D&D
    • Let's not forget Hackmaster [kenzerco.com]
    • Chaosium, Call of Cthulhu [chaosium.com].

      Love that game. Good for beginners too. Simple system, and it teaches you something that I consider to be very important to a good gaming group: Never become too attached to your characters.

      And it's lots of fun. You already know you're doomed, so why not have a little fun with it? You know you gotta love a game where bragging sounds like this: "I had an investigator survive three whole games!

      Disclaimer: I don't work for Chaosium, YMMV, etc.

    • What about the Palladium system? Those were always my favorite. Do they still exist? Rifts was an awesome game, and I had a bunch of fun with their time travelling TMNT game too (go figure, heh).
  • by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 14, 2005 @04:21PM (#14028889)
    Um, OK:

    There is certainly a role for supplementary material and pre-packaged campaigns and adventures (I refuse the to use the "M" word). They can help stoke a GM's imagination and if they're really good they can set standards for home brew campaign settings and adventures.

    But the RPG hobby has become seriously consumerrhoidic.

    Playing the game should be the point of the hobby . . . not collecting books.
    • > But the RPG hobby has become seriously consumerrhoidic.

      yeah, i think that transition occured around 1990 when TSR started to spew books for every stupid combination: the left-handed gnome handbook, etc.

      The review above mentioned page after page of prestige classes. Same tactic: force everyone to buy hundreds of books.

      > Playing the game should be the point of the hobby . . . not collecting books.

      ideally, unless of course the books are just great reads. Like the GURPS worldbooks - even if you don'
    • Playing the game should be the point of the hobby . . . not collecting books.

      Not that I wholly disagree with your sentiment, I do find that there are two problems I have with your attitude.

      The first is that the game should not be the point. Having fun should be the point. Finding the right game to pair with the group can be a difficult process, the point of which would be the finding of the system that everybody can have fun playing. Often the easiest way is to go out and buy the books. The second problem i
    • I concede that for D&D, they release all kinds of books on any possible subject. Tons of adventures and all, which ends up being used once, if never.

      For Shadowrun tho, IMHO, it's an entirely different matter. The canon(official) storyline of shadowrun is incredibly rich and interesting. Most players swear by it. It advances in a somewhat realtime fashion, always going forward. They used to release a lot of 'adventures', which were mostly cool, but now they tend to expose the storyline and give you tons
    • While you are correct that the game should always be the most important thing, I think that the books shouldn't be neglected as an item of themselves.

      I am far more likely to purchase a game is the graphic design is excellent, the artwork is excellent, it is hard cover, and is a desirable object. There are RPGs that I purchased that I have never played... but I enjoy reading the books, getting the background story of the setting, looking at the artwork, etc.
  • Ahh nostalga (Score:5, Informative)

    by graveyhead ( 210996 ) <fletch AT fletchtronics DOT net> on Monday November 14, 2005 @04:31PM (#14028973)
    I was just idly hitting alt-x (random article) on Wikipedia last week and I came across this great page [wikipedia.org].

    It reminded me why I got into computer programming in the first place. D&D modules were the 'software' of games.

    I'm not sure kids playing today have this same experience. It seemed to me for a long time that modern D&D adventures were played in cheap card games (Magic The Gathering) and in RPG computer/console games.

    It's great to hear that far from being dead and gone D&D is actually still a great pastime. Now if we could just get WOTC to hire Gary Gygax...
    • Ah Expedition to the Barrier Peaks [wikipedia.org] what a classic module. So much fun having the party blow themselves up accidentally trying to figure out how to use the futuristic technology.
      I was a big fan of Gamma World and its predecessor Metamorphosis Alpha as well.
      • IIRC, that module was a re-working of a Metamorphosis Alpha module that was run at an early GenCon.

        It was always one of my favorites, and one that I hope has been "transcribed" to the NeverWinterNights engine. I love the conversions that I've seen of all the old modules.

        I usually wound up DMing when I did play as a kid, so it's nice to have a method of playing the old classics.
      • I had an incredibly good time with Gamma World, that was hard to replicate with AD&D... why?

        Because of the profusion of rules in AD&D. GW had a nice small rule set, and everything else was up to the GM, which woorked out quite well for me, since I had a great one.

        Nothing spoils a nice table-top session like a rules-lawyer player.

        OTOH, I played in some fun Rolemaster campaigns, and if you like rules, you'll love Rolemaster.
  • by MaineCoon ( 12585 ) on Monday November 14, 2005 @04:34PM (#14029004) Homepage
    I am hoping turnout this year is good; I'd hate to see the west coast version of the conference die from lack of interest. However, it is only 3 months or so after GenCon Indy, so it might be too-much-too-soon for the gaming population at large.
  • by sammy baby ( 14909 ) on Monday November 14, 2005 @04:37PM (#14029033) Journal
    There are a ton of really interesting games out there by independent authors. They don't have the marketing clout of a FASA or Wizards of the Coast, but that doesn't mean that they're not great games. Some worthy titles to start you out:
    • Primetime Adventures, by Dog-Eared Designs [dog-eared-designs.com]. A good role-playing game should feel like you're coauthoring a good drama, right? So why not make the analogy explicit?
    • Dogs in the Vineyard [lumpley.com], by Lumpley Games. Maybe the first game that gives faith the treatment it deserves in a serious game context. (Also, the author is an old friend of mine. Buy three copies!)
    • Polaris [tao-games.com], by TAO Games: about a time long ago in the frozen north, when the people were dying at the end of the world. (Very eerie, neat play mecahnics

    You have nothing to lose but your four dozen expansion rulebooks for Shadowrun.
  • A good friend of mine writes RPG books, and I figured I'd mention some of them here. He's written some great D20 based SciFi stuff, Dead Stars [rpgnow.com], and the followup Universial Decay [rpgnow.com]. I helped playtest these, and they're great fun. The item creation system is a lot of fun, you can customize pretty much any of you gear. In the two campains I played in, I played a hacker/technogeek in the first, and a tough gun-toting cyborg. It was a lot of fun, I enjoyed it more then any other RPG i've played in. The Dead S
  • by dada21 ( 163177 ) * <adam.dada@gmail.com> on Monday November 14, 2005 @04:48PM (#14029152) Homepage Journal
    I own retail stores focused on "toys" for guys 13-31: skateboarding, paintball, surf, etc. As a tabletop gamer in my youth, I never looked at gaming as a business.

    My stores are "kindly" placed in towns without a nearby mall.

    For those who go to gamer stores, what attracts you to a store over buying online?

    I can't believe gaming is experiencing a rebirth. Another geeky lifestyle to piss off the broads.
    • Why do I go to stores?

      To flip through books, see if there is something interesting that I want to buy.

      To see if there is a new game I might play.

      To post advertisements for my game, and look at other people's adverts to see if I want to play in theirs.

      To buy dice by the scoop.
    • To look at before I buy, but usually, it's instant gratification. When I want something, I want it NOW! I don't want to place an order and wait a few days to weeks to get it. I want to drive down to the store and bring home my prize ASAP. Other than that, it's usualy a place to hang out, hear the owner talk about the latest news and products, and if you're lucky actually play some games.
  • RIFTS (Score:2, Interesting)

    by TheZorch ( 925979 )
    Now there is a game. I started out playing D&D at the Role-Players Guild at Henry Ford Community College, and then one of guys asked if I wanted to try RIFTS.

    I was instantly hooked. A post-apacalyptic world filled with magic, Anime inspired high-tech weapons and magic combined with technoogy, demons, an oppressive goverment that makes Hitler's Nazi Germany look like a paradise, a nation of vampires, and Atlantis ruled by trans-dimensional overlords. The average lifesapn of character in most games was
    • Until life got busy this year, I was GMing a table top Rifts game. I still GM a PBEM game which is going into its third year. Rifts has one of the best environments out there for roleplaying, but suffers from an extremely crapping gaming engine. The combat system is a ruddy mess, there's too many skills and the attribute system has virtually nothing to do with the rest of the mechanics save for a few savings throw modifiers. The variant I use for the PBEM is highly simplified, and in the table top realm
  • by thesupermikey ( 220055 ) on Monday November 14, 2005 @04:59PM (#14029280) Homepage Journal
    http://www.pvponline.com/rants_dd.php3 [pvponline.com]

    Years ago Scott Kurtz posted this on his website PVP.
    I have since played DnD with my little brother and his friends. While they have not become gamers they really enjoyed it.

    It seems like all of those people who say they can't play DnD or other table top RPGs because they have kids and families ought to be playing with thier kids and families. It gets them away from the video games and the TV.
  • Mewonders if this is the same Drew Curtis of FARK infame?

    jes' curious...
  • It is so refreshing to see some Shadowrun content on slashdot. Shadowrun is so well put together and fun to play (and relatively easy to pick up). A few years after not getting to role-play I got into D&D to get my fix but hated the dice rules. They have since grown on me, but all in all I will always miss the SR dice system and the universe is so much darker and more fulfilling. Check it out if you can.
  • Waterdeep is mentioned heavily in Neverwinter Nights [bioware.com]. In fact, the entire first chapter is based on Waterdhavian creatures.
  • by bahwi ( 43111 ) on Monday November 14, 2005 @05:46PM (#14029647)
    While I personally prefer hardcover, softcover, or real paper, you can get the Shadowrun PDF at http://battlecorps.com/catalog/product_info.php?pr oducts_id=1617 [battlecorps.com] for $25.

    As well as a lot of other books coming to PDF(including older stuff). I got both the PDF and the hardcover because with a PDF you can search, and with a book my eyes don't bleed. =)

    Shows that the RPG industry is heading the way to e-books faster than the more traditional publishers though.
  • by rafial ( 4671 ) on Monday November 14, 2005 @05:47PM (#14029657) Homepage
    D&D is certainly going strong and chugging along, but I've been most excited about the huge boom in small press RPGs over the past 5 or so year, much of which is fueled by the internet. When game authors can market and sell directly via the web, many things become possible.

    Some really good stuff to check out:

    Burning Wheel [burningwheel.org]:
    Dogs in the Vineyard [septemberquestion.org]
    With Great Power [indie-rpgs.com]
    The Shadow of Yesterday [anvilwerks.com]
    Primetime Adventures [dog-eared-designs.com]
  • As Game a Writer/Playtester/and player who is also friends with a number of people who work in the industry (from writing to owning bookstores), I can say that Table-top Roleplaying has NOT had a big year. Wizards of the Coast and some of the larger game companies have faired alright, but have not had that great of sales. Overall, the industry has had a mediocure year at best. Yes the larger companies have released a few books. But the books mentione in the story are by no means "important" to most gamers.

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