19th Level

After some discussions with my gaming group and time spent in creative pondering it appears that up next is some form of the Cthulhu Mythos. I'm in the process of drilling down to see just what that means. We could continue one of two previous campaigns, a traditional 1920s game and a pulp Gaslight-era one. While the Gaslight-era was fun, my inclination is to return to a more traditional 1920s or 1930s period. New characters might be in order as our group has gotten a bit smaller since then (truthfully I found the group a little too large for Call of Cthulhu though it did help when the body count got high). I'm considering three possible campaigns. The first is your "traditional" 1920-something era campaign, most likely set in Lovecraft country. I found my players tend to do very well when faced with the "impossible" odds a normal Cthulhu game presents. That's not to say such a game is safe - far from it. We did enjoy a number of pulp elements in ...

On my list of games to try at some point is some game from the Gumshoe family of RPGs. I've got a bunch of them - though I've never played one outright they are all wonderfully done and have a very high density of useful ideas, even if you never play one of those games outright. However, I do want to get around to playing one of them at some point. High on my list is the recent TimeWatch RPG, followed closely by Night's Black Agents , especially it's Dracula Dossier. For TimeWatch  I'm generally a fan of the time travel genre and more importantly, at least for me, a huge fan of history. I hope at some point to be able to visit Istanbul and see the capital of two great empires, to see the pyramids in Egypt, to see the canals of Venice, etc. I doubt I'll ever be able to go on a history world tour but some of those destinations are definitely in reach (alas no trip to the Royal Navy Museum in Portsmouth next year - the girls really want a trip to Disney......

I Kickstarted the TimeWatch  RPG in early 2014. It was supposed to be delivered in November 2014, so it was definitely late, having just arrived at my door today. For the most part, communications were pretty good, with a few quiet periods here and there. It was one of those projects were stretch goals definitely increased the scope of the project. I've had various PDF drafts of the project as time went on so I had a pretty good idea as to what I was getting but the finished product was definitely impressive. What I'll be doing here is giving a high level overview of TimeWatch , possibly followed by a full review should my group take it for a spin. TimeWatch  uses the Gumshoe system, as seen in games like Trail of Cthulhu  and The Dracula Dossier . It has a few things that distinguish it from most RPGs: General Abilities are things like fighting, athletics, etc. To test them you roll 1d6 and add nothing. 4+ is typically a success. Add nothing? Are you crazy? Well,...

Hey look more stuff to distract me! I came home today  to a pair of packages, one with the new Tunnels & Trolls Deluxe Edition and one with The Dracula Dossier , a campaign for Night's Black Agents. My experience with Tunnels & Trolls is fairly limited - I've played a few one-off games way back in middle and high school. It's a game that looks a lot like D&D, with a series of stats that are generated by 3d6. It has a small number of classes - warriors, wizards, and rogues are the big three. Warriors and wizards are pretty self-explanatory. Rogues are anyone else - they can learn to use magic, they can fight decently well. There's also the warrior-wizard, a class really difficult to qualify for (but one I saw a lot of now that I think of it...). The Deluxe Edition is expanded from this baseline with more difficult-to-qualify for classes. Unlike classic D&D stats go up over time - they go up a lot. Since wizards used to expend strength to cast spells, y...