Search Results for: Games Plus

Diplomacy and Trade in the Vastness of Space: Among the Stars by Artipia Games

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I’m still processing all the treasures I brought home from the Games Plus Fall auction on Saturday. Things move fast at the auction, and you frequently have to make a snap decision to make a bid, or lose your chance forever. So more than once I raised my bidding card while thinking “What the heck is that thing?” That was the case with Among the Stars, a peculiar board game/card game hybrid… that I ended up winning for $16. It…

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Get an Inside Look at the Hottest Boardgames with Meeple Monthly

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If you hang out in game stores (and who doesn’t?) you’ve doubtless seen copies of GTM, Game Trade Magazine, a monthly industry mag for the Adventure Hobby industry that also doubles as a handy catalog for Alliance Game Distributors. GTM is always a pleasant read, with fun articles and full color pics of upcoming RPGs and card games. While I was browsing the magazine rack at my local game store last month, I came across something called Meeple Monthly, and at…

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Joseph P Laycock’s Dangerous Games: Revisiting the “Moral” Panic Around D&D (and You Thought the ‘Pups Were Bad)

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The 80s Dungeons and Dragons Moral Panic gave my teenage AD&D group a headache… fortunately, only literally. I confess that we drank too much beer while watching the movie Mazes and Monsters. We giggled at the odd (willful?) misrepresentation of our world, but perhaps that was a kind of false bravado because we also talked too late into the night: “Did they just…?” and “Erk?” and “WTF?” And so, as is the way of things, we woke up without answers…

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: The D&D Adventure (Board) Games

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Back in 2010, Wizards of the Coast (WotC) decided to put out a board game that replicated playing 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons. Now, 4th Edition was a debacle, but Castle Ravenloft, which was the first of four games in the Dungeons and Dragons Adventure Game line, is quite the opposite. It’s a cooperative dungeon crawl with set scenarios but random tile placement and in which the game itself serves as the dungeon master. I’ve not played Castle Ravenloft (previously discussed…

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Modular: Kickstarting The Northlands Saga Complete (Frog God Games)

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The Vikings are coming! I’m a fan of Frog God Games. Rising from the ashes of Third Edition D&D’s Necromancer Games, they make RPG products for Pathfinder, 5th Edition and Swords & Wizardry. Way back in 2014, I wrote here about The Lost Lands, the campaign world that would synthesize almost all of the Necromancer and FGG products — from classics like Rappan Athuk and Gary Gygax’s Necropolis to newer deadly adventures like The Slumbering Tsar saga. I’ve happily backed several…

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New Treasures: Dangerous Games edited by Jonathan Oliver

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Time for another New Treasure. This time, I’m in the mood for an anthology — one I can really sink my teeth into. Fortunately, I think I have just the thing. The latest anthology from Solaris, Dangerous Games, collects original short fiction from Chuck Wendig, Lavie Tidhar, Paul Kearney, Pat Cadigan, and many others, on a theme near and dear to my heart: games. In a world of chances, one decision can bring down the house, one roll of the…

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Frodo Baggins, Lady Galadriel, and the Games of the Mighty

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A classic image. Iconic. Frodo Baggins, Hobbit of the Shire, offering the ring of power to Galadriel, Elven Queen of Lothlórien. Ralph Bakshi version: Peter Jackson version: Yet, as is often the case in JRR Tolkien’s writings, things are not quite what they appear. Allow me to bullet point the bites Mr. Baggins has had to take out of the crap sandwich served up to him by fate up to this point.

Game Review: Dead of Winter from Plaid Hat Games

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Color me rotting-flesh green and call me thunderstruck. I believe I’ve been playing the best board game in my thirty years of dice rolling this week: the Plaid Hat Games survival horror magnificence that is Dead of Winter. Ron Burgundy “That’s No Lie” seal of approval. I know I often write here with tongue probing my cheek, but this time I’m undeadly serious. Maybe it was just the subject matter, or how dark the game can get as desperation builds,…

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The Paris Fashion Week of Games, Spring Edition

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You know what happens tomorrow? Think hard. That’s right! The Spring Auction at Games Plus here in Chicago — only the best auction in the entire country for dedicated game collectors of all stripes. I reported on the Fall Auction here, and confessed to a painful bout of auction fever at last year’s Spring Auction here. I used to attend these as part of a constant quest for rare science fiction and fantasy collectibles — things like Judge’s Guilds epic Wilderlands…

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Book Launch Week (Plus Giveaway)

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First, I want to point everyone to a book giveaway at Reddit. Until the end of the week, you can drop by, write what your favorite fantasy setting, world, or culture is (and why) and be entered in a drawing to win a signed copy of both The Bones of the Old Ones and its standalone predecessor, The Desert of Souls. Second, I thought I’d take a moment to talk about what a book launch week is like. Long time…

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