Search Results for: Games Plus auction

Can You Really Role Play on a Board?: Pathfinder: Rise of the Runelords

Fantasy board games have tried to capture the addictive nature of role playing for decades, but without much real success. In the past few years though, a number of dungeon-delving games have come close, including Descent, Talisman Fourth Edition, Castle Ravenloft, Legend of Drizzt, Claustrophobia, and a few others. In his recent review of Paizo’s second Adventure Card Game Base Set, Skull & Shackles, Scott Taylor fingered another contender, this one from Paizo: Of late Paizo had expanded their market with several new product lines,…

Read More Read More

A Shadow Falls Over Faerûn: Anauroch: The Empire of Shade

Back in April, I wrote a brief article on the Third Edition D&D supplement Cormyr: The Tearing of the Weave, which I purchased for $7 at the Spring Games Plus Auction. While I was delighted with it, I soon discovered it was the first installment in an epic three-part mega-adventure known informally as The Forgotten Realms Trilogy. Bummer! Fortunately, I also discovered the second installment buried in the second box of auction loot, apparently purchased during an episode of auction fever for just $6. I examined Shadowdale:…

Read More Read More

Against the Giants of Chaos: Shadowdale: The Scouring of the Land

Last month, I took a look at the the first Third Edition D&D Cormyr supplement, Cormyr: The Tearing of the Weave, released in March 2007. It was a 160-page mega-adventure detailing a vast and sinister conspiracy deep in the Realms, and the first installment of what would eventually be a three-part supermodule. I wasn’t aware Cormyr was part of a series while I was bidding like a fiend in the front row of the Spring Games Plus Auction. It was just one of several Forgotten Realms products I…

Read More Read More

Delve Into a 3-Part Supermodule With Cormyr: The Tearing of the Weave

I’m still digging into the fabulous Forgotten Realms products I won at the Spring Games Plus Auction, all of which were brand new and criminally cheap – probably because they were written for D&D version 3.5 and are now a little out of date. Not that that bothers me; I mostly play version 1.0 anyway. I’ve been very impressed with what I’ve sampled so far, including Lost Empires of Faerûn and Underdark, both of which were top-notch. They proved easily adaptable to…

Read More Read More

Descend Into the Depths of the Earth in Forgotten Realms: Underdark

I’ve been fascinated with underground gaming ever since I took my first steps in Gary Gygax’s imaginative underworld in the classic 1978 AD&D module D1: Descent into the Depths of the Earth. That adventure — which first introduced the complex and sinister machinations of the drow — was one of the most popular ever released for AD&D and it has been much copied and imitated over the decades since. A message not lost on TSR and WotC over the years, who have explored…

Read More Read More

Explore the Echoes of a Vanished Product Line in Lost Empires of Faerûn

I’m still processing the boxes of gaming loot I brought home from the Spring Games Plus Auction. Honestly, this could take a while. You may want to get a coffee or something. I find it fascinating to watch the items that set off a bidding frenzy. The Descent games I talked about last time, for example. Or absolutely any expansion sets for Wizard of the Coast’s out-of-print Heroscape — lordy, yes. I wish I had a closet filled with those babies….

Read More Read More

Take Dungeon Delving to the High Seas in Descent: The Sea of Blood

Okay, that title doesn’t make any sense. Dungeon delving… on the ocean. You know what that sounds like? Drowning, that’s what it sounds like. But let’s move on. I’m still processing the four boxes of loot I brought back from the Spring Games Plus Auction and, like a determined CSI agent at a crime scene, putting clues together to determine how I ended up with a copy of Descent: The Sea of Blood. Let’s say a few words about the basic game, Fantasy Flight’s Descent:…

Read More Read More

The New Weird Tales

Weird Tales #366, the Sword & Sorcery issue (January 2023), and #367, the Cosmic Horror issue (May 2023). Covers by Bob Eggleton and Mike Mignola I ordered a copy of the new Sword & Sorcery issue of Weird Tales last year, and it finally arrived a few weeks ago — so late that I almost forgot I ordered it. But it did arrive — and turned out to be damn impressive. A huge oversize (8×10) issue in full color, with…

Read More Read More

Viking Gods: Big battles on a small scale

In many ways the early 1980s were the heyday of classic microgames, also called minigames, with the popularity of such games as Car Wars and Revolt on Antares, but those were far from the only games available. For instance, TSR Inc. made its fair share of microgames, including Viking Gods. Published in 1982, Viking Gods allowed players to take part in the battle to end all battles, Ragnarok. A game for two players, one player took the side of the…

Read More Read More

Video game history: Advanced Dungeons & Dragons for Intellivison

To those of us old enough to remember, there is little doubt the king of home video game consoles in the early 1980s was the Atari 2600. However, Atari had stiff competition from Mattel Electronics in the form of the Intellivision. First released to the public in 1979, the Intellivison console was perhaps ahead of its time. The Intellivision didn’t even have a proper joystick, something almost unheard of at the time, but came with controllers that used a directional…

Read More Read More