Saturday, April 28, 2012
Scenery Saturday!
Only one piece this time, but what a piece. I've always been a fan of fantastic elements in my, well... Fantasy. Floating citadels are one of them.
Wednesday, April 25, 2012
The Emperor Protects
So, it's been a busy month for me with school. First midterms, now pre-finals crunch is keeping me from writing up a few reviews and working on other projects. It's enough to make a grown man cry.
That is, until that grown manchild checks his mail! Lo and behold, the other day in the post I received a padded envelope, straight from the land of funny accents, cork hats, and killer trees, Australia!
And what was inside this envelope? Feast your eyes on the image below.
That is, until that grown man
And what was inside this envelope? Feast your eyes on the image below.
Saturday, April 14, 2012
Your First Time
In many ways, I'm a child playing among the shadows of those who came before. I wasn't there to experience the mother of them all. And, in fact, I didn't get into the hobby until the early nineties. Where most folks cut their teeth on the World's Most Popular Role Playing Game, I ended up going an entirely different direction.
No exotic, Tolkienien beauty for me with her strange landscapes and mighty magics. No, my first was that vulcan-jedi-roadwarrior cosplayer at Gencon. That's right, my first was Palladium's Rifts.
Much maligned (and some of it rightfully so), Rifts has always been the geeky cousin to D&D. Socially awkward, never sure of herself, a bit hard to get to know. But once you did? She knew your favorite movies, your comics, the names of all your transformers. She didn't care about the minutiae, but of the big screen explosions and madcap insanity of Saturday morning cartoons. And yet, at times, she could take you places and teach you things that the other kids on the block never would have dreamed of.
I remember clearly my first gaming session, the first time I was introduced to any game, even Rifts. My brother's group had lost a player due to summer vacation, and they needed a Big Guy With Guns. So, considering I was a bit smarter than your average eight year old, they gave me a character sheet, told me to do what the Glitterboy said, and to be quiet otherwise. While they referenced such lofty things as Star Wars, Heavy Metal, and The Terminator, I looked over my sheet, and waited for my instructions.
When they came, they were too simple. "Shoot anything that sounds terrifying."
I could do that. I had guns, I was BIG GUY WITH GUNS!
My brother, the GM, sent an adult dragon flying overhead. Dragons are scary things. It was a total party wipe, and I was banished from the table.
The seeds were planted, it was puppy love that would blossom into a real crush two years later, when my brother allowed me to borrow his books to run Rifts for MY friends.
It was another total party wipe. And it was amazing.
Though I've courted others throughout the years, trying the exotic, the mundane, the downright freaky, I've always come back to Rifts. She knows what I want, she scratches that itch nicely.
So, Blogger. Who was your first?
No exotic, Tolkienien beauty for me with her strange landscapes and mighty magics. No, my first was that vulcan-jedi-roadwarrior cosplayer at Gencon. That's right, my first was Palladium's Rifts.
Much maligned (and some of it rightfully so), Rifts has always been the geeky cousin to D&D. Socially awkward, never sure of herself, a bit hard to get to know. But once you did? She knew your favorite movies, your comics, the names of all your transformers. She didn't care about the minutiae, but of the big screen explosions and madcap insanity of Saturday morning cartoons. And yet, at times, she could take you places and teach you things that the other kids on the block never would have dreamed of.
I remember clearly my first gaming session, the first time I was introduced to any game, even Rifts. My brother's group had lost a player due to summer vacation, and they needed a Big Guy With Guns. So, considering I was a bit smarter than your average eight year old, they gave me a character sheet, told me to do what the Glitterboy said, and to be quiet otherwise. While they referenced such lofty things as Star Wars, Heavy Metal, and The Terminator, I looked over my sheet, and waited for my instructions.
When they came, they were too simple. "Shoot anything that sounds terrifying."
I could do that. I had guns, I was BIG GUY WITH GUNS!
My brother, the GM, sent an adult dragon flying overhead. Dragons are scary things. It was a total party wipe, and I was banished from the table.
The seeds were planted, it was puppy love that would blossom into a real crush two years later, when my brother allowed me to borrow his books to run Rifts for MY friends.
It was another total party wipe. And it was amazing.
Though I've courted others throughout the years, trying the exotic, the mundane, the downright freaky, I've always come back to Rifts. She knows what I want, she scratches that itch nicely.
So, Blogger. Who was your first?
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
In Review: Mystic Empyrean
Enter Empyrean, a world of
your own imagination and design.
Recreate the world lost to the Aether
and shape it to your whim and will.
But take care-for even as you
remake the world, you
remake yourself.
When I first heard of Mystic Empyrean, it was from a discussion on Nobilis. Curious, I did some Googling, grabbed the demo, and ultimately bought the PDF and Hardbound Rulebook.
A unique approach to the tabletop, Mystic Empyrean reminds me of Microscope, with a healthy dose of Legend of Mana, Dark Cloud, and the late Professor MAR Barker's Perfected Game Rules added to taste.
So what does Mystic Empyrean bring to the table? Read on to find out!
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