Tag: board games
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Nostalgia, Music, and Computers
It turns out that I get nostalgic about technology in the same way as I get nostalgic about music. Here's some things that take me right back to being nine, eleven, thirteen and fifteen years old.
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D&D 5e is not for everyone
Kai Koehler reminds us that D&D 5e is far from the only TTRPG, with a tight dissection of its specific characteristics so that they can be compared to other, perhaps more roleplay-heavy, games and systems. They include some suggested ideas for other games, too, a couple of which I'm strongly-inclined to try out!
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Y'all seemed to enjoy the "overworld" map I shared the other day, so here's another "feelie" from my kids' ongoing D&D campaign.
The party has just arranged for passage aboard a pioneering (and experimental) Elvish airship. Here's a deck plan (only needs a "you are here" dot!) to help them get their bearings.
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In the style of a passenger ferry, a floorplan for a dirigible, weighted down by polyhedral dice. Fantasy world quirks like bilingual text in Common and Elvish and the emergency exit sign depicting a fleeing witch complete the effect.
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In preparation for Family D&D Night (and with thanks to my earlier guide to splicing maps together!), I've finally completed an expanded "overworld" map for our game world. So far, the kids have mostly hung around on the North coast of the Central Sea, but they're picked up a hook that may take them all the way across to the other side... and beyond?
Banana for scale.
(If your GMing for kids, you probably already know this, but "feelies" go a long way. All the maps. All the scrolls. Maybe even some props. Go all in. They love it.)
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On a dining table lies a old-style map comprised of 12 sheets of A4 paper, sellotaped together. The map shows the 'Central Sea', an inlet from the 'Terminic Ocean', around which various settlements, forests, mountain ranges, and swamps can be found. An underripe banana sits in one corner of the map, weighing it down.
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White's move. Mate in three. A giant chessboard is the perfect environment to teach a child some basic chess strategy, right?
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A girl studies a chessboard on a lawn, watched over by two men: Dan and JTA.
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Voice of America
In light of Trump's attempts to axe Voice of America, because it is, he claims, "anti-Trump" (and because he's so insecure that he can't stand the thought that taxpayer dollars might go to anybody who disagrees with him in any way, for any reason), I've produced a suggested update to the rules of Twilight Struggle for the inevitable 9th printing.
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Future Arimaa grand masters at practice, this Sunday morning boardgaming session.
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In a cluttered dining room, two children play Arimaa, a chess-like board game.
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Playing simultaneous games against both children might have been less challenging if they hadn't both kept trying to start fights with one another at the same time! 😂
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Two frustrated-looking children each sit in front of a separate chessboard (the photographer is presumably playing both of them).
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D20 with Advantage
D&D players spend a lot of time rolling D20s. Sometimes they 'roll with advantage' - that is, roll two dice and take the largest. Last night I dreamed I derived the probability matrix for such rolls, and it got me thinking... could you construct a single die that rolls 'D20 with Advantage'?
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Multi-Phase Maps in FoundryVTT
Using FoundryVTT's powerful API and a little bit of JavaScript code, we can easily produce a battlemap that changes through a series of phases as the adventure progresses. Here's how...
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Let Your Players Lead The Way
In gradually becoming a better RPG gamemaster, the toughest lesson for me has been how to surrender control to my players. Here's the story of the importance of that lesson, and some of the mistakes I've made along the way.
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Fedicard
Yeah, that's about right.
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[Bloganuary] Playtime
Do I get to "play" in my daily life? Absolutely. For this Bloganuary prompt, I'm looking at the ways in which I play.
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Paul Labyrinth
An open-source program that combines WikiData with a random generator to come up with almost-invariably inaccurate but sometimes hilarious facts.
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Have Fun with Missions, Visions, and Values
My team and I recently used a deck of Dixit cards to playfully work on refining our collective idea of our identity and our values. It turns out we're a D&D-like party of heroic adventurers!