Taking a few days off
I’m currently enjoying a couple of days off work. I’m pretty busy meeting friends, playing games, sleeping till noon, and various other activities, so I decided to take a short break from blogging,...
October 15, 2014
2014
Freebie: Secrets of the Ancients for Traveller
While reading up on the Ancients on various Traveller forums and wikis I discovered that Mongoose Publishing is giving away the whole “Secrets of the Ancients” campaign for free. The 202-paged PDF contains...
October 10, 2014
When You Realize that You’re the Baddy
I have always been interested in history and I always found it quite intriguing to play in historic roleplaying games. So it was of course no surprise that I backed Achtung! Cthulhu which...
October 9, 2014
I’ve Got Traveller On My Mind
For years I wanted to run a proper SciFi game. I’ve made plans for Stars Without Number, but the project never made it to the game table. I tried to write a complete...
October 8, 2014
First Look: Corporia
Today I was contacted by Mark Plemmons, designer of the urban fantasy RPG Corporia. He’s a fan of my blog and wanted me to have a complimentary copy of his game. As an...
October 7, 2014
1st Kellercon in Limburg
Yesterday the first Kellercon has taken place in Limburg, Germany. We chose the name Kellercon because the location was the Villa Konthor, a local whisky pub, which has an excellent vaulted cellar we...
October 6, 2014
My thoughts on “Chess is not an RPG”
Today I stumbled upon a blog post by John Wick about game balance, social skills, weapon lists etc. If you haven’t read it yet, please check it out and come back afterwards. You’ve...
October 2, 2014
Traveller without Aliens?
I am not sure if I already wrote on the blog about it, but I have been playing Traveller for several months now. Initially my GM wanted to run a face-to-face game but...
October 2, 2014
More Thoughts on the Cypher System
Over the last few weeks I have posted several times about Numenera and praised the so-called Cypher system which powers the game. The same rules have also been used in The Strange, Monte...
October 1, 2014
Advice / Call of Cthulhu / Gumshoe System / Improve Your Game / Other Systems / Random musings / RPG
Mental Health in Roleplaying Games
Because of my personal and professional experience I know quite a lot about mental health issues. As you may well know I suffer from depression and anxiety disorder myself and since I work...
September 26, 2014
Why do we play Roleplaying Games?
If you’ve followed discussions between roleplayers, read blogs, and played in different groups over the years, you’ve probably noticed that there are various approaches to roleplaying. In some cases you might even wonder if...
September 24, 2014
How to deal with “That Guy” or do we need a Social Contract?
During the years I have been active in the RPG scene (offline and online) the topic of “social contracts” has come up from time to time. In the light of recent events I’ve...
September 19, 2014
Kickstarter: Feng Shui 2
There are only a few games I enjoyed more than Robin D. Laws’ Feng Shui. I only played it once and with a group of people I never played with before, but we...
September 18, 2014
Fuzion–Of unrealized Potential and being ahead of its Time
Back in 1998 I stumbled upon Fuzion, an universal roleplaying game which was available for free on the internet. This was – at least for me – something new and unexpected. Back in...
September 15, 2014
Life and Times of a German Blogger Part 2
Reports of my unfortunate demise are highly exaggerated. Aside from being pretty tired all the time I am actually quite fine. On Monday I returned to the office after being signed off work...
September 11, 2014
D&D 5th Edition is much better than I anticipated
When I had a look at the first public playtest documents Wizards of the Coast released of then-called “D&D Next” I was cautiously optimistic. But over time I lost interest in the game....
August 25, 2014
My Thoughts on ICv2’s 2013 Hobby Survey Results and the Top 5 RPGs Spring 2014 List
A while ago, ICv2 has released the results of their 2013 hobby survey results. According to them the gamer market has reached around $700 million at retail in the US and Canada. Surprisingly...
August 14, 2014