Death Bringers - 3:16 - Supplement Review

Following up on the review of 3:16 a couple of weeks ago, I wanted to let you know about a campaign setting for that same game. 3:16 focuses on the brutal lives of space marines as they blast their way through alien worlds and emerge victorious with goo splatters coating their MandelBrite armor. The original game is designed for campaign play and gives a system for creating a unique campaign, but largely leaves the GM to fill in the particulars. This can be great or a little lackluster, depending on the GM or the group playing. Death Bringers by Felbrigg Herriot picks up the standard from the random generator and runs screaming back into the fray.

What Death Bringers gives you is a complete

Read-through Review: Trail of Cthulhu, GUMSHOE

Happy Anniversary of Howard Phillips Lovecraft's Death! Morbid, I know, but I really feel the now-esteemed writer of cosmic horror would enjoy us celebrating his eventual demise as much as his birth. So much of his work centers on the end of his protagonists, straight jacketed or daisy-pushing. To that end I shall spend the day by reviewing Trail of Cthulhu, a role-playing game which pays loving homage to the horror writer's works and the body of Mythos fiction which he inspired.

Trail of Cthulhu was written by Kenneth Hite, a devotee of H.P.L. in his own right, and published by Pelgrane Press. The book has been around since 2008, and has been faithfully and consistently supported by a slew of adventures, campaign frameworks, and supplements. Trail of Cthulhu does not pretend that it has no relation to Call of Cthulhu. The opposite actually, it seeks to update the classic for a slightly different audience, to the point that Chaosium, the original publisher, has officially licensed it.


The core of the game is based around the Robin Laws' Gumshoe system. The main tenet of this system is

3:16 - Carnage Amongst the Stars: Read-through Review

Next I'd like to take a look at one of those indie gems that never quite get the press they deserve. While its been out for some time, 3:16 - Carnage Amongst the Stars accomplishes a number of things which small indie games usually fall flat on. It's mechanics are simple but not shallow, it encourages role-playing without leaving groups that are lighter on the role-play in a vat of awkward narrative spaghetti, it isn't a one-shot wonder but is built on campaign play. This is all really impressive because the core of the game was written for a write-a-game-in-24-hours contest (24-Hour RPG, which is a neat idea in and of itself). What this leaves us with is a very tight game, meant to emulate the bug-splatter military sci-fi - Starship Troopers, Warhammer 40K, Armor, Starcraft, Aliens, etc.

The core of the game is so clear-cut, it seems simplistic

Blood and Honor - Actual Play Review

This time I'd like to tell you all about a game that has a particular charm for me, John Wick's Blood and Honor. This samurai game is basically John's answer to the years he spent on Legend of the Five Rings following his publishing of Houses of the Blooded.

Houses of the Blooded was touted as an answer to D&D. I think really it was a call for everything in a game world to have the kind of polish embellished love that combat is afforded. I loved that message, and the clean mechanics that went along with it. The thing that rankled me a bit was

Read-through Review: Marvel Heroic Roleplaying Basic Game

Last August there was an announcement over on the Margaret Weis Productions (MWP) website that I read quickly and blocked from my memory. It surrounded them acquiring a license from Marvel. Then I checked my DriveThruRPG newsletter and laid down (a relatively small amount) of dough immediately. Now don't get me wrong, I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with MWP,

So You Want to Euro-Game Part 2 and 3: Lord of the Rings and Pandemic

So I'm continuing today with my tour of great Euro-games to introduce newcomers, with two excellent boardgames, Reiner Knizia's Lord of the Rings, and Z-Man Games' Pandemic. Both of these take a twist on the traditional board game by being co-operative rather than competitive, which is no stranger to our role-players. This makes them particularly good for your role-players to make the transition to board-gaming.

My criteria from last time was three-fold: Simple, a Clear Goal, and

So You Want to Euro-Game? Part 1: Carcassonne

Hey Everyone!

I wanted to start up a three-parter focusing on some of the best games to introduce new folks to the European style of board gaming (also know as Euro-games, German-style gaming, etc.). This type of game functions somewhere in the space between Parcheesi and Planescape. They tend to focus less on luck and direct conflict, and more on resource management and indirect competition. I find that