RPG News from last week (10/26)

October 26, 12:13 PMChicago RPG ExaminerMichael Shorten

Previous Next

Comment Print Email RSS Subscribe

Subscribe

Get alerts when there is a new article from the Chicago RPG Examiner. Read Examiner.com's terms of use.

Email Address   Include other special offers from Examiner.com Terms of Use

Chicago News

This coming weekend is Halloween and it's your chance to get out and play some games at your local gamestore. Some highlights include:

• Gamer's Asylum is holding a Halloween Raffle
• Chicagoland Games is holding a Halloween Colonial Gothic Demo
• Unique Gifts & Games has a Swords & Wizardry demo planned (run by myself.)

National News

There are some interesting releases for those D&D gamers who play the older versions. First is the news first reported here - the ENnie Award winning game Swords & Wizardry will be showing up on gamestore shelves very soon now, as they are being distributed by Black Blade Publishing.

Also being published is the unique book "The Dungeon Alphabet" by blogger Michael Curtis. This book is a compilation of great D&D dungeon ideas, tables and artwork by some of the RPG industry's most well known artists: Erol Otus, Jeff Easley, Jim Roslof, Jim Holloway, and others. Michael also announced on his blog that Goodman Games will release the book as "part of its Great Prices program" which lists books for very reasonable prices.

Another old school publisher, James E. Raggi IV, is preparing another game release - "The Grinding Gears". James has become one of the most interesting RPG publishers with some very inventive modules that go beyond what most typical fantasy adventures provide. He describes the upcoming modules as: It is a cruel one. It's not a grinder (it could be with careless play), but it is cruel, and both groups that made it out failed to find the treasure (during the initial foray, anyway).

Last week saw some small publisher love as the blog RPG Blog 2 ran a series called "Small Publisher Week." The series started last Monday, and covered quite a few different games. Here's a link to a roundup (hattip to moebiusadventures.com) - it looks like some interesting games were reviewed and covered, such as EPIC, Resolute and even one named Squirrel Attack!

Paizo Publishing released a FREE low level adventure called "Horror at Dagger Rock" last week. It's been written for the Pathfinder RPG rules and should be an interesting module to introduce people to Pathfinder, using an "old school" setting and feel.

For those of you who enjoy playing online using virtual tabletops, you'll be interested to know that the popular Fantasy Grounds has been bought by SmiteWorks USA. The sale was done "[to bring] Fantasy Grounds closer to its largest group of customers and creates new opportunities for further growth."

Wizards of the Coast has begun previewing their newest RPG book Draconomicon - Metallic Dragons and their newest miniature line Savage Encounters. There's also news of a spoiler for those of you looking forward to the Dark Sun setting release in 2010 - Amazon is already listing a Dungeon Tile set for "The Deserts of Athas" (hattip to 4espoilers.)

And finally, this bit of news is related to virtual tabletop roleplaying of an extreme nature. Students at Canegie Mello have created a project using "Microsoft Surface" to demonstrate a very modern game table. The video is amazingly cool.