Article at Wood Planet Gaming Lodge on OSR

Jason, over at Wood Planet Gaming Lodge asked me to write an article (very kind of him!) for his gaming web magazine.  I played around with some ideas for an X-Wing campaign, and maybe a variant for Pandemic I have been fooling around with, but in the end I wrote a short piece on my history with RPGs and also why I like Old School Roleplaying systems, and OSR gaming in general.

Check out the other good stuff over at WPGL while you are over there - a great site!

One thing I didn't mention in the article, that I should have, is how much of my memories of gaming 4 decades+ ago involved some of the (now dated, but at the time extremely cool) Judges Guild products.  I could have talked about the current games I have been running (updates at Sword and Potion) in the City State of the Invincible Overlord setting....

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away

So, the most excellent new gaming magazine from Flying Pig Games has recently come out with issue number 3.  The magazine is Yaah!, and it covers all manner of board games - many historical, but also science fiction and fantasy.

I will leave it to the readers of the blog to discover the goodness of the magazine (if you haven't, please do yourself a favor and purchase a copy - full color, excellent articles, and a game in every issue).  But I will toot my own horn by saying that in issue three I have had an article (actually two, but they are connected, as you will see) published. 

Yep - that X-Wing/IA mini-campaign mentioned on the cover is Me!

The first article is a mini-campaign for the Star Wars X-Wing miniatures game (from Fantasy Flight games).  The mini-campaign is actually fought as one battle, but as they resolve it, the players are also rolling dice to see how two concurrent battles are turning out.  If one side or the other wins one of those other battles, then they have the possibility of sending reinforcements to the main battle.  It is an interesting scenario, and one I borrowed from "Hey You in the Jail" (miniature rules by Martin Goddard, from Peter Pig).  The Star Wars article in Yaah! magazine, introduces some interesting features that will make it useful for other X-Wing mini-campaigns, other than the one presented in the article.

Now, I mention that I also had a second (but related) article, and that one is a Star Wars Imperial Assault mini campaign (a series of linked scenarios like the campaign that comes in the booklet with the main game).  This time it is related to the results of the X-Wing game (or you can play it alone).  It has to do with a small group of rebel commandos trying to capture a space station (that their starfighter squadron recently secured, or hopefully so, in the X-Wing scenario).  The starting conditions are necessarily different if the Imperial Forces won the X-Wing scenario, but internally many of the scenarios are similar.  Again, some unique stuff that is pertinent to this mini-campaign is presented as part of the article, I hope you get a chance to read it.

TSR? Gygax Magazine??

As many readers of gaming blogs, and gaming news in general, may be aware, a number of individuals recovered the TSR name and have reformed a company using the same.

Their first project will be the publication of Gygax Magazine.

I think that the logo alone speaks volumes about how much this is intended to resemble the (good) old days of Dragon Magazine.

If you haven't heard then here it is - TSR has reformed and will be publishing a general gaming (heavy on RPGs) magazine called Gygax magazine.  If you are interested in signing up for email notifications about publication, etc, then you can go to this website.

There are evidently some riffs in the Gygax family over who is and who is not supporting it, but it definitely seems to have the support of Gary's two brothers Sons (I mistakenly had them identified as Brothers, see comment below).

With the recent publication of the 1st Edition reprints (PHB, MM, DMG) and the upcoming reprint of the 2nd Edition books, the folks at Wizards of the Coast definitely have gotten the vibe about the Old School Renaissance that is out there.  It makes sense.  The millions of gamers who grew to love D&D in it's earlier versions, loved it as it was.  Changing it too much will lose them.

Regardless of politics about the magazine, etc etc, I just am glad that the older style RPGs are still being played by so many.  Mr. Gygax and his compadres certainly changed the world a bit when they introduced all of us to Dungeons and Dragons.

Cool free gamnig magazine - Irregular

Recently became aware of Irregular a free (downloadable pdf) quarterly gaming magazine that covers most everything from RPGs to historical miniatures gaming.

Nice, check it out.

Tags: gaming magazine