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Hobgoblin First Play

A new Fantasy Mass Combat game by Gasland’s Mike Hutchinson Hobgoblin from Planet Smasher Games, hardcover rulebook Hobgoblin recently showed up from Planet Smasher games. I was eager to kick in to this Kickstarter, first because I have mad respect for Mike Hutchinson’s GASLANDS, and I liked A BILLION SUNS (even if I never played it). Turns out, most of the guys in the Scrum Club also kicked in…

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DECEMBER, by Clark Ashton Smith

Homage to a wintery season (on Soundcloud) By Odin’s Spear · December – CAS – Poem

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Playing the New Twilight 2000 game

Free Leagues Publishing takes on an old classic A long time back, in 1984, board game design company GDW was also ankle deep in the roleplaying game business. They did a decent job of it, building, complex, more “realistic” games that simulated broad events in little details, and their complexity level, at least for me, was pretty high. For example, GDW created Traveller, which I’ve played…

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H.P. Lovecraft's (short) Christmas Poem.

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Commitment to a bit.

Perhaps I’m taking it too far, though? It all started with an intriguing junk text the other evening. That’s not the standard junk text! This isn’t an offer for crypto or a phony letter from Microsoft.. they want a DOCTOR, no, wait, a SURGEON.. who hasn’t been SUED, for urgent cardiac surgery in Southern New Hampshire? And they are using cold texts to find them? Really? Color me intrigued.…

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Erasmus of Rotterdam

Daily writing promptIf you could meet a historical figure, who would it be and why?View all responses Okay, I’ll take a crack at it. Erasmus of Rotterdam, aka Desiderius Erasmus, lived in Denmark from 1476 (vaguely) to 1536. He often reflected on subjects that invite philosophical inquiry: the influence of nature versus nurture, the relationship between word and thing, the ideal form of…

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Barsoom, the card game

A nascent attempt from the year 2004 Barsoom Card Game discussion from 2004 The following is a discussion held on CONSIMWORLD (remember that?) between James McCann, Dave Townsend and myself, plus some interested parties jumping in from time to time. Twenty years later, it still seems like a good idea to me, and God know there hasn’t been a good Barssom game in the years since.  That I know of,…

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Fall-IN 2024.. meh

.. but that was a choice of my own making. I did make it to Fall IN but I promise this won’t be another long travelogue. The reason? The weekend before Fall IN I was up at Chiller Theatre Expo with my old friend, Brian Armstrong. In a nutshell, I had a hell of a fun weekend– we went to the Expo, met some people, I talked to Molly Ringwald (John Hughes movies), Kevin O’Hallarahan (Clerks) and got…

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Random Thoughts on recent events...

Bad night for us all

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A Bad Night For Most of Us

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Historicon Lancaster 2024: Gaming Highlights and Convention Experience

This is Walt's usual convention After Action Report, for you to peruse, late, as usual!

Traipsing through an Amish world! So I plumb forgot to write one of these things. I dunno, does anyone still read them? In any event, it’s been a busy couple of weeks since Historicon at my work, and I admit it kind of slipped my mind. Sorry! PreGame stuff: I had Guidebook done on time, and I think I rolled it out pretty well for the show. Procedural notes: we are changing from the YM based…

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Guidebook for HISTORICON 2024

The facts, the features, the dirty deets… It’s true! Check out the landing page below. It’s that time again!! For starters, copy this string. https://builder.guidebook.com/g/#/guides/historicon2024 Then click on it to be transported to the Historicon 2024 Landing page. If you don’t have Guidebook installed already, it will transport you to Guidebook, either in the Apple App store or the…

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Galley Warfare at ScrumCon 2024

The Naval Battle of Alalia 535 BC Sometime in the decade between 540 and 530 BC, a combined Etruscan Punic fleet of one hundred and twenty warships faced off against a Greek fleet of only sixty ships from the Greco Corsican colony of Alalia . The battle, called the Battle of Alalia, was fought just off of the North Eastern coast of Corsica. Despite the numerical advantage, the Etruscan Punic…

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ScrumCon 2024 was a great time

Exapanded by a day, Expanded in space ScrumCon, the annual convention of the Second Saturday Scrum Club, was held on 29-30 March, 2024, at the Silver Spring Civic Center in downtown Silver Spring, MD. That’s right, we expanded to two full days of gaming. This was a bit of a risk for an all volunteer organization that legitmately has only like seven guys in it. The venue is not cheap and the…

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What Jim Ward meant to me

The designer of Metamorphasis Alpha and Gamma World has passed James M. Ward passed away the day before yesterday. Rumor was going around he was already at GaryCon, held this weekend, but I have no idea if that’s true. I think it would have added a level of versimilitude to his death if he had passed away at a convention honoring the works of his old company, TSR, and specifically bearing the…

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Metagaming Concepts is on Internet Archive

Not every game, but many of them I was surprised to see that the Internet Archive is now a repository for most of the output from the Metagaming Concepts Microgame Line. Microgames enjoyed popularity during the 1980s and have seen a revival with the popularity of tabletop games in the 21st century. The term generally refers to board games or wargames which were packaged and sold with…