Monday, December 27, 2010

Gaming is in the Air


I hope everyone had a festive and fruitful holiday season. Next up is the new year and with it comes new gaming opportunities. I am excited to say that I have a new game starting up on January 7th, and the reason I have not updated the blog is due to my work on the game. It is more of a sandbox adventure that is set inside a kear, read dungeon crawl, in the setting of Earthdawn.

For anyone familiar with my last campaign, it is a specialized segment of that game. The character's will not have the far reaching goals that I had hopped for in that campaign, but this campaign should prove interesting. I do hope the players will take some interest in the politics of the game and choose sides accordingly, but if not, the adventure serves well as a dungeon smash.

On a similar note, as with most of endeavors, this particular game has a quasi-epic story arc. I know many people like to you use long term bad guys in their games. I received the D&D 3.5 supplement "Elder Evils" for Christmas. I've been wanting it for a while because when I flipped through it, I saw a pic of "Zargon, the Returner". This was an iconic monster from my younger days of D&D and while the original adventure, B4: The Lost City, was a nice dungeon tromp for my adolescent mind, there was little explanation of the full story or how all the creatures got there. Elder Evils expound on the Lost City and helps bring the epic story arc into light, as well specific encounters at various points of the character's level advancement. It gives blanket rules on how to use 'signs' to herald the coming Evil as well a giving you some lesser adversaries and maps of locations key to that Eldar Evil's rise to power. While Zargon is what piqued my interest, the four other I have read so far are also interesting. I would encourage anyone crafting a long term campaign, with an epic battle of good and evil, to take a look at a few of the entries.

Anyone wishing to read more on the adventure can go here:

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

99 Paintings in 99 Days

Tom Baxa, one of the defining artists of the Earthdawn game, has endeavoured to create a painting a day for 99 days. Having daughter who is an aspiring artist, this is an audacious challenge to one's skill, in my opinion. For those who are not familiar with Baxa's work, his paintings contains elements of khaotic expressionism that screams Horror. I relate it to a scene in a zombie film when the camera comes into focus just as the zombie descends upon the hapless victim.

Thus far Baxa does not disappoint and I look forward to what he is going to produce in the next three months. If you are interested in his work, he selling each paint for $99 and prints for $9.99. You can read his blog for insight into each piece as he paints it.

Baxa's Art
Baxa's Blog

Sunday, December 5, 2010

Earthdawn Cathay Available in E-Format


Just want to give a shout for my favorite game. Redbrick LLC has just released their newest source book, Cathay The Five Kingdoms. This highly anticipated release is now available in PDF format at DriveThruRPG.com. Unfortunately, I can only justify one purchase, so I will be waiting for the hardback version to come out in January. If you have chance, take look and tell me what you think.