Christian's RPG Shelf

 I see a recurring theme with modern Dungeons & Dragons where DMs and players alike get frustrated with some aspects of the game and get more frustrated trying to fix it. This often leads to people finding other games that are a better fit for their table. But is D&D just a jumping off point for this hobby or is there more fun to be had with it when you play to its strengths? Patchwork Paladin has a fantastic article about this that I wanted to share. Patchwork Paladin : 5.5e D&D is not a game of goblins, orcs, wits, puzzles, and traps. It’s a game where living volcanos throw asteroids at you. It’s a game where the atmosphere turns to acid as you are possessed by the ghost of a nine-hundred year old psychic vampire. It’s a game where you are pursued by invisible, silent fairy hunters across an impossible dimensional landscape coated with diamonds, but still, inevitably, you always win. And probably bring home a pet.  D&D tries to do everything unlike so many ot...

  Darrington Press had a big hit with the launch of Daggerheart last year. The game has picked up traction quickly and has outpaced Darrington Press’s own initial expectations. It is a great game that I have run with my friends and family a few times and will be running a campaign at some point down the road.   Daggerheart’s first expansion book, Hope & Fear, launches today and brings with it a treasure trove of new goodies. I preordered Hope & Fear as soon as it was announced and it arrived at my doorstep a few weeks ago. I have read the book and am happy with what Darrington Press has accomplished with it.  (Full disclosure: I have read Hope & Fear but have not yet played in or run a Daggerheart game with the content in the book.) The book itself is full of beautiful artwork from cover-to-cover in a brisk 196 pages. Daggerheart’s Core Book has some fantastic art and that quality continues with Hope & Fear. It strikes a good balance of vibrant, inviting t...

  LichHouse, one of my favorite YouTube channels about Shadowdark RPG, just published a new video about running a Gauntlet.  For those unfamiliar, a Gauntlet is a special adventure where players prepare four “0 level” characters who try to survive. Whoever makes it out becomes a first level character and become the characters the players will use in a campaign.  I have not run one of these yet but if you appreciate the   random approach to character creation , a Gauntlet is a great way to start characters that way. Watch The Shadowdark Gauntlet: Zero to Hero  

  Creating characters for roleplaying games can be a fun process regardless of the medium you are playing in. I always enjoy the process of imagining who my latest character will be and watching them come to life. The art of character creation differs from game-to-game, each with their own complexities and flexibility.   One of my favorite character creation process is in Shadowdark RPG. For those unfamiliar, Shadowdark is a fantasy roleplaying game that revisits the classic dungeon crawling style of play with modern gameplay mechanics. There is a lot to like about the game but one of the first things that caught my attention was the character creation process. It is quick, easy to follow process with a level of randomness that I appreciate. I was creating some Shadowdark characters the other day and one of the characters went in a direction I didn’t expect. I rolled for stats and, seeing as the highest stat was Dexterity, it made sense to make a character of the Thief class. ...

I previously wrote about how Dragon Warrior (Dragon Quest) on NES was my first real introduction to roleplaying games . There was another game on NES that offered a similar, but more expansive experience, that I also enjoyed and ended up following as it became one of the biggest franchises in video games. I am talking, of course, about Final Fantasy.   Final Fantasy resembled Dragon Quest in some ways but with managing a party of characters instead of a single protagonist, offering character classes that each had their speciality abilities and traits, travel by boats and airships, a larger variety of monsters and puzzles, and (in my opinion) a more compelling story, it stood out as something special. I played this game on NES and several times over the years as Square Enix re-released the game on newer consoles and handhelds. It was always a joy to explore but I admit I never even came close to finishing the game. I would play until another game stole my attention or the game reach...

My first experience with Dungeons & Dragons was not with pencil, paper, and a handful of dice. I had an Intellivision in the 1980s and one of the games in my collection was Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. This game was a TSR-licensed game but did not recreate the tabletop game experience in a faithful way. It also wasn’t a game that my young mind comprehended. I could not figure out how to make sense of the world map, let alone visit a dungeon, so while I had awareness of D&D at a very young age I did not understand what it was.  My first true entry to the RPG genre came a few years later when Nintendo Power magazine offered me a free copy of Dragon Warrior (Dragon Quest). I had seen coverage for Dragon Warrior in Nintendo Power and I admit it had its charm but the menu-driven gameplay was of little interest to me. I only got a few new games a year so taking a chance on this weird game that thematically looked fun but mechanically did not was not something I desired. But a...

 Warm greetings! Thanks for dropping in on the RPG Shelf. I wanted to start this blog as a way to share some thoughts on my experience with roleplaying games, this includes tabletop games and video games. I have been playing RPGs since the 1980s though my real passion for this style of gaming came in more recent years. I will get into all that in a future post.  For now, I am still finding my footing with this blog and what I want it to be. Check back soon.