The Gift of the Gaming

It's been a little while again since my last post, but it's been a busy few weeks. This last week saw not only my birthday, but also my wife's birthday and our wedding anniversary. Gifts were given, and my wife being the complete star that she is, knew exactly the sort of thing I like... GAMES!

We took a trip into London, and visited three suppliers of RPGs in one day! Besides the game section of Forbidden Planet, we checked out a couple of the biggest FLGSs in the capital. First on the agenda was Leisure Games. Resisting the urge to purchase the rather epic Vampire: The Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition, I gained the rather cool Cold City RPG.

Haven't had chance to read it yet, but I've heard great things about both Cold City and Hot War. Though typically, I didn't realise it was a partner publication with Cubicle 7 until after I left the store. Looking forward to reading it!

While at Leisure Games, the wife managed to find a very cool set of blank dice. Chessex make this rather cool little set which is essential to the design work I've been pondering for WILD.


I'd been thinking about incorporating some form of "Wild Die" to add a bit of a "critical" element to the dice rolls in the game. I was initially thinking of something odd, so I ordered some of the more bizarre dice that don't usually get used in RPGs (D14's, D16's, D24's), and even looked into getting some custom made irregular dice (snub cubes, that sort of thing), but cost is always an element. So I started thinking about using D12's, with 2 or 3 sides coloured differently. May not even make it into the game, but it's something I'm playing with at the moment.

Next stop was the very cool store Orc's Nest, another FLGS, only with two floors of goodies squirreled away in there. First time I'd ever been in there, and they really do have a lot of cool stuff.

On top of Forbidden Planet, it was good to see all three of the big RPG suppliers in London all stocking the Doctor Who RPG, and it was even cooler to see that Orc's Nest had Conspiracy X 2.0.


In addition to Cold City, the wife bought me the excellent Mouse Guard RPG. We've been fans of Mouse Guard for a while, but I'd never checked out the RPG before. Based on The Burning Wheel RPG, there are some really nice elements to the game play in there - seasonal and environmental factors, the Nature of a Mouse and how "mousey" or "human" you are, and the use of Traits. Really good read. And the added bonus is that it was signed by the creator of Mouse Guard himself! Bonus!! And such a nice little hardback format too - square and compact. The sort of proportions I was thinking for WILD...

Final cool purchase of the week was a complete surprise. The eagerly awaited Marvel Heroic Roleplaying core rulebook. I'd bought the PDF the moment it came out, but I knew there was going to be a delay getting the "in print" version over here in the UK due to licensing, but it appeared! Excellent! Possibly would have preferred there to be a hardcover, but that's just me. My computer is so old it struggled a bit with the PDF so now I can really explore its intricacies and see what all the discussion has been about.

That's given me plenty to read for the time being - I think a hardcopy of Leverage RPG is going to be the next purchase, as the PDF I bought is so slow on the ancient computer, but in the meantime there was a particularly excellent delivery from Eden Studios this week - the Kickstarter copies of Conspiracy X 2.0: The Extraterrestrials Sourcebook arrived, along with my author copies, and the T-shirts.

For those of you who didn't Kickstart Conspiracy X, the Extraterrestrials Sourcebook is hitting distributors this week in the US and Europe, so please badger your local FLGS to get it in. And reassure them that the Conspiracy X 2.0 Core Rulebook is still in print to complement it. *hint, hint*