GMS Magazine Podcast - RPGs, Board Games reviews, interviews, advice. Mostly Asian and Indie games.

By Paco Garcia Jaen

The Gamerati himself has been into creating, promoting and playing

roleplaying games for a very, very long time and in that time he’s learned a

great deal. A great deal that he’s more than happy to share that knowledge.

From helping create Eden Studios to setting up the Gamerati Network, Ed Healy

has been enthusiastically promoting not just games, but gamers; celebrating our

idiosyncrasies and  showcasing how our differences only make us richer.

But who’s Ed Healy really? Where does he come from and why is he so keen on

games and gaming? And what drives him?

As I suspected, an interview worth listening to. Ed is probably one of the

nicest men our hobby has ever seen!

By Paco Garcia Jaen, Michael Chamberlain and Max Murray

Steam Park comes from the company that entertained us with Dungeon Fighter

released this lovely looking game at Spiel 2013.

With cute looks and some delightful art work by the same artist that gave

Dixit its idiosyncratic and recognisable feel, the assembly parts that come with

this game do promise quite a lot.

The charming theme, creating your own theme park to entertain and delight

your visitors. Simple, right?

Not so fast! You’ll have to keep your park clean and well looked after to

earn money, and if you also complete your missions successfully, you’ll make

even more money!

And all this in a family game!

We sat around and had a game to find out if Steam Park is as family friendly

and as lovely as it seems.

Hope you enjoy the show!

By Paco Garcia Jaen and Endzeitgeist

Welcome friends to the first of hopefully many episodes of a new show, the

RPG Review Room, in which we’ll bring the most prolific reviewer out there,

Endzeitgeist to bring us reviews of the best and worst products he’s recently

read.

To make sure he’s not the carrying all the weight of the reviews, which would

be very unfair on him, I will endeavour to also read and therefore review, as

many games as  possible. 

So in this occasion we start with Kobold Press, The Rise of the Drow

Kickstarter and something to do with lycanthropes that Endzeitgeist has actually

authored and not just reviewed. Yep! That’s all I’ll say… you’ll have to listen

to the podcast to find out more! It’ll be worth it!

We also talk about:

Panataxia: One of the Four Dollar Dungeons, a series

of standalone adventures designed to be logical, entertaining, challenging and

balanced, and easily integrated into any campaign world.

Each adventure has enough material to last two to three playing sessions and

enough experience to raise four characters of the appropriate level up by one

extra level. Treasure is commensurate with the encounter challenges faced.

Scaling information is included for adventuring parties of five or six.

It Came from the Stars Campaign Guide: The It Came from the

Stars Campaign Guide brings the mystery of the unknown and the weird to your

Pathfinder Roleplaying Game with new player options, new monsters and other GM

options, and new adventures. Mystery, wonder, and terror from the starry

vastness await you. Whether you play in a world that is already aware of what

lies beyond or that has been so far oblivious, it’s about to get ugly.

The Slaver Caves of Dorden: In the dark winter months near the

hamlet of Baruth, a menace is growing. Locals have been kidnapped and sold into

slavery in the mines to the north. Recently liberated from a cold and

calculating dictator, the town seeks heroes to mount a rescue. Far beneath the

foreboding Mountains of Dorden, an evil that has remained hidden for centuries

will soon be unleashed on the realms unless someone intervenes to save those

kidnapped and stop the growing evil.

Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Ultimate Campaign: Where the

dungeon ends, another adventure begins! Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Ultimate

Campaign takes you on a guided tour through the parts of the game that

happen between monster attacks and quests for ancient artefacts. As some of the

most powerful and prestigious heroes around, do your player characters want to

build up a kingdom of their own, or lead an army against a neighboring nation?

Perhaps they want to start a business, craft magic items, or embark on a quest

that will come to define them. Whether you’re looking for help generating a

young character or seeking ways to challenge adventurers who’ve grown bored of

fighting monsters one-on-one, this book has everything you need!

Ultimate Rulership: If your characters are building a kingdom,

you cannot miss this 40-page product! Designed as a perfect complement to the

newly revised kingdom-building system, Ultimate Rulership contains a

dazzling array of new options including new Edicts for royal commissions and

endowments, espionage and festivals, and militarism and recruiting new armies.

Add nearly 20 new buildings for your cities from Aeries to Tunnels, Hanging

Gardens to Crematoria. Guidelines for population and military recruitment, and

for integrating settlement attributes, kingdom events, and danger levels;

naturally advantageous sites and exotic city locales from cliff dwellings to

treetop towns to cities under the sea!

Achtung! Cthulhu: Achtung! Cthulhu brings you a two-fisted

wartime CALL OF CTHULHU roleplaying game setting packed full of fiendish Nazis,

terrifying ancient mysteries, legendary war machines, and enough writhing

tentacles to fill ten Reichstags!

¡Gañanes! is a

Apocalypses are something that all sorts of media have been attracted to and

using all the time. For a long, long time books, movies, theatre, games…

This game, Chaosmos, takes the apocalypse to a new level because it is the

universe that’s about to end, not just a world that’s about to end, or a country

or a civilisation… nop… it’s the universe!

This is a game for two to four players in which they play an alien race

looking for an item that will allow their race to survive the apocalypse and

travel into the new universe to thrive again.

With gorgeous artwork and some interesting bluffing and trick playing

mechanics, this game is very promising and being funded in Kickstarter at the

time of publishing this podcast.

Hope you’ll take a look and that the interview sounds interesting!

Everyone knows that angels and demons are going to fight, like they do in

Kingdom. That’s what they do because… because they’re angels and demons. And

there are kingdoms to conquer and one can’t stand each other.

Who needs any more reasons?

Exactly.

Black Locust Games decided to make a game based on the theme. This is a card

game for two players full of absolutely gorgeous looking cards in which the

players rage a battle to win control of the universe.

The copy we received was a pre-production copy, so we can’t comment on how

good or how much better the final product will be, but it is pretty good already

and the cards felt very nice, so I can imagine the final version will be pretty

stunning.

Although the game wasn’t in Kickstarter when the podcast was recorded, it’s

getting funded at the time of publishing this podcast and we sincerely hope

you’ll take a look at it because it’s certainly well worth it.

Michael

Chamberlain and Max Murray have taken a look at the game and they liked it…

that’s quite an endorsement!

Hope you enjoy the show!

Welcome back friends to the Boardgame Review Room.

In this episode we take a look at 1911 Admunsen vs Scott, a game inspired by

the epic race that took place in 1911 and saw the to legendary explorer’s teams

compete to be the first human beings to reach the South Pole.

This is an asymmetric game for two players in which both try to reach the

South Pole using two different routes.

Michael

Chamberlain and Max Murray sat down and had a go at this game to find out

what it is like to play it for the first time.

It seems it’s quite good!

Hope you enjoy the show!

Level 99 has been a company I’ve been very keen on since I learned about Brad

Talton some three years ago. I backed their Kickstarter project for Mystic

Empyrean and since they’ve had a whole load of projects that have been

successful, which is pretty good!

They are the minds behind BattleCon, one of the best fighting games out there. Also, of

course, its expansion.

Pixel Tactics also features as a fantastic game, by the way!

Now they are again in Kickstarter with a game called Argent: The Consortium,

a game the promises to mix Euro and Ameritrash experiences so everyone has a way

to play that suits their tastes.

And it sounds jolly good too, with some really cool victory conditions.

But don’t let me give you any spoilers before the podcast.

Enjoy the show!

Nothing like turning history into a game. If done well, they aren’t just

instructional, but also terrific fun. That’s what I was hoping with Cornish

Smuggler.

Apart from the fact that the game looks totally gorgeous, the subject is, to

say the least, intriguing.

In this game, you’re a smuggler who has to get cargo that fits in your boat,

transport it to a secure port – or an insecure port that has a guard you can

bribe – and then transport it inland if you want to expand your smuggling

business.

But, even though all of this sounds very promising, we had to get to play it

and try for ourselves. And of course tell you all about it!

Hope you enjoy the show!

By Dr Mike Reddy00:00 Introduction - http://www.gmsmagazine.com/podcasts/the-boardroom00:02 Interview with Hannah and Ryan of the Counters The Board Game Cafe, Cardiff - https://www.facebook.com/countersBGC00:13

Interview with Tom Nolan, designer of StakBots the card game, and their

upcoming KickStarter for the expansion -

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/643459158/stak-bots-battling-card-game-expansion00:35

Pandemic: The Cure, the dice game prototype -

http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/150658/pandemic-the-cure - with

Michael from the Little Metal Dog Show Podcast -

http://littlemetaldog.com/ - and Chris from The Sausage Factory Podcast -

http://spong.com/podcasts/tsf/01:08 End credits

Romeo and Juliet in the Council of Verona is a small game from Crash Games that

uses the characters in Shakesperare’s wonderful play. During the game, players

have to decide where to locate the given characters, in the Council or in Exile.

Some characters have agendas. During play, you’ll place some chits on the

character to gain points if their agenda is met at the end of the game. Funnily

enough, one of the chits is just for bluffing… nice addition! These are not all

the rules and it’s indeed not an exhaustive description of the rules. For that

you have to listen to the episode (which of course you were going to do anyway,

weren’t you?).

It is a short game and it’s meant to play quickly. Basically it’s a filler

game. That makes me both interested and concerned at the same time because

filler games tend to be a bit too light for me. With the extremely notable

exception of Love Letter, I don’t tend to take many more games with  me when I

go out.

So we had to try this. And we did.

I think you’ll like what we had to say about this game.