Virtual Play

While Mel is away, he’s entrusted me with keeping the Virtual Play flame burning, a task to which I have not applied myself as assiduously as I ought. But now that summer’s here and my teaching duties in the real world are not as onerous, I’ve managed to pull together an episode that discusses Kevin […]

This episode of Virtual Play is a quick look at Goodman Games’ Dungeon Crawl Classics. A fantasy RPG in the old-school tradition, DCC was a lot of fun to run. The recommended method to start play is to take 2-4 randomly generated 0-level characters per player into a gauntlet of some kind as an initial […]

I am making up for some lost ground in November with a quick turn on another show this month. I’m excited to be talking about Black Seven because I had a great time playing the game. Joe ran the game for us several weeks ago and it was a blast. Black Seven is billed as […]

Welcome to Virtual Play! Today’s episode is about Tenra Bansho Zero. This is a Japanese game from 1997 that is being translated into English. I believe the English version will be available within the next six months or so. I played the game a few years ago with Andy Kitowski, who is doing the translation, […]

In this episode of Virtual Play, Bill and I talk about the Chronica Feudalis game he is running. Set during the First Crusade, Bill’s campaign is a great opportunity to intermix history with roleplaying. The campaign has run about 4 sessions or so; I’ve had the opportunity to play one evening so I can share […]

Hi! Welcome to Virtual Play. This episode is a bit different than normal. Rather than playing several short excerpts intermixed with discussion, I am going to play the more or less complete actual play of a practice game Bill and I played of Marvel Heroic Roleplaying. We were getting ready for a Marvel Launch Party […]

Bill and I are back with the final episode recounting our games from Dexcon 2012. Today’s episode is about Cthulhu Dark, a rules-light game of Lovecraftian Horror by Graham Walmsley. The adventure is titled ‘A Head of His Time’, and it involves Andrew Mellon and his family gathering the artwork that Mellon intends to use […]

Welcome to Virtual Play! In this episode, Bill and I discuss Ashen Stars and Night’s Black Agents. Bill ran both these games at Dexcon. They are both based on the Gumshoe system, by Pelgrane Press, and so share the same basic mechanics. Ashen Stars includes rules to give it a science fiction feel: space combat, […]

As promised, this episode is a recap of the two Classic Traveller games Bill ran at Dexcon. I find these games very entertaining to listen to. They make me want to play! Both these games were essentially pick-up games, with characters and the adventure more or less determined on the fly using the Traveller rules […]

Our Dexcon wrap-up episodes continue with this look at Skulduggery. It’s an adventure pitting heroes of Mankara against a giant automaton built centuries earlier that has awoken once more to threaten the city. Bill points out a key thing about players that I have been overlooking–sometimes it’s important for a player to solve whatever mystery […]