The drow have become a fixture in Dungeons and Dragons, and that brings a lot of baggage to the game, since they live squarely at the corner of “a lot of players like even sentient, free willed beings to be born evil so it’s okay to kill them” and “hey, this thing that was born evil looks a lot...

This is part 3 of my review of the Pathfinder Playtest from Paizo. You can see part 1 here and part 2 here. In this part of the review, I’ll comment on Advancement and Options, and Playing the Game. The fourth segment will contain my thoughts on Game Mastering through Appendices. If you’re...

This is part 2 of my review of the Pathfinder Playtest from Paizo. You can see part 1 here where I cover the first three sections of the book (Overview through Classes). In this part of the review, I’ll comment on the next four sections (Skills through Spells). The next review should cover...

The big news from the Paizo arena is, of course, their Pathfinder Playtest. I picked up a copy of the physical rulebook at my FLGS about a month ago with the intent of writing a review. Guess what? This is that review. Normally, I have a system for my reviews of RPG products, but I’m going to set...

My brother and I had a weird ritual when I was in high school. On Easter, we would stay up until my niece fell asleep, hide eggs for her, and then watch the Blues Brothers. There was something oddly comforting about watching an obsessed pair of ex-cons on a crazy quest as they traveled cross...

There is something about space opera that just begs for the inclusion of rogues, thieves, and criminals. Sure, Star Wars has Han, Lando, Boba Fett, and Jabba the Hutt, but even Star Trek has its Harry Mudd and its Orion pirates. Even comic book universes known for their superheroes seem to have...

I think the heist story may occupy a special place in my gamer heart as a tale I greatly enjoyed in media such as television and movies, and yet wasn’t high on my list of adventures to attempt to emulate in tabletop gaming. When I was a fledgling gamer, a lot of cyberpunk and espionage games were...

My first brush with 7th Sea was to see all the 1st edition books on the shelves of one of the local game stores when I was getting back into roleplaying after my brief, early adulthood hiatus from the hobby. It looked interesting, but at the time, I was still locked into the mindset that if it...

Last year at Gen Con, I was given a slew of things by Josh Wardrop at Arc Knight Publishing to review for the Stew. I was in the middle of a move, a new job, and closing out my old web development company. The Spell Templates, Maps, and Flat Plastic Miniatures got stuck in a box and only unearthed...