RPG Blog Carnival – Pimp A Game, Final Roundup

Wow! That was an awesome month! I’ve never hosted a blog carnival before, so I’m afraid I don’t have anything to compare it to, but I was amazed at the obscure, unique, and (for me) unheard-of roleplaying games that numerous people shared with me as part of the carnival.

I’d like to give a shout out to all all the those that participated in February’s ‘Pimp a Game’ Blog Carnival. Ordered by blog:

Complete List of Carnival Posts

Alesmiter

Book Scorpions Lair

The Chindividual

The DM From Outremer

Exchange of Realities

Held Action

Journeyman GM

Kobold Enterprise

Lunarshadow.net

The Ongoing Campaign

Rising Phoenix Games

RPG Circus

Shorty Monster

Tales from the Savage Troll 

The Village Barbarian

Sorry if I missed anyone, please let me know if this is the case!

RPG Blog Carnival – Pimp A Game

The Unofficial Official RPG Blog Carnival Logo.

February is the month of love. For many it engenders images of chocolates,  snuggling by the fireside, and rampant fornication. Not all of us are so lucky to have that special someone, however, and we make do with what we’ve got.

Instead of chocolates, we pull out the old dice bag. Instead of snuggling by the fire, we park our rump around the table among our gaming friends. And instead of fornication, we enjoy the pleasure found in pretending to be capable warriors and adventurers saving the day.

We all know the big roleplaying games: Dungeons and Dragons, Pathfinder, maybe GURPS or RIFTS (If your DM hated you). They get a lot of attention and love on the internet. That’s not what this month’s blog carnival is for.

This month of February I invite you to gather round the campfire with your obscure indie rpgs and your sleeper hits and your imported foreign rpgs with funny dice. I invite you to gush about your love for these less well-known games, create homebrew content and share it, or tell a story about a session you where in playing these games. I invite you to pimp out your favorite roleplaying game, the one you could never find players for and settled for DND even though you really wanted to play Paranoia or Call of Cthulu.

Go forth and commence the pimping. Just please make sure to link back here and/or comment this post so I can include you in the month-end roundup.

And hey, while you’re at it why don’t you take a look at the last blog carnival: New Beginnings!

Secrets of Necromancy – Epic Tier Powers

Necromancer

Used with permission from yigitkoroglu @ http://yigitkoroglu.deviantart.com/

I have reached the pinnacle of my art. All undead bow to my will and the secrets of the shadowfell are known to me. I am the dominator of souls, the harbinger of decay. Weep mortal, for your life is at an end. 

Now for the pinnacle of necromantic prowess. Learn to summon deathknights, ghastly hordes, skeletal dragons, and the dreaded reaper to fight on your behalf.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD PDF

Special thanks to yigitkoroglu for giving permission to use the awesome image in both this blog post and the pdf document.

Find more of yigitkoroglu’s work at http://yigitkoroglu.deviantart.com/

Secrets of Necromancy – Paragon Tier Powers

Necromancer by Dezilon

Used with permission from Dezilon @ http://dezilon.deviantart.com/

My powers grow daily. Soon I shall unlock the secrets of the soul itself! The ancient tomes I have been studying teach me of the powers of flesh and bone. The dead provide ample resources for those with the strength of will to use the forbidden magic. None can stand before the very forces of the grave!

This article is a doozy. Learn to summon banshees, flesh golems, shadowy steeds, and clouds of noxious fumes that raise the dead to fight on your behalf.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD PDF

Special thanks to Dezilon for giving permission to use the awesome image in both this blog post and the pdf document.

Find more of Dezilon’s work at http://dezilon.deviantart.com/

Secrets of Necromancy – Heroic Tier Powers

You imbecilic fool! You have no concept of the eldritch forces I can bring to bear. The mysteries of death have been revealed to me and the dead serve my will. Tremble in fear mortal, and pray for your soul. 

There is something about the undead that just hits a nerve with people. I’ve lost count of the number of zombie related movies, video games, and books that have been released in the last decade – a staggering number I’m sure. Cooler still are the necromancers who control the hordes of undead, who use dark rituals to summon them from the underworld. These sages in black have always interested me greatly – I played a true necromancer several times in my 3.5 Dungeons and Dragons game much to the dismay of my DM. An army at my beck and call has always interested me – the more rotting the better.

I’m a 4th edition player now, through and through, but I was rather disappointed with the weaksauce power selection we got for the Necromancer in Heroes of Shadow. We were given very few real undead-summoning powers and those we did get where rather lackluster. In response to this I have been working on some necromancy-appropriate daily powers for the wizard and mage classes, specifically the summoner and necromancer builds.

Contained in the following PDF are 6 heroic tier daily powers designed to give necromancers true undead summoning capability.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD PDF

Kingdoms of Kalamar – Twilight Elves

Twilight ElvesTwilight Elf

“No mercy, no quarter given. We of the Uulihanni will not rest until our dark kin have been eradicated.”

Twilight elves consider themselves to be the guardians and justicars of the elven people. It is they who keep the dark elves, their fallen cousins, from threatening the surface in force. Their martial prowess and military tactics rival those of the Hobgoblins – indeed the two races have much in common, though both would find the idea revolting. While the twilight elves have made their homes underground to fight their hated foe they are not well suited to the environment. They are the tallest, and most handsome of all the elves, radiating the arrogant beauty of the original elves before the Great Schism that led to the separation of the elves into distinct subcultures. Read more »

How I got into Wargaming Part 2.

We left last week’s post on a bit of a downer. I realized Games Workshop is made up of a bunch of crooks who can’t write a balanced ruleset that doesn’t force their players to purchase an ungodly amount of models – or more likely won’t. There is a light at the end of this tunnel, however. Warmachine and Hordes, two different force configurations, really one game.

Warmachine and Hordes Logos

It took a bit of time for me to get sucked into this game, I won’t lie. A good friend of mine whom I played Dungeons and Dragons with let me read through the quickstarter rules provided in the battle box of his force. Quick note on the battlebox – $50 for a playable force that you can have a lot of fun with – compare that to Games Workshop’s $150 dollar battleforce boxes that don’t come with your leader and will, if you’re lucky, only get you about a third the way there to making a tabletop-ready force.

Read more »

How I got into Wargaming Part 1.

I want you to go back in time with me – back to 2004. I was 14 and my family had just moved to the big city and where checking out the mall one Saturday afternoon in December. I had 40 dollars burning a hole in my pocket and decided to wander the mall looking for something interesting. That’s when I spied this:

Games Workshop

Read more »

Move Completed.

The move has been completed. We still have to style the new blog properly so please be patient as the site may go through several changes in the next week or two.

The Many Faces of Barthan :P

Hello folks. Just wanted to first start off this post with some context. See I’ve been in a weekly campaign since September 2010 (about) and we’re level 8 at the moment, having started from level 1. I am behind in journal updates but you can find some journal entries describing the game in my earlier posts. We started with essentials and then where able to make new characters outside these original restrictions. I have kept my same character, since Barthan is the best character I’ve ever played or made by far and I really like him. Mechanically, however, he has had some changes. In the beginning of 2011 I changed him to a normal phb wizard, from the essentials mage, and chose some new powers. Then a month ago or so I changed him to a psion and reflavored the powers to be arcane. One of the players made a joke about me making him a cavalier next (the essentials paladin). Anyway this sparked a humorous little lazy Photoshop project called ‘The Many Faces of Barthan‘. Below is the fruits of that project.

Read more »