Roll 2d6

Well, only a mere 4 months after the convention ended, here’s our Kublacon 2008 report. We recorded this about a week or two after the con, but it took me quite a while to get around to editing it. Let’s hope the next one goes more quickly.

As usual, I took a bunch of pictures and they’re all up in the Roll 2d6 Flickr account, so if you’re at your computer you can follow along.

Links to games and companies we mentioned:
Carcassonne
Carcassonne Inns & Cathederals
Carcassonne Traders & Builders
Gutshot
August Games (for Road-Kill Rally, War of Sail, and Air Knights)
Man O’ War
Legends of the Old West
D&D Miniatures
Simple Great Battles of History
Pizza Box Baseball
Wings of War
Your Move Games
HeroCard Orc Wars
HeroCard Nightmare

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In the first part of a four-part series on Star Trek-based tactical starship combat games, we discuss the late Babylon 5 Wars, and how we’ve found ways to play it as a Star Trek game. I discuss a bit of the history of the game and then go into excessive detail about how the game is played, while Nate tries to rein me in from diving too deep into the details. Enjoy!

Things mentioned:
Babylon 5 on Wikipedia
Babylon 5 Wars on BGG
Babylon 5 Wars on the defunct Agents of Gaming web site
Planetside conversion for Star Trek using the B5W engine
Massive list of Star Trek ships using the Planetside Star Trek rules
Graphical Inertial Movement System (vector movement) for Babylon 5 Wars

We will cover the other three Star Trek games at some point in the future. Has anyone played this game besides us? Let us know!

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In this episode, Nate and Adam follow Marty McFly’s lead, and go back in time to the Old West to cover Avalon Hill’s 1982 classic Gunslinger. We go over how we found the game, what it’s like to play it, and describe how playing Gunslinger led us to re-interpret some Western movies.

Games mentioned:
Gunslinger
Cowboys: The Way of the Gun
Strange Synergy
Car Wars
RoboRally

Movies mentioned:
A Fistful of Dollars
Back to the Future Part III

BTW, near the end there’s some GSM radio noise I couldn’t get rid of — I had my mobile phone too close to my microphone. Gotta remember to turn my phone off during these recording sessions. So, sorry about that.

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In this episode, Nate and I discuss all the games we saw and played at KublaCon 2007, and make some attempt to remember what they were all about. As usual, I took lots of pictures and made a Flickr photoset of them. Check out the pics and you can follow along as we talk about the various games!

Formula Dé
Axis & Allies Naval Miniatures
Axis & Allies Miniatures
Thunderin’ Guns
Ship o’ the Line
Legends of the Old West
HeroCard Champion of New Olympia
HeroCard Rise of the Shogun
Federation Commander
Desperado
Circus Imperium
High School Drama

Note: I had said in the podcast that I was unable to find information about the game “Ship of the Line” from Ballantine, published in 1976. After looking at my Kublacon notes again, I found that the publisher was actually Battleline, and I was able to find the game on BGG … but under the name “Ship o’ the Line”. A tip o’ the hat to Tom Rogers, who ran that game at KublaCon.

Other stuff:
Dungeon Majesty
The Gamers
Old West miniatures from Foundry

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Update: Added link to Federation Commander.

Just a quick note to mention that we’re going to be at our favorite Bay Area game con again this weekend — Kublacon! Just like last year, I’ll be taking pictures and live-uploading them to the Roll 2d6 Flickr account, so subscribe to the RSS feed and you can see the pictures as they come in. It’s just like being there! (Well, kind of.)

This time we explore the depth’s of Nate’s superhero fantasies with a journey deep into Champions, the Hero System superhero RPG that allows for free-form creation of any kind of superhero. We go over the history of the game system and Nate’s experiences with it, and briefly cover an unusual early 80s crossover product between Champions and Car Wars.

Champions gaming

• Hero Games Official site
• Intro to the Hero System [PDF link]
• Wikipedia: Champions

Champions Comic books

• Champions Universe comics titles (with online scans!)
• Champions comic cover gallery

Wikipedia is grand

• GURPS Supers
• Marvel Super Heroes RPG
• DC Heroes RPG
• Categories: Super Heroes RPGs

The Tick does Wikipedia

• The Tick comic book entry
• Circus of the Mighty info

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What is game modding? It’s when you make a change to the physical components of a game you own, and that becomes the way you play the game from that point on. It’s something many gamers do for their games and it can add a lot more fun, or make a problematic game work a little better. We talk about the practice of game modding and also discuss some of our favorite mods.

Games we discuss:
Give Me The Brain
Duel of Ages
Strange Synergy
Babylon 5 Wars
Battlestations
Chess with human pieces

What are your favorite game mods? Let’s hear about it in the comments!

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Coming to you from a rift in the space-time continuum, Adam and Nate discuss Steve Jackson Games’ “Chez” series of card games. We talk about the similarity and differences in the line, and our experience playing them.

Here’s the line-up:

• Chez Geek
• Chez Geek 2: Slack Attack
• Chez Geek 3: Block Party
• Chez Greek
• Chez Goth
• Chez Grunt
• Chez Guevara
• Chez Dork

Other links:

Wormholes
Damn Dirty Apes
Nuclear Wessels

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In this episode, Adam just can’t stop talking about some of his favorite gaming accessories such as dice towers and gaming stones, and he even gives out some game-related crafting tips. Then, Nate discusses a well-known German game that both of us just played recently for the first time: Carcassonne.

Dice towers from GraveDiggerGames.com

Google image search for “dice tower”
miniature castle dice tower
Lego dice tower

Dice Boot link,another Dice Boot link

Das Boot on the IMDB

Adhesives

• ThisToThat.com
• Sticking plastic to fabric
• 3M’s Super 77
• Sticking Styrofoam to leather

Home and Garden Television

Glass stones at Michaels
Glass stones at Ikea

3 Sages Gaming’s Gaming Crystals

Meeples

• A plethora of meeple merch
• BGG pics of meeples

Carcassonne

• BGG Carcassonne page
• Wikipedia Carcassonne page
• BGG’s Spiel des Jahres winners (Carc is 2001)

Rio Grande Games

Reviews:

• Tom Vasel’s
• Paul Tevis’
• Paul Tevis’ “Have Games Will Travel”

Mythbusters
Mythbusters on Wikipedia

“analysis paralysis” in Wikipedia

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Just in time for the 40th anniversary of Star Trek, an episode about the history of Star Trek licensed RPGs. We go through the early Star Trek games, discuss the two different licensed Star Trek universes out there, and talk about our own memories of playing some of these RPGs. What happens when your GM is playing a serious game but the players are playing a wacky game? Find out …

Star Trek: Adventure Gaming In The Final Frontier
FASA’s Star Trek: The Role Playing Game
Last Unicorn Games’ Star Trek Roleplaying Game
Decipher’s Star Trek RPG
Amarillo Design Bureau’s Prime Directive RPG (formerly owned by Task Force Games)

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