For those of you out there already aware of Monaco and its rave reviews, this will be very familiar. If you haven’t yet read those reviews, they’re right. At least, the ones that refer to Monaco as delightful and occasionally vindictive are. It’s a wonderful heist game that — as you keep taking — just keeps on giving. I haven’t yet finished the game, and I anticipate many more hours with it.
Author Archives: Henry
The Mongoliad, Book One
The Mongoliad, Book One, is the first in a series of books written by a collection of authors (Bear, Bear, Brassey, deBirmingham, Moo, Stephenson, Teppo). It is an alternate history starting in 1241 AD with brief moments of the fantastical / spiritual. They make no jokes about the devastation wrought by the Mongols, and paint a convincing portrait of medieval Europe (everything is dirty and most people are poor). It’s a quality story, with the promise of more good tales to come.
Servant of the Dragon, by David Drake
Servant of the Dragon is the third book in the epic fantasy series Lord of the Isles, written by David Drake. Published in 1999, it is a excellent sequel and addresses the few issues that I previously had with the series while continuing the better traditions of the first two books. I recommended the series before, I recommend it even more strongly now. If you want to dive into a fantasy setting built on the sunken ruins of an Atlantean past, constructed from the stones of Sumerian mythology and mortared with Greek and Roman poetry, this is the series for you.
Horror and Predetermined Outcomes
In my article on how I run a game, I mentioned that there are specific genres in which I’ll sometimes accept predetermined outcomes. I’ve most often experienced this in horror games, where both the players and the PCs know that there will be certain terrible things that happen, regardless of the actions taken by the PCs. But why does this work? How could any player enjoy knowing that their terrible doom approaches?
Short Story: Jerome Goes North
A second story in my fantastical alternate history world; this one follows Jerome at a younger age, as he travels to trade with the Northmen.
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It was one of those late summer days when the weather somehow thought it was late fall, and Jerome huddled into his wool cloak as the wind forced rain into his eyes. A truly miserable day to be riding north into the hills on a narrow and winding dirt trail. He had to manage the wagon as his team of oxen laboriously pulled it over every rut and stone they could find. The rain had soaked through to his skin several hours back, shortly after he had broken camp with his retainers, and not one of them looked comfortable. His uncle had neglected to mention anything like this.
Player Action, Player Inaction
I have often focused too narrowly on what will happen when the players follow the trails that I have laid out for them. But what do you do when the players don’t want to play with any of the plot you’ve got prepared for them? And what happens with the problems that they’re ignoring?
Queen of Demons, by David Drake
Queen of Demons is the second book in the Lord of the Isles series, printed in 1998. David Drake continues to show that he knows his craft, with this sequel giving a suitably dramatic follow-up to the beginning of the epic. This time I wasn’t skeptical at all, and I was right not to be. That musty scent of genuine historic fantasy setting, cobbled together from the corpses of bits of real history, takes life once more.
Lessons I’ve Learned about Naming NPCs
Names are hard. You want to make sure that the people and places you’re creating sound believable, and you don’t want to keep repeating the same things over and over (unless there’s a name like Michael in your game world, in which case you should probably just name everyone that since that’s how it works in real life). I’ve made and seen some pretty funny mistakes with naming things, so here are a few of the things I’ve learned…
How I Run a Game
Much like with Jason’s article, this is not meant to be an exhaustive discussion of how to run a game. It also isn’t meant to be prescriptive. Like it says on the tin, I want to share with you how I go about running games these days. Curious about success through brainstorming and improvisation? Keep reading.
Lord of the Isles, by David Drake
I had always thought of David Drake as a military sci-fi author. He has a long history of writing exactly that, with Hammer’s Slammers and Northworld being the examples I’m most familiar with. So when I came across Lord of the Isles while browsing his wikipedia page, I was a little surprised. A renowned sci-fi author tries his hand at epic fantasy?
I shouldn’t have been skeptical. Continue reading
Fistful of Wits 