A few weeks back I was fortunate enough to play in a Back to the Future-themed Shadows of Brimstone game. The adventure was called "Shadows of Hill Valley: 1885," and had the players being hired by the local Blacksmith (the mysterious Emmett Brown) to clear out the mines where he had hidden one of his "inventions."
Hans, the game host, brought props for the table and whiskey for the players. Along with our extended Brimstone theme music all the props really brought forth the Old West theme. In this post I put up some highlight pics from the game, to help understand the glory that evolves from a bunch of middle-aged men pretending to be cowboys.
No big deal, just buying dynamite and whiskey in Old West Hill Valley.
I recently stumbled upon a site that definitely deserves a mention, and have been spending hours watching the associated Youtube Channel and learning new techniques. The DM's Craft is a forum/video site hosted by DM Scotty, and it covers all things crafty about D&D. DM Scotty gives tutorial videos about how to make various projects that are loaded with good tips and how-to's in a very professional-looking presentation. Its great if you're getting started crafting or, like me, want to improve your skills.
Like many of you, I like shooting lasers at stuff. In fact, I'd wager to guess that all people like shooting lasers at stuff, at least a little bit. Lasers are just inherently great. I also have started using them in my tabletop RPG games, with mirrors and all that. But there is a secret to using lasers in your games. Something you may not have considered, and will only encounter when you've built the whole damn thing and it doesn't work right. Fortunately, we here at Vorpal Chainsword Productions were able to solve this dilemma, and in our generosity we will share with you...
Played another game of Shadows of Brimstone with the game crew the other day. This time I decided to try one of the 'fixed map' adventures, and utilize my recently-constructed mini dry ice fog machine. So before they came over I had the whole map set up and ready to go. I remember almost nothing from the game itself (too much creativity juice beforehand), but I got a few pretty cool pics of it on my phone, so it must've been a lot of fun.
A while back I was I was ranting about the amount of chits and cards that modern-day boardgames from Fantasy Flight Games and Flying Frog Productions were using. In an attempt to get me to shut up about it, Mary picked up a cheap rotating plastic spice rack one day to help me organize my decks of cards during gameplay. After playing with it a bit, we added some improvements to the system and created the ultimate FFG/FFP boardgaming accessory, which we call:
As many of you know, I am a fan of props in gaming. Even with boardgames. I figure if you're going to donate a few precious work-week evening hours to a game, and you're having people over to do it, you might as well use gold tokens for money or paint your minis to give it that extra uumph.
What only a few of you might know is that I have an unhealthy love for dry ice in gaming. I use it whenever I can get my hands on it. All gaming is better with dry ice fog settling all over the place. I find that chemical fog machines and smoke machines don't have the same effect as good old dry ice does. Even though dry ice can be messy and dangerous (and I have the frozen-off fingerprints to prove it), at least it doesn't have the sneeze-inflicting stink that your standard 'Party City Halloween Fog-O-Matic Deluxe' produces. No, dry ice only emits nice, cool, clean-smelling, suffocating Carbon Dioxide. Like nature intended.
Plus you can get Dry Ice in 1 lb bricks at most grocery stores like Hy-Vee, especially around Halloween (just go to the customer service desk and ask for it), which is what made me think of it.
This last weekend I decided that just putting dry ice in a bowl and setting it in the middle of the table during gaming, while cool-looking, just wouldn't give me the directional control over the foggyness that a true gamesman requires. Therefore I got online and looked for better ways to control my dry ice flow for gaming, wherein I found some good videos for such a project.
So I was setting up another game of Brimstone the other day and something struck my eye. I notice it with every boardgame with similar kinds of cardboard map tiles (Ravenloft, Doom, etc.), and that is the edges of those cardboard tiles that you pop out of the big templates. They're so bright white. The rest of the tile has nice art on it but I feel like the unpainted edges really detract from the effectiveness of the art on the tile. Everything is outlined by this glaring white line on the map, which is distracting.
As a wargamer trying to build a new set of city terrain, miniature painter with tons of unpainted Reaper Bones sitting around, or Dungeon Master with writers block, sometimes it takes a little extra push to get the brain-juices flowing enough to set aside time to continue your projects. Often because your projects require you to access the Creativity part of the brain, and yet also require you to buckle down and get the Productivity part of the brain going.
For instances like this, I have invented something that will revolutionize the way you do game prep. Here's the idea behind its formulation: as is well known and researched thoroughly by well-respected agencies, alcohol sparks the creativity neurons in the brain to let loose their inhibitions and think about stuff like spaceships and sorcerers. On the other hand, caffeine sparks the productivity part of the brain to get you to pick up the pen or paintbrush and start working and maintain focus on things you need to get done, like corporate spreadsheets and TPS reports. So in a flash of genius, we here at VC Labs thought... "Why not combine them?"
I call it: Cyberninja's Cyberstonishing Producto-Creativity Juice.
