New Releases

What can I say except that April has been a slow month on the new releases front. White Wolf did release the very interesting World of Darkness: Innocents for playing children in the World of Darkness. This is the latest in a variety of games about playing children in a horror setting and it will be interesting to see how it compares with others over time. Exalted fans finally got their Abyssals book, allowing for a variety of new villains and anti-heroes to be created in the Exalted 2nd world.

Arriving at the end of the month is Mongoose's Traveller, providing a new take on a classic series. Here's hoping it proves itself to be an excellent improvement on the history of science fiction adventure that has come before it.

On The Net

I've not been on the various RPG fora as much as I would like this past month, but I am very aware of a few fantastic resources. Behind the Counter and Business of Gaming Retail continue to provide just downright interesting insights into running a game store. If you've ever considered running a shop, or just want to read some entertaining columns, then I highly recommend them.

While all of our columns are great, two in particular stood out this month. If you ever want to use poison in a game check out the impressively researched Death by Poison, which provides a great many poisons and poison uses throughout history. If it's running convention games that interests you then you can't go wrong with RPG Con Season Tips. It's an entertaining piece that offers useful suggestions for everyone.

You can never go wrong with Story-Games' Stuff to Watch thread. A collection of assorted things of interest for the RPG fan, this thread series never fails to clue me in on neat ideas that I wouldn't otherwise be exposed to.

Finally, I found the thread Things You Wish Didn't Bug People to be an interesting read in that it lays out all of the major and minor gripes folk have about various games and provides some interesting discussion as well.

My Take

I had the opportunity to review Mob Justice this month and found it promising in that it included novel mechanics and focused on building characters that are riddled with plot hooks and drama. It's a little rough around the edges, but it could work beautifully for the right group.

Unfortunately, that's it for April. Join me next month for even more new releases, reviews of Spirit of the Season, Elder Evils, and other great games, and interesting posts from around the web. Happy gaming!