New Columns

Christopher Cecil. Fuzzy Thinking. Comic. "Singing Telegram of Cthulhu."

Shannon Appelcine of Advanced Designers & Dragons (and, of course, RPGnet) offered some critiques of the graphic novel biography of E. Gary Gygax Rise of the Dungeon Master: Gary Gygax and the Creation of D&D in "A Look at Rise of the Dungeon Master."

New Reviews

Rick Hull reviewed "Super Mission Force," a superhero miniatures battles game that's quick, easy and extremely intuitive.

Arquette took a look at "Explore/Create", an autobiography of game designer Richard Garriott.

Antonios S was back with reviews of two alternative versions of the perennial favorite board game Pandemic. First was "Pandemic: Reign Of Cthulhu," which re-themes the game from battling disease to fighting the Mythos. Next was "Pandemic Iberia", which re-homes the game in the 19th Century Iberian Penninsula, and in the process significantly improves on the base game in both mechanics and theme.

Antonios S also reviewed "The Lure Of Venus", a supplement for the retro-sci-fi Rocket Age RPG that is an entertaining read that takes your imagination to places before dealing with its main job as an RPG product.

Rounding out the week was baakyocalder with a review of new RPG "Corporia", which crosses Arthuriana with cyberpunk dystopia.

Threads You Might Have Missed

"NERDFIGHT: Predator vs. one Avenger" is thread with a fun concept that also shows off the comics writing talents of some of your fellow RPGnetters.

The Newsletter usually tries to avoid negative threads, but there is a great deal of useful information in this thread for GMs of all games regarding worldbuilding, adventure construction, and set-piece design: "[3rd/4th/5th Mainly] I Hate Balanced Encounters."

To balance that out, here's some straightforward positivity: "2017 - What are you excited about?" For those of you playing the home game, Fall of Delta Green is the correct answer.

And, last but not least, for some more GMing advice that has application even beyond the system that the thread is notionally about: "Fate Accelerated Approach Problem." The 'problem' being: how do you stop your players from using their best ability in every circumstance?

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Have a good week, everyone.

• Iustum
  Newsletter Editor