Where the Wild Things Are….A helping hand in making an RPG work

A couple of years ago I agreed to run an RPG for some members of the Corehammer crew. Most were first time role-players with a couple of more experienced heads in the mix. After careful thought and consideration I decided to go with what I knew best, Shadowrun 2nd Edition. For those who don’t know, Shadowrun is set in the near future dystopia of 2075. A calamitous shift in the world which has seen people evolve/devolve into mythical races, magic to resurface and dragons to take to the skies and the board rooms of mega corporations! Think Bladerunner meets Lord of the Rings!

After a quick snoop around I found a great simple starting adventure that was released as part of the 4th Edition quick play rules (available for free HERE) With some tweaking it was easily adjusted to 2nd Edition rules…… Continue reading

Lords Of Waterdeep Review

 

Squad goals – Box art for Lords Of Waterdeep

 

So when I was first into this kind of stuff I never really fucked with board games, I stuck to Games Workshop stuff for the most part and Dungeons and Dragons. I didn’t really see the merit in a game where you hadn’t funnelled hours of work into building an army and painting it up or having your own narrative/fluff involved. It’s only really since I came back into it I’ve seen the merit of dropping 50 bar or less on a game, spending 20 minutes flipping through a short rulebook and then get cracking, and being done with a game in an hour or so. How else are people supposed to catch up on what’s popping off in the group chat about Bake Off or what kind of curry Mark had for his tea without that kind of convinience? In absolute honesty me and my brother picked this game up like 3 years ago or so now so this review could have been on here sooner. Nate’s latest push to action made me think it was probably a good idea to actually type up bunch of article ides instead of doing fuck all about them. He can be very motivating both in and out of the geography classroom.
Continue reading

Corehammer presents: Dungeonpunx Podcast

LogoAfter much procrastination we have finally got our finger out and recorded the debut episode of the Corehammer podcast, which I have dubbed Dungeonpunx. I had been wanting to try my hand at podcasting for a while but the opportunity to get the rest of the OG Corehammer mournival around the table on the regular was proving to be an impossible feat. Despite my best efforts, conflicting schedules, geographical hinderance and a generous serving of good old fashioned apathy amongst our ranks put the clappers on my plan for full media dominance. I sulkily resigned my podasting ambitions to the steadily increasing mountain of ‘that could have been cool’ ideas.

Regular readers may recall my crisis of faith a few months back HERE Increasing pressures from work and university as well as recently volunteering a couple of Saturdays a month to work with autistic kids have led to a gradual withdrawal from regular posting and editing here, as well as a re-evaluation of what I really want out of the hobby. And whilst my 13th Company have not graced a battlefield since last years Corehammer Christmas party, I HAVE been playing D&D 5th Edition on the regular for just over a year and absolutely loving it.

A change in personal  responsibilities meant that I recently had to take a hiatus from my usual Wednesday night  D&D sessions. In anticipation of this I set up a regular Sunday afternoon session with a group of close friends that were keen to give D&D a try but had very little experience of actual RPG’s. Being the only member of the group familiar with 5th Ed D&D I grudgingly found myself sitting in the DM’s chair and after a few clumsy sessions we have found our feet and really got stuck into it. The natural rapport that already existed between Boardy, Max, Ager, Tom, Connor and I translated well into creating a comfortable and entertaining gaming dynamic. It soon occurred to me that this gang of cocky dungeoneers could perhaps serve a dual purpose and so I revived the idea of starting a podcast with the rest of the crew as my conspirators & co-hosts and lo, Dungeonpunx was born.
Continue reading