Rockett Science Labs

"Where Yesterday Is Tomorrow"

I'll be running octaNe at Emerald City Gamefest on Saturday

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via emeraldcitygamefest.org

Last July's octaNe adventure War Zeppelin of the Iron Man was insanely fun. I knew I had to run octaNe again at some point, and that time is now.

This Saturday at Emerald City Gamefest I'll be running a foray into Hong Kong b-movie style madness called Shadows of Lo Pan: Big Trouble in the International District from 10am to 2pm. I'll have room for six people at the table; pre-generated characters will be on hand as well as lucky envelopes containing clues, red herrings, and game-altering revelations.

There will be stiff competition for my game, though: other folks will be running adventures during the same time slot, including We Be Goblins! for Pathfinder RPG. (Complete schedule here.) There's also a gamer garage sale offering all sorts of cool games at affordable prices.

New blog post: Kobolds Overrun RPG Countdown

RPG Countdown Logo

When Ed Healy sent us a link to the latest episode of his RPG Countdown podcast with the cryptic note, “Thought you’d like to have a listen…” we were most intrigued. We soon discovered that Kobold Quarterly occupies two spots on the countdown of top-selling game products!

Read the rest at koboldquarterly.com

My new blog post over at Kobold Quarterly. Checkit.

We treat the dice as oracles that reveal this other world

People want to believe that illusions could be real; that’s why we go to magic shows. I think the illusion that’s important to us as RPG players is the sense that events in the imagined world have their own independent and pre-existing reality. Even though at one level we know that some of these events are the result of random rolls on a chart, at another level we treat the dice as oracles that reveal this other world. This illusion that both dice rolls and asking “what do I see when I throw a torch into the pit?” are ways of discovering what’s out there in the game-world seems to me vital to what roleplaying is about.
via muleabides.wordpress.com

Link from Jeff's Gameblog

A reason to visit your local game store today: National Unplugging Day starts at sundown

Have you been meaning to stop in at your friendly local game store and pick something up to play with your friends or family? Well, today is a really great day to drop in during your lunch break or on the way home from work, and get a new board, card or tabletop roleplaying game.

This is because today begins the National Day of Unplugging, which starts at sundown tonight and ends at sundown tomorrow. During this time, people who've taken the "unplug challenge" will be disconnecting from all the electronic devices that consume a large part of our time and attention: phones, computers, portable media players, game devices, TVs.

You'll need something to do while unplugged, so how about a game of Werewolves? Pandemic? Win, Lose or Banana? If you play Dragon Age, did you know there's a Dragon Age tabletop RPG? TRUE STORY.

If this unplugging deal sounds remarkably like a Shabbat observance...well, yes. It's part of the Sabbath Manifesto from Reboot (which is a client of the PR agency i work for.) But it's not like you have to be Jewish to turn off your iPod for a day, right?

You can download a Check Out app that helps you unplug from all of your social networks and give your friends a heads-up that you won't be accepting their Vampire Wars requests for 24 hours. And you can join the discussion about National Unplugging Day on Twitter via the #unplug hashtag. Before you unplug, naturally.

I've invented a game: "My Video Queue Is A Story About..."

When my post "My Netflix queue is a story about how street racers teamed up with Miyamoto Musashi to fight the Mafia" appeared on Facebook, a friend commented:

Apparently, mine is a story about southern vampires in a beauty pageant held at a canadian high school.

I thought on that one for a bit and replied,

True Blood, Miss Congeniality, and DeGrassi High?

Which was correct!

SO. Here's the game:

  1. Open your Netflix queue; or whatever video-on-demand service you use in which queuing is employed.
  2. Look at the first three titles
  3. If those three movies were one story, what would the story be about?
  4. Post on your Facebook wall, blog, or whatever: "My video queue is a story about..." and let your friends guess the movies.
This will provide at least a minute's worth of entertainment during a hectic workday.