News — Guardians of Order

Let me make this very clear before I begin, I’m both a huge fan of George R.R. Martin and also one of his greatest haters.  How can that be, you might ask?  Well, I believe his first three novels in The Song of Fire and Ice may be the greatest pieces of fantasy fiction since Tolkien, but after that, Martin imploded into a kind of literary oblivion that almost fully invalidates what he did in those books.  Bottom line, it should have been a trilogy, and milking this dead and decrepit cow has spoiled everything he was so brilliantly trying...

I often wonder what goes into making a game.  I mean a real game, not some sandbox rules set or home brew Fedex/Kinkos print job, but a real hardcover core book.  As I look at my shelves the myriad of small gaming companies who have produced truly inspired works over the years is astounding, daunting, and in the end sad, as most of them are no more.   For my posting today I’m going to look at one such core rulebook that found its way to my collection at GenCon a few years back from a discount bin. Ex Machina:...