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I’m not completely sure what I can say about TSR’s 1985 release of Battle System.  For one thing, I don’t own it, although it has been in my possession since 1988.  It officially belongs to my longtime gaming compatriot ‘Murphy’ who often says that it is on permanent loan, like an exhibit at the Smithsonian.  Whatever the case, I have dragged this boxed set with me from north to south, then east, and finally west.  In all that time I’ve never played it, as there has never seemed to be a reason.  Inherently, I’m not a miniatures player, and as...

For me personally, Battletech was an odd choice of game, since I wasn’t a war-gamer but role-player, and yet I have to say over the course of the late 1980s I did have a great deal of fun with this game.  In fact, to a point, I owned nearly every supplement that FASA brought out for it, and one that stands out to me is Citytech.  That certainly isn’t to say it revolutionized the Battletech system, but it was a fun piece to take the mech-driven combats from the wastelands of the Successor States to more populated industrial centers.  I...

In my day, I’ve played probably two dozen Call of Cthulhu adventures.  Each and every one of them is memorable for some reason, and I think that in itself tells the story of just how good Call of Cthulhu is as an RPG. When Chaosium took on this license, I really have no idea if the truly understood what they were getting themselves into, but I have to say that they did it right, even if their choice of artwork is lacking.  Today I’m looking at Call of Cthulhu 5th Edition, written by Sandy Petersen & Lynn Willis from way...

In the mid-90s I was working as a manager of a B. Dalton Bookseller down in Bradenton Florida.  How exactly I got there is really beyond me, save to say it had something to do with the no-mans-land that is post college graduation. Whatever the case, I did have the opportunity to use my 20% employee discount on several gaming products that came across the shelves of my miserably failing mall store.  One of these was the Star Wars supplement Platt’s Starport Guide by West End Games. Now I’ve never played the Star Wars RPG in any form, although I...

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:...