In August or September 2009, Mayfair Games will release Witch of Salem, a Michael Rieneck design that was released by Kosmos in late 2008 under the title Der Hexer von Salem. While Rieneck is the designer, the name splashed across the top of the box is Wolfgang Hohlbein, a German author of science fiction, fantasy and horror who has written more than 200 books, including six in a series that goes under the umbrella title of Der Hexer von Salem. Here’s the game description from Mayfair:

Step back to early 20th Century New England. Here, the horrible “Great Old Ones” – mysterious inhabitants of a dark, unfathomable void – seek entry into our world. One of their imprisoned overlords gathers them, just as his worldly servants open portals throughout Arkham for the coming onslaught. Only Salem’s master witch, Robert Craven, holds the key to safeguarding mankind. He plans to gather a team of intrepid scholars to find the hidden portals and close them with powerful magic seals. The noble witch’s elite team must battle the threat of madness, duel the dark servants, tackle mystical challenges, and face their ultimate nemesis: an unidentified Great Old One with an unknown and incalculable strength.

In Witch of Salem, you step into the terrifying world of renowned storyteller Wolfgang Hohlbein, a mythos inspired by the tales of H. P. Lovecraft. You play one of the witch’s scholarly allies. Working cooperatively with your cohorts, uncover the secrets of the Necronomicon, combat creeping insanity, defeat the coming Evil, and bar the Great Old Ones from exiting the interdimensional abyss.

Yes, Witch of Salem is another entry in the recent wave of cooperative games. I’ve played once on the easiest level, and the tension felt among all the players was intense. We walked the edge of victory and failure from the midpoint of the game onward, finally crawling toward a win in the final moments before the world was doomed – only to be undone by a gate to another dimension that one player had forgotten to seal! Sorry for wrecking the Earth everyone.

Witch of Salem is for 2-4 players, ages 12 and up with a playing time of 60 minutes and a retail price of $50. This game has been added to Gone Cardboard.

In DD, everything can kill you; now imagine if our world was that deadly.

The audio demo of Serial Homicide Unit is now available a href=http://www.ipressgames.com/SHU-Demo-Full.mp3here./abr /br /Russell Collins, our esteemed narrator, has produced a brilliantly atmospheric and informative demo that is FULLY PLAYABLE. The recorded instructions are a bit longer than 7 minutes. They provide step-by-step instructions for playing a brief demo of Serial Homicide Unit. The demo is provided in MP3 format, and is 13.5MB. Feel free to link to this demo from wherever you think appropriate.br /br /Try it for free. Protect the innocent. Hunt down a killer.

By Ted Cheatham
June 22, 2009

Designer: Tushar Gheewala
Publisher: Out of the Box Publishing
Players: 2-8
Ages: 8+
Playing Time: 20-30 minutes
Rules Language: English
Price: $25
Links:

Ted Cheatham gives an overview of Letter Roll, a 2009 release from Out of the Box Publishing. You can explain this word game in less than two minutes and be ready to play immediately. Ted shows you how to do it…





If you want to forgo YouTube, you can watch the video straight from the BGN server. For another take on the game, published in June 2009, head to my first impression of Letter Roll.

a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_pWKl3t_aGeg/Si7p7RxqHjI/AAAAAAAAA3k/6hNNth6d3Ss/s1600-h/shasham.jpg"img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 250px; height: 160px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_pWKl3t_aGeg/Si7p7RxqHjI/AAAAAAAAA3k/6hNNth6d3Ss/s400/shasham.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5345467012328594994" border="0" //abr /div style="text-align: center;"Um jogo da FoxMind Games para 4 a 12 jogadores, a partir dos 5 anos, com a duração de 10 a 15 minutos.br //divbr /div style="text-align: justify;"Shashawa é um jogo que envolve a passagem simultânea de cartas entre jogadores. Os jogadores devem ser rápidos a encontrar nascentes de água, porque nunca há suficientes… A vitória vai para quem tiver as mãos mais rápidas. A acção está garantida neste jogo divertido!br //divp/pdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/2365270125698943946-4407584440054534578?l=dreamswithboardgames.blogspot.com'//div

Id saved away a book to read while I was away at Jasons wedding: the new Atticus Kodiak novel, iWalking Dead/i, by Greg Rucka. And, it was a well-selected book for the occasion. I started it on BART headed toward Fremont and finished it shortly after we got back home.br /br /Though Im going to mark this post with my mystery tag, iWalking Dead/i is a really a thriller (as is generally the case for the Kodiak books). I dont read a lot of these but Ruckas are quite good, because hes continually grown the series and evolved the hero over time. This time around, despite being in a really morally questionable situation, Kodiak pretty much acts the hero, going after the daughter of a friend when shes taken.br /br /Its a really good book, as is this entire series (though the first couple are a bit weaker than what follows).

In case anybody's interested, I've just written up our recent Psi*Run game, here.
By Vincent Baker in anyway. Filed under rpgtheme rpglink. 2009-06-22

(Picked up from here.) Imagine a GM plus 3 players. They're playing a fantasy game of the long-term sprawling sort where there are rival kingdoms and trade cities and so on, and the PCs have a home base in an inn, and kings' spymasters and ancient wizards and foreign ladies come and enlist them to go on adventures and stuff.

Gameplay's basically sandboxy and in-character. The GM has responsibility for everything in the game world but the players' characters; the players get to say what their characters think, feel and undertake to do. But, you know, sometimes there's an NPC villain with mind control powers, and when Mitch joined his character was from a previously undeveloped cult so he got to say a whole bunch of interesting things about its inner workings, so it's a little bit flexible. Everybody's here to have fun.

With me? Okay.

Setup

Imagine that the players get together behind the GM's back and say "hey you know the NPC Chamberlain, our contact with the king? Let's all, no matter what the GM says about him, let's all react to him as though he smells bad. We can't insult him to his face, we need him, but let's be subtle and see what the GM does with it."

So they do.

Does this make it true, but secret from the GM, that the chamberlain smells bad?

In the first session after:
Player 1: While the chamberlain's talking to us my guy edges toward the window, and opens the shutters. Want me to make a stealth roll?
GM: Uh, no, that's fine. You do, nobody notices.
Player 1: My guy notices! Thanks for that.
GM: Okay, whatever. As I was saying...
Otherwise it doesn't come up.

(Now the GM has assented to one character's opening a window and another character's being glad for it, but nobody's put before him that the Chamberlain smells bad, so he hasn't assented to that as such. See it?)

In the second session after:
GM: The chamberlain comes into the inn's common room and -
Player 1: Hah, okay.
Player 2: My character needs to see to the wine cellar he'll be back in a bit.
Player 3: Coward.
GM: Huh?
Player 2: Nothing, my guy's just going down to the wine cellar.
GM: Okay...?
Player 1: We'll tell him what the Chamberlain says, later.
GM: Okay, whatever. As I was saying...
Otherwise it doesn't come up.

In the third session after:
Player 1: So the Chamberlain wants to talk to my guy alone? Wow.
GM: Yeah, and he says [blah blah].
Player 1: While he's talking, my guy edges slowly back from him.
GM [in Chamberlain's voice]: Is something the matter?
Player 1 [in character's voice]: No your grace, not at all.
GM: Okay, whatever. As I was saying...

Thinking about the game after this session, the GM figures out what they've been doing.

Outcome 1: the GM runs with it

In the fourth session after:
Player 1: When my guy sees the chamberlain coming he opens all the windows in the inn. He's opening the last one when he comes in.
GM: Okay, but it's a still, muggy day. It doesn't help a bit.
Players: Ha ha ha!

Over sessions 5 and beyond, the GM casually incorporates into play that the Chamberlain's having a little thing on the side with an untalented apprentice perfume-maker in the town, and it's a scandal and a matter of much gossip. Occasionally the GM will say that the Chamberlain both looks especially cheerful this morning and smells especially overpowering. It becomes a fun, ongoing, not-very-important detail of life in the city, and nowadays nobody really thinks about how it started.

Outcome 2: the GM reins it in

In the fourth session after:
Player 1: When my guy sees the chamberlain coming he opens all the windows in the inn. He's opening the last one when he comes in.
GM: Okay, but it's a still, muggy day. It doesn't help a bit.
Players: Ha ha ha!

In the fifth session after:
GM: The Chamberlain comes in. Somebody must have had a word with him; he smells fine.
Player 1: That's a relief.
Player 2: What does he have to say?

It drops out of currency and a few sessions later nobody ever thinks about it.

Outcome 3: the GM fights it and the players relent

In the fourth session after:
Player 1: When my guy sees the chamberlain coming he opens all the windows in the inn. He's opening the last one when he comes in.
GM: Now, no. The Chamberlain's clean, healthy, he bathes, his clothes are fresh, he wears a modest aftershave - he doesn't smell bad.
Players: Ha ha ha! You got us.
GM: Did your characters have a secret meeting without me? To make the Chamberlain look bad?
Player 1: Huh? No. You're the GM, our characters can't do anything without you. [Take this as true for this group, if not universally. The characters aren't in on the players' joke.]
Player 2: It was just [gesturing] us.
GM: You think you get away with that? No, your characters did those things, even though the Chamberlain smells fine. So what's the in-character explanation?
Players: Uh oh.

The players take their lumps and cobble together some retroactive in-character justification, properly chastened. Here's Simon from here: "On the otherhand, you could treat it as a childish conspiracy amongst the characters to humiliate him." That'd be an example: "I guess our characters had a secret meeting after all?"

GM: Real mature. When he figures it out he stops doing your guys favors with the king.
Players: Oops.

Outcome 4: the GM fights it but the players don't relent

In the fourth session after:
Player 1: When my guy sees the chamberlain coming he opens all the windows in the inn. He's opening the last one when he comes in.
GM: Now, no. The Chamberlain's clean, healthy, he bathes, his clothes are fresh, he wears a modest aftershave - he doesn't smell bad.
Player 1: So you say. My guy's still opening the windows.
GM: Why?
Player 1: It's just what he would do.
GM: Okay, whatever. But the Chamberlain smells fine.
Player 2: My guy sits as close to a window as he politely can.
GM: If your characters had a secret meeting to plan this, as GM I should have known about it.
Player 2: Nah. If our characters had a secret meeting, you WOULD have known about it, of course. They can't do anything without you, you're the GM! [Take this as true for this group, if not universally. The characters aren't in on the players' joke.]
GM: Okay, so you admit that he doesn't smell bad?
Player 2: Well I admit you say he doesn't. Anyway my guy sits at the window and tries to breath mostly outside air.
GM: WHY?
Player 2: It's just what he'd do.
GM: No come on. What's he thinking when he decides to do that?
Player 2: He's thinking "dang the Chamberlain smells."
GM: BUT THE CHAMBERLAIN DOESN'T SMELL.
Player 2: Are you telling me what my guy's thinking? Who's mind-controlling him? Don't I get a Will Resist Roll?
GM: Okay, whatever. Your guy sits next to the window thinking about how the Charmberlain smells even though the Chamberlain doesn't smell. I don't care. As I was saying...

Over the next few sessions, the players keep having their characters act like the Chamberlain smells bad, and the GM keeps denying that he smells bad, but they can have their characters do whatever they want. Eventually the story moves on, they're dealing with the king directly now, and the Chamberlain doesn't really come up anymore.

Outcome 5: the GM fights it and the game busts up

We join session 4 in progress:
Player 2: ...Anyway my guy sits at the window and tries to breath mostly outside air.
GM: WHY?
Player 2: It's just what he'd do.
GM: No come on. What's he thinking when he decides to do that?
Player 2: He's thinking "dang the Chamberlain smells."
GM: BUT THE CHAMBERLAIN DOESN'T SMELL.
Player 2: Are you telling me what my guy's thinking? Who's mind controlling him? Don't I get a Will Resist Roll?
GM: Nobody's mind controlling him. I'm just telling you, he wouldn't be thinking that, because the Chamberlain doesn't smell.
Player 2: You get to tell me what my guy's thinking now? That's the new rule?
GM: Well you sure don't get to tell me that my guy smells.
Player 3: We're just saying what our characters do...
GM: Oh please. You're saying the Chamberlain smells bad and you have been for 4 sessions now. He does not either.
Player 2: You say my guy doesn't think he smells, but I say he DOES smell and my guy smells him plain as day.
GM: I'm the GM.
Player 2: It's my house.
Player 1: They're my Fritos.
Player 3: This sucks.

They never play again. They try another session but it devolves rapidly. Eventually they all have happy lives and are still good friends but they don't talk about this game much.

Outcome 6: the GM never catches on

Maybe something else interrupts and ends the game before the GM figures it out.

Maybe the GM just doesn't figure it out, or doesn't care enough to think about it. For many sessions after, the players have a snicker at the GM's and the Chamberlain's expense, and the GM's always just like "huh? I don't get it. Whatever. As I was saying..."

So the question is...

For each outcome:

(a) When did it become true in real life that the Chamberlain NPC smells bad, if ever?

(b) When did it become true inside the game's fiction that the Chamberlain NPC smells bad, if ever?
By Vincent Baker in anyway. Filed under rpgtech. 2009-06-22

How Greeks in Space came to be.

We are back home again. The relay back was a quick two-hour trip, car with my mom and Bob to BART, then BART to home. We got in at about 12.30 last night.br /br /hrbr /Yesterday morning we walked around Gilroy a bit. This was our general plan, to have some quiet time to ourselves between the peopled-ness of the Friday party and the Saturday wedding. We happened to chance upon a nice bike/pedestrian trail down by a creek, and walked that for a while, then cut back into the middle of Gilroy to pick up a snack, then headed back to the hotel to wait for the shuttle to the wedding (which was out at a winery, about 15 minutes from the center of Gilroy).br /br /Though we found that very nice bike trail, I was struck by its lack of use. The only bicyclists we saw in the 30 or 40 minutes we were on that trail were two kids. The people were also few and far between; we saw more homeless people walking the trail (all in one clump) than other folks. But then, Gilroy was generally very pedestrian unfriendly. We didnt even have sidewalks all the way from downtown to our hotel. So if anything, I guess its the existence of the bike trail at all thats weird, not its lack of use.br /br /Beyond that, Gilroy is considerably more built up than last time I was there. And by built up, I mean strip-mall-strip-mall-strip-mall. US consumerism at its worst. At least that was a marked contrast to the back trails we took, just a mile or two further west. I plan to do some more research on Gilroy to see if I can find any maps of the trails there and northward, as it might be fun to plan a couple of days of biking vacation in and about the Gilroy and San Jose areas (with bike accessability provided by BART CalTrain, which together can get us down there on a week day).br /br /hrbr /We took a shuttle up to the wedding at 3pm. There was a bit of chaos because there were two different shuttles, and they werent exactly on the same page. Once we got up there, Kimberly and I started helping to sort wedding favors. I did my best to be very helpful all weekend, remembering how hectic things can be for a wedding. It seemed to be well appreciated (especially my help the previous day, setting up things for the wedding rehearsal party).br /br /The actual ceremony started at 4.30. Very promptly. I got grabbed at the last minute to walk my mom, the mother of the groom, up the aisle as part of the wedding party. Thered apparently been confusion about who was supposed to do that task, since my other brother, Rob, was the best man. It was totally no big deal, and I was happy to do, but my mom thought it was. Given that Id been married nine years previous (and stood up for a couple of my friends at their weddings, for that matter), I didnt even think twice about this.br /br /(Glad I got a new suit coat and shirt for the wedding though!)br /br /The ceremony was short, original, and nice. I particularly liked their vows, which they wrote themselves. Especially Lisas, which had a few funny bits in it. I didnt know she was funny, but then I barely know my new sister-in-law. I told Jason toward the end of the evening that we should really get together, the four of us, as couples. I hope theyll take us up on that, especially as were nowadays their closest relatives, given that they live about an hour north of us.br /br /After that there was pictures, appetizers, toasts, dinner, and dancing. Kimberly and I danced quite a bit. Its the first time weve danced in years, and it was quite nice. She was a little reluctant, even though shed been talking about really looking forward to the dancing, but once she got onto the floor, she seemed to have fun. We also got to have some nice dinner conversation with my Uncle Dale and with Mike T., probably my favorite of Bobs relatives, as he lived with us for a bit when I was growing up. Were going to hopefully get together to do some biking out in Contra Costa county this yaer.br /br /hrbr /Overall it was a beautiful and romantic day. Jason and Lisa both looked so happy, and it of course reminded me of my wedding too. When all was said and done, we cleared out of the winery about 10pm, and my Mom and Bob were kind enough to give us a ride straight up to BART, so that we could sleep in our own bed, with our own cats, last night.

pdl br / dtstrongThis Weeks' Tips/strong/dt br / dd a href="http://www.roleplayingtips.com/readissue.php?number=452#T1"Deck-Building Supplies/a br / a href="http://www.roleplayingtips.com/readissue.php?number=452#T2"Assembling Your Cards/a br / a href="http://www.roleplayingtips.com/readissue.php?number=452#T3"Care and Maintenance/a/dd br / /dl/p pdl br / dtstrongFor Your Game/strong/dt br / dd a href="http://www.roleplayingtips.com/readissue.php?number=452#F1"Magic Item Backstories/a/dd br / /dl/p pdl br / dtstrongThis Weeks' Tips/strong/dt br / dd a href="http://www.roleplayingtips.com/readissue.php?number=452#R1"Comments on Police in a Modern Campaign/a br / a href="http://www.roleplayingtips.com/readissue.php?number=452#R2"Additional Modern Police Tips/a br / a href="http://www.roleplayingtips.com/readissue.php?number=452#R3"Create Alternate Characters For SWAT/a br / a href="http://www.roleplayingtips.com/readissue.php?number=452#R4"Identifying Your Dice/a/dd br / /dl/p pstronga href="http://www.campaignmastery.com/blog/"Campaign Mastery Blog/a/strong/pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/roleplayingtips/~4/4ZZGYbb0YD0" height="1" width="1"/

The Summer convention season is upon us and I’m off and running.  Actually, this is a late start for me this year--I’ve had only one major gaming weekend (Memorial Day Weekend) since school let out and I was only able to pop in for a day of that.  This week I’m at Oasis of Fun in Atlanta, GA (an invitation event) and next week Tyler is gearing up for Origins.  Why am I not getting ready for Columbus, Ohio’s biggest game convention?  As it turns out, I will be in Berlin, Germany that weekend for the press conference announcing this year’s Spiel des Jahres.  In July I have a non-gaming event--10 days of animal behavior fieldwork in Arizona (earning that sabbatical!).  Then it is a busy August with The World Boardgaming Championships and then Gen Con--all while I’m having my kitchen remodeled.  Finally, I typically consider Dragon Con (Labor Day Weekend in Atlanta) to be the end of the summer convention season.  I’ll be there again this year--especially since I won’t be rushing back to classes when it’s over.  Here’s a look at what’s new at this summer’s conventions…

Prose on Cons

Do you remember the free game give away at Origins last year?  Rio Grande donated pallets and pallets of games that the Columbus Area Boardgaming Society (CABS) distributed from the Board Room.  Well, Rio Grande out did itself this year.  I’ve gotten a sneak peak at the game giveaways for this year and I was floored.  Trust me, you will get your money’s worth out of this year’s Board Room ribbon.

This year at the WBC they have added a teaching/demo portion before the tournaments get underway.  I’ll be there demoing games for Rio Grande at Cafe Jay the entire week.  I’m just not sure what I’ll be teaching yet! 

Friends, friends, and more friends.  The economy is tough and people are cutting back on travel, but gamers are still finding a way to come together.  I’ve never needed my friends more--it’s been a tough year losing my Dad, my grandfather, my grandmother, and one of my best friends in gaming, Kevin Gonzalez.  I’m looking forward to seeing everyone!!

Happy Father’s Day, Daddy…
Valerie Putman

ul class=loudtwitterliem00:49/em Man, Left 4 Dead is a really sweet game./li liem12:30/em Its Free RPG Day! Get to your local store for a free #dnd adventure written by Eberron creator Keith Baker and other fabulous goodies./li liem13:17/em I have a strange impulse to write a musical based on my current #dnd campaign called It Never Rains in the City of Brass./li liem21:01/em Show support for democracy in Iran add green overlay to your Twitter avatar with 1-click - a href=http://helpiranelection.com/helpiranelection.com//a/li/ulAutomatically shipped by a href=http://www.loudtwitter.comLoudTwitter/a