James Nicoll Reviews

Kevin Kulp and Emily Dresner’s Swords of the Serpentine¹ is a fantasy roleplaying game (RPG) set in Venice Eversink, an entirely fictional secondary world fantasy city that is simultaneously a geological mystery, a thriving trade community, and the living embodiment of a goddess. Core mechanics are based on Robin Laws’ Gumshoe game engine. The game emulates the heroic fantasy of Howard, Leiber, Lackey, and Pratchett.

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Pete Nash and Lawrence Whitaker’s¹ Mythras is a Basic-Roleplaying-derived table-top simulationist fantasy roleplaying game.

In the beginning there was Chaosium’s RuneQuest and Greg Stafford saw that it was good. Fast forward three decades…

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Ben Riggs’ 2022 Slaying the Dragon: A Secret History of Dungeons & Dragons is an account of the rise and fall of TSR, publisher of Dungeons & Dragons, as well as many related works. 

Although there were precursors to table-top roleplaying games (including the Bronte siblings’ 19^th century foreshadowingof the pastime), Dungeons and Dragons is generally acknowledged as the first modern roleplaying game. Having founded the field, publisher TSR dominated sales. Roleplaying fans and game merchants, therefore, were taken aback when in the mid-1990s TSR suddenly imploded. Only timely intervention by cash-rich Wizards of the Coast gave the game a new owner and new lease on life.

Perhaps the chief question addressed is ​“What went wrong?” 

Having read the book, perhaps a better question is ​“how did nemesis take so long to catch up with TSR?”

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Aaron Allston, Steve Peterson, and Michael A. Stackpole’s 1984 Justice Inc. (JI to its fans) is a tabletop roleplaying game. It is based on the pulp fiction of the 1920s and 1930s. 

And what did roleplayers of the long, long ago find when they opened Justice, Inc.’s attractive and sturdy box? 

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Mike Larrimore and Brian Pivik’s¹ 2022 Destined is a superhero roleplaying game. But not your usual game; Destined is set in a world of comparatively low-powered superheroes. 

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Design Mechanism’s 2020 Lyonesse roleplaying game is a fantasy roleplaying game based on the Lyonesse novels—Lyonesse (AKA Suldrun’s Garden), The Green Pearl, and Madouc—of Jack Vance. It was written by Dominic Mooney, Dave Morris, Pete Nash, Mark Shirley, and Lawrence Whitaker¹.

Despite the best efforts of Andrew Wheeler, I am not myself a Jack Vance fan. Why, then, acquire a copy of a licensed roleplaying game set in a Vancian world I’ve not read?

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Greg Stafford, Jeff Richard, and Jason Durall’s 2021 The Runequest Starter Set is a starter set for Runequest: Roleplaying in Glorantha. It’s the latest edition of the venerable table-top fantasy roleplaying game Runequest. It thus simultaneously embraces both the very new and the very old, so I thought it was particularly suitable for this, the two thousandth review on James Nicoll Reviews.

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Trudvang Chronicles Gamemaster’s Guide, published in 2021, was written by Theodore Bergqvist, Magnus Malmberg, Anders Jacobsson, Max Herngren, and others. It is one of two core Trudvang Chronicles books: the other book is 2021’s Trudvang Chronicles Players Handbook, written by Theodore Bergqvist, Magnus Malmberg and Anders Jacobsson and others. The English translator for both books was Andovar.

Back in the dawn of time, Chaosium’s Basic Roleplaying begat Äventyrsspel’s 1982 Drakar och Demoner (in its first edition, a combination of Basic Roleplaying and Worlds of Wonder’s Magic World). After a convoluted process too lengthy to be detailed here, this led to Riotmind’s 2016 Nordic-and-Celtic-themed fantasy roleplaying game Drakar och Demoner Trudvang¹, the Anglophone edition of which is Trudvang Chronicles.

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Just in time Only slightly late for 💖 Valentine’s Day! 💖

Monsterhearts 2 is the second edition of Avery Alder’s¹ Monsterheartsroleplaying game. As you might guess from the title, this RPG lives in the intersection of teen romance and horror. Not limited to the usual issues presented by puberty, this game has extra issues galore! The player characters in this storytelling game are (almost all) literal monsters, transformed by circumstance and magic into strange new forms.

Despite which, they are still expected to attend high school. 

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Greg Stafford, Steven Perrin, Jeff Richard, Jason Durall, and friends¹’ 2018 RuneQuest – Roleplaying in Glorantha (RQG) is the latest²edition of the venerable roleplaying game, RuneQuest (RQ). My review of the 2^nd edition can be found here.

And how does this version of the pioneering game stand up, forty years after the first edition saw print?

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