Yes, that's right.

The reason I haven't been posting very much is because I have, I've just been sneakily doing it over here.

Almost every D&D fan has probably hacked their own version of their favorite roleplaying game into something they can call their very own. But being a graphic designer, I guess I feel obligated to try to do it in style and then show it off.

Like most of us, most of my projects end up only half-finished, or ever existing really only in our minds as much as down on paper. Well, I'm happy to announce that I'm already over halfway finished with Old School Hack, and am fairly close to posting an honest-to-goodness playtest document shortly.

As much as I'd love to gush all about what the game is and what it's going to do for you (yes, you!), that was really the whole reason that I built a quick website for it, so I urge you to click on it and take a sniff at what's brewing in the pot (and then leave some comments if you want me to know how it smells). Yes, do it now! Er.. and thanks!

So I've raved a little about Red Box Hack on here before, but I've been lucky enough now (the DM of our current 4e campaign is on temporary hiatus) to actually run a session or two of this fun little system.

Red Box Hack is a sort of "reimagining" of Original D&D, only with some story-game elements and set in a more wuxia asian-themed world. Like OD&D it has levels, hit points, and classes (seven: four human and three non-human), and XP is gained through killing monsters and getting treasure. It's simplified quite a bit (the entire game is only 23 pages), and is extremely and entertainingly pick-up-and-playable.

It's also free and open to tweakery. I've been working on a Red Box Hack "hack" for most of the summer now, but I figured I should probably actually playtest the thing some if I was so damned excited about it.

The adventure started off with a bang aboard a sandship skimming over the surface of a broad desert on its way to the town of Brokenfalls, known as "the town on the edge of forever", as it was being hijacked by desert bandits riding giant wasps. Once we got a feel for the combat system and the use of Awesome Tokens, things seemed to flow quite nicely.

It's that time of year again.

If you're a fan of role-playing games, any roleplaying game, you should do this.

Voting on the ENnies ballot can seem a little confusing at first. "I haven't heard of any of these games!" You might find yourself thinking, "What do I care about some fan-voted awards?"

Vote at the Ennies!

One of my long-term goals for G³ is to get back into doing a lot more drawing and artwork, but I've been at a little bit of a creative impasse. To help jump-start some of my gaming doodlery, this weekend I purchased Tony Dowler's excellent solo mini-game, How to Host a Dungeon, and stayed up far too late last night using it to map out this little glorious place:

Click here to see the high-rez scan.

A great time was had by all (being me), and the rules were clear, concise and made for an entertaining four or five hours worth of time, though I imagine if I did it again it'd go a lot faster now that I have a sense of the process (especially the complicated Age of Monsters).