Dungeons & Dragons' lead rules designer Jeremy Crawford has a tough job. To keep the game in top form, he's got to make sure its exhaustive ruleset walks that fine line between combat and role-play, thoroughness and accessibility, firmness and flexibility. Along the way, he's come up with some good tips on getting in touch with D&D's system.
A bloodthirsty janitor, Colonel Mustard, Death, a God-fearing cleric and a dabbing teen had one thing in common at Gen Con last weekend: They were among over a hundred Level 1 characters whom a sadistic dungeon master killed in the span of two hours.
Before last weekend's Indianapolis tabletop gaming convention Gen Con, I was skimming lists of the weekend's most anticipated games and seeing the same-old, same-old: a feudal japan card game, a fantasy role-playing campaign -- but a ubiquitous outlier kept catching my eye: Photosynthesis, a game about growing trees. Halfway through Gen Con's first day, attendees had greedily snapped up every one of publisher Blue Orange's over one thousand available copies.
Upcoming horror board game Monster Slaughter taps into the best thing about watching campy horror movies: The order in which teens die. Where it one-ups popcorn and The Blair Witch Project is that, in Monster Slaughter, the player is the beast killing off the obnoxious teens.
