The Prologue: I started the game with a quick overview of Freedom City and how this world was different from our own. Specifically there was the bloodier American Revolution that culminated in the British surrender at Freedom City and detonation of the first nuclear bomb in Germany rather than Japan. After that I let the player's each describe an only slightly guided prologue for their character. Read the Full Article

I have been talking about this game for a while. Getting it off the ground was a little bit of a hassle with real life issues getting in the way. In the end though, I was able to get three players together only two months later than the original start date. Here is how it went down. Read the Full Article

When playing an RPG, one of the things I find myself looking for after the game is over is the shining moments of the game. Those times when your character got a chance to 'do his thing' and either succeeded or failed spectacularly. Some of my best moments have been my character's death but that's another story. This past weekend I went to DC Gameday and got to try out a few games that I hadn't played before. Here are a few shining moments from this weekend. Read the Full Article

I feel it is important when running a game to run a game that you'd want to play in. With that in mind, for my upcoming Paragons of Freedom game I took a moment to write up my own alter ego for the game. He will likely never show up in the game but that's sort of his powers.

For his background, I started with myself but then I stripped out computers and gaming from my interests and looked for common threads. It reminded me of a time when I compared my Stage Crew and Church work to being a Ninja.

"If I'm doing my job right, no one notices I did it." Read the Full Article

The Mutants and Mastermind's message boards have a section called 'Roll Call'. The section is for posting character write-ups. Sometimes these are personal characters but more often they are the stats for various characters from comics, TV, and movies (but mostly comics). Years ago, back when M&M was still in first edition I stumbled across a writeup for a character called 'Liberty: The American Girl' which was a poser based superhero web comic. Read the Full Article

I've sort of vaguely known about this game for years as I'm pretty sure I was still reading Dragon Magazine when it first came out. I only recently went looking for it when someone pointed out the system's "Bimbo Mechanic". Who can resist a mechanic with a name like that, I had to hunt this game down and see what was going on. Read the Full Article

This post is actually going to be very self indulgent. Recently the Atomic think tank upgraded and given that I'd been on there since 2003 I wanted to go through and document some of the ideas that have come out of my head and seen decent discussion. There is at least one item on this list where no one cared even a little. It is here because I want to delve into that item for some specific inspiration. If you're just passing through, no need to worry about a list of links but if you're curious to see what I get up to from time to time, well then here you go. Read the Full Article

Hello Gamers and Geeky Friends,

I tend to wear my geek on my sleeve and spend a lot of time talking about RPGs. The sad fact however is that I haven't played in a game since April and rather than whining about it, I thought I would instead do something about it. With that in mind, I'd like to invite people over to my house to play a game of Mutants & Masterminds. They say do what you love right?

The game would be a 'Paragons of Freedom' style game meaning that it would be set in the fictional world of Freedom City but the style would be heavily influenced by television superheros in the vein of Smallville or Heroes.

I am hoping to start in September (August is a very busy month) meeting once every other month or so on the weekend for 4 to 5 hours. The kitchen table at our house in Bethesda opens up and should be able to support a number of players. I'm pretty relaxed at the table and think I tell a pretty good story that is heavily shaped by the player's desires and the character's actions.

One thing some friends did back in college was play a game called 'Crusaders' that I was always sad I never got to be a part of. The basic concept was that you played yourself, only with superpowers. I think that would be fun but only if everyone else was comfortable with it. At the very least, it should make things easier for anyone who is interested in playing but hasn't done this sort of thing before.

Please let me know if you're interested, I'd love to have you join.
-Bill Read the Full Article