Kickstarter Feature: Kings of War

In what I hope to be a regular feature on this blog, I'd like to feature a Kickstarter I've got high hopes for.  In the past, I've backed a variety of projects, including a Zombie game designed by Cool Mini or Not, a new CRPG Shadowrun game, and an interesting collaborative dice game.  Today, I'm going to talk about Kings of War.

Tiny Battles

I've been toying with making the plunge to a smaller scale (in size, not in battle size) wargame, but I've not been able to settle on one.  The concept of fitting more tanks on the field, and significantly lower prices than the 28mm vendors out there, is an extremely attractive one.  For varying reasons, there are a few that I'm considering.  Epic: Armageddon is attractive, but it's still pricey and is hard to come by, because its parent company likes hiding that it exists.  So here's what I've got on the table:

Sex and Violence: The "Demise of Guys"

The mental health profession is one with its share of quirks and oddities.  It's a field that's tried hard to analyze bias, avoid it, and generally comes out swinging hard with positive biases toward the underdog.  There are specific exceptions, and sometimes they're more evident than others.

Gaming a Zombie Apocalypse

With the events of the past month pointing toward (hopefully) silly statements about a zombie apocalypse, let's talk about how to tie them into some sort of role-playing game.

Infernal UI

We're a few weeks into Diablo III now, and the entire experience offers a few things that Blizzard could really use to pick up from this game for that other game they make.  You know, the ones with the kids and the Wars and the Craft and the sparkles and the ponies.  Here's a list of 5 major UI tweaks that Blizzard could port to make that other game to make it a lot more player-friendly.

5 Infernal Things Diablo III Should Have Done Differently

We're a few weeks into Diablo now, and despite fun, addictive, arcade-style gameplay, there are quite a few things that could have been done differently to make the game much more enjoyable.

Shaping a World

Perhaps above all else, I feel like depth is important in a setting.  I want to feel like things are well thought out, or have some sort of plan.  If I don't feel connected with a game/book setting, I find myself more frequently disengaging, which means less connection with a character and a game world.  In order to provide this for my players, I like to do extensive setting research before I'm comfortable getting to the point where I'm ready to present it.  Here are ten tools that I've found rather useful in writing a setting, given that I've primarily run historical games or games based in real-world settings (Cthulhu, Shadowrun, World of Darkness).