White Dwarf Loses the Human Connection
I haven’t seen much coverage of this, but I clearly noticed it in White Dwarf magazine. Especially when the robot voice told me that it was a human. Weird. That’s right, White Dwarf magazine no longer has a Editor’s note at the beginning. I’m sure it still has an editor, but it’s fully corporatized. Spikey Bids did cover the shift: https://spikeybits.com/white-dwarf-editor-made-redundant-after-75-issue-run Now I don’t know if White Dwarf has ever pulled the plug on the Editor’s note, but maybe they have. And maybe it’ll come back. Who knows? But losing that human touch is pretty crummy. All to similar to the “only hands” issue on YouTube. Barnes & Noble, the corporate behemoth that killed so many independent booksellers, has found their way back to sanity. They found a CEO that understands that people don’t want corporate compliance. They want local connection. I hope Games Workshop can find that balance too.…
AI and Novel Ways to Usher In Our Own Destruction
Fears of our AI overlords is all over the news, so I figured I’d come up with some novel sci-fi-ish ways that AI could start killing us. Global annihilation is a possibility, but there’s certainly lots of ways that AI could chip away at the human headcount. The scariest thing to me is that in the worst scenarios, human assistance is needed to make it happen. Avoiding these outcomes is trivially easy too. Just pull the plugs and use paper records. But do we have that level of gumption anymore? Also, it’s a little funny to me with all these heightened concerns about climate change and AI; it’s abundantly clear that humans have the capacity and will to kill each other long before the planet becomes uninhabitable. Here it goes, in no particular order.: Or, AI could make amazing cat videos. Either way. Both equally likely.
Magnetizing GW Bases
This is sort of a weird post. I was trying to measure the recess within a GW slotta base. These are the best measurements I could come up with. I was hoping they would be nice round numbers that would correspond to commercially available mini-magnets. It kind of does. These are the most accurate results I could come up with. They may or not be precise or accurate, but it’s the best I could do. 25mm – 2.2mm 28.5mm – 2.2mm 32mm – 2.75mm 40mm – 3mm 50mm – 3mm
You don’t need long term support to play a game
Maybe it’s an internet thing, but if a new game comes out, the first question asked is: “How do the expansions look?” There’s so many great games out there that have been retired. That doesn’t mean that you have to stop playing them. Warhammer Quest 1995 hasn’t had new GW published material since 2000. That doesn’t mean you have to stop playing. Barbarian Prince never had an expansion. You can still print-and-play it. Sure, I’ve only tried it once and starved to death before I could successfully roll to exit starting hex, but hey, that’s how those old games did things. Dungeon Dwellers only had… well… seven expansions. That’s quite a bit for a small game from a smallish company. Admirable, really. Way to go guys. Battle Masters didn’t have any meaningful expansions. The only ones that came out were additional units that came in the base game. You don’t…
I Played 40k for the First Time Ever!
I’ve had Space Marines for years. Roughly 40 years. And they’ve never seen the table. Until now! We did our best, made it work, and had a great time. I don’t anticipate being able to keep up with all the rules changes all the time, but I’m doing my best to learn 11th Edition. Deathwing Terminators: Reporting for duty RTB01 Marines: On the Table! Scouts: Ready for action! My friend’s Orks were out for blood!
New Darkwater Content!
It appears I was too quick to retire Darkwater. White Dwarf 527 includes new rules, scenarios, and character cards. I haven’t investigated these yet myself, but I will soon. ABNB released a video (with spoilers at the end). So maybe there’s still some legs under this game after all?! Or it just took a while to get a big enough slot open in White Dwarf to squeeze it in.
What’s on the Table?!
Pathfinder Quest! Another great session of Pathfinder Quest. We’re up to level 3 now. It’s pretty fun. A good balance of challenge and reward.
What’s On The Floor?!
1st Edition Space Hulk! It’s been a while since this old dinosaur has seen the table, er, floor. It’s a challenge playing those missions if the dice rolls don’t go your way. I actually didn’t participate in this session, which made me a little sad. Glass half empty. But having my own offspring have the idea to play, then making it happen… glass half full. Glass all the way full! I’m not sure exactly how many scenarios I’ve personally played. Definitely didn’t finish all the core missions. We even have Deathwing (and some sweet Deathwing terminators) but I’m pretty sure we only played that once or twice. Those genestealers are so tough!!
What’s on the Table?!
Pathfinder Quest! We kicked the tires on the new Pathfinder Quest. It was pretty darn fun. As usual, we really prefer cooperative games and PFQ ticks a lot of boxes. Maybe all the boxes. We’ll definitely keep this one in rotation.
MÖRK BORG – Bare Bones Edition
I’m running the risk of spreading myself too thin with all these games, but there’s just so much cool stuff out there. MÖRK BORG is a, well, you already know about MÖRK BORG. But! Did you know that you can download the core rulebook without art? I didn’t, but I do now. Check it out at: https://jnohr.itch.io/mrk-borg-free There’s even an introductory adventure included: Rotblack Sludge. There’s also plenty of content on the official page: https://morkborg.com/content/ As always, these guys have the best third party license going. MÖRK BORG THIRD PARTY LICENSE We love community created content, hacks, adventures, monsters, tables etc! The MÖRK BORG CULT is our main program for encouraging that kind of thing. But we also want to make it possible for you to create things for the game without having to wait for our review process, approval and layout/art. We want you to be able to just…