AD&D « Thistle Games

'Hack and Slay' or Remix and Play

By Thistle, on August 27th, 2010

A full range of RPG gameplay options can include stealth, investigation, mystery, construction, characterisation, planning, intrigue and all manner of on-going challenges, missions and quests. These options, (and the list is far from exhaustive), open up opportunities for a wide variety of open-ended tabletop roleplaying and design gaming. At the same time, sooner [...]

FLGS: Battle Games, Adventure Games and Fantasy Art: Part 2

By Thistle, on July 23rd, 2010

After collecting a bit of information from and about Kingdom of Adventure, we’re confident we’ve a few suggestions that can help to grow the business without jeopardising the existing customer base. They’re offered informally and presented as ‘zero cost’ options, so it’s up to the owner, or any other FLGS owner, to make [...]

FLGS: Battle Games, Adventure Games and Fantasy Art Part 1

By Thistle, on July 20th, 2010

An interesting email arrived from Favourite Local Game Store (FLGS) Kingdom of Adventure, which is based in the Scottish town of Kirkcaldy. The store’s owner runs a successful ‘comics, RPGs and wargames’ model that’s ideally suited to delivering a loyal customer base.

A quick look at the website, (and related [...]

Tabletop RPGs: 'One Ring To Bind Them'

By Thistle, on July 16th, 2010

Most games markets are packed with fierce competition, which operates across and between several levels of company operations. This is particularly true of videogaming, where countless major companies, (including Sony, Konami, Ubisoft, Electronic Arts, Bioware, Nintendo, Microsoft and many more), compete in terms of media formats, game formats and even peripherals.

With [...]

D20 To Die For

By Thistle, on June 26th, 2010

Just received an email from Q-Workshop with a decent image of one of the large D20s that they’ve added to their range. We posted about the black version recently, but there’s a choice of colours on offer, (including this rather splendid blue version).

It seems there’s going to be more [...]

Tabletop RPGs: Where Did All The Girls Go?: Update

By Thistle, on June 23rd, 2010

The recent “Tabletop RPGs: Where Did All The Girls Go?” post drew a few remarks over at RPG forum EN World. We’d been invited to comment on ways to encourage more girls to take part in tabletop RPGs. However, our opinion, (which suggested publishers, communities and players might want to review how they [...]

Economy Class: Free Online Options On Free RPG Day

By Thistle, on June 19th, 2010

Free RPG Day has just been held at game stores across the USA and UK. Plenty of players and potential players will have had a chance to pick up hard copies of selected tabletop RPGs and RPG scenarios. We applaud the whole exercise but what about those who couldn’t make it to a [...]

Designer Dice: Update

By Thistle, on May 17th, 2010

A pack full of the dice previewed last week arrived in the post on Friday morning. We’ve been trying them out since then and they seem to offer good value.

First out was a D20, which is probably the best D20 any of us have ever used. The intricate design on the [...]

Our Favourite Tabletop RPG Props

By Thistle, on May 1st, 2010

Adding a few props to a tabletop RPG game can be a lot of fun. The props shown here are our personal favourites at present. All except the very latest technologies have been tried out over several years and most are best used sparingly. Props tend to lose their effect if the Gamesmaster [...]

Rapid Research: Tabletop RPGs

By Thistle, on March 22nd, 2010

Recent postings at tabletop RPG forums ENWorld and RPG.net have talked about how to make better commercially published RPG scenarios and modules. Most of the replies on the topic have either discussed cosmetic changes to existing AD&D module formats or offered general requests for greater emphasis on roleplaying over combat.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, [...]

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