The two games that I will be running at SaltCON-Spring. The time has come again to get ready for SaltCON, a local gaming convention in my area. This is the first of three SaltCONs and the biggest. It will take up the entire Davis Convention Center. You can read about my past adventures at SaltCON in my past blog entries. I will be packing my Convention Backpack that I have documented in a previous blog post. When I first discovered that SaltCON had multiple RPG sessions (and not just board games, which is a massive draw at the convention) I had decided to make this my relax-a-con after volunte ..read more

And we’ve reached the end of the 2024 #CharacterCreationChallenge. If you made it to 31 days, congratulations. Send me a note via email (carl (at) tardiscaptain.com) on the TardisCaptain dot Com Discord server. My daughter is currently working on a new graphic for those that completed the challenge and I’d like to make sure that it gets sent to you upon completion. I did make it to 31 characters, but I was delayed by a few days due to a family emergency. Thank you to everyone who reached out to me to ask. One poster mentioned that they had seen a lack of entries for the last two days. My moth ..read more

Day 26 of the 2024 #CharacterCreationChallenge is not a repeat from my 2021 Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition entry. I am using a book titled Dungeons and Dragons Essentials: Heroes of the Forgotten Kingdoms. I had picked up this book from a thrift store in 2022 and added it to the bookshelf thinking it was just a fourth edition supplement. Then last year I was looking through the book and noticed that it contained some rules, a character sheet and a character creation process. I looked up the book online and discovered that it was published a few years after the fourth edition core books came ..read more

OK so Favorite Game System is the subject for Day 18 of the #RPGaDAY2023 challenge. And I have to think about this one. While there are a few systems I’d prefer not to play (such as something really crunchy or overly-complicated) I’m pretty much open to playing just about anything at least once. There is the old standby of the standard D20 system that has been seen in the various flavors of Dungeons and Dragons or the various retro-clones such as Basic Fantasy, Castles and Crusades, OSRIC or Labyrinth Lord. There are a ton of other options in this category as well that covers other genres. La ..read more

Stack of character sheets printed out for the 2024 #CharacterCreationChallenge 2023 was a weird year to say the least. I was able to see a ton of concerts including several that I wanted to check off of the bucket list. These included Duran Duran, Love and Rockets, The Cure, Garbage, and Depeche Mode. I was able to see a live show that featured some of the comedians from “Who’s Line Is it Anyway” (the show had a different name probably for copyright reasons). I’ll be getting the photos for these up in the photo albums. For the first time in a long time, I had the opportunity to attend a gaming ..read more

Some of the games that I plan to use in the 2024 #CharacterCreationChallenge For the three previous years of the Character Creation Challenge (in 2021, 2022 and 2023), I’ve prepped ahead of time to make the challenge a little bit easier. Especially since I try to use a wide variety of games in January 2024. I’ve already had some people reach out to me using various methods to let me know of their participation. Please let me know, Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com if you plan to post your characters up on a blog. I’ll link to it from the Character Creation Challenge section of my website. If you are ..read more

Earlier this year I was walking through a mall in my city that has a used book store. Like a siren calling me to the depths, I went in not knowing what I was going to find. This used book store has had several roleplaying game books in the past, but it actually had an entire display towards the front of the store. It was probably trying to capitalize on the Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves movie that was playing in the theater across the mall. Most of the books were ones I already owned or made my savings throw vs buy. But one book caught my eye. A little hardback book with a worn bo ..read more

I’m going to need one of these for the con. So in my gaming convention trifecta, I’m going to be attending SaltCON-End of Summer over Labor Day Weekend. My wife had purchased a ticket for me as a Father’s Day gift. It will be interesting to compare this event to the big SaltCON in March and the smaller SaltCON-Summer that was in June. While I do have to take off for a birthday, I don’t have any concerts scheduled for this same weekend. Once again, I’m really grateful that I can schedule my games in advance. While scheduling mishaps can (and have) taken place, I’m sure that I’m going to have fu ..read more

Day 22 of the #RPGaDAY2023 Challenge has us talking about our Best Secondhand RPG purchase. While I have purchased a few used books from different sources, the ones that I love the best come from thrift stores. The prices are LOW and I feel like I’ve won a treasure hunt when I stumble across them. Here is a photo of just a few of the thrift store finds that I have uncovered. Most of these are various flavors of Dungeons and Dragons. I wasn’t really expecting the Everquest RPG when I stumbled across it. I never really played the MMORPG, but I did use it in the first year of the Character Crea ..read more

For Day 19 of the #RPGaDAY2023 Challenge we were asked to discuss our favorite published adventure. Like some of the other favorites in this challenge, how can I select just one. So in order to make sure this isn’t a huge blog post, I’m going to stick with two that came to mind. Demand of Honor for the FASA Star Trek RPG I loved reading through Demand of Honor for the Star Trek Role Playing Game by FASA. There were quite a few good published adventures from FASA that followed up on episodes from the original Star Trek. This one gave us the aftermath of the episode Arena where we first saw the ..read more