I was a bit apprehensive going into this review, because, whilst the 4E splat books have been pretty darn good so far, some of the 3.0 and 3.5 Monster Manuals were… um… not that great. Fortunately, as you will see, I was pleasantly surprised by this book.

Some monsters which might have been nice in the MM1 appear in this book, like Metallic Dragons and the Rust Monster. There are also some real classic classic monsters, from 1^st and 2^nd Edition, which kinda dropped off the radar in 3^rd Edition.

Continue reading 4E Monster Manual 2 In-Depth Review and Analysis

(Read our review of the Monster Manual II here…)

And about time, too.

This is a review of the 4E PHBII. For a review of the 3.5 PHBII: it’s arguably the best 3.5 book in existence. Anyway, on to the point.

4^th edition leads itself nicely into splat books, because the Power system limits what abilities are available. On the flip side, the core 4E books are balanced a lot better than the 3.5 ones. Either way, the PHBII is, mostly, pretty much in line with the core books, and shouldn’t endanger a campaign with some broken ability or some such.

One very nice side note about the PHBII: the back of the book has the revised Stealth rules, which were errata’d.

Continue reading D&D 4E Players Handbook 2 In Depth Review

We have covered a lot of different dice rolling applications for role-playing games that are available in Apple’s App Store on this site. Over the past year that the app store has been around, these apps have started to fall into two main groups, namely, the Simulation group and the Random Number Generator group.

The Simulation group of apps seek to re-create the look and feel of rolling polyhedral dice. They often have beautiful graphics and sounds and can be quite fully features. The Random Number Generator group, by and large, are only interested in presenting the user with the calculated number of an equation.

We, in our gaming group, have players who prefer one or the other from the various groups, so we are going to do four of each.

Continue reading List of the Best 8 iPhone RPG Dice Rolling Apps

Zombie Attack! for the iPhone has kept me happily distracted protecting the beer shack vigorously against the zombie onslaught for more hours than I care to admit. The recent update has seen the game improved immensely with new ways of controlling the dude, cheaper building, a “secret” weapon in the beer shack and the dude and shack healing themselves.

With the upgrade of the game I have started getting to level 30 pretty frequently, and I assuming that that is not too bad seeing as a lot of my friends who play the game struggle to get to level 15. Being eager to help my fellow man during the zombie apocalypse (not a guarantee…) I am posting Rupert’s Guide to Killing Zombies for Zombie Attack!.

Step One – Hurt Zombies are Easier to Pick Off (or, Why the Cannons Don’t Suck)

Hurt zombies in Zombie Attack! suffer huge penalties. For lost limbs, they lose attack strength, for lost legs they start to wander in circles (taking longer to get to the shack) and if they lost their heads they wander aimlessly only attacking if they get to a target by accident.

Using this strategy we do two things. Firstly, use the Cannon to hit the groups of zombies as they arrive through the gate. The area of effect weapon is a good way of hitting lots of zombies with one hit. Flank the cannon with swinging axes as this will definitely remove a limb or two (see above).

If your cannons and axes are doing the job properly, then your zombies will be ready for step two.

Step Two – The Beer Shack Must Be Protected

Once you have your cannons and axes chopping up zombies, its time to clean them up. The Guns are not particularly good at taking out a healthy zombie before it gets to your shack, but they are very good at polishing them off if they are hurt badly.

I place one gun at the corner of the shack first so that it can hit the three areas you need to concentrate on – the direct line to your shack and the right and left flank. Build this gun up to its maximum and be prepared to man it bravely (see Step Three below). Follow this one up with a gun on each flank to protect the sides of the shack and to proved some crossfire (see Step Four below).

Step Three – Be Prepared To Die

One of the new additions to the game is that you get a 20% bonus to any gun that you man. This is extremely useful if you start to get swamped or just haven’t got the money to upgrade yet.

Zombies will also sort of chase your dude for a little while as well which can be very useful in distracting them from breaking into your beer shack.

If you are like me, the death of the dude is not important – he comes back and its not about points, its about killing zombies. Its not unusual for me to go through 3-4 dudes…

Step Four – Crossing Arcs of Fire

After the initial set up of your defences is complete, its time to make sure that your zombies are getting hit by at least 2 weapons at any given time. This is best done by making sure that your weapons at the back of the line are upgraded first so that they can reach the zombies at the front, and also adding new weapons around the central line as soon as is feasible.

If you aren’t playing the game, you probably should be, its not expensive and lots and lots of fun.

Zombie Attack! (iTunes link) USD 0.99 | AUD 1.19

If anyone is getting much past level 30 50, can you let me know how in the comments please?

Update: I am getting past level 45 almost every game now. I am posting the set up that I am using in the hopes that it will aid my fellow zombie hunters…

I was in the Gold Coast, QLD on the weekend, and I met a really nice nerd chick with amazing tattoos. I got to chatting to her about them and she was kind enough to let me take photos (she exclaimed, “Oh wow – you are a nerd – you have an iPhone” to which I just smiled…). She explained that she had plans for her entire back, but still had some money to earn first. They are all designed by herself.

First, the back of her neck:

You will notice a VGA out DB9 serial port, 2 x PS2 ports, 2 x USB, Network Activity lights (and two that I haven’t worked out yet… ).

Second tattoo:

A firewire port! So, maybe a fan of Apple? 

And finally, the main tattoo. This represents a circuit board and has binary worked into it. She made sure I understood that she had used 8-bit words when she left… it seemed really important to her.

For those of you who don’t want to work it out – here it is for you:

The binary is 01100001, 01101110, 01100111, 01100101 and 01101100, or in decimal  97, 110, 103, 101 and 108.

Or, quite simply, “angel”.

Update: This list has been updated and modified here.

For 3rd edition D&D, I am rather fond of a non-standard character sheet – Ema’s Charsheets. It has some quite nice stuff, and I really like the first page of the 3.5 one. So, naturally, when we migrated to 4E, I went looking for a 4E sheet that could satisfy me.

Now, there’s two schools of thought on 4E character sheets: those who want to have their power details written down, and those who don’t. I fall into the latter: I prefer to try to remember the powers, and have less pieces of paper to lose. Unfortunately for me, all the people who made character sheets fall into the former category.

However, that’s not to say they aren’t great. The 4E ones on Ema’s page (the above link) are good. This page has some good ones, and power cards, which are neat. My favourite sheets are Shado’s 4E sheets: gorgeous colour landscape ones, which I consider the best I’ve found. For latest version: Download here. If you want to have all your powers written down, and want a really nice looking character sheet that’s easy to read and understand, I reckon Shado’s are the way to go. Originals and details in this forum post.

But, as I said, these aren’t my cup of tea, beautiful as they are. So what have I chosen? Well, the default D&D sheet (pictured), believe it or not. Of all the sheets I looked at, it’s the only one which, in two pages, shows everything you need including a space to right down your powers. If you can memorize your powers, or are using cards for your powers, the basic sheet really is a good way to go.

So, in summary:
* Shado’s Sheet Best overall sheet, Landscape
* Ema’s Charsheets Best Portrait sheet
* Standard D&D sheet Best 2 page sheet (1 double sided)