Not so long ago, the 4^th Edition DMGII came out. With the general high quality of 4E splatbooks so far, this looked promising: but for those out there for whom “promising” isn’t enough, this in-depth review should give you everything you need to know about the book, helping with the critical decision of whether or not to actually go out and buy it.

Continue reading 4E Dungeon Master’s Guide 2: In-Depth Review

Remember those choose your own adventure books from your childhood? Well imagine that gameplay with some RPG character development, an inventory system, dice-based skill checks and an entire world to explore and quest throughout — awesome! Well I’ve just described Fabled Lands, an excellent gamebook series, that provides as good a solo adventure as I’ve found in a book.

Continue reading Fabled Lands: a great solo roleplaying adventure

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

There has been a sudden rush of Tower Defence games released for the iPhone recently, and for the most part, they OK to play. What there hasn’t been is any real innovation in the genre as it is played on the iPhone – and this is what makes Zombie Attack! absolutely brilliant…

First of all, the setting – you control a ’survivor’ who runs around a fenced off area protecting the shack. The shack has a health score, so it can get hit once or twice and it’ll be alright, but if it gets hit too much, you lose the shack (and the game). You also have as many ’survivors’ as you need (just in case they don’t live up to their name…). You control the survivor by tilting the device (you can change the calibration in the options…) and he can build/upgrade various defences around the paddock.

Zombies come charging in pretty quickly so you need to build swinging axes, mounted machine guns, flame throwers and canons as quickly as possible. You can also get the zombies to follow your little dude into traps as well, or distract them from attacking the shack (remember, the beer is in the shack, so you have to look after it…).

How the game is different, and true to its setting (something that can be surprisingly rare) is that you don’t really build mazes. You have to concentrate on setting up crossfire, funnelling the attackers and distracting (engaging in hand to hand combat at times…) the zombies. In this way it is not a typical Tower Defence game, and some people might be thrown by that at the beginning. But believe me, this is better.

There are little details as well that I love. Zombies that lose a limb, lose 25% of their combat efficiency with each one. Zombies without a head wander around aimlessly until they get to something they can attack. This gives an incredible feeling of actually being there and panicking trying to save the beer shack from the hordes and hordes of mindless shack hating zombies that come rolling in.

Overall its an incredible game from IUGO and the best part? Its only a dollar to buy…

• iTunes Link USD 0.99 / AUD 1.19)