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Curse of the Yellow Sign

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Apparently, the Call of Cthulhu RPG isn’t lethal enough for some people (I feel relatively confident questioning the sanity of these people). The RPG industry’s king of extreme gaming, John Wick, is back with the newest title from Wicked Dead Brewing Company, Curse of the Yellow Sign: Digging for a Dead God. This $5 PDF, featuring very evocative artwork by Aaron Acevedo, provides a full Call of Cthulhu module (complete with pre-generated characters) that is designed to be deadly and playable in a single evening. The PDF rings in at 28 pages (the maps and characters use minimal space) in a very attractive package with some very clever writing. The story (John is very deliberate about describing this work as a story – the character’s aren’t surviving, they’re participating in a story – one that ends poorly for them…) focuses around six Nazi soldiers (their words, not mine – yes, I’m aware that not all German soldiers were Nazis…please re-engage the safety on your flamers…) sent to quietly exploit an unknown diamond mine in British-controlled Africa. The actual meat of the module is rather small and really depends on the players to adopt their characters and their motivations. I’m pretty jazzed about getting this one to the table with a few people – and for $5, its hard to go wrong.

Charles Picard went to the bricks and mortar location of FunAgain Games and returned with a story and pictures. (source)

Michael Mindes, founder of Tasty Minstrel Games, gives us a look at how to get started publishing board games. (source)

Magic: the Gathering’s head designer gives us a look at what makes for too few, or too many, options in card game design. (source)

Game Pimping Roundup

Entertainment Today pimps Hive. (source)

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette pimps family game night, including Cranium Hullabaloo. (source)

Lubavitch starts an “Intelligent Games Club” at a Jewish Community Center in Donetsk, Ukraine. (source) Source on the JCC site reports the same story with a picture of Ticket to Ride Switzerland.

Streets to Home Game

stockport_homes_logoMembers of Stockport Homes created a simple board game Streets 2 Home to help people living in temporary shelters make the right choices to get back to living in permanent homes.

Streets 2 Home is also the name of a number of organizations that do the same thing.

(source)