The St. Louis Chess Club and World Chess Hall of Fame has openings for a Gallery Attendant, a Retail Associate, and a Graphic Designer. The last includes significant management responsibilities, such as assigning tasks to other staff, selecting vendors, and representing the organization to the public.

Modiphius Entertainment has openings in its London office for a Finance Assistant (full or part-time), a Marketing & Communications Manager, and a Logistics Assistant. The Finance Assistant will handle bookkeeping, accounts payable, and account receivable. The Marketing & Communications Manager will promote the company’s products to distributors, reviewers, and customers. The Logistics Assistant (or Manager) will require experience with imports and exports and freight arrangements. The company is also looking for a Freelance Layout Artist to work remotely.

Gen Con is looking for a temporary Administrative Assistant for the Events Team. The job starts in February and lasts until August. Location is Seattle.

Atlas Games is looking for a Marketing Coordinator at its office in Duluth. The position requires knowledge of marketing analytics and the hobby game industry.

American Sign Language Proficient RPG Game Masters are wanted by RPG Therapeutics to run games in Spokane, Washington.

A full-time Chess Coach with at least an International Master rating is wanted by The University of Texas at Dallas. In addition to training the team, the Coach will also be responsible for recruiting students at international tournaments.

PSI is recruiting for a Vendor Account Coordinator to manage relationships with board game publishers “leading to the development of customer delight.”

The Field Museum in Chicago is recruiting for an After School Game Designer. It’s a temporary part-time position for the spring program in which teens will create board and card games about freshwater ecosystems.

Good Games in Indianapolis is planning to expand its e-commerce business and needs an Online Sales Manager.

Galileo Learning runs a summer camp for elementary school-aged children in Mahanoy Plane, Pennsylvania, where it needs a Game Design Instructor.

STAR is looking to hire a Dungeons & Dragons Teacher for elementary after-school programs in Culver City, California.

Hasbro is looking to hire a Contract Graphic Designer to work on the Transformers TCG.

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Spin Master has singed a 3 year licensing agreement with Warner Bros. Consumer Products for DC comics properties. The agreement covers games, puzzles, action toys, remote control and robotic vehicles, and water toys beginning in spring 2020.

PlayMonster (5 Second Rule, Yeti in My Spaghetti) is partnering with Audax Private Equity to finance additional expansion through “organic growth and add-on acquisitions.”

Goliath continues to grow, acquiring U.K. based Vivid Toy Group and moving in to the Italian market through a partnership with distributor MacDue. With the acquisition of Vivid, Goliath plans to launch 20 new games in the U.K. market next year.

Drumond Park has signed on with Tomy UK as exclusive distributor for all the former’s games in the U.K. and Ireland.

NSKN Games (Dice Settlers, Teotihuacan) and Board & Dice Games (Beet Empire, Dice Brewing) are merging. The combined company will continue operations under the Board & Dice name.

With the passing of designer Greg Stafford and earlier Stewart Wieck, of the games’ latest publisher, Nocturnal Media, the RPGs King Arthur Pendragon and Prince Valliant have been transferred again to Chaosium.

After a couple of messy PR situations involving insensitive or extremist material in game books, Paradox Interactive is stepping back from the publishing business but not abandoning the World of Darkness altogether. Instead, Paradox is moving to a licensing model and integrating White Wolf’s operations in to the parent company. Modiphius Entertainment, which was already handling distribution, is taking over development and publication for Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition. This will include production of various supplements (such as The Fall of London Chronicle and Players Guide), as well as oversight of other licensees (Onyx Path Publishing, Elderwood Academy, Dogmight Games, and others).

Impressions Game Distribution Services is being acquired by Flat River Group. The latter is a toy and game distribution company with business in e-commerce and crowdfunding fulfillment. Impressions founder Aldo Ghiozzi will continue with the combined company.

Scientific Games and Hasbro have extended their license agreement through 2025. The agreement covers the use of Hasbro properties, including Monopoly, Battleship, Clue, Yahtzee, and others for lotteries, slot machines, online gaming, and now also table games.

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“Thomas, would you like to review Vampire: The Masquerade 5^th Edition?” they asked. Would I? I mean, I’ve never played Vampire before. I’ve heard things about it, sure, but played this game that’s been around for over 25 years, a game that changed rpgs, bringing in a new wave of gamers to the hobby? I haven’t. Friends have played it. I’ve seen Kindred: the Embraced. I’ve attempted to play the Jyhad CCG. I’ve thumbed though a few titles in the line over the years such as Hunter: the Vigil, Changeling: the Lost, and Wraith: the Oblivion. I’ve heard of years and years of world building, metaplot, and lore so thick White Wolf killed the line at least once to make it easier for new players to join in.

So yeah, let’s take this new edition from the position of a completely new player to the World of Darkness. I don’t have many assumptions about the setting or the game apart from you probably start a campaign with a scene as you, a mortal, before becoming a vampire; there are vampires from different bloodlines secretly running things; and there’s an official LARP that is simultaneously awesome and universally hated with a passion that burns like the sun.

I’m also eternally unclear about the differences between White Wolf, CCP Games, Paradox, and Onyx Path, but that’s something else. (This version is created by White Wolf, has graphic design by Free League, and is distributed by Modiphius. Disclaimer: Modiphus is a graphic design/layout client of mine.)

So. What does Vampire: The Masquerade 5^th Edition (V5) look like to a first-time player?

Thick. There book is 406 pages long. Do I have to read all of that to play? Open book, Thomas. Dive in.

The art style of the book is centered around the use of digitally-manipulated photographs, which is… interesting. There are stock photo resources used here and original photographic assets, which is a technique I’ve seen (and used – I do layout and graphic design for other RPGs) in other horror role-playing games set in urban settings during contemporary times. (Chill and Unknown Armies are two I’ve worked on that use this technique, so to me, it doesn’t look like anything out of the ordinary.) The layout is easy to read with a two- or three-column layout per page with plenty of whitespace and room for the copy to breathe. It’s light and open and suddenly those 400+ pages don’t seem like much of a threat.

We open with twenty-eight pages of in-world fiction presented as a collection of papers, screenshots on phones, and the like, collaged as if the reader is going through a stack of papers on someone’s desk. It’s very… clean? I recall in earlier editions of World of Darkness games, the front chapters were filled with hard-to-read in-world fiction, scribbles on notebook paper. Here, this serves to be an introduction to what vampires are in the game, that there’s a “masquerade violation” that’s got to be dealt with violently, and what clans are.

Oh, an early example of play before concepts are introduced. This is done rather well. It’s one of the best example of plays I’ve seen. A concept is introduced with a page reference to later in the book. We’re not just reading from a script like so many other games’ examples of play – we have a bit with dialogue, a summary of what’s going on, some decision points our game’s Storyteller is doing, a look at some of the mechanics, and a definite feel of how the game designers believe Vampire is to be run. Here’s a thing: players are adding world-building elements.

Onward: lots of quick overviews of clans and larger groups/movements. Rules seem simple: stat + skill to get a dice pool of ten-sided dice, 6s or higher are successes. Pairs of 10s are even bigger successes: 10s alone aren’t awesome, buckets of them are. You’re rolling against a target number; if you fail you don’t do the thing unless you want to, as long as something bad happens. Perhaps you took damage. Perhaps you were caught on a CCTV camera. Perhaps you didn’t notice you dropped your cellphone right there.

Combat in roleplaying games can take a long time to slog through. Vampire “strongly recommends” that you take no more than three turns to resolve an ongoing conflict. “Too much dice rolling slows down the drama and becomes harder and harder to describe creatively.” There’s an emphasis on getting more story in a game of Vampire than a second-by-second recording of blows and the whittling down of health stats. (Besides, there are plenty of other games for that.)

One third of the way through and it doesn’t feel like the size of the book is imposing. Continue through character creation and we see we’re using relationship maps, so yes, more emphasis on all the players helping to create the world you’re playing in. You should create your characters together, because that’s group play. First, create yourself as a human.

“And then, some monster kills you.”

That sentence is written in red with a lot of space above it and a lot of space below it. Yes, the game earlier did state that you’re not playing good guys in this game, but here, some monster kills you and now you’re going to play a monster.

Halfway through the book and we’re looking at life as a vampire and all the horrible things you must deal with: hunger, power, and your own humanity. A slew of optional rules come in (just in case you do want a blow-by-blow health attrition fight), and then we’re at Cities. Here’s how cities work. Here’s how domains work. Here’s several hunting grounds you might find. Here’s how to make your city into a city run by vampires.

We’re very close to the end of the book. There’s a whole section of Storyteller advice on how to run a game of Vampire. There’s a sample chronicle (campaign setting/storyline). A packet of opponents that might be thrown against your coterie of vampires. And we’re out.

All that lore, all that heavy weight of the past twenty-seven years of canon and metaplot? It’s not here. Just the basics of being vampires. Not a whiff of Werewolves, Hunters, Changelings, Mages, Mummys, or Wraiths. It feels like I, someone who knows nothing about the history of this game, could jump in and start playing a game where we’re all vampires.

So. For a gamer who hasn’t played Vampire, this looks… rather easy to get into.

A pre-release pdf copy of Vampire: The Masquerade 5^th Edition was provided free for review by White Wolf.

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Goliath Games is recruiting experienced artists with 5 or more years of experience to fill the position of Graphic Designer at the company’s office in Plano, Texas.

Spin Master is in search of a Social Media Producer and an Integrated Marketing Specialist for the company’s Toronto office. For Social Media Producer, what the company wants is someone who’s constantly plugged in to social media and loves to play with toys. Marketing experience and creativity required. The job of Integrated Marketing Specialist will be to develop influencer campaigns, events, and programs. At the company’s Los Angeles office, Spin Master is looking for a Senior Brand Manager to lead product development and marketing for entertainment-based brands, including Star Wars, How to Train Your Dragon, and Pirates of the Caribbean. For this position, an MBA and 4-6 years of consumer product brand management experience is preferred.

Modiphius Entertainment is expanding its miniatures business and needs both freelance 3D sculptors and figure painters. The company is also looking for an Art Director, which could be freelance or full-time, in London or remote.

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Modiphius Entertainment has announced plans for a tabletop miniatures war game based on the Fallout series of video games. Fallout Wasteland Warfare will have players commanding crews of 32 mm figures in player-vs-player, coop, and solo missions. No details on a delivery date.

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Cartamundi has three new James Bond 007 products for the UK market. One is a James Bond movie poster deck of playing cards (retail price £3), another a Spectre deck (£4). The third is a James Bond Luxury Poker Set (£100).

River Horse has acquired a license produce a board game based on The Hunt for Red October, the movie version. Expect the company to make it a Kickstarter project.

Kung Fu Panda: The Board Game is coming from Modiphius Entertainment under license from DreamWorks Animation. Scheduled for release next fall, Kung Fu Panda will be a cooperative adventure game where the players take on the role of Po or one of the other Furious Five, complete quests, earn Kharma, upgrade their abilities, and work to defeat Tai Lung and other villains.

At the Fall Toy Preview show in Dallas, Wonder Forge premiered Matching and Surprise Slides games based on the children’s books of Eric Carle, including The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

Hitting retail this week is Mystery Motive for Murder from Mayfair Games. Based on the Masterpiece Mystery series on PBS television, the game doesn’t hide the location and weapon used in a murder but rather asks the players to figure out the culprit and motive.

Releasing November 10th is a Fallout Collector’s Edition of Monopoly from USAopoly. It’s a Gamestop exclusive.

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The Mutant Chronicles Roleplaying Game is now available in PDF form. This is the post-apocalyptic space science-fiction game’s third edition but the first from Modiphius Entertainment. The nearly 500 page ebook retails for $20, however that charge also qualifies as a credit on the purchase of a hardcover print book when it becomes available.

Mutant Chronicles employs Modiphius’ 2d20 game system and was written by Jay Little (who also worked on Star Wars RPG and miniature games for FFG). The setting imagines a human-settled solar system beset by the mutant Dark Legion and technology-killing Dark Symmetry. Over the years since its first introduction, the setting has been tied to a variety of CCGs, board games, miniatures products, novels, video games, and even a movie.

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Modiphius Entertainment announced today plans for a series of tabletop games based on Edgar Rice Burroughs’ John Carter of Mars stories. The series, which Modiphius promises will be “a faithful adaptation of Burroughs’ planetary romance,” is to include the full standard set of three: a board game, roleplaying game, and miniatures.

Of the three, the first scheduled for release, in December of this year, is John Carter: The Roleplaying Game. Powering the RPG will be a streamlined version of the 2d20 rules system that Modiphius employed for Mutant Chronicles and Conan.

Further adventures in Barsoom will follow with John Carter: Swords of Mars Miniatures in the spring of 2016 and John Carter: Warlord of Mars, The Board Game the following summer.

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LUGU is a new storytelling card game from Modiphius Entertainment. It has the familiar scoring mechanism where a player gets points only if some but not all of the other players are able to match cards. What’s different, though, is that the cards from which the players are supposed to derive their stories only feature abstract images.

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The latest nostalgic trigger overfunding on Kickstarter is the Thunderbirds Co-operative Board Game from Modiphius Entertainment. Designed by Matt Leacock of Pandemic fame, the game has players taking on the roles of the individual Tracy family members, completing various rescue missions around the world, and most importantly, piloting miniatures of the beloved Thunderbirds vehicles. The project is currently working toward a stretch goal that would allow a fifth player to act as the evil Hood.

If for no other reason, I would have had to mention Bad Medicine for best integration of a gorilla suit in a project video. Fortunately, though, this party game that bucks the recent trend of simply being crude has more to offer than that. In Bad Medicine players identify maladies, concoct remedies, and argue over side effects. Sounds like a visit with the grandparents.

RPE Miniatures’ Phroggs project is for 28mm metal figures of science-fiction amphibians. They’ll be produced in Poison Dart Frog, Fire Bellied Toad, and Bullfrog versions, each with futuristic uniforms and weapons.

Another minis project is the one for cast resin terrain by THMiniatures. It features unpainted elements in two groups: fortifications and ruins.

I’m a very geeky geek. Besides the obvious focus on games, I have a real fascination with the history of electric utilities (it’s the engineering background, I guess). So Artana’s project for a board game on just that subject hooked me on two fronts. Tesla vs. Edison has the PR antics, stock shenanigans, and business chicanery that was a real part of the industry in its early days. My only beef (without having played the game yet) is Artana’s assumption that all geeks will side with Tesla. You can count me in the Edison camp.

Nova Aetas is a tactical combat board game set in Renaissance Italy. Nova Aetas can be played single-player, cooperative, or competitive and includes 50 miniatures, 3D terrain, and a campaign of 30 scenarios. It also promises tough enemies controlled by an aggressive AI and a time-based action management system.

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