Last year I saw an add for the North-to-South Designs Gaming giving away free dice if you paid for the shipping. Well another advertisement came up earlier this year for Dice Legend that was giving away dice if you payed for the shipping. After the interesting response from NTDS, I thought I’d check it out.
After checking out the link from the advertisement, the prices were all listed as $0.00. The shipping prices were not listed but would be revealed just before completing the order. There was 21 pages of free items that also included pins, dice trays, metal dice, acrylic dice, jewelry, dice containers and patches.
I had selected three sets, and then knocked it back down to two after I saw the shipping prices. With the two sets it cost me $18 (so about the same if I had purchased two sets in a local gaming store). I received a confirmation email and a tracking number. Which turned out to be from China Post. It took a few days before I could get signed up to receive email updates and I waited. One email arrived a few days later stating that the package had moved from one location in China to another location. Google maps showed it wasn’t very far. Oh well, I figured it would take a while.
To my surprise, the package showed up a week later. I think the reason it was a surprise is that I didn’t get any further email updates letting me know the status. I never received another email until a week after the package had arrived stating that the package had been delivered. Um… OK.
As for the dice themselves, I picked up two sets. The first was the Dark Purple set (for my geek wife, which she loved). The second was the Vampire Set with red numbers on a white translucent color. Both sets had the same gothic looking font. I’m certain that there is an official name for this font, but I don’t know what it is.
The two D20s compared with the NTDS D20 on the right.
While comparing the weight and feel, they seemed to be about the same as the NTDS set and the set I picked up from the Dollar Tree in 2021. Which also meant that it was lighter than the Chessex dice. I did several test rolls and it did the job. Random numbers across the board.
A surprise in the package was a free dragon dice bag with an eye embedded in it. The note of appreciation stated it was a $12 value. It was large enough to hold a set or two, but not my entire collection. I’ve got a dice bag that I have no idea where I picked it up from.
Since she hasn’t had a chance to uses the set, my wife didn’t have an opinion on her dice. So while I thought the gothic looking font was kewl, I’m not really certain I’d pick up another set for full price. The weird lack of communication from China made me raise an eyebrow. I think I’d prefer to order from a domestic manufacturer.
What is your favorite dice set? Tell me about it. This article is open for discussion on the TardisCaptain dot Com Discord server. You can also email me at Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com with any comments.
I also thought that the Lynx Dice Dunce Chair that I had reviewed several years ago was pretty kewl and I could put my Jason Fox Lucky D20 in it if I wanted (but it has all 20s on each side so it would never go wrong).
But for this blog entry, I think I’ll talk about one of the recent purchases that I haven’t had a chance to review yet. The 20-in-One Card Deck by precis Intermedia. The GM of the James Bond RPG that I played at SaltCON Spring was using it during his game and I was really impressed that I had to order a set of my own.
It is a set of 60 cards and an instruction sheet. There is a standard set of playing cards (with 8 Jokers), your common single die rolls (D3 up to D20), common multiple die rolls (2D6, 3D6, 2D10, and D%), Averaging die roll, Fudge/FATE Roll (-4 to +4), D6-D6 Roll (-5 to +5), Coin flip, Yes/No with Conditionals (and/but), Directional (in degrees) and Clue (who, what, where, when, why).
Sample of one of the cards
While I haven’t had a chance to use these as a GM, I did get a chance to use them when I played Weird Frontiers at SaltCON-Summer. I’m looking forward to using these in the future. As a GM, the players can’t hear me draw a card as they can rolling a die. Muwahahahahahah!!!!!!
What is your coolest looking RPG product or book? Tell me about it. This article is open for discussion on the TardisCaptain dot Com Discord server. You can also email me at Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com with any comments.
It looks like the Dominion War from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is taking front and center for the latest eBook deal from Pocket books. There are also a couple of Voyager novels in this mix as well. Various Star Trek digital novels are only 99 cents for the month. Amazon is also doing a special where you earn points for each book you buy. This can lead to free books.
I noticed something putting this blog post together. The 3rd novel in the Dominion War series is listed by Pocket Books (and on Amazon) as being written by Esther Friesner. Yet the cover has John Vornholt listed. Does anyone know why there is a discrepancy?
So if PDFs of this game is free on the Basic Fantasy website, why did I purchase a physical book? Well, I wanted to support the community efforts into creating the 4th edition. After the OGL fiasco that Wizards of the Coast had created earlier this year the Basic Fantasy community elected to remove all System Reference Document (SRD) references in the game and place the system under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. At the time they were doing this, I was unable to jump in and help lightened the load. It took a lot of volunteers to help out in getting Basic Fantasy moved over. The primary concern was to remove all terminology that could be construed as SRD. These “limits” only fueled the creativity of the Basic Fantasy community that is now seen in the new 4th edition book. Some of these I’ll mention below.
As you can see from the photos above, the covers of the 3rd edition and 4th edition look very similar. The biggest change is the “castle border” now wraps around to the back of the book. Chris Gonnerman mentioned in one of his videos that this was a creative decision in order to give an “at a glance” look that differentiated the 3rd edition books from the 4th edition books. Plus he really likes the dragon art that was used on the cover that he had commissioned. (Side note: pay the artists for their work. Chris did for this cover and I thank him for that.) The 3rd edition book has 166 pages where as the 4th edition has 202 pages. The ISBN is 9798398957679 for the hardbound (I’m not certain if the softbound has a different ISBN number) and it ran me a little over $18 after taxes. Because I have an Amazon Prime membership, shipping was free. Not a bad price for a hardbound book considering some of the other prices I’ve seen lately.
The system itself is basically the same. With the SRD text, mostly, removed. As I was thumbing through the books side by side, I noticed that the 4th edition had page numbers when they referenced another section (i,e “See How to Attack on page 53…”). I could see this being very helpful when you are quickly flipping through the book trying to find a rule. It was also visible that some descriptions of various items (spells, races, classes, etc.) had been slightly altered.
The monster section has been greatly expanded from 183 entries in 3rd edition to 213 entries in the 4th edition book. Some of the new art can be found here. I think the art for the Rot Grub is going to give me nightmares. When the volunteers working on the update thought that they couldn’t use Kobolds any more (until WotC backed off of the OGL mess), they came up with their own variation that was still used in the book, The Barklings.
Did you just tell us to go fetch?
I think this shows some of the creativity that went into this update. Another change was with the Dragons. Instead of being just a red dragon or a white dragon, now they are based off of their environment. The red dragon is now a mountain dragon, white represents the ice dragon, etc. They list the old terminology next to each type so it is easily connected. However the cloud dragon is not listed with a color in my copy of the book. I also like that they listed the similar monsters together, such as all of the puddings are listed under pudding.
The back part of the book deals with magic items, various rules and optional rules that the gamemaster can use, stocking dungeons, setting up strongholds, etc. As with the other sections, there has been some polishing here and there, but it basically looked like it covered the same subjects as before. I will say it was a little different not seeing the OGL statements at the back of the book that I’ve been seeing for over twenty years. But I think that’s a good thing.
So my complements to the army of volunteers at the Basic Fantasy forums for coming together and getting this project done. I could easily have seen a lot of project creep work it’s way in which they were able to avoid. Players of the Basic Fantasy RPG will easily recognize the high quality that this line has been known for. If you are looking for an old school feel with some modern tweaks, I’d recommend picking up this book. At the least, it just costs you some download time to get the books and supplements. But if you are like me, a person who loves to feel the weight of a book in his hands, then I would strongly urge you to pick up a physical copy.
Have you played Basic Fantasy RPG? Do you enjoy the games that have that OSR feel? This article is open for discussion on the TardisCaptain dot Com Discord server. You can also email me at Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com with any comments.
The complete Star Trek Deep Space Nine worlds set and the Star Trek Destiny set highlight the June 2023 eBooks that are available for 99 cents. There is also one TOS novel, one Stargazer novel, an additional DS9 novel and one for both Enterprise and Discovery.
All of these eBooks are 99 cents and available to read on your Amazon Kindle. Amazon is also doing a special where you earn points for each book you buy. This can lead to free books.
While I was doing some research for my “More IDW Comics in Star Trek Adventures?” blog post, I came across an interesting tidbit in Memory-Alpha. There was a comic released by IDW in 2019 called Star Trek: Sky’s The Limit. This concerned me. My local comic book store had been very good about making sure that all new Star Trek titles from IDW Publishing was put into my hold. I had also not seen digital versions of this comic come up on Amazon.
So I inquired with some of the online Star Trek comic discussion boards and was pointed in the direction of the Star Trek Picard Movie & TV Collection. The Blu-Ray set contained TNG episodes “The Best of Both Worlds” and “Chain of Command” along with all of the TNG movies. But included in the set was the 16-page Sky’s The Limit comic. This is why I didn’t see it in the comic store, it was a special item.
So to the online shopping sites I went. And luckily I was able to find the set with the comic at a reasonable price. A week later, it arrived. So this is my review of the comic (and a few notes about the movies/episodes).
A size comparison between Sky’s The Limit and the recently released Star Trek #7
It shouldn’t of surprised me, but the issue is only 5.25 inches across and just under 7 inches high. This was so it would fit into the Blu-Ray slip-case. The story was written by Thomas Zahler, art by Carlos Nieto and colored by Charlie Kirchoff. As mentioned above there are only 16 pages in the issue, but I think this gave the story an advantage. Set in Stardate: 48516.7 (just after the events in “All Good Things…“) Picard has to protect a Federation colony from a Maquis cell. The story is pretty quick and it reminds me of reading a short story. The writer only had so many words (or in this case panels) to tell the story so they got right to it. There were still a few tidbits that would be recognized by Star Trek fans (General Order 24 anyone?) plus some new things that I’ll probably need to update on Memory-Beta. When I was done reading the comic, I was glad that I had picked it up. This is one of two (that I’m aware of) IDW Comics that have not been made available digitally. The other being the Loot Crate “Star Trek: The Next Generation – Mirror Broken: Origin of Data” comic that was released in 2017. I had to jump through some hoops to get a copy of that issue. I really wish that IDW would release digital versions of these two books since they were both released several years ago.
As for the disks, well they were just the episodes and movies. I enjoyed watching the gag reel and documentary on Best of Both Worlds. But when I compared the movies to the Star Trek: The Next Generation Motion Picture Movie Collection I already owned on Blu-Ray, they were practically the same disks with the same specials and bonus features. I was a little disappointed as I was hoping for new material.
On the Star Trek comic message boards, someone responded to me that the comic would be worth it if you were a collector who needed all of the issues. While I don’t feel the need to collect every variant cover (what I want is on the inside) I did want a copy of Sky’s The Limit so that I could read it again at my leisure. Of this, I was not disappointed. If you are looking for the movies, well the Picard collection is slightly cheaper than the movie collection. It’s a little thinner for placing on the shelf, but it doesn’t come with the 5th disk of specials (called Evolutions) that the movie collection does. I’d probably recommend the movie collection over the Picard TV & Movie collection. But both would fulfill the mission of watching the movies.
Did I miss an IDW comic that hasn’t been released digitally? Have you read Sky’s The Limit? If so, what did you think about it? This article is open for discussion on the TardisCaptain dot Com Discord server. You can also email me at Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com with any comments.
There are quite a few books in this set. Some of the highlights include the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine relaunch series, Mission Gamma. There are also two Star Trek: Discovery books available in this sale.
All of these eBooks are 99 cents and available to read on your Amazon Kindle. Amazon is also doing a special where you earn points for each book you buy. This can lead to free books.
So earlier this month I was working on my review of the latest Star Trek Lower Decks releases for the Star Trek Adventures RPG when it hit me. “I wonder if we will see any future cross-over products between Modiphius (publisher of Star Trek Adventures) and IDW run of Star Trek comics?” Back in 2021 there had been a cooperative release with the IDW Year Five Tie In.
So I thought I’d take to social media and ask. On twitter (while dodging spam posts) I submitted the following:
Hey @Modiphius are we going to see any additional #StarTrekAdventures supplements for @IDWPublishing #StarTrek comics like we did for Year-Five tie in? I would love to see more supplements like this. #please
Well, I received a response from Jim Johnson, who is the project manager for Modiphius Star Trek Adventures. Wow, I wasn’t expecting that. He asked what I’d like to see from the IDW run. Well when I read that, my first thought was “Everything!” Yea, I know that’s not going to fly logically. IDW has been publishing Star Trek comics since 2007 and has released over 400 issues and trade paperbacks. Some of them include crossovers with other intellectual properties such as Doctor Who, Planet of the Apes, Green Lantern, The Legion of Superheroes and Transformers. The likelihood of any supplements for these issues are slim to none. Especially since there is already a roleplaying game for Transformers and Doctor Who.
So what was the most likely candidates from the wide catalog of IDW publications would be good for a Star Trek Adventures supplement? Well I have several recommendations in mind. I did mention a few in a quick twitter response to Mr. Johnson, but I felt that this topic deserved a blog post to give it more thought.
I’ve actually mentioned this in past blog posts, but IDW has done a very good series of comics covering the TNG crew in the Mirror Universe. In this setting, the Terran Empire was defeated, but not overrun. (Hey, if you are looking for a reason to keep this within “cannon”, just remember that there are many, many multiple universes as seen in the TNG episode “Parallels“.) This empire was boxed in, was low on resources (Captain’s kept their own secret supply caches) and still had some fight in it (for both external and internal conflicts). RPG scenarios could include Prime Universe Federation members dealing with Terran Empire incursions, more accidental crossovers or a campaign set with PCs playing members of the Terran Starfleet. Some of the advantages to this idea include lots of resource material (13 TNG comics plus additionaly 7 TOS comics, 1 Voyager comic, and 4 Discovery comics) which could include new races, new spacefames, new background information, new characters (we see “The Obnoxious Okona” who is a thorn in Mirror Captain Picard’s side). The disadvantages that I see are also the large number of sources (the supplement could be much larger than the Year Five tie in if they didn’t break it up by comic series), roleplaying in the Mirror Universe is much different than in the Prime Universe (but I do recall playing in a FASA Star Trek campaign where we were accidentally sent to the Mirror Universe) and there is a lot of Mirror Universe seen in the shows. While this is my first choice that I would LOVE to see, I could understand why it may not make the list at Modiphius.
Before there was Star Trek: Year Five by IDW, the comic publisher released Star Trek Year Four. This covered what could have been the fourth season of The Original Series. This would make for an excellent companion piece to the STA Year Five tie-in. This would be an excellent opportunity to present the stats for the Federation Class Dreadnought (seen in the Enterprise Experiment series). There are not as many issues covering Year Four as there are for Year Five (10 vs 26 respectively) but that might make is more of a candidate for a PDF only release. There are other TOS comics presented by IDW, but they cover various times across the Original Series. That could be used to pad out a publication if needed.
The next recommendation may be an issue. I don’t know if Modiphius has any type of license with the Kelvin Universe movies. Creating a tie-in supplement might be possible if a license isn’t fully connected. However there are a LOT of Kelvin Universe comics published by IDW. A total of 106 issues (not counting the two Kelvin Universe/Green Lantern crossovers). Some of these issues cover Starfleet Academy cadets and could be a perfect way to release some Kelvin Universe resource material into the market.
The last recommendation that I’m going to make is for Leonard McCoy: Frontier Doctor that had four issues. Not a lot of material, but the storyline covered Dr. McCoy after he had left Starfleet and went on a “Doctors without Borders” type of adventure (between the end of The Original Series and The Motion Picture). There would definable be a new spaceframe (The Joanna), several characters and planets and information on how to play in the Frontier Medics Program. A non-Starfleet sourcebook could help with civilian roleplaying.
As I mentioned in my Year Five Tie-In review, there was still some Year Five material that could have been added to the supplement. I wouldn’t be opposed to that type of expansion.
There are still a ton of other IDW Star Trek titles that information could be pulled to create a tie-in supplement. Some cover various races and characters. A few had different inter-ST series crossovers that only comics could pull off. Others had tie-ins with different Star Trek novels and video games. I believe that IDW has the longest run of continuous Star Trek comic publications. Despite recent news that the company had some layoffs, I hope that they will be able to continue to publish new comics for quite a few more years.
Thank you Jim Johnson for inspiring me to expand this subject into a blog post. I had a great time going back through several comics and (quickly) re-reading some of the stories. Jim did respond to my suggestion tweet saying “I just gotta chat with the good people over there and see what’s possible.” So… (crosses fingers).
What IDW Comics would you like to see turned into a Star Trek Adventures supplement? Are there other Star Trek comics that you draw gaming inspiration from? This article is open for discussion on the TardisCaptain dot Com Discord server. You can also email me at Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com with any comments.
While they are not in the photo above, several of the books on sale this month are the William Shatner written books. There are also a couple of good TNG and DS9 books along with the George Takei autobiography “To The Stars”.
All of these eBooks are 99 cents and available to read on your Amazon Kindle. Amazon is also doing a special where you earn points for each book you buy. This can lead to free books.
With March being Women’s History Month, I’m not surprised that the selection of eBooks put up for sale are focused on some of the strong female characters that we have seen in Star Trek. There is a lot of representation from Deep Space Nine and Discovery in this batch.
All eBooks are back to 99 cents each. I wonder if the 1.99 price was only for the Picard books or if it was an experiment to see if they would sell. Amazon is also doing a special where you earn points for each book you buy. This can lead to free books.
