In this two-part episode, we review Numenera and 13th Age. This episode focuses on Kickstarter sensation Numenera. Should you buy it?

It should be noted that these reviews are based on reading the books, not playing the games. After these reviews, we’ve decided to make one our next game. It should be clear which one after listening to both parts.

In our first episode of our third annual Month of Horror, we look at the Inquisition. Sodomy, bigamy, heresy, and witch, uh, sorcery; this episode has it all. We discuss how to play an inquisitor as an antagonist (easy) and how to play them as a protagonist (not so easy).

Special guest appearances by one of Lyal’s cats and some of his dishes. He has since been brought in for questioning on suspicion of witchcraft.

With Wayne back from Strategicon‘s Gateway 2013 and Lyal fresh off of reading books on the history of role-playing games, we decide to combine these for this episode’s topic. We look at the innovations that role-playing games brought to gaming and how these can be found in today’s convention games. Since we’re talk about conventions, we cover an eighties cartoon, zombies, neck beards, teenage girls (Wait. What?) and One Direction (Which convention did Wayne go to?).

“In the criminal Idle Red Hands system, Rogues will be separated into two separate yet equally important groups: the crimes and the people who commit them. These are their stories.”

The month of debuts gets another debut! This time, it’s Rogues, a look at criminals and the crimes they commit. We look at the proud noble tradition of deal dealers, gunrunners and pimps (and those guys that sold jeans and Beatles records in the Soviet Union). Believe it or not, we actually suggest how to play black marketeers. Chris tries to cheat by recommending a “black” marketeer who provides food to the starving, but Wayne and Lyal put a stop to that nonsense.

“Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”
– Winston Churchill

Was Churchill talking about World War Two or a game of Axis and Allies?
With an apocalypse, the end is not really the end either. In fact, it’s where the fun really begins, if radiation sickness, starvation and sterility could be called “fun”.
In this episode, we talk about the post-apocalypse, including zombies, vampires, farmers, and Sam Gamgee’s second favourite topic.

Special Note: The Novel which Chris refers to, in which weapons are used to remove information from matter, is titled “The Gone-Away World” by Nick Harkaway.