Every 85 cents donated means 1 meal given to someone in need. A $40 donation is FIFTY meals.
Tabletop game designers from all over the world are helping amplify the reach of this project, spreading the word across social media and contributing to a special gift for donors.
And there is a bonus for any RPG enthusiasts who donate:
Everyone who donates to this campaign can receive a free PDF bundle including an epic one-shot adventure and a new playable species for Pathfinder and Dungeons & Dragons, letting you and those you love play the heroes in your games that you are in real life. You are saving real lives while forging bonds and memories across the game table.
Please click this link for more information, and if you’re an RPG fan, just use your email to sign up for alerts, follow the instructions, and share the PDF receipt of your donation to receive your free PDF bundle.
And for those unfamiliar with the world of tabletop RPGs, you might be wondering about the origins of the name Power Word Meal.
There are a series of spells in Dungeons & Dragons based on the idea that you’ve learned a word of power, and that by speaking that single word, you can cause a magical effect. Power Word Stun, Power Word Blind, and most famously, Power Word Kill, are terribly dangerous, terribly effective spells.
Which makes it genuinely lovely to see that idea turned on its head with Power Word Meal, spreading the idea that we DO have the power to help others. Not with a magic word of eldritch might, but with a few clicks, a few screen taps, a few dollars, a few moments of our time.
So please cast Power Word Meal with us and make the lives of some deserving strangers better.
A lot of cool things are happening in the actual play RPG scene these days.
For the uninitiated, actual play games (also known as liveplay games) are when a party of roleplaying game enthusiasts share their gameplay for viewers.
Some of them simply record a regular session around the table, while others create sets, graphics, and expend a fair bit of coin on their production values to enhance the viewing experience.
There are LOADS of podcasts and video series in the actual play RPG arena, and over the last few weeks, several of the heavy hitters in the genre have announced big projects.
So let’s do a roundup of actual play RPG news!
Dimension 20 + WWE
The comedy streaming service Dropout is the home of Dimension 20, one of the premiere liveplay games running today. Fresh off of selling 20,000 tickets for a show at Madison Square Garden, Dimension 20 recently announced a new campaign featuring their flagship Dungeonmaster Brennan Lee Mulligan. And his four players at the table are all WWE superstars!
Xavier Woods, Kofi Kingston, Bayley, and Chelsea Green will be tackling a gladiatorial arena in the time of ancient Greece in Titan Takedown, starting April 2nd!
It’s interesting that they’re using D&D rules instead of any pro wrestling RPG systems, but otherwise, I’m excited to see this campaign play out!
Critical Role 10th Anniversary
The top dogs in the RPG actual play scene are undoubtedly Critical Role, a self-proclaimed group of “nerdy-ass voice actors who sit around and play Dungeons & Dragons.”
They have a hit show on Amazon Prime, The Legend of Vox Machina, which is based on their original RPG campaign.
They just wrapped up their third multiyear campaign with a huge crossover event featuring the characters from all three campaigns. (The final episode lasted a whopping EIGHT AND A HALF HOURS.
They’re currently running a short follow-up game, Divergence.
Not only that, but there are big expectations for the announcement for their fourth campaign, which could feature their in-house RPG system, Daggerheart.
Ten years after their debut on Geek & Sundry, Critical Role is still shaping the actual play landscape.
Geek & Sundry
And speaking of Geek & Sundry, they recently announced a tabletop charity event featuring several top names in the actual play community.
Alongside Geek & Sundry’s own Felicia Day, Matt Mercer of Critical Role is returning to Geek & Sundry for this special one-shot event, and he is joined by Daredevil star (and RPG influencer) Deborah Ann Woll, Superman portrayer Brandon Routh, and comedian Reggie Watts. The game is being DMed by Bill Rehor of Beadle & Grimm’s, which not only produces topnotch specialty RPG products, but also created the D&D/improv comedy show Faster, Purple Worm! Kill! Kill!
And it’s also advertising a unique opportunity for viewers to experience the game “firsthand” by using VR headsets to virtually sit at the table alongside the players!
I have no idea if the technology will back up the interactive promises made, but at the very least, this should be a very entertaining round of roleplaying for a very worthy cause!
Baldur’s Gate Liveplays at Conventions
One of the biggest success stories in RPG-inspired video games over the last few years was the 2023 release of Baldur’s Gate 3. Set in the Forgotten Realms D&D setting, the video game brought many new eyes to the world of Dungeons & Dragons, giving them a sampling of the worldbuilding and storytelling potential of traditional tabletop gaming.
But an unexpected and delightful spinoff of the game’s success has been the series of actual play games inspired by Baldur’s Gate 3 at major fan conventions.
The voice actors for some of the game’s most popular characters have been playing D&D for live audiences, and seeing the voice actors learn to love the game that inspired their video game roles has been a wonderful treat.
Astarion, Karlach, Lae’zel, and Wyll have all come to life for gamers and D&D fans alike as the actors themselves roll dice and take control of the story.
Did any of these projects grab your attention, fellow puzzler? What’s your favorite actual play group or campaign? Let us know in the comments below!
All of the books discussed and/or reviewed in PCBR articles are either directly or indirectly related to the world of puzzling, and hopefully you’ll find something to tickle your literary fancy in this entry or the entries to come.
Let’s get started!
The subject of today’s book review is The Gamesmaster by Flint Dille.
In the late 70s and early 80s, popular culture exploded as cartoons became vehicles to sell toys and the modern blockbuster continued to rise to prominence in cinemas after the successes of Jaws and Star Wars.
G.I. Joe and Transformers, two of the most iconic franchises from the 1980s, are still influential properties today, but one name that helped craft both franchises (and many others) is probably unfamiliar to you: Flint Dille.
The Gamesmaster chronicles what Dille calls “The Geek ’80s” — aka his animation and pop culture heyday — exploring the birth, growth, and tumultuous developments behind the roleplaying game Dungeons & Dragons as well as the animated shows G.I. Joe, Transformers, Inhumanoids, and the Star Wars cartoons Droids and Ewoks.
This almost feels like a nonfiction companion book to the novel Ready Player One, since so much ’80s pop culture is explored in Dille’s stories. He gives us glimpses into the writers’ rooms of various animated shows (both the most influential and the sadly forgotten), providing what feels like an outsider’s view of Hollywood. It’s the equivalent of a fan getting a deep look behind the scenes.
But the game fans in the readership will get the most out of his journey through the offices of TSR, detailing the steady rise of D&D‘s reach and influence, as well as the incredibly turbulent interpersonal struggles amongst the writers and innovators who helped shape it. Dille generously shouts-out the contributions of fellow creators, but also shares the flip side of success, highlighting the bad luck that followed many of his friends on the TSR side of things.
And at a time where D&D itself is questioning Gary Gygax’s role and somewhat problematic legacy in the wake of the game’s 50th anniversary, Dille offers valuable insight into those crucial, formative years.
Although Dille’s not the most focused or artful storyteller — this feels more like a rambly series of conversations than a traditional autobiography — he is an immensely charming and likable narrator, happily sharing credit, admitting missteps, and celebrating the legacies he played an influential role in crafting.
The Gamesmaster offers a key piece in the often patchy, unreliable history of Dungeons & Dragons, whilst still embracing the nerdy energy that brought roleplaying, Transformers, G.I. Joe, and other celebrated franchises to prominence during the 1980s.
There are a lot of interactive puzzle experiences out there. Scavenger hunts, puzzle hunts, murder mystery dinners, treasure hunts, geocaching… it’s an amazing array of puzzly options.
But I think escape rooms are probably my favorite. There’s something about the combination of the ticking clock and the mechanic of working as a team to defeat the room itself that is so immensely satisfying.
It builds communication skills, it challenges you to use both your logical and associative thinking patterns, and
Ideally, everyone gets a moment to shine in an escape room.
Some people are better seekers, finding items or hints or pieces of a particular puzzle for others to put together.
Some are better connectors, realizing which of those items could combine to crack a problem or a code.
Some are better puzzlers, figuring out how those combinations of found items and context clues leads to a solution.
Some are better organizers, sorting found items, putting aside items already used in solutions to help keep track of what hasn’t been used and still could contribute to a later puzzle.
Some are better leaders, assigning tasks to best utilize everyone’s hands and minds to get the ball rolling.
Some are better realists, accepting when the group is truly stumped and/or needs a hint or a clue, recognizing when an answer isn’t coming and helping move the game along in a timely manner (with the group’s agreement, of course).
At least someone’s having fun in this escape room scene from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend…
Even when my team has failed to escape a room in the allotted time, I’ve never felt like the effort was wasted. I still had a blast, and I learned from it, and I got better for next time.
And one unexpected consequence of frequenting escape rooms has been hearing horror stories from staff members regarding players who took things too far.
So let’s go over some escape room etiquette together as I share some tidbits escape room operators have shared with me over the years.
#1: You don’t have to pull hard.
Now, it’s true that some locks stick. If that’s the case, then grasp the loop in one hand and the body of the lock in the other and pull.
But don’t yank the lock and damage how it’s attached to something. Don’t pull hard on doors. Don’t force things. The VAST majority of doors, hatches, trunks, and other items that open in an escape room do so EASILY. If you have to force it, you’re probably not doing it right.
The very first time I hosted an escape room event at a convention, one of the boxes got broken open by an overexcited teenager. Because the magnetic opener didn’t work the first time they tried it. So they immediately went HULK SMASH on the poor little false book disguising a hidden trove.
I’ve seen escape rooms with warnings about not RIPPING cabinets off the wall by trying to open them, complete with the obvious repair jobs that went along with returning said cabinets to the wall. People need to seriously calm down.
This leads nicely into my second bit of escape room etiquette:
#2: It’s not a rage room.
I saw this written on the whiteboard in capital letters at an escape room once. Because, apparently, someone broke every bit of glassware in the room. It’s not clear if they thought it was part of the game or they just had poor impulse control.
It’s a little sad that they have to include that on a board that otherwise offers fun little advice and tips for first-timers.
I heard about a group of constructor workers that went to an escape room as a team-building exercise, and the staff member running their room overheard them discussing how thick the sheetrock was. They were genuinely considering just GOING THROUGH THE WALL instead of playing the game.
I mean, it’s cool that they were bringing their particular skillset to the experience, but guys, dial it back a notch. They didn’t give you sledgehammers, after all. I don’t want every escape room to need signs that say, “Please don’t smash through this wall.”
So, in short, be nice to the room. Whether it’s the trunks/cabinets or the walls or the many knickknacks and bits of color they put in the room to help with the immersion, just be gentle with it all so other solvers can enjoy the same experience.
And speaking of enjoyment:
#3: Winning isn’t the only goal.
Yes, the goal is to escape the room before the time limit expires. Lots of places post the best escape times, and there are folks that will sacrifice an immersive experience just to beat that particular room’s record escape time.
And, as previously stated, some people take it too far.
One operator told me a guy snuck a Swiss army knife into the room with him, unscrewed the screws holding the final box together, took the key, and opened the door. Out the door within the first first minutes, bypassing the ENTIRE game for everyone involved.
I don’t know if he didn’t want to do the whole room, or he was trying to show off how clever he was by cheating, or what the thought process was. But he spoiled it for everyone.
Communicate with your fellow players. Show them what you find, don’t hoard it for yourself. Encourage discussion and theorizing. It’s way more fun to solve as a group than to solve alone. A close call with a few minutes to spare — but one where everyone got to contribute — is better than a quick escape that only one or two people in the group got to enjoy. And it makes for a better story to retell later.
Do you have any favorite escape room stories? Are you an escape room staffer with a horror story to share? Either way, I’d love to hear from you!
Role-playing games are high on the list of my favorite pastimes, and whether you’re looking for a fun game, a puzzly experience, or a chance to tell some exciting, engrossing stories with friends, you’re bound to find something to enjoy in a role-playing session.
And if you’ve never tried out a role-playing game or dipped a toe into the fascinating world of RPGs, tomorrow is the perfect opportunity for you to do so.
Because tomorrow, Saturday June 15th, is Free RPG Day!
Established in 2007, Free RPG Day is a collaborative event where RPG publishers team up with game shops, hobby shops, and other game retailers to celebrate role-playing games and try out brand-new and unfamiliar games.
Stores around the world will be offering free adventure modules and quick-play rulebooks for all sorts of different role-playing games — covering everything from classic D&D-style games to spacefaring campaigns — much of it created specifically for Free RPG Day!
Companies like Goodman Games, Paizo Publishing, Green Ronin, Off World Designs, and many more are participating, along with game shops all over the U.S. and across the world.
You can use this store locator to find the nearest participating location, but worry not if you can’t get out to a friendly local game shop!
PuzzCulture 