Saturday, December 24, 2011

Holiday message from Polymancer Studios, Inc.

Hello all,


From our Staff and their families, we wish you all the very best of this holiday season; regardless of your faith or religious background. It is a time of well wishing and friendship and may you benefit from all of these. May peace and safety envelop you and yours.


To all be well, may health be yours, may happiness be a part of your life for 2012, and may good fortune shine upon all of you in the New Year.


Cheers,


From the staff of Polymancer Studios and the guys at Polymancer Game and Hobby.

Saturday, December 10, 2011

DiceCast Episode 16: Using Miniatures In Your RPG & "You Are A Cat"

We return with an honest-to-goodness episode about a game topic! As much as we love interviewing interesting people who are connected to popular culture, it feels good to be back to the game table for an episode. In this one, we talk about miniatures; not miniatures wargaming, but the use of miniatures in roleplaying games (RPGs).


It seems almost odd that we have to introduce miniatures to roleplayers, because RPGs evolved from miniatures wargaming. Indeed, the first RPGs were miniatures wargames optimized to playing a single character, rather than an entire army; a character who went on to evolve from scenario to scenario; scenarios which were more than just a battle. It was when the emphasis switched to interaction and plots and away from combat that roleplaying games evolved into something in which miniatures were optional. This has been great for the maturation of the hobby, but maybe roleplayers are missing out on something.


To that end, we introduce miniatures to roleplayers in this episode, with a few tips on how to get started using them. THere is nothing in here about painting or customizing miniatures or producing scenery. Those are topics for future episodes. Rather, we talk about the general concerns that come with using miniatures at the roleplaying table. We also give the quick and dirty rules to PUMMEL!® (Pick-Up, Multigenre Miniatures, Easy to Learn), a miniatures wargame that can be adapted to any RPG for mass combats; and we offer the quickstart rules for free download.


We also have an interview with Sherwin Tjia, author of the Choose Your Own Adventure-style adventure book You Are A Cat (published on Conundrum Press). Mr. Tija discusses his love of cats, of adventure books, and why he made You Are A Cat. We mention the Cat RPG by John Wick.



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