Tales of Xadia: The Dragon Prince Roleplaying Game (TOX) is a hidden gem that deserves more attention. This tabletop game comes with a robust digital toolkit, similar to D&D Beyond, and it’s built on the Cortex system found in Cortex Prime Game Handbook. Despite being tied to a popular TV show, TOX offers a lot to players who aren’t fans. In fact, I believe it’s the perfect system for running Curse of Strahd (COS), even better than D&D itself. Let’s dive in and see why.
Author: Tim Bannock (Page 1 of 25)
Tim Bannock (@timbannock on most social media) is a roleplaying game developer and e-commerce product manager. He's been playing D&D since 1985, and has been a best selling DMsGuild developer and indie RPG publisher since 2016.
Enter the Romulus – I Join Enter The Nerdom to Talk ALIEN: Romulus
Following our one-shot ALIEN The Roleplaying Game session, I was invited back to Enter The Nerdom to discuss the scenario, talk about the history of the ALIEN franchise in roleplaying games, and then discuss the new film, ALIEN: Romulus!
It’s a spoiler-filled discussion filled with our thoughts on not just Romulus but the entire ALIEN franchise across movies, books, games, and comics. We also touch on a few other recent movies and shows.
If you’re looking for more ALIEN discussion, some behind-the-scenes stuff about our game session, and some general nerdy chat, check out the latest episode of Enter The Nerdom wherever you listen to podcasts! Some of the more popular spots:
Reminder: This is a spoilery discussion, not only about our game session, but also about ALIEN: Romulus and a few other shows and movies.
If you enjoy Enter The Nerdom, follow them on Instagram or your favorite podcasting service to catch more episodes! They feature special guests from all walks of nerdom, including Christine Valada (Photographer, Lawyer, and widow of Len Wein, co-creator of Marvel’s Wolverine), and DJ MacHale (writer, Nickolodeon’s Are You Afraid of the Dark), they report on conventions (SDCC, D23, various horror and comic conventions), and much, much more!
After all this ALIEN stuff, I’ll be changing gears next week with a post about how Tales of Xadia: The Dragon Prince Roleplaying Game might be the best game system for D&D’s Curse of Strahd campaign. Stay tuned!
Once again, I got to run a game for the Enter The Nerdom podcast, along with special guest Dan Mason.
Here’s where you can find Enter The Nerdom Ep. 46 – Alien RPG Tabletop; if you don’t see your favorite podcast venue of choice, check again in case I missed it.
There will be a video version of this episode with cameras on the battle maps and gaming table coming soon!
I ran Steve Hatherley’s Perfect Organism scenario with a few minor tweaks and it was almost a Paranoia-level hose-job for the players! I highly recommend it if you’re looking for a scenario that does a great job tying right into the first two ALIEN movies.
We’ll be doing a sort of post-session breakdown, explore some of the alternative events and some other actual plays of the scenario, and discuss ALIEN: Romulus later this week! I’ll make sure to really take you behind the scenes of the scenario when we do that.
One of the things I realized a long time ago, but Sly Flourish article “How to Survive a Digital D&D Future” really cements, is that Wizards of the Coast will never release the Dungeon Master’s Guide (DMG) that DMs need. No, I’m not talking about one that will “teach them how to DM,” which the current one does, and which the next one is arguably going to do better. Teaching how to DM is great, but you also need to provide tools for a DM to identify and create good content for their game. People crave exciting games, filled with fun content.
I’m talking about having a DMG that’s packed with the tools necessary to generate a campaign and a dungeon top to bottom in a format that goes beyond vague advice and stylistic choices. I’m talking about procedural dungeon and campaign creation. Procedural NPC creation. Procedural adventure and encounter table generation. One with tons of evocative ideas that show DMs how to turn that content into good, fun content for the players to engage with.
What I’m really talking about is all the nifty tools that Shadowdark just won multiple ENNIE Awards for doing. Let’s take look.
It’s been a long time since I’ve (publicly) put a lot into game development and publishing, but behind the scenes things have been going on. A lot of things.
There will be bigger announcements and more news coming in the future. But for now, I just wanted to take a moment to say these new ventures will be happening under a more formalize organization: Bannock N Barkby, named after myself and the magical pupster who’s been in my logo for some time!
If you’d be so kind as to show some love, here’s where you’ll be able to find stuff in the future:
Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/bannocknbarkby
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bannocknbarkby/
Twitter (because X is a stupid name): https://x.com/BannockNBarkby
Like, subscribe, share, whatever. I’m not a big fan of social media, but you gotta what you gotta do to get the word out, right? Your support is always much appreciated; there’s no gaming without friends!
Tim Bannock Publishing will slowly but surely morph into Bannock N Barkby, and you may even see some revised releases to celebrate.
More to come!