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.

New Mutants for Marvel Heroic Roleplaying

Marvel Heroic Datafiles for Karma and Negasonic Teenage Warhead

01/10/2025 / / 0 Comments

I recently started a Marvel Heroic Roleplaying campaign that’s basically a Civil War What If…? where the House of M stuff didn’t drastically sideline the mutants, since my players wanted to play X-Men and X-related characters. Plus we’re from the era of the 1990s X-Men The Animated Series cartoon, so being able to rely on some continuity elements of that wouldn’t be so bad.

One of the things we’re doing is having the X-Men PCs take on New Mutants as apprentices. Since one of the PCs is Colossus, we decided to take a page from the Deadpool movies and place Negasonic Teenage Warhead on the New Mutants roster and become his protégé. It’s a nice call back to Kitty Pryde getting demoted from the X-Men to the New Mutants circa New Mutants Vol. 1 #3 or 4. Meanwhile, the other PC is an original character based on one of our previous non-Marvel superhero campaigns written up on this very site, Monochrome. He’ll be taking Karma under his wing.

You’ll see that I’m not really following canon timelines, because we don’t really care about that sort of thing! Negasonic is basically immediately post-Deadpool & the Mercs for Money, and Karma is more or less at the start of New Mutants Vol. 1.

So without further ado, here are the datafiles for Negasonic Teenage Warhead and Karma.

Negasonic Teenage Warhead datafile front

Negasonic Teenage Warhead datafile front

Negasonic Teenage Warhead datafile back

Negasonic Teenage Warhead datafile back

Negasonic Teenage Warhead – as a PDF

Karma datafile front

Karma datafile front

Karma datafile back

Karma datafile back

Karma – as a PDF

Thoughts? Feedback? Comment below!

Curse of Strahd powered by Tales of Xadia - The Dragon Prince Roleplaying Game

Forget D&D – Curse of Strahd is Better with Tales of Xadia

08/27/2024 / / 0 Comments

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.

Continue reading

Enter The Nerdom enters the Romulus
Enter The Nerdom enters the Romulus

Enter the Romulus – I Join Enter The Nerdom to Talk ALIEN: Romulus

08/22/2024 / / 0 Comments

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!

Enter The Nerdom VS Aliens

Enter The Nerdom Versus Alien the Roleplaying Game

08/19/2024 / / 0 Comments

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.

 

Shadowdark - Better than the Dungeon Master's Guide?

The Dungeon Master’s Guide Sucks but Shadowdark’s Got Your Back

08/08/2024 / / 0 Comments

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.

Continue reading

« Older posts

Subscribe via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

© 2025 Tim Bannock

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑