Justin Schmid

Justin started tabletop gaming in 1983 with Basic D&D (red box) and never looked back. He runs and plays in a wide variety of games, including Savage Worlds, Dungeon World, Trail of Cthulhu and many, many more. He also writes professionally for role-playing games, including writing and creating Night's Edge an Alternate Reality Universe for Cyberpunk 2020. He went on to write eight more adventures and sourcebooks in the Night's Edge line, adding vampires and other supernatural perils to the already dangerous world of Cyberpunk. As a freelance writer, he wrote The Bermuda Triangle for Call of Cthulhu, Shadows of the Mind, and Psi Wars for Conspiracy X and contributed to Last Unicorn's Star Trek RPG, as well as to Cybergeneration sourcebooks, and many other games. When he's not creating imaginary worlds for his daughter, he's running games for his friends and writing new adventures or designing new game systems. He currently lives in Vancouver, B.C., Canada.

#RPGaDay2015: Favourite Free RPG

 Posted by on August 7, 2015  Filed as: Editorial  No Responses »  Topic(s):
Aug 072015
 
#RPGaDay2015: Favourite Free RPG

For day 7 of RPGaDay, the question is what is my favourite free RPG? This one is too easy – Lady Blackbird: Adventures in the Wild Blue Yonder by John Harper. If you haven’t seen it yet, go check it out now. I’ll wait. It’s an awesome award-winning role-playing game with everything you need to play in 16 pages. There’s a ton of fan-created extra material out there [Read the article]

Aug 072015
 
#RPGaDay2015: Most Recent RPG Played - Lankhmar and Deadlands Reloaded

Day 6 of RPGaDay asks what RPG I most recently played. If it’s played, then it would be Savage Worlds Lankhmar: City of Thieves. My good friend, Mark, is running the game via Fantasy Grounds. We’ve just started a campaign in the city and it promises to be a good time. I’m playing a Fezzik-like Northlander called Mammut who is Brawny, a Brawler and suffers from the Clueless, [Read the article]

#RPGaDay 2015: Most Recent RPG Purchase

 Posted by on August 5, 2015  Filed as: Editorial  No Responses »  Topic(s):
Aug 052015
 
#RPGaDay 2015: Most Recent RPG Purchase

The question of the day for Day 5 of RPGaDay is what was my most recent RPG purchase? This would be a copy of Basic D&D. At some point, I lost my original copy and I’ve been thinking I would like to try the first adventure I ever ran/played again.  Just the other day, I found a copy while looking through a local game store’s second hand books and immediately grabbed it. Over [Read the article]

#RPGaDay2015: Most Surprising Game

 Posted by on August 4, 2015  Filed as: Editorial  No Responses »  Topic(s):
Aug 042015
 
#RPGaDay2015: Most Surprising Game

Day 4 of RPGaDay asks what was the most surprising game for me. The game that surprised me the most was Dungeon World by Sage Kobold Productions. After about 30 years of role-playing, I thought I understood what gaming was and this was the first game that let me play a game, but got out of the way to let me play. Now, in all fairness, Dungeon [Read the article]

Aug 032015
 
#RPGaDay2015: Favourite New Game of the Last 12 Months

Day 3 of RPGaDay brings us the question of my favourite new game of the last 12 months. This is a tough one, as although I have enjoyed many of the new games I picked up in the last 12 months, my real favourites are older than 12 months. The “new” game that I’ve played the most of in the last year would have to be D&D 5th Edition, [Read the article]

Aug 022015
 
#RPGaDay2015: Kickstarted Game Most Pleased I Backed

Day 2 of RPGaDay brings us the question of which kickstarted game I was most pleased that I backed. This is a tough question, as I’ve backed so many games on kickstarter, so here’s my top three (in no particular order): Fate Core, not because I play it regularly, but because the Fate System Toolkit was part of it, which is an invaluable game design resource. [Read the article]

Aug 012015
 
#RPGaDay2015: Forthcoming Game You're Most Looking Forward To

This year’s RPGaDay (a month long discussion of Tabletop RPGs created by David Chapman of Autocratik) has launched and I’ll be (trying) to cover his daily topics over the month of August. Today’s topic is forthcoming game you’re most looking forward to. That’s an easy and difficult one for me. It would have to be Will Hindmarch’s Project: Dark. It’s easy because that’s the one game that comes to mind if you [Read the article]

Jul 312015
 

Here are five quick(ish) ways that you can make your convention game really stand out. Some might even be helpful for your home games! 1. Use Props Players love props. If there’s a letter they find, make one to hand out. If there’s a special artifact they find, make a card up for it. Some people go over the top on this and actually create a mock-up [Read the article]

Kickstart The Warren

 Posted by on July 20, 2015  Filed as: Editorial  No Responses »  Topic(s):
Jul 202015
 
Kickstart The Warren

Instead of a regular Kickstarter round up, I’m going to focus in on one of the two kickstarters I’m backing this month. The first, which I won’t spend much time on, is the Reaper Miniature Bones III kickstarter. I’ve backed the two previous ones and this one is again looking to be a blockbuster. Check it out if you like minis and have time to [Read the article]

My Battle Map Wish List

 Posted by on July 19, 2015  Filed as: Editorial  1 Response »  Topic(s):
Jul 192015
 
My Battle Map Wish List

As you may have noticed, I really like to use visuals in my games and aside from the 3D terrain (which is great!), I love great-looking colour maps, particularly battle maps (maps with the 1″ squares marked out.) It’s not that I’m a big wargamer or D&D 4e aficionado. I’m not stuck to the grid, but it helps me and my players figure out distances easily. I’ve [Read the article]