These days, you’re just not a proper RPG unless you’ve got a fancy card-game spin-off either in or out of world. Gwent. Hearthstone. Arcomage. Triple Triad. Legends of Norrath. Pokemon CCG. Now The Elder Scrolls is throwing its adventurer’s cap into the ring with The Elder Scrolls: Legends, as announced aeons ago, but only just going into closed beta. Quite a gold-rush, especially given that historically, these games haven’t done particularly> well in digital form, even when backed by a big name or license. … [visit site to read more]

The most dangerous ideas are the ones so compelling, nobody wants to admit they’re bad. Also the atom bomb was pretty nasty, but that’s a bit out of a weekly RPG column. Instead, let’s pick one of the chocolate teapots that people keep mistaking for the Holy Grail – the idea that RPGs can hope to offer anything close to a classic DM experience. It’s a terrible idea. It’s not going to work. Stop wasting everybody’s time.

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Card Hunter [official site] is a free to play D&D-themed CCG/boardgame for one or more players, originally released two years ago as a browser game. It’s now been re-released on Steam, with a new, System Shock 2-inspired paid expansion. I jumped at the chance to go back.> … [visit site to read more]

Card Hunter [official site] is available on Steam right now. It will be one of the best games released on Steam this year just as it was one of the best games of 2013, when it launched as a browser-based free-to-play CCG/RPG hybrid. The development team includes former Irrational, Popcap, Looking Glass and Magic: The Gathering folks and the game is every bit as good as their combined back catalogue suggets it might be.

Go. Play it now.

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Hot damn, Card Hunter [official site] is coming to Steam. I enjoyed the card game simulation tremendously when it first came out. From the little details to the cast of geeks, it all works for me. There were only two things I really didn’t like about it: the fact it wasn’t on Steam, and the fact I couldn’t trap my friends on the board with me. WELP. GUESS WHAT HAS CHANGED.

(Card Hunter is coming to Steam, and will allow co-op goodness. It’ll also soon receive a new expansion, Expedition to the Sky Citadel, introducing a not-wholly-unfamiliar AI.)

… [visit site to read more]