My First 'Doctor Who' Audio Drama is ON SALE NOW!

Just passing this along to all my fellow Doctor Who fans out there!

With Melanie back on our screens once again, Big Finish Productions is currently running a SALE on her many audio adventures including MY very first one, the Juggernauts starring Colin Baker (the Sixth Doctor), Bonnie Langford (Mel), Terry Molloy (Davros), and a few Daleks!

Get your copy now for just $2.51 USD through Monday, June 24!

It's Origins Awards Time Again

As I write this, the start of the OriginsGame Fair, a long-running annual gaming convention run by the Game Manufacturer's Association (GAMA), is less than a week away, and with that comes the prestigious Origins Awards.

I encourage you to review the list of nominees as it is always a nice cross-section of quality in a number of categories including board games, card games, roleplaying games, and even media contributions (podcasts, vlogs, and the like).

This year, Savage Worlds (and Pinnacle Entertainment Group) is represented in the Best 2D Artwork category in the form of Holler: the Appalachian Apocalypse. Congratulations to Francesco Chiappara, Aaron Acevedo, Karl Keesler, Simon Lucas, and Alida Saxon for their outstanding work on this gorgeous setting!

Meanwhile five years ago this week, I learned that one of my proudest accomplishments, the Savage World of Flash Gordon, was nominated for Best Roleplaying Game of 2018!!! While the game did not win that year, it was still thrilling to see it up there among other outstanding titles like Forbidden Lands, Invisible Sun, Star Trek Adventures, and Vampire: the Masquerade!

Who knows, maybe next year Pinebox Middle School will appear on that list! 🤞🏻

The Sixth Gun TV Pilot

Well, well, well... 

After 11 long years, the rejected pilot for the Sixth Gun (based on the critically-acclaimed comic by Cullen Bunn) has finally turned up online!

As a huge fan of the source material and the writer of the Sixth Gun Roleplaying Game for Pinnacle Entertainment Group, I have been eager to see this pilot for a very long time, and today, I finally carved out 42 minutes to kick back and give it a look-see.

Without turning this post into a full-fledged review (I’m sure you can find one or two of those online already), I will say that the pilot is quite ambitious and it gets a LOT right, however it is also plagued by a few oddities that make it less than perfect:

1. It’s obvious that titles, captions, and a few visual effects are not in any way final. The visit to the Hanging Tree, for example, is a clear example of some of those incomplete VFX which, unfortunately, ruin what should have otherwise been a phenomenal sequence!
2. Pedro Pascal (yes, THAT guy) appears here as Agent Ortega and is fine in the role, however, he LOOKS like he should have been Drake Sinclair, even down to the moustache, hat, and tie. Meanwhile, Michael Huisman as Drake does a decent job, but comes across more as a fast-talking rogue versus a driven and haunted soldier in an ongoing war for reality. Additionally, how could someone look at Drake’s appearance in the comics and then do a complete 180 from his signature ‘stache, dapper suit, gloves, and bowler?
3. In the comics, Becky Montcrief is instantly recognizable by her flaming mane of red hair, yet here, she appears as a blonde. That said, Laura Ramsey still does a good job.
4. Continuing with the hair theme, Missy Hume, as presented in the comics, sports long, raven-black hair, but inexplicably, in the pilot, she’s the one with a mountain of red hair! Elena Satine still delivers a good performance and it’s nice that we get see her in her aged form for one quick scene.
5. I can think of no reason why the name of Missy’s saloon was changed from “the Silver Palace” in the comics to “the Emerald Palace” in the pilot. I’ve never been much of a fan of change for change’s sake.
6. The hard rock music tracks (mercifully used sparingly during a few fierce battles) are jarring and completely out of place. I get what they were trying to do, but I would have instead preferred a powerful, dramatic score during these moments.
7. I would have LOVED to have seen General Hume in all his undead glory, but alas, all we get is a bloodshot eye, a grim voice, and a couple dusty hands in the last 10 seconds of the presentation.

As for things I quite liked:

1. James Le Gros, in an understated role as Billjohn, is spot-on! Had Billjohn’s story unfolded as presented in the books, it would have been interesting to have seen if Le Gros would have continued in the role as a silent reanimated husk or if they would have ignored that storyline altogether.
2. It’s nice seeing René Auberjonois as Becky’s stepfather, Gregory.
3. The Six Guns, with Roman numerals emblazoned on their grips, look very nice. I wonder where those props wound up.
4. The opening attack on the monastery, with Silas wielding the Fourth Gun to great effect, is exciting stuff, and the husks exploding out of their graves is pretty awesome!
5. I quite like the way the flashes of both future and past are handled when Becky uses the Sixth Gun.

Overall, this pilot is pretty entertaining. On the one hand, it packs too much into its short running time, while on the other hand, it leaves a LOT of great material out with the assumption that those things (the rest of Silas’ gang, for example) would have been revealed in future episodes.

If you’re looking for a little weirdness in your westerns, give the pilot a look. If you want to really see what the Sixth Gun is all about, read the dang comics (and there are plenty of them out there) and get your hands on the RPG (the core book is still available in both softback and PDF from Pinnacle Entertainment Group)!

Savage Saturday Night at KublaCon 2024

As I write this, KublaCon 2024KublaCon 2024 is history!

One of the highlights of this convention is our Savage Saturday Night event (a multi-table event celebrating all things Savage Worlds). This year, after a bit of a rocky start (I'll reserve that story for a future post) a terrific time was had by all as six packed tables all buzzed with exciting RPG adventures!

Here are the six games (with brief descriptions) that were played that night beginning with mine:

Pinebox Middle School - Savage Saturday Night

"The Locked Door." A locked door alone can be mysterious. It is even more mysterious when one appears in the home of one of the students of Pinebox Middle School! What dark secrets lie beyond this padlocked portal and are the heroes brave enough to find out? Play with Scott Woodard, the designer of 'Pinebox Middle School' for Pinnacle Entertainment Group at this year's Savage Saturday Night special event!

A Night to Remember - Savage Saturday Night

HIGH SOCIETY, BATHTUB GIN, & UNSPEAKABLE HORRORS! As the Prohibition rages on, claim your member of the Mythos Resistance and begin your investigation of the N'Orleans Opera House… Occult Lore, Gun Play, and Rubbing Elbows with Ne'er-do-wells to solve a mystery and prevent our destruction from forces beyond reckoning.

Deadlands: A Cowboy Legend - Savage Saturday Night

Maverick - Paladin - Cheyenne - Matt Dillon - Miss Kitty - and more.

These famous Heroes of the Wild West have gathered in Dodge City. Grave danger awaits them there, as the Deadly Drifter Jasper Stone, springs a trap aimed to end their illustrious careers.

Do these Living Legends dare duel Death himself?

Trailer Park Shark Attack! - Savage Saturday Night

The river is overflowing and your mobile home community is caught up in the deluge… wait, is that a shark fin? No, it's actually two shark fins… scratch that, it's a LOT of shark fins!! It's Trailer Park Shark Attack!

A Billion Miles From Home - Savage Saturday Night

This adventure for Deadlands: Lost Colony sends your spacers to the outer fringes of the Faraway system to discover the fate of the long-lost Bosphorous. What terrors lurk aboard her frozen halls? And why do they call this region of space “Johnson’s Folly?"

Star Wars: Murder on Arcturus Station - Savage Saturday Night

Can your group of undercover Rebels discover who murdered the station administrator and get access to supplies for the Rebellion - before the Imperial commander finds out who you really are?!

Huge thanks to KublaCon's Mike Eckert (who also ran Deadlands: Lost Colony during Savage Saturday Night) for helping to make this happen and for providing us with another glorious set of custom Bennies! Oooooh, shiny!!!

If you've never attended KublaCon and getting out to the Bay Area isn't too difficult for you, I highly recommend it! 

Hope to see you next year for Savage Saturday Night at KublaCon 2025!

Prepping for KublaCon 2024

In this post-pandemic era of virtual tabletops, a large number of gamers around the globe get their regular RPG fix via apps like Roll20, Foundry VTT, and Fantasy Grounds. For many others, organized conventions offer the rare opportunity to play their favorite games face-to-face.

I’m one of those lucky gamers who actually has a semi-regular, in-person game group, however whenever the opportunity arises for me to attend a convention, I leap at it because cons offer a truly unique gaming experience.

As I write this (in early May), KublaCon, my favorite west coast convention, is just a couple weeks away. This year, I have two games on the schedule including a published adventure (John Goff’s Final Rest Stop (the first release in the new Savage Saturday Cinema line) and an original adventure I wrote for Pinebox Middle School that I will be running as part of our SavageSaturday Night event.

Whenever I run games at conventions, I always bring plenty of “toys” to the table. Themed components, custom character sheets, maps, minis/tokens, etc. Whether people are paying to participate in individual sessions via a ticket system or the events are included in their overall registration fee, they are investing their hard-earned money in the hope of being entertained for a few hours, and I always feel compelled to deliver that experience.

As a designer who frequently runs sessions of his own games, I’m also there to function as a salesperson and company representative, so it behooves me to take an extra step or two in my presentations.

For this year’s Savage Saturday Night (a multi-table event celebrating all things Savage Worlds), I am running an original adventure for my latest game, Pinebox Middle School titled "The Locked Door." Thus far, I have playtested this game with two groups (my regular local game group and a group at DunDraCon back in February). The promotional blurb posted to Tabletop Events reads:

“A locked door alone can be mysterious. It is even more mysterious when one appears in the home of one of the students of Pinebox Middle School! What dark secrets lie beyond this padlocked portal and are the heroes brave enough to find out?”

This time around I decided to go all out, working with my extremely talented friend, David Okum (Okumarts Games) to create a set of custom, full-color cardstock miniatures featuring all the enemies the heroes will encounter. Along with these (and they are absolutely amazing), I have the official, die-cut character pawns for all the heroes, full-color maps and map tiles (some with 3D elements), several handouts, those Gear Cards I discussed here a couple weeks ago, and customized table tent character sheets (with art from the core game) for all my players.

For a few other necessary accessories, I’ll be using those EERIE playing cards I blogged about back in April for my Action Deck/s, special branded Bennies provided by the convention, a jumbo-size set of dice (I find these really help for con games), and all the usual items needed to best run adventures for Savage Worlds.

Lastly, I made some tabletop signs (5” x 7”) promoting the games at each of our six tables and I’ll have a box of “I Survived Savage Saturday Night at KublaCon 2024” buttons for all participants!

Rest assured, I will be posting an after-action convention report (or three) in a few weeks, so watch this space for photos and much more!

"Kuuuuuubla!!!"