Against the Goblins

Cursed Panorama

Battle at the G8

During tonight's episode of Villains & Vigilantes, Northern Shield, our supergroup, was tasked with rescuing Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin from a group of nefarious mercenaries. We rescued Trump, but the kidnappers got away with Putin. I...don't know how to feel about any part of this outcome. 

Battle on a Field Unknown

For the first time in many moons, I took up the role of Gamemaster. I led a one-off session of Villains & Vigilantes, pitting the characters of Jeff, Connor, and Sean against a maniac with a bow, a sorceress, a shapeshifter, a martial artist, a masked gunslinger, and a gorilla gunslinger. The lads eked out a victory, but the mystery of the battlefield to which they were so unceremoniously teleported remains unsolved...

On the Precipice of Disaster

On tonight's exciting adventures of Northern Shield, the villainous Lightning Bug and perfidious Dr. Apocalypse put our heroes, shackled and helpless, at the edge of a boiling pit of lava for "pest disposal." They escaped with seconds to spare - but was it all a ploy? The last -minute salvation seemed a little too easy...

Sean's Dice

Ugh

Art and photography by Sean Woods. Painted miniature by Earl Woods. Epcor Tower map by Jeff Pitts. Saturday night Villains and Vigilantes. 

Fallout Encounter

Fallout really works as a board game! The high-quality components are beautiful, and the game mechanics to a very good job of translating the computer game's mechanics to a tabletop setting. Each player gets his or her own agenda and wanders the wasteland in pursuit of that agenda, encountering people and creatures along the way, with a variety of skills tested; sometimes your charisma will help you survive, sometimes your brawn, sometimes plain old luck. We did stumble on our first excursion into a Vault; the rules weren't completely clear on Vault mechanics, and the way the cards fell made it clear we messed up somehow. But aside from that glitch, the game went smoothly and I look forward to further adventures. 

The Fallen Hero

Return of Villains & Vigilantes

Some months ago, Sean and I and Jeff and Jeremiah Pitts supported a Kickstarter for the third edition of Villains & Vigilantes, a game we'd all enjoyed back in the - gulp - 1980s. Last night we gathered, along with Jeff's son Connor, for the first game of V&V we'd played in many years, save for a short one-off adventure back in 2007, part of my bachelor party. My character, seen here in the foreground, is the Mirror Maniac, a young man with reflective powers and the ability to turn himself into different inanimate objects. (I'm using a HeroClix Invisible Kid to stand in for my character while I await my custom-built miniature in the mail.)

Last night's short adventure saw the four of us attempt to stop a robbery on Whyte Avenue. I was in my civilian identity, shopping at Chapter's, when the call for help rang out. I quickly changed into my costume and dashed across the street--but I failed to look both ways, and was hit by a passing car. I was flung 30 feet and lost six hit points. It was an ignominious debut for the Mirror Maniac, but we managed to capture the villains and recover the artifact they'd attempted to steal. Huzzah!