When we don’t have enough players to play our normal current table-top RPG, we often pickup a card game or two to play.

One of our favourites is Give me the Brain, a simple card game by Cheapass Games.

Our copy of Give me the Brain is one of Cheapass’s orignally seriously cheap games, the cards are simple black and white art on basic card stock. We treat it well and it’s lasted over a decade. Cheapass now do a deluxe version of Give me the Brain, actually it appears to be the only version now.

My tunh is stuh ta da fluh!

The basic premise is that all the players are zombies working in a burger joint. Players are dealt a number of cards and the aim of the game is to be the first person to dispose of all their cards.

There are two main types of cards, numbered bid cards, and job cards. Bid cards are used to help you pickup the brain. The brain is represented by a d6 dice, and there’s just one brain between all the players.

Job cards allow you to do a variety of things, such as drawing more cards, forcing ownership of the brain to move, taking cards from other players hands and all sorts of crazy shenanigans.

Some job cards are marked with a brain, and can only be played if you are currently the owner of the brain, making them much harder to get out of your hand, which means the brain moves around a lot as people fight over it.

A game usually takes 10 to 20 minutes to play out and we rarely stop there, but usually play three or four games before moving onto something different.

For a quick diversion from usual RPG play it’s a great stand in and I recommend it whole heartedly.

What do you do when you haven’t got enough people for your usual game? Let us know below.

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Tags: Review

Don’t forget I’m giving away a copy of PH3. Check here for the competition details. You have until March 9th to enter!

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Tags: 4e, D&D

I’ve got one more item on the list that’s been the inspirational spark behind the Magical Minds series of magic items.

Now it’s your chance to transform a nascent idea into a workable balanced magic item. The best item as chosen by the judge will win a copy of the Players Handbook 3!

The last item name, along with my daughters brief notes is as follows:

Necklace of Death (Notes: You put it on and you die)

Rules

1. Stick to Dungeons & Dragons 4e
2. Stay true to the item name, include necklaces and death somewhere.
3. Don’t stay true to my daughter’s notes, make it balanced!
4. Only one entry per person, although feel free to replace a previous entry if you suddenly come up with a better idea.
5. Email entries to blog@buccaneersguild.com.
6. Tell other people about the compo, post on Twitter or Facebook for example.
7. Closing date is March 9th 2010.
8. The winning entry will be announced on March 15th.

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Tags: #DnD, 4e, D&D

The gaming group I belong to is looking for players and DMs.

We are located in and around Watford, Herts, UK.

We’d love some more people to join us, both experienced and beginner players are welcome. We are open and interested in playing and running any type of RPG.

See the West Herts RPG! site
for more info.

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Over the past few days I’ve been turning my young daughter’s magic item suggestions into usable Dungeons & Dragons items. Earlier we had a Wedding Dress of Resurrection and Earrings of the Sidhe. Today I’ve skipped over the troublesome Necklace of Death, which I’m considering using for a competition, and moved onto the Feather Boa of Beauty.

You know, even though I was at first doubtful what to do with this, I think I like this one the best so far. I’ve got a character that might literally kill for one of these.

I should really do a post on how to make character portraits such as the one above, with no artistic skill required! What do you reckon?

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Tags: #DnD, 4e, Ideas, Resource

As I mentioned in my last post my daughter wanted to help with D&D and so has invented some magic items. It falls to me to interpret her work into usable D&D stat blocks.

So today we present the some magical earrings. When I asked what they did she replied, “They turn you into a tiny fairy, with wings, and you can fly.”

The creator of today's item

After a bit of work, here’s the result.

Is it too weak or too powerful? Let us know in the comments.

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Tags: #DnD, 4e, Resource

Ever since my six year old daughter helped me with 100 post apocalyptic junk items, she’s wanted to do more lists of things with me. So this weekend, as she lay in bed suffering with chickenpox, she decided to create a small list of magic items for Dungeons & Dragons.

It’s from that list that I’m taking inspiration for a short series. She came up with names for items and a brief description of their powers. I’m trying to make balanced game sense of them one by one, and today I’d like to present the first of them.

Wedding Dress of Resurrection

When I asked my daughter why this even existed she said a powerful mage was due to be married to the love of his life, but she died on the morning or their wedding, so he created this powerful arcane item to raise her from the dead. The only problem is she had to wear it for the rest of her life.

This can be worn by either male or female characters. Even if worn under your armour it should still show a little at the cuffs and the long trailing dress. Drawing strange looks should be part and parcel of not being dead!

More from Magical Minds later, if I can work out how to make some of the more mental ideas even close to playable!

Please let us know what you think in the comments and I’ll make sure that I pass them on to the young creator.

Comments: 6 comments

Tags: #DnD, 4e, Ideas, Resource