Blog Posts

Beginner’s Guide to Pinny Arcade Trading

June 16, 2024 by Mike 3 Comments

Pinny Arcade has a massive community of collectors and traders, and it’s a fun and exciting part of the PAX experience. But trading at the event has changed since the beginning, and the official website’s information is out of date. The community has its own lingo, etiquette, and some shared perception of pin value. I learned a few lessons in my first few years of trading; some from wonderful and supportive community members and some lessons from the school of hard knocks. This guide is here to help you avoid the harder lessons and get the most fun out of your pin trading experience.

PAX Report 2024

April 1, 2024 by Mike Leave a Comment

The clouds have cleared, the rain has dried, and another amazing weekend at PAX East is in the rear view mirror. The Expo hall floor was admittedly different this year, competing with GDC for independent game creators’ attention. But, while some of the chatter from nay-sayers online was that PAX wasn’t the same, there was … [Read more…]

PAX Report 2023

March 29, 2023 by Leave a Comment

The dust is settling after another PAX East, and this time there is just too much PAX goodness to pack into one episode, so we have a special post just for the con. People have asked whether after the pandemic, is PAX back to it’s former glory? After the unfortunately necessary move to make 2021 … [Read more…]

Selling Your Star Wars Miniatures

May 30, 2021 by Bryan 1 Comment

A couple times a month, someone in a Star Wars Miniatures forum posts a pic with the question, “How much can I get for these?” The image is usually a wide shot showing the entire collection as a jumble of pieces of various sets and rarities; very little is clearly discernible. Sometimes the pieces are … [Read more…]

Who Can Change Initiative

October 24, 2019 by Leave a Comment

In most of my years roleplaying, initiative usually works the same way. We roll dice, whoever rolls higher goes sooner. If you wanted to cut the rope on the chandelier and crash it on your enemy before the party’s combat monkey blasts the baddie back five feet, then you need to roll high. If … [Read more…]

The Real Superheroes of Shazam!

April 19, 2019 by Leave a Comment

I’ve been a Shazam! fan for quite a long time, and I’m more than happy to talk about him, as anyone who listened to episodes 16 and 12 knows. I was thoroughly delighted by the film, and I’m more than happy to talk about that, as well. But there’s something about it that hit me harder than … [Read more…]

Feddernik Singsangsung Thrubmorton

April 18, 2019 by Leave a Comment

James and I were recently delighted to play a short session for the City on a Hill actual play podcast. They run a 5th Edition Dungeons & Dragons game, and we were adventuring in a corner well away from the main storyline. The DM, Ryan, instructed us that the only available races were Gnomes, Halflings … [Read more…]

Guide to Your First PAX East

March 18, 2019 by Bryan 2 Comments

You’ve just scored tickets to your first PAX East. Congrats! So, now what? You’re going to find over 500,000 square feet of the Disney World of gaming cons. A lot of first-time PAX goers want a little advice as to what to see and how to see it. Below is an aggregation of my own … [Read more…]

Does it Hold Up: A Link to the Past

July 2, 2018 by 1 Comment

Does it hold up? Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past Back in 1992 when the SNES was still pretty new, Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past hit the shelves, and the cartridges quickly hit our consoles. Still basking in the new found radiance of 16-bit graphics, SNES gamers like myself reveled … [Read more…]

The Rules

March 5, 2018 by Leave a Comment

The first time I’d ever taken the GM seat for an RPG campaign, I kept all my campaign notes in a college-ruled notebook. On the inside cover I wrote three rules. These rules were to be my guideline for preserving the flavor of the kind of game I wanted to run. Since I had little … [Read more…]