And The Winners Are In!

Folks, last year's contest was...anemic, at best...it kinda cast a dark shadow over the whole year for me, with the seeming lack of interest and overall dip in blog traffic.

This year saw a record shattering 109 entries, and this year's Top Six is already the 6th most read post in the history of my blog. Additionally, the response to my other posts have been pretty amazing, so I am trying to get back on my Tuesday-Friday blog schedule and pump out not only reviews, but Tommy's Thoughts on some RPG topics and maybe some homebrew stuff...so thank you to everyone that reads this blog.

Next, a point of clarification: The D&D Player's Handbook was never a prize entered in the contest. Unfortunately, I was unable to secure prize support from Wizards of the Coast on that one, but I never predicate my Top Six on publisher support...I believe that's disingenuous, even if it means I have fewer prizes to give away.

So, that being said, our five winners are, as determined by the Invisible Castle dice roller:

Accursed - Thomas Shook
ETU - Rich Spainhour
Fiasco - Mike Dale
Firefly - Empress
Tianxia - Greg Kerner

Thank you again to everyone that entered this contest, and to my wonderful sponsors: Melior Via, Pinnacle Entertainment, Bully Pulpit Games, Margaret Weis Productions and Vigilance Press...this is my favorite thing to do every year, and if I had more prizes to give, I would give every one of you a prize!

Finally, thank you so much to everyone that still reads this little blog. I do this for the love of the game, and it always thrills me when someone tells me I helped introduce them to something they never heard of or never would have tried on their own.

Here's hoping for a productive 2015!

Tommy

Tommy's Top Six of 2014 and Birthday Blog Giveaway

It's that time of year, in which I look back on the games I reviewed and played over the last year, and I pick out the six that were, in my opinion, head and shoulders above the rest, and worthy of your dollars.

The rules, as arbitrarily decided by me: 1) Only one product per publisher. 2) My primary exposure to the product has to have been between December 1st of last year through November 30th of this year, regardless of publication date. I don't watch my TV shows on the same day, or even week, that they air and I don't always buy and/or read books immediately upon release. 3) I can't have any involvement in the production of the book.

I have done this four times before:

Tommy's Top Six of 2010
Tommy's Top Six of 2011
Tommy's Top Six of 2012
Tommy's Top Six of 2013

This year, I have even put my money where my mouth is and purchased physical copies of all six books on my list.

Spoiler Warning: These are my Top Six.

Here they are, in alphabetical order, with six reasons why I selected each:

#RPGaDay Day 17: Funniest Game You've Played

Intentionally?

We had a blast with Fiasco. I got to ham it up, no one really knew which way the story was going to turn, and it was all horribly inappropriate in a wonderful way. My wife even got involved (she thought the game sounded really fun). We're all fairly convinced it's kind of a perfect game to play with non-gamers (my wife's pretty well a non-gamer and an introvert to boot). The Fiasco Companion even has tips on dulling the edges a bit, if you need something with a little less sex, drugs and violence.

Take a read at our actual play if you wanna know how our (hopefully first) session went.

The Manna Hotel - A Fiasco Actual Play

So last night I got to check another item off of my gaming Bucket List: I played in a full game of Fiasco for the first time.

I played in a Fiasco demo a while back with Mike Lafferty, Daniel Gallant and Fiasco writer Jason Morningstar and enjoyed it (you can listen here), but had never had a chance to play a full game. I recently stumbled across the print version in a game shop and pounced on it, becoming so set on playing it that I bought the Companion and new sets of white, black and red six sided dice. After talking about it enough, even my usually non-gamer wife expressed interest in playing it.

So after taking a few weeks off due to various members of the group traveling, we reconvened last night to play Fiasco!

I gave a quick explanation of the game's premise and rules, and we got to work setting up The Manna Hotel playset (available for free here).

Disclaimer: The content is a little stronger than you normally find on my blog, so consider yourself warned.

BAMF!, Fiasco and Tommy's Top Six

Wednesday night, I was on Mike Lafferty's BAMF Podcast, where we talked Fiasco (specifically the Fiasco Companion) with Jason Morningstar of Bully Pulpit Games, as well as Tommy's Top Six. In fact, we set up a Fiasco game in a couple of weeks, which will be my first time gaming on Skype.

Look for a review of Fiasco sometime after the game.

Also, Mike has indicated that he would like to have me back about once a month, so look for more Tommy on the BAMF Podcast!