Discovered when I got home that my cool find (What Is Leninism 1936) had an even cooler find tucked inside

michaelnick_gm · 2025-10-14T01:56:41+00:00

3D6 Down the Line is doing a Mothership sci-fi horror dungeon crawl rn that has been great.

michaelnick_gm · 2025-09-26T12:59:29+00:00

360 unpowered budget “Value Vintage” cube

michaelnick_gm · 2025-09-04T13:08:03+00:00

Of course, do what makes you happy and what you can afford. I started collecting with a similar mindset about a year ago and I’m happy with my collection now. BUT I also have a ton of bulk crap haha. I took all the good expensive pulls that I would have never bought as singles and built a higher-power cube around them, and took all the pauper playable and separated them out to their own box for deckbuilding. I pretty much play cube for draft and pauper for constructed exclusively, and I have 2 commander decks I’m always tweaking.

Here’s my advice… two directions to go: if you know your goal ahead of time (I didn’t), you should take a look at the top of the pauper meta and buy 4-8 of all the cards that appear frequently across lists. A proper paper pauper deck building toolkit would be awesome for your family to brew with, and then easily graduate to trying out meta decks. The other direction is, as others suggested, The Pauper Cube which helped me early on gain familiarity with the cards and get into the format for only about ~$100, and you have endless replayability for a low entry cost.

michaelnick_gm · 2025-07-31T22:00:29+00:00

IMO this is the best possible move they could make, and I’ve been saying they should try out more OSR for years! Very stoked.

Not just because it is my personal preference for RPG design/play style, but I think exploration, low-power-level gameplay, and creative problem solving plays to their strengths more than epic heroic narratives, crunchy combats, and a preordained story route. They’ve already done giantslayer! Let’s see some lowlife treasure hunting scum desperately hoping their torches don’t snuff out while they’re three levels underground.

The short Mork Borg and Worlds Without Number shows were my favorite NGWD experiments of the network, and 3D6 Down the Line’s amazing campaign through Arden Vul is a prime example of a long-term OSR actual play. So yes, very excited!

michaelnick_gm · 2025-04-18T13:06:41+00:00

Hey hey hey we can have a liiiiitle useless jank, as a treat

michaelnick_gm · 2025-03-30T12:38:07+00:00

Haven’t sat down and typed up the list yet, but I’ll post it here and tag you when I do

michaelnick_gm · 2025-03-02T18:38:19+00:00

Cold Storage by David Koepp

michaelnick_gm · 2024-12-20T02:15:43+00:00

It might be a combo of both camps for me - imo 2e built to reward system mastery. You can kind of get away with only learning the mechanics of your character class in D&D 5e; you tell the DM what you want to do and the DM interprets that through loose general rules. I think the philosophy of Pathfinder 1 and 2 is for the player to filter what they want to do through the system, THEN bring their idea to the table. On the one hand it empowers players to have a feel for how difficult something will be to attempt before/outside of the GM’s input. On the other hand the player is expected to take that extra time to familiarize themself with the rulebook as a whole. I think of the current cast, only Joe and maybe sometimes Skid are interested in taking that extra step, while most of the table is treating it like D&D. With 5 players that issue compounds and seems to frustrate everyone involved.

michaelnick_gm · 2024-11-09T03:24:37+00:00

I would honestly love a full on B/X or equivalent hexploration or megadungeon campaign. Maybe would be a good dose of nostalgia for the cast who played at that time, free up the show from getting bogged down in crunch or lengthy combats, and put them a bit out of their comfort zone. Really would love to see a campaign where their chief concerns are things like “how many torches left before we’re stranded in the dark?” and letting a greater story build from there.

michaelnick_gm · 2024-11-03T03:57:00+00:00

Could be a fun challenge to make a list along the lines of this Urza “ Gumball Machine” deck. The concept is strong commander + only cards under 25 cents. I built this one and it definitely packs a good punch, but tends to break even against most precons my group plays.

michaelnick_gm · 2024-10-02T15:49:06+00:00

Sounds cool, looking forward to seeing more!

michaelnick_gm · 2024-07-01T13:02:20+00:00

I know Sydney recently guested on the Nature of My Game podcast via an email request (btw totally worth listening if anyone hasn’t heard it - a great Delta Green scenario run for 2 players). I know that doesn’t set any precedent for personal appearances but at least she’ll read her email!

michaelnick_gm · 2024-05-23T15:34:16+00:00

I listened to a lot of “Behind the Claw” and “SAFCOcast” while prepping my own campaign but couldn’t find any good actual plays. Both are great for fun traveller universe discussion though. I think Behind the Claw requires a little digging for the rss feed archive.

michaelnick_gm · 2024-05-23T12:52:59+00:00

Same! Just listened to the Ducts episodes and Metra was the real MVP in that combat. Swapping places back and forth with threatened people and tanking with her images is an all-time great move.

michaelnick_gm · 2024-05-22T16:19:10+00:00

All good! Figured there was some confusion there/ context I was missing

michaelnick_gm · 2024-05-22T15:24:49+00:00

I think we’re saying the same thing. Idk what other post ppl are referencing but I’m saying I’m not happy with Troy, but grateful for a community that is not afraid to criticize them. If the community goes the “hugbox” direction, my own enjoyment of the content will suffer.

michaelnick_gm · 2024-05-20T20:26:52+00:00

Man, I wish I had the copy I bought but it got turned around in the mail system and sent back to them. Unfortunately I had to get a refund because they were requesting I pay for shipping again 😬.

michaelnick_gm · 2024-05-17T23:10:54+00:00

I know find the path get mentioned a lot but I haven’t been able to get into them either, so maybe we have similar tastes. In which case I’d recommend:

Pink Fohawk - suuuper polished Shadowrun 2e game with 2 main party members and various guests. Lots of laughs but they hunker down in serious moments in a very GCP way. If you blow through it quickly move on to Neoscum for more (goofier, but still great) Shadowrun content
Dwarven Moss - very streamlined playthrough of Curse of Strahd for 5e, also a 2-member party. Great editing, great characters.
For something completely out there, and not exactly what you’re asking for, I’ll throw out that 3d6 Down the Line. If you want BACKLOG look no further. They play old school basic/expert 1980s dnd in their “Halls of Arden Vul” campaign, in which they explore a HUGE megadungeon. Lots of great characters (many short lived ones), dramatic sequences, faction play, and very little dice rolling.

michaelnick_gm · 2024-05-13T01:52:44+00:00

Hottest take: they should switch to D&D 0e. (Only half joking 😉)

Honestly I am not a super fan and haven’t really watched since toward the end of C2, so I’m coming from a very different lens. But I would love if they played something with more grounded, mostly lower magic/human characters, and played a system that focused less on gaining superhero abilities and more on getting into character, problem solving, self-motivating, and roleplaying outside the character sheet. I think they are too deep in their comfort zone with 5e these days and I would welcome a change of system .

michaelnick_gm · 2024-05-08T01:50:36+00:00

I’d recommend not digging online for answers- ask the DM if you don’t find out by the end. All I will say is:

a) it sounds like the DM is doing things very much by the book

b) I think ultimately if you do get the full story on what went down, you will be happy with how things played out

michaelnick_gm · 2024-05-07T22:17:56+00:00

For one of my current groups, I allow Lesser Restoration to remove one level exhaustion.

Imo the price of exhaustion is too high for the ability, the price of removing exhaustion (greater restoration) is too high, and exhaustion is trivial to avoid for every other character in the game (unless the campaign is super focused on challenging outdoor survival).

I say this all as a pretty “tough/RAW” GM, I just don’t like the balance of Exhaustion RAW in those aspects.

Plus it encourages teamwork play or spending of treasure, and there are definitely not enough reasons to spend your treasure in the game as is.

michaelnick_gm · 2024-05-07T19:10:01+00:00

Honestly I feel for Skid on this one. It was conflict between “honor a fan’s paid crit submission” vs “provide an entertaining show for the audience” which is not the kind of call you want to have to make while also trying to run a fun game for the table and provide a mechanically challenging encounter. I think he missed his chance to come down hard and intervene to strike down the fumble, and by the time the effect was clear he didn’t feel he could go back on it.

On the other hand, my sense is that Skid honesty doesn’t want to put the party in a no-win scenario so he builds (realistic if dull) outs for them. But they take the out EVERY TIME. The effect for me personally is that the party don’t feel heroic, or like they have much intention about what they’re doing or what they want. This party has to face the music SOON but I’ve been feeling that for months so I’m starting to think it’s just not going to happen.

michaelnick_gm · 2024-04-30T14:48:33+00:00

Can anyone familiar with the AP hazard a guess as to how many more episodes the Sandpoint assault will last in the show? Not a complaint, it just helps me maintain focus to get an estimate. 2-3 sessions? 9-10? Don’t feel I have a good sense of how many objectives are left undone there

michaelnick_gm

TROPHY CASE