July of Adventure!

Babbling at the Counter #49 – Blog

July of Adventure!

Now, I, the Storeman, officially announce the beginning of... July of Adventure!

Ok, technically, it began last review with Slayin, but let's roll with it. This, our second theme month, is very important. After all, the Warehouse of Trinkets opened its doors on July, 2013. So, happy birthday Warehouse!

About the theme, well I had it in store for a special occasion (read, anniversary). The first review on the site was about one of my favorite games, and it is of the medieval fantasy genre. So, after finding a suitable tabletop RPG and a few cool games, I just sat and waited for a few months to host this event!

Finally, let's welcome Emma to the site's banner! She's been writing reviews for a while, so she earned that spot.

All in all, a great month for the Warehouse! Thanks for everything to you too!

- The Storeman

Seeking the Truth

Babbling at the Counter #37 – Pen and Paper

Seeking the Truth

This is an idea for Mystery Investigation that I have been toying with for a while now. It’s incomplete, and it may not work, but maybe getting it out there will help develop it.

I remember a blogger (I'm now pretty sure it was Robin Laws, author of the GUMSHOE system, thanks to Aaron on the comments section. If I eventually find the original post I’ll link to it.) saying that the problem with using skills and dice rolls to run a mystery was that a single failed roll would stop everything on it’s tracks. He made this comparison (I’m paraphrasing): Imagine this. You enter a room, there is a monster there. If you miss your attack, then you can never go into the next room. You are trapped.

That was meant as a parallel with missing a clue in a way that made it impossible to go to another scene. But it got me thinking about something else.

When you fight a monster, you make a few rolls to attack it, until it’s dead or defeated, thus solving the situation. Now, you could do exactly the same thing with any other obstacle, including a mystery.

Instead of making each and every clue a challenge by itself, you could treat the whole mystery as a single “entity”. Every roll, you are “damaging” it, only you don’t stack damage until it’s dead, you take away some of the mystery until it’s solved.

As I said, it’s a pretty unfinished idea. I still don’t know how you can run a whole session with a single “entity” to defeat. But I think this can be used in smaller doses for a lot of other things.

A single scene, like a dance contest, for example, could be treated as a fight. Each move damages your opponents “image”, until one of you is humiliated and defeated.

So weird idea today. Hope at least it gets you thinking about alternatives to single roll resolutions. See you soon.

- The Storeman

Guests Welcome

Babbling at the Counter #35 – Blogging

Guests Welcome

This weekend, the Warehouse's first guest column was published. Emma, from my RPG group (she was the zombie witch on this game), decided to write a fun review about Jetpack Joyride. Go on and read it before continuing.

This special post was my way of closing Dazzling March, the first non-monthly special event of the site. Hopefully, many more will soon follow.

And I'll also like to take this opportunity to extend the invitation to write to anyone interested. There may be free games I have missed up, or from a genre I don't usually play, and it would be awesome to help bring a little attention to them, too.

I can say I'm really proud of the work that has gone into the Warehouse this past few months. Thanks to all the people that have dropped by, and specially to all the regulars that keep showing up.

Make sure you check out our stock. Remember, new items arrive every week.

- The Storeman

What’s Dazzling March?

Babbling at the Counter #31 – Blogging

What’s Dazzling March?

Ok, so, I thought it was time this little Warehouse got its stuff together and started improving as a blog. That’s why this month is Dazzling March!

Now, what’s Dazzling March? It’s a themed event focusing on the bizarre and brightly colored. It’s the first of what I hope can be a long line of wacky themes. It’s the Warehouse growing.

I decided to prepare this for two different reasons:

First, as I said, to work more on the blog. Instead of just using a list of games and stuff that I like, I had to hunt for content that could work with both NeonPlat Adventure and the game I’ll talk about next week (those two inspired the Dazzling theme). That was fun.

Second, while playing next week’s game, someone said to me “you play such childish things”. And I thought: “Yes, they have quirky music and are colorful, silly, and nonsensical, but childish?” Then I realized. It’s not that they are childish, it’s that they remind people of old games. Simple games. Games we played when we were younger.

So, that’s Dazzling March. It’s the same reason I opened the Warehouse on the first place, to celebrate simple to understand and simple to play games. See you all later, we still have a whole month to go!

- The Storeman

Welcome to The Warehouse of Trinkets!

Well, this is the first post of my first blog and I’m pretty exited about it. The idea behind The Warehouse is to provide a place to look for free stuff, mainly video games and pen and paper Rpg material, but there might be a post about a web show or something else from time to time.

I know there are specialized lists of free content on the web, so that’s why this isn’t going to be one. I’ll post reviews, not just a name and a link, and they’ll only be about games I’ve personally played and enjoyed.

This may seem limited but this way I’m ensuring some sort of quality threshold for the content stored here. These reviews will be posted every Sunday night. There will be only one review each week.

Also, there will be opinion columns, called “Babbling at the Counter”. They’ll be mostly me thinking out aloud, and will usually talk about something I found interesting in that week’s game and wanted to analyze further, but that didn’t seem right to include in the review.

Being no expert in game theory I don’t expect to be treated like one. While the reviews will be informative and as objective as possible, this columns will just be my opinion and my take on a broad concept.

“Babbling at the Counter” will appear at least once a week, on Tuesday nights. There may be an extra post another day, but those will be an irregular feature.

And as my final note, I wanted to say that English is not my first language, but as most of the content I’ll talk about is only available in English I think the site should also be. Fell free to point out any grammar or syntax mistakes you find, as it will be appreciated. I’m just going to ask that you don’t do it in the comments section, so it doesn’t turn into an autocorrect feature. Use a private message, please.

Ok, I think that’s all. So after this long and boring explanation, why don’t you start reading my first review? Hope you enjoy The Trinket’s Warehouse and find it useful. Feedback is not only appreciated, it’s also encouraged.

- The Storeman

Note: Sorry about the disclaimer before the download links. I just want to make everything nice and clear.