Author Archives: G.A. Barber

Rifts Africa: A Review

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Cover image is property of Palladium Books.

The year is 1992, and Rifts is a breakout success. It’s the gonzo RPG experience that no one knew they wanted, and people are screaming for more. The books out are selling like crazy, but the world is still insanely under developed. World Books One and Two, The Vampire Kingdoms (Northern Mexico) and Atlantis respectively, were well received. 1993 is supposed to build on the successes of the last few years, with Dimension Book One: Wormwood, and the third and fourth World Books, England and Africa, planned for release. Things didn’t go as planned.

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Backgrounder 001: Gnolls

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Someone asked, so here we go, the first in what will probably be a number of lore and speculation fueled screeds about monsters, specifically underappreciated/potential player-race monsters that don’t get the love that they deserve. This all started as a commentary on how in-game characters like Mordenkainen and Volo are, at best, unreliable and biased narrators and witnesses to the events, monsters, and races they describe. Basically, they can’t be trusted, only the stat-blocks can. Then it turned into a rant on how awesome Gnolls are.[1] So, this is the supporting, hopefully more readable post to support my Twitter craziness.

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Fallout 76!

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Fallout 76. I know I’m supposed to be working on some Forgotten Realms stuff, but damn it! I love me some Fallout by Bethesda and Fallout 76 has my brain on fire. So this is a quick post about the trailer, and what it’s telling us about the world 20 years after the War and the world around Vault 76 in West Virginia. If you haven’t watched the E3 presentation yet, hit this up first:

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Fixing the Realms: Part One

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So, I’ve been banging on about the state of the Forgotten Realms for some time, culminating in the Tomb of Annihilation multi part review.[1] While talking with a friend of mine, he asked what I would do to address the issues with the campaign setting, and what approaches I would take to it that didn’t involve throwing it all out and ignoring hat it ever existed. So, after a lot more discussion, and a lot of thought on the matter, I’ve decided to embark on a new series of posts called “Fixing the Realms”. In part one, I’m going to look at the world building that went into it, and how that has left us in the position we’re in today.
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