In this title in the Battle for Britain series, well-known historical illustrator Peter Dennis takes the battle out to sea, supplying all the artwork needed to create the navies which clashed in the English channel at a moment of supreme danger for the realm. Artwork is also suppled for a printable squared sea surface, coastline and islands. Here, the galleons, Nao and galleasses of the Spanish invader can clash again with the sea dogs of Elizabeth I using simple rules from veteran wargamer Andy Callan. This source book shows you how to copy and make any number of simple and colourful ship cut-out models using traditional skills with glue and scissors. To play the game you will need a tabletop playing surface and a handful of dice.

An avid gamer and sharp media critic explains meritocracy's negative contribution to video game culture-and what can be done about it Video games have brought entertainment, education, and innovation to millions, but gaming also has its dark sides. From the deep-bred misogyny epitomized by GamerGate to the endemic malice of abusive player communities, gamer culture has had serious real-world repercussions, ranging from death threats to sexist industry practices and racist condemnations. In The Toxic Meritocracy of Video Games, new media critic and longtime gamer Christopher A. Paul explains how video games' focus on meritocracy empowers this negative culture. Paul first shows why meritocracy is integral to video-game design, narratives, and values. Games typically valorize skill and technique, and common video-game practices (such as leveling) build meritocratic thinking into the most basic premises. Video games are often assumed to have an even playing field, but they facilitate skill transfer from game to game, allowing certain players a built-in advantage. The Toxic Meritocracy of Video Games identifies deep-seated challenges in the culture of video games-but all is not lost. As Paul argues, similarly meritocratic institutions like professional sports and higher education have found powerful remedies to alleviate their own toxic cultures, including active recruiting and strategies that promote values such as contingency, luck, and serendipity. These can be brought to the gamer universe, Paul contends, ultimately fostering a more diverse, accepting, and self-reflective culture that is not only good for gamers but good for video games as well.

With annual gross sales surpassing 100 billion U.S. dollars each of the last two years, the digital games industry may one day challenge theatrical-release movies as the highest-grossing entertainment media in the world. In their examination of the tremendous cultural influence of digital games, Daniel Reardon and David Wright analyze three companies that have shaped the industry: Bethesda, located in Rockville, Maryland, USA; BioWare in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada; and CD Projekt Red in Warsaw, Poland. Each company has used social media and technical content in the games to promote players' belief that players control the companies' game narratives. The result has been at times explosive, as empowered players often attempted to co-op the creative processes of games through discussion board forum demands, fund-raising campaigns to persuade companies to change or add game content, and modifications ("modding") of the games through fan-created downloads. The result has changed the way we understand the interactive nature of digital games and the power of fan culture to shape those games.

Dive deep into the history of the world's most popular fantasy RPG livestream with the cast of Critical Role in this definitive guide featuring never-before-seen illustrations and photos. From its unassuming beginnings as a casual home game between friends to the role-playing phenomenon it is today, Critical Role has become the stuff of legend. These pages chronicle how a circle of friends who all happen to be talented voice actors built the most-watched tabletop role-playing livestream of all time. Discover dazzling new illustrations and richly written insights into the locations, characters, and adventures featured in the hundreds of episodes across Critical Role's two campaigns, Vox Machina and the Mighty Nein. Go behind the scenes with archival photos and exclusive interviews with Dungeon Master Matt Mercer and the entire Critical Role cast as they explore their characters' most triumphant moments and darkest hours. And celebrate the massive community of Critters who support and expand the show's world through a highlighted tour of the crafts, cosplay, and art they create every day. Featuring a foreword from the cast, lush illustrations, and the inside story you won't find anywhere else, this book is your indispensable guide to Critical Role. The adventure begins!

An Introduction to Game Studies is the first introductory textbook for students of game studies. It provides a conceptual overview of the cultural, social and economic significance of computer and video games and traces the history of game culture and the emergence of game studies as a field of research. Key concepts and theories are illustrated with discussion of games taken from different historical phases of game culture. Progressing from the simple, yet engaging gameplay of Pong and text-based adventure games to the complex virtual worlds of contemporary online games, the book guides students towards analytical appreciation and critical engagement with gaming and game studies. Students will learn to: - Understand and analyse different aspects of phenomena we recognise as 'game' and play' - Identify the key developments in digital game design through discussion of action in games of the 1970s, fiction and adventure in games of the 1980s, three-dimensionality in games of the 1990s, and social aspects of gameplay in contemporary online games - Understand games as dynamic systems of meaning-making - Interpret the context of games as 'culture' and subculture - Analyse the relationship between technology and interactivity and between 'game' and 'reality' - Situate games within the context of digital culture and the information society With further reading suggestions, images, exercises, online resources and a whole chapter devoted to preparing students to do their own game studies project, An Introduction to Game Studies is the complete toolkit for all students pursuing the study of games. The companion website at www.sagepub.co.uk/mayra contains slides and assignments that are suitable for self-study as well as for classroom use. Students will also benefit from online resources at www.gamestudiesbook.net, which will be regularly blogged and updated by the author. Professor Frans Mayra is a Professor of Games Studies and Digital Culture at the Hypermedia Laboratory in the University of Tampere, Finland.

CHAOS IS NOT A PIT-IT IS A LADDER. MAIN GAUCHE is a supplement for the ENnie award-winning Best Game & Product of the Year ZWEIHAENDER Grim & Perilous RPG - a gritty, dark fantasy tabletop role-playing game. Using this book, you will be able to: * Add 68 all-new Professions to your grim & perilous game * Build fantastic machines, like the Arkwright Cauldron & Rumblebutler * Easily integrate cinematic, vehicle-based combat into encounters * Use alchemy & Wytch-science to gain deadly abilities * Devote yourself as an occultist to elder Daemons * Learn damning Covenant Magick & wield their horrific manifestations * Make soul-altering pacts for Daemonic Gifts of unfettered power * Build your own unique creatures & NPCs on the fly Using the Powered by ZWEIHAENDER d100 game engine, this book expands your options into the realm of chaos and beyond. MAIN GAUCHE is suited for running low and dark fantasy games, along with Renaissance and medieval-style adventures. You can also use this book to create your own homebrewed worlds, whether inspired by the works of Andrzej Sapkowski's The Witcher, George R.R. Martin's Game of Thrones, Glen Cook's Black Company, Myke Cole's The Sacred Throne, Robert E. Howard's Solomon Kane, Scott Lynch's Gentlemen Bastards or other grimdark-inspired media. With a total of 186 unique Professions and over 300 spells across ZWEIHAENDER and MAIN GAUCHE, you now have countless ways to create your own vision of grim characters ready to embark upon perilous adventures. Embrace the left-handed path of MAIN GAUCHE, where chaos awaits!

Welcome to the obsessive world of Fantasy Football, where managers will do anything to succeed. Every Saturday afternoon, 5.8 million people around the world settle down to see how their team will get on. But this isn't the team they support. It's THEIR team. They have spent hour after hour assessing injuries, swapping subs and tweaking formations. Because when the day is done and the scores are in, they want to be able to look in the mirror and say, 'THAT TRIPLE CAPTAIN CALL WAS AN ACT OF GENIUS!' David Wardale - writer for the UK's number one Fantasy Football site, Fantasy Football Scout - meets previous winners to discover how they beat millions to the crown. He reveals the leagues where failure involves outright humiliation and discovers just how low some managers will go to claim a psychological advantage. Along the way, he finds Saudi sheikhs, stats professors, most of Norway and a member of one of the biggest pop bands of all time, all of them united by their unflinching desire for Fantasy Football greatness.

Global esports explores the recent surge of esports in the global scene and comprehensively discusses people's understanding of this spectacle. By historicizing and institutionalizing esports, the contributors analyze the rapid growth of esports and its implications in culture and digital economy. Dal Yong Jin curates a discussion as to why esports has become a global phenomenon. From games such as Spacewar to Starcraft to Overwatch, a key theme, distinguishing this collection from others, is a potential shift of esports from online to mobile gaming. The book addresses why many global game players and fans play and enjoy online and mobile games in professional game competitions, and therefore, they investigate the manner in which the transfer to, from and between online and mobile gaming culture is occurring in a specific subset of global youth. The remaining focus identifies the major platforms used to enjoy esports, including broadcasting and smartphones. By analyzing these unexamined or less-discussed agendas, this book sheds light on the current debates on the growth of global esports culture.

Long ago, the great Colossus of Argantheon stood upon one of the outer islands, its vast, outstretched arm pointing the way to the Crystal Pool, or so the ancient texts claim. Then, during some forgotten war, the Colossus was shattered, and its parts flung across the Archipelago, to lie in forgotten ruin.

In this expansion for Frostgrave: Ghost Archipelago, players lead their warbands through a series of interlinked scenarios in a race to discover the secrets of the Colossus. Along the way, they will encounter new monsters, discover new treasures, and even recruit a few new specialist warriors to their cause. Perhaps, if they are successful, the knowledge they obtain will help point them towards the ultimate treasure!

Kobolds & Cobblestones is a skirmish wargame for rumbles between gangs in the city of Ordinsport's seedy underbelly. Players hire gangs of criminals, thugs and enforcers from a number of classic Fantasy races, and attempt to take control of the underworld and establish themselves as the city's kingpins. Playing card-based mechanics and a cunning bribery element keep players on their toes, as a one-sided battle can turn around in a flash.

A good Game Master never has enough monsters, and a good player always has time to kill a few more The newest hardcover rulebook for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game presents more than 300 new creatures for all your fantasy RPG needs. From classic creatures like undead dragons, hippogriffs, and the Jabberwock to denizens of the outer planes like daemons, proteans and the all-new aeons, the Pathfinder RPG Bestiary 2 is packed from cover-to-cover with exciting surprises and fuel for a thousand campaigns

The Seven Years' War was the pinnacle of 18th-century warfare, with dramatic campaigns and battles, famous leaders, and wide variety of colourful uniforms. Compared with the later Napoleonic Wars, tactics were simpler, armies more professional, and battles tended to be smaller. Using these quick-to-learn rules, players can bring this period to the tabletop, recreating anything from a small skirmish to a major pitched battle. Although simple, the rules allow for a wide range of tactics and reward historical play. That said, fog of war sometimes produces unexpected results and units don't always obey their orders! The game moves quickly, and players must be prepared to regroup and counterattack or to press home an advantage - a lot can happen in one move!

Game designers, authors, artists, and scholars discuss how roles are played and how stories are created in role-playing games, board games, computer games, interactive fictions, massively multiplayer games, improvisational theater, and other "playable media." Games and other playable forms, from interactive fictions to improvisational theater, involve role playing and story-something played and something told. In Second Person, game designers, authors, artists, and scholars examine the different ways in which these two elements work together in tabletop role-playing games (RPGs), computer games, board games, card games, electronic literature, political simulations, locative media, massively multiplayer games, and other forms that invite and structure play. Second Person-so called because in these games and playable media it is "you" who plays the roles, "you" for whom the story is being told-first considers tabletop games ranging from Dungeons & Dragons and other RPGs with an explicit social component to Kim Newman's Choose Your Own Adventure-style novel Life's Lottery and its more traditional author-reader interaction. Contributors then examine computer-based playable structures that are designed for solo interaction-for the singular "you"-including the mainstream hit Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and the genre-defining independent production Facade. Finally, contributors look at the intersection of the social spaces of play and the real world, considering, among other topics, the virtual communities of such Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs) as World of Warcraft and the political uses of digital gaming and role-playing techniques (as in The Howard Dean for Iowa Game, the first U.S. presidential campaign game). In engaging essays that range in tone from the informal to the technical, these writers offer a variety of approaches for the examination of an emerging field that includes works as diverse as George R.R. Martin's Wild Cards series and the classic Infocom game Planetfall. Appendixes contain three fully-playable tabletop RPGs that demonstrate some of the variations possible in the form.

Virtual worlds have exploded out of online game culture and now capture the attention of millions of ordinary people: husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, workers, retirees. Devoting dozens of hours each week to massively multiplayer virtual reality environments (like "World of Warcraft "and "Second Life"), these millions are the start of an exodus into the refuge of fantasy, where they experience life under a new social, political, and economic order built around "fun." Given the choice between a fantasy world and the real world, how many of us would choose reality? "Exodus to the Virtual World" explains the growing migration into virtual reality, and how it will change the way we live--both in fantasy worlds and in the real one.

In the shifting labyrinth of the Ghost Archipelago, there is one group of islands that can almost always be found; the Islands of Fire. Surrounded by a grey haze of sooty smoke, the islands contain numerous active volcanoes. Despite the constant threat of annihilation, many tribal groups call these islands home, building their villages on the rocky slopes or in the black jungles of gnarled and stunted trees that surround the mountains.

In this supplement for Frostgrave: Ghost Archipelago, the Heritors lead their crew to these blighted isles in search of clues to the location of the Crystal Pool. Containing a host of new scenarios, crewmen types, creatures, and treasure, this volume also includes guidelines for building unique tribes to use as adversaries in scenarios or as allies to the Heritors in their quest.

The digital technologies of the 21st century are reshaping how we experience storytelling. More than ever before, storylines from the world's most popular narratives cross from the pages of books to the movie theatre, to our television screens and in comic books series. Plots intersect and intertwine, allowing audiences many different entry points to the narratives. In this sometimes bewildering array of stories across media, one thing binds them together: their large-scale fictional world. Collaborative Worldbuilding for Writers and Gamers describes how writers can co-create vast worlds for use as common settings for their own stories. Using the worlds of Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, A Game of Thrones, and Dungeons & Dragons as models, this book guides readers through a step-by-step process of building sprawling fictional worlds complete with competing social forces that have complex histories and yet are always evolving. It also shows readers how to populate a catalog with hundreds of unique people, places, and things that grow organically from their world, which become a rich repository of story making potential. The companion website collaborativeworldbuilding.com features links to online resources, past worldbuilding projects, and an innovative card system designed to work with this book.