Cecilia D'Anastasio

D&D Rules Developer’s 9 Insider Hacks For Players and DMs

Dungeons & Dragons’ lead rules designer Jeremy Crawford has a tough job. To keep the game in top form, he’s got to make sure its exhaustive ruleset walks that fine line between combat and role-play, thoroughness and accessibility, firmness and flexibility. Along the way, he’s come up with some good tips on getting in touch…

Inside The Hilarious Variety Show That Killed 175 Level 1 D&D Characters 

A bloodthirsty janitor, Colonel Mustard, Death, a God-fearing cleric and a dabbing teen had one thing in common at Gen Con last weekend: they were among over a hundred Level 1 characters whom a sadistic dungeon master killed in the span of two hours. Killer Breakfast is a 20-year-long Gen Con tradition that takes the…

Arms’ Next Fighter Is A Candy Clown

Nintendo announced that the pantaloon-wearing candy clown Lola Pop will be Arms’ newest fighter today. She’s got a totally bonkers (and hilarious) outfit more fitting a psychedelic first birthday party than hand-to-hand combat, and looks marvelous. Following Arms’ trend of eccentric character designs, Nintendo explains that she’s a “a well-traveled clown with a personality as…

One Of Gen Con’s Biggest Hits Was A Board Game About Photosynthesis

Before last weekend’s Indianapolis tabletop gaming convention Gen Con, I was skimming lists of the weekend’s most anticipated games and seeing the same-old, same-old: a feudal Japan card game, a fantasy role-playing campaign—but a ubiquitous outlier kept catching my eye: Photosynthesis, a game about growing trees. Halfway through Gen Con’s first day, attendees had greedily…

Finally, A Horror Board Game Where You Are The Monster Killing The Obnoxious Teens

Upcoming horror board game Monster Slaughter taps into the best thing about watching campy horror movies: the order in which teens die. Where it one-ups popcorn and The Blair Witch Project is that, in Monster Slaughter, the player is the beast killing off the obnoxious teens. In Monster Slaughter,players operate a family of monsters—zombies, werewolves,…

At Gen Con, a 24-hour charity event called CardHalla has attendees stacking thousands of Magic, Dragon Ball and Pokemon cards in a meters-long sprawl of card towers.

Kotaku is at the 50th Gen Con in Indianapolis today. Look forward to our coverage of upcoming tabletop games, news and more over the next few days.

Haunting New Hiroshima Anime Illustrates Life Before The Bomb

The specter of the Hiroshima bombing hangs over the World War II anime In This Corner of the World, and yet, the movie easily lures viewers into a specious calm with easy vignettes of ‘40s Japan. Falling into the regularity and mundanity of surviving a seemingly far-off war only serves to make the inevitable more catastrophic.…

On August 22nd, World of Tanks is getting its first campaign mode on console, publisher Wargamng announced today. “War Stories” contains two free campaigns—one about the Red Army fighting on the Eastern Front and the other about a British fighter in the Cold War cracking a Berlin blockade.

Splatoon 2‘s next turf war battle for the arbitrary supremacy of one thing over another—SplatFest—is Flight vs. Invisibility. It will run between September first and second.

Action-adventure adventure game Crackdown 3 will be delayed from November to Spring 2018, Polygon reports.

A Sci-Fi Adventure Made With Stunning Pencil Art

Sci-fi adventure game Original Journey entices with its hand-drawn pencil art of alien mutant egg creatures. And luckily, they feel as good to bombard with cannons as they do to look at. In Original Journey, out today on Steam, you are a young member of an endangered species who, despite being late to one of…

For Honor’s Season three patch seems to have patched out the exploit that fueled one player’s victory (with a $2,000 prize) in a recent official tournament [Correction—8/16/17]: Ubisoft has confirmed that the prize was not $10,000, as originally reported, but $2,000. We regret the error.

Deadly Premonition Creator’s Next Game Is A Slice-Of-Life Cat RPG

Not just a brand of cat food, The Good Life is Deadly Premonition creator Hidetaka “Swery” Suehiro’s upcoming mystery slice-of-life cat role-playing game. It will be the debut game of White Owls, Swery’s new studio. The Good Lifeis set in rural England’s “Rainy Woods,” where a New York photographer named Naomi is struggling to pay…

Upcoming MMO’s Cryptocurrency Marketplace Was Inspired By Other Games’ Black Markets

When black markets develop on the sidelines of most massively multiplayer online role-playing games, most developers would panic. But with today’s rise of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, a growing group of game-makers are embracing some gamers’ tendency to turn in-game currency into real-world money. In general, publishers often take steps to prevent the selling of in-game…

A Silent Voice Is A Sensational Anime Movie About Bullying

In anime movie A Silent Voice, deaf girl Shoko Nishimiya’s sixth-grade notebook is full of apologies to the classmates who keep throwing her hearing aids in the river. Her bullies’ ringleader, Shoya Ishida, later watches his guilt-ridden mother offer $15,000 dollars to Nishimiya’s mother in compensation. The cycle of hurt continues until it reveals itself…

Dungeons & Dragons’ new digital toolset, D&D Beyond, releases today. After checking out its beta, we deemed it a convincing argument against pen-and-paper purists.

Anime streaming service Crunchyroll just released a preview for philosophical anime Kino’s Journey’s new TV series, coming this Fall. The original 2003 anime, which follows the marksman Kino and the talking motorcycle Hermes on their mysterious adventures, is thoughtful and exciting.

Discord Shuts Down White Supremacist Servers In Wake Of Charlottesville Rally [UPDATE]

Gaming chat client Discord has banned servers and several users linked to white supremacist and Nazi ideologies, according to a tweet sent out from the official Discord account. “Discord’s mission is to bring people together around gaming,” their statementon Twitter read. “We will continue to take action against white supremacy, nazi ideology, and all forms…

Fortnite‘s Complicated Progression System Obscures A Great Game

Epic Games’ Fortnite, out in Early Access, is not one game, but many, all tangled together under one name. It’s a resource management game. It’s a multiplayer third-person shooter. It’s a tower defense game. It’s a collectable card game. It’s a strategy game, a survival game and it’s even a little bit of a role-playing…