We’re starting another new series here at The Flickcast. This time around it’s all about books with the first edition of What We’re Reading. So, what are we reading? Today, it’s some helpful D&D books from author Keith Ammann.

These helpful D&D books are The Monsters Know What They’re Doing: Combat Tactics for Dungeon Masters and Live to Tell the Tale: Combat Tactics for Players. We know, those titles are kinda long, but they’re really good books, so we won’t hold it against him. In fact, the info in these books is so helpful and useful, we don’t mind if he uses twenty or thirty words for the title of his next one!

Moving on, you can probably guess these D&D books deal with various aspects of playing Dungeons & Dragons, especially combat. The first, targeted at Dungeon Masters . . .

“. . . lightens the DM’s burden by helping you understand your monsters’ abilities and develop battle plans before your fifth edition D&D game session begins. Just as soldiers don’t whip out their field manuals for the first time when they’re already under fire, a DM shouldn’t wait until the PCs have just encountered a dozen bullywugs to figure out how they advance, fight, and retreat.”

It really helps DM’s get inside the minds and motivations of NPC’s and creatures in the game. It also makes combat encounters more realistic and fun. Sounds great, right? We’ve used it during many of our games with great success. 

The second book is targeted at players and deals with their mindset and tactics during combat. It’s . . . 

“. . . an introduction to combat tactics for fifth-edition Dungeons & Dragons players, Live to Tell the Tale evens the score. It examines the fundamentals of D&D battles: combat roles, party composition, attacking combos, advantage and disadvantage, Stealth and Perception, and more…including the ever-important consideration of how to run away!”

It also offers several combat scenarios featuring character and monsters of increasingly higher level. This helps to better illustrate the tactics of each character class, abilities available at various levels, what to do with them during combat and the roles each class can play to help ensure combat success. It’s pretty cool. 

If you’re a D&D player, Dungeon Master (or both) and you want to improve your games, especially during combat, give these books a try. You’ll definately learn something. We sure did. 

You can find these books at Amazon, or your local bookstore. We get a lot of our books at Book People, which is one of our favorite local shops here in Austin. Please support local bookstores when you can. 

Keith’s next book, featuring more combat tactics and monsters from Volo’s Guide to Monsters and Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes, is available for pre-order now. And in addition to the books, you can get more insights and info over at his blog.

What are you reading and enjoying these days? Let us know in the comments or hit us up on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram. Happy reading!

Note: This post contains Amazon affiliate links.  
Artwork: Saga Press / Keith Ammann

As you’ve seen there’s been a bunch of new episodes of The Flickcast over the last few months. We’re thrilled to bring the podcast back to you and we look forward to doing it for a long time to come. 

But what about this website? Well, good news (we think, at least) the site is coming back too. That’s right, look for more content dropping here shortly. We’re getting things ready behind-the-scenes, but hope to have some stuff ready to go for you soon. 

We’re talking, of course, about articles, reviews, tutorials, news, videos and more. All the stuff you used to come here for. Going forward, our coverage will be a bit different than what we did before, though.

We’ll keep talking about movies, television and all that good stuff, but we’re also going to expand into other areas of pop culture like books, music, streaming, technology, tabletop RPGs and much more.

Pretty much anything nerds are playing, watching and enjoying these days will be fair game. It’s gonna be fun. We hope you’ll join us and enjoy!

Until then, look for a brand new episode of The Flickcast every Monday at 9AM Central Time. Thanks and we’ll see you soon.

Image: Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro

Welcome to a brand new episode of The Flickcast, a pop culture podcast about stuff nerds love. On this week’s show Chris welcomes guest Ashley Warren to talk about a whole bunch of stuff they love.

A small example of this includes writing and her writing process, her love for Dungeons & Dragons, what it means to be a DM’s Guild Adept, working from home, creating official D&D content, saving the world and a whole lot more.

It’s a big episode chock full of insights, thoughts and ideas. Plus, they manage to have some fun along the way too. Hope you enjoy it.

And be sure to check out all of Ashley’s work at her website ScribeMind, the RPG Writers Workshop, the DM’s Guild and find her most recent project Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden wherever D&D adventures are sold.

Thanks for listening.

WARNING: This episode may contain discussions about COVID-19, mental health and quarantine. We understand not everyone is in a place to talk about or hear discussions surrounding these issues. Please do what’s best for you. Stay safe everyone.

As always, if you have comments, questions, critiques, offers of sponsorship or whatever, feel free to hit us up in the comments, on Twitter, Instagram or, yes, even Facebook. Or shoot us an email. We don’t mind.

Photo: Wizards of the Coast

Opening and end music by Kevin MacLeod under Creative Commons License

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Fifteen years ago I almost started an arduous trek down a very dangerous rabbit hole. I installed Everquest on my PC and luckily most of my friends weren’t playing so I avoided its clutches. I then saw the power of it in full effect with my roommate my Freshman year of college as I had a roommate who literally spent 14 hour binges without leaving his desk.

Don’t get me wrong, I am a gamer and have gone to extremes but even that was a bit too much for me. Since, I have carefully navigated past the waters of various MMOs like City of Heroes, World of Warcraft and DC Universe Online only getting just a taste and not allowing myself to be caught in their web.

Just over a week ago, those who have been stuck in the Evercrack trap found out they will be returning to it with Everquest Next. While Everquest II floundered, players maintained a strong base into Everquest even well into the days of World of Warcraft’s reign. Now, they will be rewarded with a new MMO that redefines the rules for what people expect from a massively multiplayer online RPG. You’ll be able to see a highlight of all the new features in the video below.

South Park is one of those shows that just doesn’t seem to get old. After years and years of popular TV, a theatrical movie and countless other tie-ins, Trey Parker and Matt Stone have been able to keep the franchise fresh. A lot of that is due to the timely and topical nature of the series, which in and of itself is born from the show’s simplicity.

That simplicity can be deceptive, so when Obsidian claimed they were making an epic RPG based on South Park that would feel like you were playing an actual episode there was skepticism. Sure the screen caps looked stellar, but those are easy to produce, we needed to see something more.

At the 2012 E3 Microsoft Conference we finally got our first glimpse at the game in action, and it looks like mission accomplished for Obsidian. The animation looks smooth, the designs are awesome and most importantly the humor is there. One big reason for that last part is the game itself is being written by Trek Parker and Matt Stone, making this truly as much on an interactive episode as you could possibly get.

The game will be released on the PS3 and 360 in early 2013, but for now take a look at the full E3 trailer after the jump.

Though one of our contenders for Game of the Year, even The Flickcast has to admit there have been a share of problems in the Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (mostly if you were one of the poor souls who chose to play it on the PlayStation 3 though). As expected, another patch is coming out soon to hopefully finally fix the frame rate issues that have afflicted players the further they progress in the PS3 version as well as other quest improvements that had become minor inconveniences.

There will also be new features added to the game. Some of these are minor and only affect the PC like the option for high end rigs to add shadow effects to the grass in the world. Others are awesome visual upgrades like new cinematic kill cameras for projectiles, spells and melee weapons. Take a look below at the kill cam trailer which shows some fantastic new visuals like a full on suplex and an arrow shot high into the air and taking an opponent out with a shot to the head (not the knee unfortunately).

NEW FEATURES

• New cinematic kill cameras for projectile weapons and spells
• New kill moves and animations for melee weapons
• Shadows on grass available (PC)
• Smithing skill increases now factor in the created item’s value
• Improved visual transition when going underwater
• Improved distance LOD transition for snowy landscapes

Check out the new Kill Cam animations trailer after the jump for the Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim’s 1.5 Patch now in Beta on Steam and coming soon to PlayStation 3 and XBox 360.

Diablo is one of those franchises that exists in every gamers dreams. It was one of the classic Blizzard titles that has been long lost in the success of World of Warcraft and Starcraft, but there has always been hope that we would see a return to the action RPG franchise.

So a few years ago it was announced that Diablo 3 was officially on the way, and the world of video games seemed like a happier place. However, A funny thing happened on the way to Gamestop and the release missed an originally planed 2011 release window. Reports of an early 2012 release were heard, but alas we have at least a few more months to wait.

Activision announced in a recent financial report that Diablo 3 is currently expected for the middle of the year, killing any hope that we would see the game sooner rather than later.

That was not the only disappointing news for Blizzard fans in the report. The long awaited second part of Starcraft 2 and the next World of Warcraft expansion are on shaky ground for a 2012 release. Blizzard is only expected to ship one other title this year in addition to Diablo 3, meaning one or both of those two announced projects is going to be pushed to 2013.

The Bitcast returns this week with their record setting 8th Episode featuring the Flickcast’s own version of Mario & Luigi, though JC and WallE will both always lay claim to being the star of the episode.

In the News of the Week, JC and WallE discuss the upcoming Spike Video Game Awards show and speculate on the upcoming announcement from Epic Games, the makers of Gears of War and the Infinity Blade franchises. They also discuss the 10th Anniversary of Grand Theft Auto III coming to iOS before getting into detail with South Park: The Game coming from Obsidian. They even talk Beta numbers for Star Wars: The Old Republic and announce the current and upcoming DLC for Goldeneye 007: Reloaded, sadly with the absence of Sean Bean.

In the Long Grind in Skyrim this week, JC gets in detail on both the dragons and music of the Elder Scrolls V.

For the Topic of the Week, WallE shows that he can handle both movies and gaming as he discusses the scores composed for some of the most influential titles in gaming history.

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The first impression the world got of Dead Island left it with some lofty expectations to uphold.  In one of the most emotionally stirring game trailers of the past decade, no one knew really what to expect from the Techland developed zombie title. At that point, no one even had any idea what kind of game Dead Island would even be.

What Dead Island brings is a combination of many genres both in theme and gameplay style. Debating whether the title is a first person shooter with RPG elements or an RPG with first person combat becomes a moot point as the lines are so blurred in the intoxicating gameplay of Dead Island.

Gameplay:

As just mentioned, Dead Island is a combination of both FPS combat with tons of RPG style gameplay seamlessly mixed together. Add that to an open world environment and the Fallout comparisons begin building up quickly. To say that Dead Island is Fallout 3 with zombies though would be an oversimplification of what Dead Island brings to the table.

First, let’s talk combat. Dead Island is played entirely from a first person perspective. Players begin with nothing more than their fists but soon begin picking up common items found on an island paradise such as paddles, kitchen knives, coat racks and machetes (with all that jungle, it doesn’t seem odd that these are found throughout the game world). Through the use of these items, players must bash their way through zombie attacks.