About

Life and Times of a Philippine Gamer is all about the experiences, thoughts, opinions and rants of a die hard RPG enthusiast born and bred in the Pearl of the Orient.

A self-taught GM that has been rolling oddly shaped polyhedrons since the tender age of nine, Pointyman2000 brings his musings on bringing more Fun to the table as both a Player and a GM. While most of the articles in this blog will focus on gaming tips to enhance the rpg experience, Pointyman2000 will also review his latest gaming purchases, upcoming products and the occasional video game or card game release that catches his fancy.

For Publishers and Game Designers

If you’re looking to have a game reviewed, feel free to contact me at pointyman2000 -at- gmail.com and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can!

37 comments

  2. I know I’m so rude to post it here or I may be wrong so sorry.
    I just want to ask you if you know any store where I can buy a set of gaming dice. I’m from Laguna and I’ve tried askin’ for it at almost every mall here and hobby store(NG at ATC for example) but they don’t have any.

    I thought that maybe you could help me.

    Reply

    • Hey there,

      To be honest the last place where I’ve seen polyhedral dice sets (the one used in D&D, with the 1d20, 1d12, 2d10, 1d8, 1d6 and 1d4) is in Fortress Games Store in the second floor of the new Virra Mall. It’s on the side with the Toy Kingdom and is along with a bunch of other stores that sell hobby kits and collectible figures. Just look for the store that sells Warmachine Miniatures. There’s not a lot but last I checked they had 4-6 boxes of the dice.

      Don’t worry, I know how tough it is to find gaming dice so I’m only happy to help

      Reply

  3. It’s me again posting on the “wrong” section to express my gratitude.

    Thanks so much sir! I hope we could throw some dice together. =)

    Reply

  4. hello,
    i was wondering if you know of any tabletop rpg circles playing an exalted campaign?
    thanks.

    Reply

  6. Good pm, sir—

    I’ve been following the D&D and forgotten realms series for
    a long time.
    I’m wondering if you know of any fil.community that buys/sells/trades online rpg characters?
    To give you an idea, it would be a local version of the
    traders at this site. thanks!
    –morpheus
    http://www.egamingsupply.com

    Reply

    • Hi Morpheus,

      I’m afraid I don’t play MMORPGs (I’ve quit WoW a few months back) so I can’t really help you there. I’ll leave your comment on the page so that if anyone who -can- help sees this, they’ll be able to reply to you.

      Reply

  7. I really enjoy your blog and it’s refreshing to find a fellow GM who’s also (obsessively?) concerned about the quality of his game. I’ve been running a Requiem game for about two years now, with one of my players recently starting a Mage game and another’s been running Werewolf. We maintain a forum (address below) where we talk about game events, swap character ideas, and discuss rule changes. We’ve made several rule changes in case you wanted to check them out. (WoD and Requiem both have Word documents pinned at the beginning of the post; haven’t yet got up the Mage ones). E-mail me if you have any feedback; I’d really like another’s opinion.

    http://z3.invisionfree.com/gmuvampire/

    davidyoungberg@gmail.com

    Reply

  8. Hello,

    I would be interested in your thoughts on the rest of the Fantasycraft expert classes (let alone the new ones in the Call to Arms series)

    Reply

  9. Hi Mr. Pointyman2000,

    I’m Martin and I’m from BF Homes in Parañaque.

    I Google’d “Dungeons & Dragons Philippines” and came across your site.

    First I want to say that your site is great. The amount of information is tremendous.

    I’m about to DM my first D&D session tomorrow night. I have a little experience playing D&D from when 3rd ed first came out but have never experienced DM’ing.

    I’ve read through the 4e PHB and DMG and we’re going to be playing through “Keep on the Shadowfell” which I’m now reading through as well.

    I chose to play 4e instead of 3.5 ‘cos it is an easier game to jump in to for new players and since 4 out of 5 of my players will be playing for the first time I thought it would be best to go the 4e route.

    Do you have any tips for me as a new DM and for us as a gaming group in general?

    And also, since we live in the Philippines. Do you have any money saving tips on buying materials and tools for playing D&D? My players aren’t very willing to shell out large amounts of money with our economy and all so it’d be great to know if there are reasonably cheaper alternatives for the things we need to play or enjoy the game like D&D tiles, and minis. For now we have a set of dice (d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, d20, d100), the books in PDF format, character sheets, pencils, and paper.

    It’s great to know that there’s still an active RPG scene in the country.

    Thanks! And keep up the great work!

    Reply

    • Hey Martin!

      Glad you found the blog useful! D&D 4e is a good starting point for new gamers, and the DMG in particular is fantastic as an introduction to the hobby with good advice regarding player types and how to run the game.

      My advice would be to start simple, get yourself and your players into a simple scenario to get used to the rules. Given that this is 4e we’re talking about it might be a good idea to split it up between scenes… something like:

      – Introduce party to situation
      – Investigation phase, throw in an easy skill challenge to discern a suspect
      – give players time to plan how to confront or tail the suspect
      – should a confrontation occur, give them an easy fight, have them outnumber the opponents for now, just to get them used to their powers, and how to use them.
      – drop a clue to a bigger bad guy, and so on.

      Hopefully this will get you guys up to speed on the way the game runs. Typing out their chosen powers, or writing them up on little index cards for each of the players will also come in handy so they don’t have to reference the PDF all the time.

      With regards to cheap tools, I usually don’t rely too heavily on the tiles for dungeons. I just use websites like http://incompetech.com/graphpaper/ to come up with graph paper that I can draw on. My drawing skills are comparable to a puppy, but my players seem to be happy with it as far as I can tell.

      I’m always happy to help out new players to the hobby. Feel free to post here if you have any other questions.

      Enjoy, and welcome to the hobby!

      Reply

  11. I found out about BADASS today, and I just wanted to let you know that you have managed to do several things!
    You got me interested. You then managed to keep me interested after reading the introduction. You managed to get me MORE interested with every sentence I read. You got me enthusiastic to start playing it, and while I was reading you already gave me over 10 cool ideas for a campaign. You even managed to get me to read the entire thing (a first for me) and you also made me laugh at regular intervals.

    All in all I would say BADASS is a pure work of both art and genius.

    As a fellow RPG designer, I am also feeling very inspired. Especially the fact you managed to cram so much information in such a small amount of pages is an eye opener for me. I will definitely link from my blog to yours and am already spreading the word!

    I (truly) look forward to running a game of BADASS soon, and that is something not many systems manage to do.

    Reply

    • Hi there!

      I’m glad that BADASS got you inspired! To be honest I have had absolutely zero game design experience prior to this and so this is all new to me as well.

      Please enjoy BADASS and share it with everyone you know. I’m eager to hear about what kind of campaigns you’d run with it.

      Also, make sure to drop me a line once you’ve got your own RPG running, I’d be happy to review it and promote it here in my blog. 😀

      Reply

    • Hi Jeremiah!

      Glad to hear from a fellow Philippine Gamer! I’m more into Roleplaying Games than CCGs and board games, but I’d be honored to be linked to your blog. I’ll add a link to your blog on my site as well. Happy gaming, and I’m looking forward to seeing your blog grow!

      Reply

  15. Thanks for giving me a link to your blog.

    Seems you’re doing better than me in terms of game cohesion and player participation. I do miss L5R but most of my time’s currently separated to DMing for D&D and playtesting Deathwatch and Danmaku Yuugi.

    It’d be nice to meet up and pool ideas. You’ve got a fresh take on DMing that I haven’t considered. Once I get my paycheck, I’ll be sure to test out Marvel. But for now, I like what I’m discovering with badass, as well.

    Reply

    • Good to hear from you Kline!

      I’m always open to talking shop when it comes to GMing. That said I’m also happy that you’re liking BADASS! It’s a point of pride for me to be able to put out a game that people play and I’m always looking for other people to give it a shot. Maybe you can convince your gaming group to try a one-shot?

      Reply

      • Although their mileage may vary, I believe they will be open to Badass sessions. I just need to time it right so as not to kill their momentums for their other game universe cravings. I mean, who in their right mind wouldn’t want to wade into a gamesystem where thinking outside the box and taking things on in style is heftily rewarded?!

        Reply

  16. I’m a fan of the blog and my name is Kyle Simons. I’ve written a tabletop roleplaying game designed to help players learn a language. I thought you might get a kick out of it and I was wondering (hoping) you might want to get in touch and talk about it!

    The kickstarter: http://kck.st/TuOkPa

    Reply

    • Hey Janothar!

      Thanks for bringing this to my attention, this is great news! (Though I suspect that I’ll need to start setting aside funds as early as now if I want a collector’s edition copy)

      Reply

  18. Great Homepage and I am happy to see that there is RPG in the Philippines. I would be very happy if ever you would contact me via my E-Mail winternight.holg@gmx.de to have a Chat about RPG in the Philippines and about your thoughts about VtM in the Philippines.

    All the best

    Gangrel

    Reply

  19. You’ve got a really great site here with a lot of interesting information about various tabletop role playing games, as well as general information (I really liked your spotlight on different villains)
    I was wondering if you would be interested in including some information about my roleplaying social network http://www.RolePages.com – We are doing some pretty unique stuff with interactive storytelling including video role playing, live GM led text based adventures, and periodic multimedia events.
    I’d be happy to write something about us up for a Guest Article, or just provide you with more information so that you can do
    Thank you for curating such an interesting website, and broadcasting your awesome podcast. I hope we can work together!

    Reply

  20. Finding your page was awesome! I’m on a development team creating a new tabletop rpg called Ultimum. Half our development team is Filipino and naturally one of our main characters in the story has to be one as well. We’d like to get you to take a look at our stuff and give us your opinion. We plan on marketing all over the world and would love to get a shout out from you. If you’re interested I could email you a copy of our beta book once it’s finished in a couple of days. Our website is http://www.ultimumrpg.com most of our background story is up on our KickStarter page as well as our amazing cinematic trailer.

    Reply

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