Author: Alfred Bonnabel

Husband, Father, Gamer, Techie. Co-founder of Double Tome Studios. Architect of The Alfred Effect, The Sega Genesis Challenge, and The Tabletop RPG Sampler. He/Him.

D&D, FoundryVTT, and Dungeon Crawl Classics – Week in Review 05/23/2021

Posted on May 24, 2021 by Alfred Bonnabel

Welcome to The Alfred Effect Week in Review for the week ending May 23, 2021. Blog News The Spring semester has wrapped up and today marks the first day of the Summer term. I’ve got a fairly full plate this summer with two classes each for both the first and second Summer terms. I took some time to update my Solo Roleplaying Game Resources page with a section on random generators. I’ve Double Tome Studios I’ve been struggling a bit lately to nail down what rule set, if any, to base some of our upcoming projects around. Each has pros

The Fantasy Trip – Gaming with Minions

Posted on April 23, 2021April 28, 2021 by Alfred Bonnabel

Happy days! The Hexagram #6, Adventures 2, and Old-School Monsters Kickstarter by Steve Jackson Games is in fulfillment and my copies arrived via FedEx earlier this week. I had a blast digging into the box of goodies and flipping through the new content. From what I’ve seen so far, the finished product continues to maintain the high level of quality that the SJG team has put in to each prior TFT release.

Dark City Games New Release – Village of the Dead

Posted on April 21, 2021 by Alfred Bonnabel

Incredibly excited to see the next release from Dark City Games Legends of the Ancient World series of modules: Village of the Dead, coming 4/22/2021. As you know, I’m a big fan of Dark City Games and their Legends of the Ancient World rule set and accompanying scenarios. These have been a big hit around the house and I’m incredibly excited to see a new release coming our way.

Virtual Cons, FoundryVTT, and 5e – Week in Review 04/17/2021

Posted on April 17, 2021April 17, 2021 by Alfred Bonnabel

Welcome to The Alfred Effect Week in Review for the week ending April 17, 2021. Blog News It’s been a crazy 6 months or so since I was last posting regularly. The world has been going through plenty of ups and downs both personally and generally. It has all been a bit overwhelming and I largely stepped back from online activities last fall to focus on priorities. While things are still a bit bumpy, it is at least trending upward and I’m ready to start easing back into things with this site. All has not been doom and gloom. I

Legends of the Ancient World RPG Free Downloads

Posted on January 31, 2021 by Alfred Bonnabel

Dark City Games just uploaded a ton of free downloadable content to their site over the past few days and I’m loving it. A total of eight sets of player/npc/monster game pieces and five sets of tiles have been uploaded so far and I hope to see more to come soon. I’m especially enjoying the tiles as I feel like you can never have too many full-color tiles ready to build an encounter. One of my favorite things about the adventures from Dark City Games are the bundled map and tokens. The DCG games introduce a diverse variety of foes

Legends of the Ancient World RPG and Dark City Games

Posted on January 18, 2021 by Alfred Bonnabel

When it comes to solo roleplaying games, Legends of the Ancient World (LAW) tops my list. It is a rules light system that captures the fundamentals of The Fantasy Trip while streamlining some of the more complex combat options. This pairs nicely with the fun programmed adventures offered by Dark City Games and makes for an enjoyable solo or group play experience. This month has seen the release of a brand new fantasy adventure for LAW titled “Uprising” by the amazing Bret Winters. I have enjoyed many of Bret’s previous adventures and the content shared to his blog, “Swords Under

Homeschooling and Historical Wargaming

Posted on January 1, 2021 by Alfred Bonnabel

My wife and I have always been a big proponents of public schools, but we are also very focused on ensuring that our kids have the best education that we can give them. So when schools began to close in March 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic and the uncertainty of virtual learning programs that school districts were scrambling to ramp up, we decided to take the plunge and formally homeschool. We are now almost 9 months into that journey and the experience has been equal parts thrilling and terrifying. We have gone into this process together with each of

Painting, Writing, and More – Week in Review 9/13/2020

Posted on September 13, 2020 by Alfred Bonnabel

Welcome to The Alfred Effect Week in Review for the week ending September 13, 2020. Blog News Due to prior commitments, the Elder Minion and I were unable to spend very much time with our Star Wars RPG mini-campaign this week. We did manage to wrap up Episode 1 and complete all of Episode 2 of Strike Force: Shantipole. We’re looking forward to playing catch-up a bit this week and hope to finish the remainder of the scenario before deciding which module we wish to tackle next. Stay tuned! Double Tome Studios We’re now live on itch.io! You can find

Star Wars RPG, Imperial Assault, and More – Week in Review 9/6/2020

Posted on September 6, 2020September 6, 2020 by Alfred Bonnabel

Welcome to The Alfred Effect Week in Review for the week ending September 6, 2020. Blog News The Elder Minion and I continued our Star Wars RPG mini-campaign this week, diving into the first episode of Strike Force: Shantipole. We are having an absolute blast playing so far and the Rules Update booklet included in Strike Force: Shantipole has helped smooth over a few of our initial bumps with combat. Double Tome Studios I’m reviewing the artwork and working to prioritize the next “Items of Adventure” release. I’ve been bouncing around a bit from idea to idea, with notes started

Star Wars RPG Part 2 – First Session

Posted on September 3, 2020September 4, 2020 by Alfred Bonnabel

First Session The Elder Minion will be playing three of the characters from the templates provided in the Star Wars RPG core rulebook. We leveraged the template download file from the Fantasy Flight Games website to print a stack of double-sided character cards on heavy cardstock, making the character creation step that much easier. Campaign Backstory I’m running this as if we are in the time period short after the Battle of Hoth. The Rebellion is struggling a bit to get up back up and running. My hope is to guide us through at least two of the published