13th Age, Gameplaywright, Merryshire Detective Club, News, Page Turners, Swords of the Serpentine, Trail of Cthulhu
View from the Pelgrane’s Nest – November 2025
When egg nog appears on store shelves and the strains of Wham’s Last Christmas play on their public address systems, that means two things in the Pelgrane nest.
One, the Great Pelgrane flaps from his nest on his annual flight to the North Pole to offer old Saint Nick his sleigh-pulling services should the reindeer happen to call in sick. Santa then shows him his prominent spot on the naughty list, tabling the discussion for another year. Maybe one December it will finally happen for him.
Two, the Pelgrane team plots its traditional journey to Dragonmeet in London. For more than fifteen years this convention has been a key event for us. The core team gathers, shares information, makes plans, and pitches new books. But before any such work gets done, we play a game together.
This year I’ll be running a DramaSystem game to accompany Friday night dinner. When I whipped up the Ragnarok at the O.K. Corral scenario for The KRAKEN in the spring, I saw that I would have to also use it on the Pelgrane crew. For reasons that will later become evident, I have already chosen characters for Ken and Simon. Everyone else gets to pick. When the threat of spoilers have passed I’ll make the scenario available as a feature here in the webzine.
2025 marks my first time with a Pelgrane job title. Some might argue that my position on the org chart demands an adjustment to the peremptory tone in which I demand additional helpings of sticky toffee pudding from publisher Simon Rogers. We shall see how that pans out. At any rate, with my new gig as Creative Director comes some additional planning and strategizing sessions, with results to fill installments of this column.
What else do we do in London at this time of year? Oh yes, attend a gaming convention on the Saturday! This year will be Dragonmeet’s first in a larger new venue, the ExCel London Centre. It most prominent architectural feature, a glass pyramid with the part on the top for the Illuminati Eye chopped off, suggests certain affinities with the subject matter of the Ken and Robin Talks About Stuff podcast. Light preliminary research indicates that the venue lies more than half an hour from a Christmas sandwich purveyor, but surely that can’t be right.
This year marks a return to a Pelgrane tradition from Dragonmeets of yore. We will have a special advance edition of an upcoming game for sale. Even more excitingly from my perspective, it’s my new game, Page Turners!
Yes, we’ll have copies of this full color beaut to snap up. Attendees, be sure to acquire the game of dramatic interaction for one player and one GM as early in the day as your backpack can stand, as supplies are limited. That way you can lovingly peruse the scenarios by Wade Rockett, Sarah “Sam” Saltiel, Ruth Tillman on your train journey home. Should you have another gamer sitting across from you, you can even take it for a whirl, to the certain utter delight of your fellow riders.
We seldom get the chance to do Dragonmeet editions these days. It’s a rare high profile release that is ready at the right time and hasn’t been preordered or crowdfunded. This time the details all worked out, with publisher Cat Tobin working a print buying miracle to get it to our London offices in time.
In a milestone featuring many more copies of a book, 13th Age 2nd Edition has begun to arrive at the homes and post office boxes of Kickstarter backers. Unboxing threads have already begun to appear in the wild, a trend that will only escalate as package deliverers worldwide complete their rounds.
When not basking in the glow of their print copies, Rob Heinsoo and team have been readying downloads and resources and working on the starter set.
Meanwhile our effort toward a steadier, fuller release pipeline continues at all stages of the publishing process.
Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan has tweaked his delightful Merryshire Detective Club game in response to development comments. Its playtest will open shortly after the New Year.
His fantasy GUMSHOE One-2-One game, Paragon Blade, is in print buying, as is the main run of Page Turners.
In yet more Gar news, his epic Swords of the Serpentine campaign, Pillars Built on Sand, has gone through development and is now being art directed and illustrated.
This allows him to return his attention to the Merryshire scenario anthology, The Dreadful Hare.
Hamlet’s GM Screen, my book studying the up and down beats of classic roleplaying moments, is in layout approval. Once Cat and I sign off, it will defy the usual order of things by going to proofreading, as its many diagrams have to correspond correctly to the text.
Fear Itself Shattered Veil Edition is in the indexing stage.
Layout continues on Trail of Cthulhu 2nd Edition.
One of its notable components, the Georgian era sourcebook Boundary of the Darkness by Philip Masters and Sarah “Sam” Saltiel, has gone to proofreading.
More illustrations are in for Kenneth Hite’s Outside Entities sourcebook for Trail of Cthulhu, with one more batch pending.
In short, many hands busily toil, dare I say like veritable workshop elves, to keep our projects moving in advance of the oncoming holiday break. In the meantime, game safely, travel well, and if a gigantic pelgrane offers to help pull your vehicle out of a snowbank, be sure to first read the fine print on his liability agreement.