Cthulhu Confidential and other upcoming One-2-One games recommend using physical cards (or the digital equivalent) in play. Giving a player something to hold onto has several benefits. It’s a reminder. In a multiplayer game, key plot elements get discussed endlessly at the game as players speculate about what’s going on, how they rid themselves of […]
Author Archives: Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan
One day, the mystery of the Ocean Game will be revealed. Until then, hints and fragments skitter at the edge of perception in articles like this. Art and setting text by Dave Allsop. The Phantom Birds bear a strong resemblance to Earth’s Marabou Storks – spindly, ugly, carrion creatures with bald, scab-encrusted heads. Phantom Birds […]
The upcoming Book of Ages includes the Engine of the Ages, a Microscope-like tool for collaboratively generating your own history of the Dragon Empire. Each player tells the tale of one faction (usually, one associated with their player character), while the GM mixes in other groups that may play a part in the campaign. The […]
One of the suggested campaign frames in Cthulhu City casts the investigators as journalists on Newspaper Row, working for one of Great Arkham’s competing newspapers. Let’s borrow a page (yellowed, and a little stained) from Bookhounds of London and look at the mechanics of playing a journalist. Newspaper Credit Rating Each newspaper has a Credit […]
The Armitage Files is Robin D Laws’ groundbreaking adventure of improvised Mythos investigation. Cthulhu Confidential is Robin D Laws’ groundbreaking game of solo Mythos investigation. Putting two groundbreaking products together is hazardous for Gamemasters. You run the risk of collapsing the ground beneath you. However, the risk can be worth it: improvised play supports the […]
My current project (ONE of my current projects, so many current projects) is the (provisionally-titled) Book of Ages, for 13th Age. It’s mostly a grab bag of “cool stuff from previous Ages” – monsters, magic, feats, legends, adventure seeds – but here’s one of the early sections, discussing persnickety world-building questions and assumptions. * * […]
There are a lot of books in the pipeline right now, but none of them are quite cooked yet, so here’s a little bit of whimsy before the cannon of self-promotion is brought to bear on this space. As you know, Bob, Icons are a lovely little mechanic from 13th Age that model the player […]
Cthulhu City is written, if not finished, and the final book is overstuffed with Mythos gribbles and haunted architecture. There are so many cults and sorcerers lurking in there, not to mention weird Yithian machines, that I had to remove certain blasphemous tomes and cryptic relics to the virtual pages of page XX. Consider these […]
The Land Beyond The Forest The old woman confirms that she is, indeed, Mina Harker. She’s kept herself alive with vampire blood for more than a century, for if she dies while Dracula lives, she’ll become his Un-Dead slave. She contemplated ending her own life in 1940, before Edom could bring Him back, but she […]
The Prime of Ms. Ellen Mowbray A terrifying, elemental storm strikes Osmond Singleton’s mansion. The windows shudder as the wind hammers at them. The power goes out as lightning blasts transformers all over South London. Nearby, three members of the team – McAllister (who managed to dodge the MI5 street teams that were crawling all over […]