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 […]
Author Archives: Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan
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 […]
Street Theatre The team retreats from Singleton’s house. They decide that they need some spiritual assistance, and contact a Network ally of theirs, Revered Rogers (any resemblance to Simon Rogers of Pelgrane is purely deliberate). Rogers meets them in a private room at a nearby pub, and brings along a bag of crucifixes along with […]
There Was An Explosion Adjacent To A Helicopter Session 2 brings in our first temporary player – a Medic named Dr. John McTavish, a former British army medic now working as a doctor in the Edinburgh hospital where Edom brought Hopkins. The team follow the Edom convoy to the edge of the city, then call […]
Doing the Reading The three Agents meet in an inn. Well, a country pub – the Suicide’s Rest, just outside Whitby, where Hopkins has arranged to meet them. As soon as they arrive in town, they can tell something’s wrong. There’s a bad energy in the air (Streetwise); too many spooky figures lurking in alleyways, […]