This post originally appeared on DyingEarth.com between 2004 and 2007. A column on roleplaying by Robin D. Laws One of the big differences between roleplaying sessions and the adventure stories from which they derive their inspiration is found in the degree of interaction between hero and villain before their conflict devolves into violence. In a […]
Category Archives: See Page XX
This post originally appeared on DyingEarth.com between 2004 and 2007. A column on roleplaying by Robin D. Laws Almost all popular RPGs are adventure games – escapist, wish-fulfilling power fantasies. We play heroes evincing varying degrees of ass-kickitude, overcoming villains and other obstacles, saving the day and otherwise demonstrating their reverberant mastery. The fantasy genre […]
This post originally appeared on DyingEarth.com between 2004 and 2007. A column on roleplaying by Robin D. Laws Those of you familiar with the Dying Earth roleplaying game know its Persuade/Rebuff mechanic. To emulate the twists, turns and connivances of Jack Vance’s sublime source material, the game treats persuasion attempts as having the same structure […]
This post originally appeared on DyingEarth.com between 2004 and 2007. A column on roleplaying by Robin D. Laws One of the powerful abilities of a roleplaying rules-set is to provide compromise without negotiation. The normal process of conversational give-and-take through which people normally resolve issues of mutual preference or gratification is inherently distorting. Let’s say […]
With Book of the Underworld surfacing on game store shelves and available from the Pelgrane store, it’s time for an update on the three other 13th Age books that will be published soon: Elven Towers, Crown of Axis, and Drakkenhall: City of Monsters. Ready for the Printer: Elven Towers [[cover by Lee Moyer and Rich […]
This post originally appeared on DyingEarth.com between 2004 and 2007. A column on roleplaying by Robin D. Laws Those of us make stuff up for a living face a wide variety of possible ways to make ourselves crazy. One of the fastest and most direct routes to self-induced insanity is to obsess over the ultimate […]
This post originally appeared on DyingEarth.com between 2004 and 2007. A column on roleplaying by Robin D. Laws A few columns back, I mentioned the iron rule of theatrical improv: never negate. The idea is this: when you’re working together to create a scene on the fly, you have to accept, and build on, any […]
The following article originally appeared in an earlier iteration of See Page XX in June 2008. by Simon Rogers In this issue Robin D Laws discusses the use of genre conceits in Mutant City Blues, we have more music from James Semple, and a second interview by Luke Crane. This issue sees the return of […]
The following article originally appeared on an earlier iteration of See Page XX in February 2008. Find James Semple’s stings for Trail of Cthulhu here, and you can also find the soundtracks James composed for Trail of Cthulhu and Night’s Black Agents. A column on roleplaying by Robin D. Laws Sting, Sting, Sting A GUMSHOE issue […]
The following article originally appeared on an earlier iteration of See Page XX in December 2007. News from Pelgrane Press This month we’ve released GUMSHOE Unremitting Horror, Robin’s The Birds webcomic and The Compendium of Universal Knowledge. This is the month that we pre-released a limited edition Trail of Cthulhu and the general release version went […]