Category Archives: Swords of the Serpentine

The Cost of Corruption: Sorcery in Swords of the Serpentine

By Kevin Kulp Along with political manipulation and potent social abilities, Swords of the Serpentine has four primary professions for your Hero: Warrior, Thief, Sentinel (think “city guard or inquisitor”), and Sorcerer. Let’s talk about that last one. If you’re wondering how you can rip a stone tower in two with a wave of your […]

Three Things About Eversink: Swords of the Serpentine’s Core Setting

by Kevin Kulp Swords of the Serpentine is designed to be a swords and sorcery GUMSHOE game that you can set anywhere, including your own home setting. Thinking of Thieves’ World’s Sanctuary, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser’s Lankhmar, or Locke Lamora’s Camorr, however, Emily Dresner and I love the game most when it’s set in […]

Strange Bedfellows: Manipulating Politics in Swords of the Serpentine

by Kevin Kulp Swords of the Serpentine is a swords and sorcery game that’s fundamentally about your actions changing the world around you. One of the ways it does that is by giving you tools to manipulate political factions in your fantasy city or world. Politics in Fantasy Literature Every fantasy setting has political factions, […]

Social Combat in Swords of the Serpentine

Social Combat in Swords of the Serpentine When words cut as sharply as a knife, you don’t actually need to carry a knife.  Whenever Smaug’s roving eye, seeking for him in the shadows, flashed across him, he trembled, and an unaccountable desire seized hold of him to rush out and reveal himself and tell all […]

What Kind of Hero Are You?

by Kevin Kulp Pelgrane Press’s upcoming fantasy GUMSHOE game, Swords of the Serpentine, has any number of ways to be a hero. Investigative abilities define the knowledge and abilities you use to gather leads and clues while adventuring. Swords of the Serpentine has shared General and Investigative abilities that are available to any Hero, but […]

Swords of the Serpentine: What’s In That Playtest?

The Swords of the Serpentine playtest is now live! SotS is the upcoming fantasy GUMSHOE game from Kevin Kulp (TimeWatch) and Emily Dresner (the Dungeonomics column at www.critical-hits.com). The full game will be available in 2019, traditionally published by Pelgrane Press with advance pre-orders, and we’ll open up those pre-orders in the months before publication. […]

Swords of the Serpentine guidelines

Swords of the Serpentine, by Emily Dresner and Kevin Kulp, is Fantasy GUMSHOE as seen through a lens of classic swords and sorcery. That means different things to different people, though, so we wanted to share with you the set of collected guidelines we’ve used when writing the game. Adventures are episodic. Months or years […]

Swords of the Serpentine cover

We’ve worked with Jérôme Huguenin on many of our covers, and he never fails to amaze and astound us with beautiful art. His latest creation is the cover for the upcoming GUMSHOE core game Swords of the Serpentine, by Kevin Kulp and Emily Dresner, which you can see below. To see more of Jérôme’s art, like and […]

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