We’re getting close to the end of New Gamemaster Month, and our new GMs will be getting ready to run their first game. If you’re an experienced Trail of Cthulhu GM, we’d love for you to jump into the NewGMMonth social media sites (the Facebook group is here, and it’s @NewGmMonth on Twitter) and share the benefits of […]
A Column about roleplaying by Robin D. Laws Many moons ago I encountered a phenomenon I later termed an unrule. A rule, as goes without saying, is text the designer includes into a game to explain how it is played. An unrule is text you have to include to prevent players from making a mistaken […]
by Eric Paquette During my first TimeWatch campaign, I decided to use Backstory Cards to help define the group. Backstory Cards are a rpg tool which helps to establish links between the agents (PCs), other individuals, groups, places, and events in your group’s campaign. Backstory Cards were designed by Ryan Macklin and published by Brooklyn […]
by Lisa Padol Ever since GUMSHOE came out, there’s been a lot of focus on the investigation skills. But it seems to me that the emphasis in discussion is on the wrong thing. The key thing is not that the PCs will always find the core clues (if they are looking in the right place […]
On the Google+ 13th Age community, Stefano Gaburri posted a question about the casting sequence of the 13th Age chaos mage class: A while ago I asked about “daily” spells for Chaos Mages, namely: since they’re limited, can a mage cast the same spell multiple times, since he’s gonna cast the same maximum number of dailies […]
“The children of the night… what music they make!” We’ve prowled around the topic of werewolves in Night’s Black Agents once in a blue moon. The ghoul stats in the core rulebook (p. 150) include a quick-and-dirty conversion to wolfman mode; a pack of terrorist werewolves shows up in The Edom Files. Some say Ken chains himself […]
In January, Cat and I take stock of our previous year and look ahead to the next one in our Annual Partnership Meeting. We hold this on the dry Friday before WarpCon, a games convention based in Cork, Ireland, primarily in the student union bar, which means good minutes are essential. The Book of Demons is […]
By Rob Heinsoo, with Jonathan Tweet Another 13th Age campaign, another experiment with the icon relationship dice! My previous campaign was using a riff on the way that 13th Age Glorantha handles rune narrations. This time, in a campaign I’m referring to as 13th Arduin*, I’m using an idea from Jonathan that he hasn’t gotten […]
“Crack the Sky, Shake the Earth” — North Vietnamese coded message launching the Tet Offensive Fifty years ago today, the Viet Cong broke its own back by launching the “Tet Offensive” against Saigon, Hué, Da Nang, Nha Trang, Pleiku, every provincial capital (36 cities), and all major US bases in South Vietnam. Between 30 January […]
In the latest episode of their Nile-irrigating podcast, Ken and Robin talk player choice-making, King Tut’s meteor dagger, AATIP and The Last Jedi.