by Chris Sellers I recently ran a short campaign of Ashen Stars where the group played crooks instead of Lasers. They were honorable thieves, like the crew of “Firefly,” or maybe the Han Solo we’ll see in Solo. The game was set in a vast Bleed where they also had to dodge a still-powerful Combine. […]
Montages—first introduced in our organized play adventures and later expanded on in the 13th Age Game Master’s Resource Book—can quickly advance a story while co-creating events and interactions that might contribute in surprising ways later in the session or the campaign. Here are the basics of running a montage: Start with a player who is […]
29 May: [Royal Nepalese Army] gives three objects to [REDACTED] and tells [REDACTED] that a complete nose cone (fourth object) exists but cannot be seen — US Embassy Nepal, Defense Attache Office report, 23 July 1968 On the night of 25 March 1968, something unknown crashed into Nepal from outer space. Project MOON DUST was […]
In the latest episode of their trim and healthy podcast, Ken and Robin talk improv GUMSHOE, fitness app opsec, scene transitions and the Agatha Christie disappearance.
When the cold war sputtered to a close, Esoterrorists let the stoking of nuclear anxiety recede into the background in favor of newer and fresher means of increasing ambient panic. These days Esoterror operatives, eagerly scanning the news for fresh inspiration, suffer from a glut of possibility. So many causes of psychic disequilibrium, so little […]
In another all-request episode of their garum-basted podcast, Ken and Robin talk sandbox time travel, Apicius, place as story and the Belluminati.
GUMSHOE is a system for designing and playing investigative roleplaying games and adventures, emulating stories where investigators uncover a series of clues, and interpret them to solve a mystery. In a GUMSHOE game, the player characters discover something which triggers their investigation, and then the Game Moderator (GM) narrates them through a number of scenes, […]
GUMSHOE One-2-One retunes, rebuilds and reenvisions the acclaimed GUMSHOE investigative rules set, as seen in such hit roleplaying games as Trail of Cthulhu and Night’s Black Agents, for one player and one GM. The animating principle behind GUMSHOE states that failing to get key information is never interesting. If you have the right ability and you look in […]
by Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan Love is eternal… if you’re an alien monstrosity from beyond all sane conceptions of space and time, an undying horror that seethes and defies our pitiful understandings of entropy and existence. For the rest of us, love’s a brief candle, a momentary delusion to distract us from the horror of existence, our […]
In the latest episode of their comfy cuppa of podcast, Ken and Robin talk RPGs as jazz, Dennis Detwiller, the Worst Genre, and zodiac cup tea reading.