The Dragon Empire – Through A Mirror, Darkly by Aaron Roudabush The Dragon Empire, bitterly cold and dangerous from border to border — whether in the depths of the wilds or the heart of a city — is as cruel, unfriendly land. The people here have long been oppressed and controlled by a line of […]
Search Results for: fear itself
By James Palmer What do vampires and organized crime have in common, besides murder, conspiracy, and Eastern Europe? When under pressure, they turn on each other. Criminal conspiracy breeds mistrust, while the nature of vampires is endless, unheeding consumption, like Saturn eating his children or Duncan’s horses that “did turn and eat each other.” The […]
A column on roleplaying by Robin D. Laws GUMSHOE bases itself on the observation that failing to get information is never as interesting as getting it. It gives the characters the clues they seek, provided they have the right skill and look in the right place, with no die roll required. Since its advent, […]
By Matthew Sanderson In the Aftermath of an Esoterrorist Generated Catastrophe Introduction The Ordo Veritatis would like to believe they continue to have the upper hand in their struggle against the Esoterrorist movement. However, in the upper echelon of the organization, there exists the seed of doubt. What would happen if the tables were turned […]
When the so-called holy thorn tree of Glastonbury is destroyed by vandals, the hallmarks of an Esoterror operation are apparent to the greenest of Ordo Veritatis analysts. In its apparent senselessness, the small event causes widespread public distress, both in the devout and in respecters of tradition. Heightening the cognitive anxieties generated by the story […]
RetroPunk, our Portuguese translators, interviewed Trail of Cthulhu author Kenneth Hite and allowed us to publish the untranslated version here. How long have you been into RPGs? I’ve been playing (and mostly GMing) RPGs since 1979; I got into it with Basic Set D&D and then right into AD&D; from there, it was an explosion […]
Over the last couple of installments (here and here) I discussed structure as something that mostly takes care of itself if you manage the dramatic rhythms of your roleplaying session on a beat-by-beat basis. Now it’s time to break that down a bit. Our first step is to nail down what we mean by a […]
Contest Rules To win the contest prize, put yourself in the mindset of an investigator for the Ordo Veritatis. Examine the notes and documents, which will be provided in dribs and drabs over a period of days. Use them to construct: A) A theory of the case, explaining the source of the supernatural threat, including […]
Antagonists and Motivations: giving enemy NPCs depth by Adrian Bott You can’t have only one favourite scene from The Princess Bride, but if I had to choose, it would be the moment when the vengeful Inigo Montoya finally confronts the evil Count Rugen. Inigo has been waiting for this moment for twenty years. He has […]
The Invitation, a pick a path adventure for Trail of Cthulhu by Sam Friedman 1 A friend has been engaging you in correspondence for some time. As of late he has been going on at great length about one Mr. Alan Barton. Without saying much about what exactly Mr. Barton does, your friend has written, […]