New website, who dis? We’re back in time for the holidays, with a new website and some cracking new products! On pre-order this month are the long-awaited Trail of Cthulhu setting Fearful Symmetries, and its companion volume The Book of the New Jerusalem. New Releases Fearful Symmetries pre-order – A William Blake-inspired magical 1930s England sandbox […]
Yes, it’s been a time. But what even is time, in this new normality we find ourselves in? It’s hard to keep track any more, but I’ll try to drag myself back from the abyss into a regular See Page XX routine again we are excited to be getting back on the horse and taking […]
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Dec
Dec
A column about roleplaying by Robin D. Laws This picks up where last month’s column left off, sketching out the second half of a Wars sequence for The Yellow King Roleplaying Game. Espionage Build a change of pace episode by injecting some wartime spycraft into the proceedings. For example: Military intelligence concludes that a mole […]
In the Community Content Spotlight, I write up a short review of a GUMSHOE community content title, all of which are available on DriveThruRPG. See this page if you’re interested in creating something for our Community Program! Apocrypha, by Michael Rees, was another entry in our GUMSHOE Community Content Contest last year. It provides 214 […]
By Kevin Kulp Swords of the Serpentine (abbreviated SotS, or #SerpentineRPG) is Pelgrane Press’s new GUMSHOE sword & sorcery game by Emily Dresner and Kevin Kulp. It features morale-based social combat, a freeform sorcery system, cinematic combat, a canal-strewn setting that echoes classic fantasy cities like Lankhmar and Ankh-Morpork, and an Allegiance system that let […]
The Combat Modifiers section on page 171 of the core book suggests giving +2 to attacks that have “advantageous circumstances” and -2 to attacks from adverse circumstances. The bonus can come from a particularly clever use of the terrain or a surprising combat maneuver. A bonus might also come from some special circumstance of the […]
In the latest episode of their ummissable podcast, Ken and Robin talk unskippable F20 encounters, esoteric secrets of the London Eye, dream sequences in film, and that time pirates stopped the metric system.
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Nov
Nov
A scenario hook for The Yellow King Roleplaying Game: This Is Normal Now The investigators step into the path of the rubbery yellow entities called hazmats when they look into the disappearance of an environmental activist. They discover that she had planned to go undercover as an employee of a toxic waste disposal company called […]
In the latest episode of their inchoately terrifying podcast, Ken and Robin talk conclusive endings to ambient horrors, Barrett’s Privateers, Haunted West, and the Dead Man’s Hand.
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Nov
Nov
On the Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff podcast we recently wrapped our series on the various axes or oppositions that distinguish tabletop RPG designs. For future reference, here’s the list: A game has Elegance if all of its subsystems work in the same way, stemming from a central resolution mechanic, or is Ornamented if […]