The upcoming Prophet of the Pyre campaign takes the player characters from 1st to 10th level, from fresh-faced young adventures to epic heroes. The first part of the campaign takes place in a remote valley, isolated from the rest of the Empire. Most of the characters have never left this valley and so do not (yet!) have […]
Search Results for: black star magic
By Kevin Kulp This is the fifth in our series on non-human heroes which has so far covered Constructs, Intelligent Animals, Unsleeping Advisors (secret undead), and the Considerata (humans whose souls are contractually linked to gods). This month’s Ancestry is inspired by drow elves, deep ones, embedded spies, and any creatures who try to hide within […]
03
Apr
Apr
“The last conscious effort which imagination made was to show me a livid white face bending over me out of the mist. I must be careful of such dreams, for they would unseat one’s reason if there were too much of them.” — Mina Harker’s journal, 1 October (26 July 1894) Dracula isn’t the only […]
For the last, er, twenty-five years or so, I’ve run a Cthulhu game every year at Warpcon. In recent years, they’ve been playtests or first drafts of material intended for publication – scenarios like A Cigarette, a Blindfold and You or, for that matter, Cthulhu City began life as con scenarios. But the early scenarios […]
07
Mar
Mar
“As he replied to my mocking allusion to the beetle by echoing my own words, he vanished, — or, rather, I saw him taking a different shape before my eyes. His loose draperies all fell off him, and, as they were in the very act of falling, there issued, or there seemed to issue out […]
Sometimes, a monster’s just a bag of hit points attached to some fun attacks – the heroes roll in, spend a few perfectly enjoyable combat rounds fighting the creature, and then head on to the next encounter. Sometimes, a monster’s a major recurring foe, a devilish nemesis whose schemes and counterschemes reverberate through the campaign, […]
22
Dec
Dec
(Author’s Note: Sometimes you have stupid ideas. Sometimes, an idea is so stupid that it develops its own gravity well, dragging you down into it even though you are quite aware that it is monumentally stupid. Enjoy the fruits of said stupidity. That said, putting stupid constraints on yourself can be a useful way to […]
By Kevin Kulp “Bookhounds of Eversink” (p. 28 of the Adventurer’s Edition) is a quick-start campaign setup for your Swords of the Serpentine game. The premise, which will be familiar to folks who have read or played in Pelgrane’s other Bookhound game Bookhounds of London, is that adventures focus on the acquisition or sale of […]
“While America needs you, my son, you shall not die!” — Bruce Carter I, to the Fighting Yank (Bruce Carter III), in Startling Comics #35 (Sep 1945) The Shield was the first, and Captain America was the greatest, but lots and lots of heroes donned the red-white-and-blue and punched Nazis in the 1940s. Many of […]
I ran a 13th Age one-shot for some wonderful authors as a part of the online TBRCon (check out the full set of panels), and the fact that it was recorded gives a chance to talk about one of the most important but most ephemeral aspects of rpg play – gamemastering decisions. As a GM, […]