This post originally appeared on DyingEarth.com between 2004 and 2007. A column on roleplaying by Robin D. Laws Those of you familiar with the Dying Earth roleplaying game know its Persuade/Rebuff mechanic. To emulate the twists, turns and connivances of Jack Vance’s sublime source material, the game treats persuasion attempts as having the same structure […]
In the latest episode of their luminous podcast, Ken and Robin talk Toronto Film Fest (at home edition), Nero Wolfe in GUMSHOE One-2-One, and the Clavllux.
This post originally appeared on DyingEarth.com between 2004 and 2007. A column on roleplaying by Robin D. Laws One of the powerful abilities of a roleplaying rules-set is to provide compromise without negotiation. The normal process of conversational give-and-take through which people normally resolve issues of mutual preference or gratification is inherently distorting. Let’s say […]
When asked for his top GMing tip, Rob would normally make a Faustian bargain. Instead he reaches for a technique he has adopted relatively late in his d20-rolling career. 13th Age combines the best parts of traditional d20-rolling fantasy gaming with new story-focused rules, designed so you can run the kind of game you most […]
With Book of the Underworld surfacing on game store shelves and available from the Pelgrane store, it’s time for an update on the three other 13th Age books that will be published soon: Elven Towers, Crown of Axis, and Drakkenhall: City of Monsters. Ready for the Printer: Elven Towers [[cover by Lee Moyer and Rich […]
This post originally appeared on DyingEarth.com between 2004 and 2007. A column on roleplaying by Robin D. Laws Those of us make stuff up for a living face a wide variety of possible ways to make ourselves crazy. One of the fastest and most direct routes to self-induced insanity is to obsess over the ultimate […]
Elven Towers is a fantastic new adventure from Cal Moore—if you pre-order the print edition now, you get the full PDF and color map folio immediately as a download. It does some really interesting things with 13th Age design, but as a GM I also love that it’s full of creepy monsters. With Halloween on […]
By Kevin Kulp Here’s an adventure seed to use alongside of (or instead of) A Corpse Astray from the Swords of the Serpentine core book. This adventure seed should fill one or two game sessions, and the supporting characters here can be integrated into ongoing plots in your game. Due to space limitations you’ll want […]
This post originally appeared on DyingEarth.com between 2004 and 2007. A column on roleplaying by Robin D. Laws A few columns back, I mentioned the iron rule of theatrical improv: never negate. The idea is this: when you’re working together to create a scene on the fly, you have to accept, and build on, any […]
The following article originally appeared in an earlier iteration of See Page XX in April 2008. by Julia Ellingboe [Editor] Julia Ellingboe is the author of Steal Away Jordan, an RPG about slavery in the United States. “Steal Away Jordan is about playing heroes” has become my mantra of late. I declare it to illustrate that Steal […]