Call of Chicago: The Gatiss Addenda

“They say much of blood and bloom, and of others which I comprehend not, though I guess what they mean; but nevertheless they tell us all things which we want to know.” — Abraham Van Helsing, in Dracula, by Bram Stoker Through the persons of writer-creators Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss, the BBC (and its […]

Call of Chicago: The Helm of Dungeon-Switching

“I could but tell them how I had just emerged from dungeon and jacket in the morning, and without rhyme or reason, so far as I could discover, had been put back in the dungeon after being out only several hours.” — Jack London, The Star Rover The only problem with dungeon crawls is there […]

Station Duty: Bitter Vigil

A previous article outlined an alternate campaign frame for Ashen Stars. Here’s a worked example. (The inspiration for this example, by the way, came from an episode of 99% Invisible about the Great Bitter Lake Association.) In the Ashen Stars setting, ships travel fast-than-light along translight corridors. The largest starships – massive industrial supercarriers, mobile refineries, and […]

(Space) Station Duty

The 2nd edition of the Esoterrorists includes the Station Duty campaign frame, in which a Esoterrorist team is placed on long-term assignment to a particular small town for an ongoing investigation instead of the usual mystery-of-the-week. That approach also works in Ashen Stars. (The obvious worked example: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine swapped out the […]

13th Sage: Soldiers of the Wizard King

In my home campaign, our heroes found themselves transported back in time to the rebellion against the Wizard King—though as they discovered later, they were actually trapped in a living dungeon’s memories of that era. These were some of the foes they encountered: brutal enforcers of the Wizard King’s rule. It’s possible these miscreants will […]

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