In all GUMSHOE games, there’s a benefit for having 8 rating points in Athletics – your Hit Threshold rises by 1. Night’s Black Agents expanded this to all General Abilities – if you invest eight of your precious build points in a particular ability, you get a cherry, a special ability that shows off your […]
Tag Archives: Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan
In him, however, the family mentality had veered away from practical affairs to pure scholarship; so that he had been a notable student of mathematics, astronomy, biology, anthropology, and folklore at the University of Vermont. I had never previously heard of him, and he did not give many autobiographical details in his communications; but from […]
Under the glorious new regimen, my articles get upgraded to a column with a running title, which is like an academic getting tenure. Bear with me a moment while I suckle at the pelgrane’s noisome teat. * * * Accretion Disk, the Ashen Stars expansion book, continues to live up to its name. More and […]
In The Zalozhniy Quartet, there’s a scene (not really a spoiler) where the PCs are outmatched and are ‘supposed’ to flee, leading into a tense chase. Expecting player characters to take a particular action is always hazardous design – you can set up a situation where there’s only one valid route for the PCs to […]
Last month, I compared the 13th Age rulebook to my beloved Rules Cyclopedia, and talked about how cool strongholds were and how they’d work in the looser, more narrative Archmage Engine style. This month, it’s Dominions. There comes a time in every adventurers’ career – sometime between slaying that first dragon, and well before going […]
The Eyes of the Stone Thief campaign pits the player characters against a vengeful Living Dungeon that steals things from the surface. Castles, mostly, but also wizard’s towers, druid circles, enchanted waterfalls, dragon’s lairs, unholy temples, kobold-infested gold mines or unattended oceans. One of the amusing consequences of this is that the GM can throw […]
by Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan Most cultures mark the deepest darkness of the winter and the turning of the year with feasts and rituals. Festivals often spread from one culture to another when peoples engage in trade, though the celebrations may lose their original meaning and acquire new ones in the transmission. By the time humans went […]
Call me Bargle. Eyes of the Stone Thief started out under the working title of Moby Dungeon, which rather gives the game away. It’s inspired by Moby Dick, with the whale swapped for a dungeon full of traps and monsters. The characters must hunt the living dungeon as it swims through the Underworld. When it […]
Take your players on the greatest vampire hunt in history—more than a hundred years in the making. Dracula is not a novel. It’s the censored version of Bram Stoker’s after-action report of the failed British Intelligence attempt to recruit and control the perfect asset — the ultimate weapon — Count Dracula. Kenneth Hite and […]
The Dracula Dossier is an epic improvised campaign for the Night’s Black Agents RPG. Do your Agents have what it takes to face the Lord of the Undead himself? The wild beasts of the desert shall also meet with the wild beasts of the island, and the demon shall cry to his fellow; Lilith also shall rest […]