It’s a staple of the detective genre that the heroic investigator picks up on some tiny clue, some inconsistency that unravels an otherwise perfect crime. They spot that only one dinner guest could have passed through the kitchen in the two-minute window to poison the bride’s champagne glass, or that the mystery turns on whose […]
Tag Archives: Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan
The Agents in Night’s Black Agents are burned spies, out of favour with their former agencies, banished into the cold – but even a broken spy has uses. Smiley got called back from retirement all the time; unsanctioned operations call for unsanctioned assets. What sort of unofficial intel ops might your Agents get involved in […]
Player input into a game is a wonderful and multifaceted thing. It’s not just that it takes some of the burden of creativity off the GM (“I don’t know, you tell me who your character knows that’s an expert on Etruscan demonology”), it also gives the players a sense of investment and ownership, and gives […]
It’s been a while since I’ve written one of these Page XX pieces. In the intervening months, I’ve been working on a whole host of different adventures, ranging from classic Cthulhu mythos to epic fantasy to political drama to different flavours of weirdness. As part of the process of adventure writing, there are ten questions […]
The first time I played 13th Age, lo these many years ago, Rob used the 13th Age Convention Demo, which shows off the improv-friendly flexibility of the game by letting the players pick One Unique Things and Icon Relationships, and then putting together a quick combat encounter based on those Icons. Here are thirteen really […]
Some GUMSHOE scenarios give players the opportunity to pick up small temporary pools. In Trail, for example, reading the collected letters of a crazed physicist might give a 2-point temporary pool that can be spent on Occult, Physics or Astronomy. The players can use these points as they would regular points from their character sheets. […]
The Cult of the Devourer, as seen in Eyes of the Stone Thief, are the descendants of enemies of the Emperor. They were exiled from the Dragon Empire, and ended up riding along in a living dungeon that they intended to one day turn into a weapon against the ‘usurpers’. The cult’s original goal of […]
Ritual Magic permits a spell caster to turn one of their prepared spells into an improvised plot-bending miracle. All they need to do is have the Ritual Casting feat, sacrifice one of their available spells, and make a skill check. The rules and Difficulty Class are simple and largely in the purview of the Gamemaster […]
While personal hooks and drives ensure that your investigators are the ones to actually investigate the Mythos, what brings them together, as opposed to pursuing their own solitary mysteries? The Trail of Cthulhu rulebook offers several campaign frames; here are three more. Ghostly Sorcerers Against The Mythos Other ugly reports concerned my intimacy with leaders […]
by Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan At Gencon 2023, we proudly announced the advent of Trail of Cthulhu 2nd edition. We also, perhaps foolishly, intimated it would be crowdfunding in November. This is, as you have doubtless discerned already, not the case. We’re currently planning a crowdfunding campaign for March of next year. As of this writing, we’ve […]