In DramaSystem, all participants, including the GM, collect and spend tokens throughout the course of an episode. Red, yellow and green tokens are called procedural tokens, and are used to call procedural scenes your character is not in and determine how many cards you draw to resolve procedural scenes. Blue tokens are recommended to represent […]
Tag Archives: Hillfolk
Up until the middle of the 20th century, when class distinctions started to soften and an egalitarian ethic took hold in the West, differences in social status remained a key concern of the English-language storytelling tradition. Today’s audiences sometimes have trouble understanding why Tess of the d’Ubervilles doesn’t leave and set up a hat shop […]
In the latest episode of their eponymous podcast, Ken and Robin talk character agency, palimpsest recovery, Hillfolk Kickstarter logistics, and saving Vinland. Featuring special Pelgrane guests Simon Rogers and Cat Tobin!
A column about roleplaying by Robin D. Laws I designed DramaSystem to allow groups to impose their own dynamic on play. It gives you a framework and lets you decide what to do with it. So when it turns out that one-shot games tend to take on a cutthroat edge, that’s not because I installed […]
A column about roleplaying by Robin D. Laws Hillfolk and Blood on the Show present a couple of series pitches that cross the streams with our flagship GUMSHOE games. Chris Lackey’s “The Whateleys” lets you play in Lovecraft territory from the cultists’ point of view. My own “Mutant City: HCIU” flips the police procedural […]
See P. XX A column on roleplaying by Robin D. Laws Roleplaying offers a pleasure we don’t much mention or, for that matter, particularly think about. When you play with a group, you get to see how each of its members thinks. Here I’m speaking not so much of the content of their thought—about resource […]
“I am not in danger, Skyler. I am the danger.” —Walter White, Breaking Bad Every month the DramaSystem Series Pitch of the Month Club brings you a new and unique series pitch for the Hillfolk RPG. For December, Jesse Scoble draws you into the dark and violent world of border drug trafficking with Narcocorrido. Here, narcotraficantes and […]
See P. XX A column on roleplaying by Robin D. Laws In DramaSystem, the group takes turns selecting themes for each episode. At the end of each session, players explain how they brought this theme into play, and related it to their Dramatic Poles, the internal contradictions that lend dramatic characters coherence and motivation. […]
Hail, raiders of the Gen Con high country! To celebrate the launch of Hillfolk and its companion volume Blood on the Snow, we’ve arranged two signing events at the Pelgrane Press booth. We have so many contributors at the show that we’re going to be splitting our signers into two bunches. On Thurs Aug 15th […]
Christian is very close to being finished with the layout for Hillfolk, and it’s really capturing the feel of the game. We’ve also had a picture from the printers of one of the bags for the Hillfolk tokens. Here are some initial mock-ups of how the books, the cards and the bag will look.