A column about roleplaying by Robin D. Laws Over the years I’ve occasionally been asked, most often by Simon, how GUMSHOE and player narrative control might work together. My answer has always been the same—uh, they kinda mostly don’t. GUMSHOE assumes that the solution to the mysteries the PCs investigate remains fixed once established in […]
Tag Archives: RDL
The following memo was found in the archives of the Russian Academy of Sciences. It sheds light on the complicated relationship between the surrealist Dreamhounds of Paris and both the French Communist Party (PCF) and the intelligence arm of its Soviet masters. July 6, 1932 To: Trofim Lysenko, Russian Academy of Sciences From: Konstantin Strezhakov, […]
Dreamhounds of Paris already stretches Trail of Cthulhu’s default time frame by covering events of the surrealist movement from the 1920s. While researching the book I found some details ripe for Lovecraftian parallel that fell on the other side of the time divide. Although the surrealist movement never recovers from the Occupation and the flight […]
See P. XX A column on roleplaying by Robin D. Laws The surrealist films your player characters help to create as the Dreamhounds of Paris one day wind up on YouTube. The ones fit for human observation, at any rate. In 1928, expat American photographer and painter Man Ray and French poet Robert Desnos […]
One figure I’d hoped to feature as a possible player character in Dreamhounds of Paris is the painter Yves Tanguy. His imaginary biomorphic landscapes seem as dreamlandish as better-documented movement cohorts Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst, or André Masson. Their undulating forms evoke a primordial soup on the verge of spawning life. His careful delineations of […]
Dreamhounds of Paris’ sandbox structure requires players to know what they want to do as their surrealists explore and alter the Dreamlands. Knowing what you want from a sandbox roleplaying environment can be harder than it sounds. Luckily, the unconscious automatism so beloved by the historical surrealists can come to your rescue. Just scour the […]
Want to cross over from the Spanish Civil war setting of Adam Gauntlett’s Soldiers of Pen and Ink to the Dreamlands exploration of Dreamhounds of Paris? Connections abound. The war takes a profound toll on Salvador Dalí, whose rightward political shift can be traced to the leftist capture of his hometown, Cadaqués. Revolutionaries destroy his […]
Dreamhounds of Paris brings sandbox play to Trail of Cthulhu, as the surrealists of the 20s and 30s discover their ability to consciously reshape the realm beyond waking. I play with a group that works best either in the completely dramatic realm of Hillfolk and DramaSystem, or in a procedural game with a strongly laid-out […]
a column on roleplaying by Robin D. Laws Trail of Cthulhu maven Tony Williams asks, regarding Dreamhounds of Paris: I would be interested in Robin’s opinions of surrealist art. Does he enjoy it? What does he think of the major surrealists movers and shakers as people, having researched them so thoroughly? Are they all insufferable […]
See P. XX A column on roleplaying by Robin D. Laws As a general rule, writers learn to avoid repetition. In the immortal words of David Byrne, say something once, why say it again? When writing roleplaying material I have to keep reminding myself to strategically violate that general rule. If there’s one thing playtesting […]