As the project increasingly leaves my hands and heads to Pelgrane HQ and post-production, it’s time to show off a smidgen of the reality-shattering art you’ll see in The Yellow King Roleplaying Game. Brittany’s legendary city of Ys rises from the waves, by Shel Kahn, from Paris A postcard of malign implication, collage by Dean […]
A creature for The Esoterrorists The Outer Dark Entities known as sheeple slip through thin spots in the membrane caused by the belief that a dangerous contaminant or source of disease exists nearby. They enter our reality only in rural areas where domestic livestock roam. Sheeple feed on the fatal terror of farm animals. Cows, […]
A column about roleplaying by Robin D. Laws The Yellow King Roleplaying Game rules debut a new iteration of GUMSHOE, which we’re calling QuickShock GUMSHOE. The name combines two of the features of the new rules set: combats take way takes less time than in standard GUMSHOE mental setbacks a character may suffer in the […]
In my last Page XX column I promised a rule for a rare instance of procedural resolution. This occurs when the caller of the scene wants to be surprised by the outcome of an external event. I admit to being surprised that people want this, but it turns out that a few groups do. It […]
In a previous post I laid out the basics of Shock and Injury cards in The Yellow King Roleplaying Game (now on Kickstarter.) Let’s now dive in a bit more detail into the way certain of the cards evoke the sense of a multi-step recovery. Like anything in GUMSHOE, they emulate the way things work […]
As those who’ve read the preview draft of the Yellow King Roleplaying Game (available to all backers of its Kickstarter) already know, its iteration of GUMSHOE takes a new approach to the emotional and physical wounds horror characters suffer in the course of their exploits. When something debilitating happens to your character you receive Shock […]
A column about roleplaying by Robin D. Laws My designs for Pelgrane have all been modular. Each includes several sub-systems one could drop out without affecting the way other parts of the game operate. (I say “for Pelgrane” because one of my games does use a universal engine in which every action is handled in […]
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 […]
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 […]
