In the reality horror world of The Yellow King Roleplaying Game, a redmedic is a parasitic humanoid guised as a doctor or nurse. In our reality, it is a refreshing cocktail starring muddled fresh strawberries. Redmedic 2 shots gin ¼ shot gum syrup (or simple syrup) 3 dashes rhubarb bitters 3 – 5 strawberries ½ […]
Tag Archives: RDL
Today’s cocktail brings lightless deliciousness from the Lake of Hali. Black Lake 2 shots Cachaça 2 shots chilled espresso, incl 2 tsp sugar or sweetener 6 shots water 2 dashes mole bitters ½ tsp vanilla extract Stir. Serve on the rocks. Requires the advance prep of making and chilling the espresso, but more than worth […]
A Scenario Hook for Ashen Stars The lasers pick up a contract for what appears to be a simple rescue mission. The massive freighter Never Given has lost faster-than-light capability and has become lodged in a translight corridor. Characters with Astronomy or Forensic Engineering want to hear that last bit again. Lodged in a translight […]
In this story hook for preteen weird investigation in Fear Itself, excitement over Mars exploration turns to alien terror in a sleepy small town. The young protagonists assemble when assigned to a group class presentation about the latest NASA rover mission to Mars. They establish their group dynamic while poring through images on the NASA […]
The paintings of the Russian-born French artist Jean Béraud (1849-1935) offer a trove of inspiring images for the Paris sequence of your Yellow King game. Straddling the warring Impressionist and Academic camps, he specialized in scenes of everyday life and worked during and beyond the game’s 1895 setting. Like the action of a typical scenario, […]
A column about roleplaying by Robin D. Laws Most writers, whatever form they favor, fade into obscurity after their deaths. That goes triple for playwrights. The number of stage writers whose works are still produced in the English-speaking world is very spare. And only a handful of those wrote originally in other languages: chiefly […]
Along with many other historical figures of 1895 Paris, characters in The Yellow King Roleplaying Game can meet Alphonse Bertillon, who pioneered both the scientific and pseudoscientific strains of criminal forensics. He appears in the Paris book; we also discuss him in this episode of Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff. The mug shot remains […]
When Kanye West commissioned a hologram of her late father as a birthday present for his wife Kim Kardashian, he was giving a gift to her, no doubt about it. But wasn’t he also giving a gift to us, as Game Moderators looking for perfect scenario seeds for the This is Normal Now sequence of […]
For the “Mr. Wilde’s Wild Halloween” one-shot of The Yellow King Roleplaying Game I ran recently on Twitch, I knew the action would open with the investigators heading to a party. To fit both the occasion and the reality-bending theme, and to demonstrate to the audience how Shock and Injury cards work, I decided […]
A column about roleplaying by Robin D. Laws A colleague currently running The Yellow King Roleplaying Game recently asked me what happens when one of your players determines to seek out “The King in Yellow,” the fictional play that brings mental dissolution and reality shattering supernatural effects to all who read it. The answer is: […]


